As soon as they had to do anything, the whole thing fell down. From the slogan, to the statement, to the guidance, it is an unholy shambles, a near-ceaseless demonstration of cack-handed inadequacy.

It’s not like they didn’t have time to prepare. We’d been hearing rumours of Boris Johnson’s announcement for a week before it happened. And then look how it played out.

The government changed the ‘stay home’ slogan to ‘stay alert’, a phrasing which had no obvious meaning whatsoever, and which then had to be explained by a statement which suggested, among other things, that people should “stay alert by staying at home as much as possible”. So it meant nothing unless it might also meant the other thing which it had just replaced.

Last night, Downing Street put out a statement saying the prime minister would tell people that they should go to work on Monday if they could not work from home. Shortly afterwards, Johnson made a statement in which he made the same point. He did not specify the day but the clear implication, given it was delivered on Sunday night, was that he meant Monday morning. This afternoon in the Commons he simply referred to “this week”.

But on the Today programme this morning, Dominic Raab said:

“We’re saying to them, they should now, from Wednesday, go back to work.”

On the extremely basic matter of when people should go to work, there was no clarity. And in fact there was some evidence people were already going to work, with videos of the London Tube network showing packed carriages of commuters.

Employers were told that workplaces needed to be distanced so that they were safe for workers. Public transport should be avoided, but where people had to use it they should also be subject to safety measures.

What were the safety measures? We do not know, because they have not been published. Pushed on the issue today, Johnson suggested the workplace guidance would be published tonight and the transport guidance tomorrow. The plan itself was only released this afternoon.

So at the moment at which people were pressured to go back to work, they were provided no basis upon which to assess the safety of them doing so.

There was a fascinating turn of phrase during last night’s statement. Johnson delivered most of it directly to the viewer. But then he suddenly switched gears and started speaking about the viewer instead.

“We said that you should work from home if you can, and only go to work if you must,” he said. And then: “We now need to stress that anyone who can’t work from home, for instance those in construction or manufacturing, should be actively encouraged to go to work.”

Who was that said to? It was hard to escape the conclusion that it was aimed at employers. It seemed to give away a deep truth about whose side the government was on.

Johnson will not know what it is like to work in a factory on low wages. He will not understand, or be interested in, the power dynamic that operates in places like that. It is not, as he seems to envisage it, a forum where egalitarian discussions take place. You are told to go work by your bosses and then you go to work, if you want to keep your job.

But the statement yesterday and in the Commons this afternoon provided those workers with very few protections.

“People who cannot work from home should talk to their employers about returning this week and the difficulties they may or may not have,” he said.

On the struggles of those who have children to look after and no school provision, he could only say:

“We will count on employers to be reasonable.”

He used the phrase “common sense” so often that it seemed to dominate the entire debate. And yet there is no common sense here. Common sense to an employer is getting back to work so they can make money again. And that might involve less stringent safety provisions than an employee would like. The sense was not common at all. It would be different to different people, depending on where they stood.

In reality, common sense had only one translation. It was the transfer of responsibility for what was happening from the government to people themselves.

Only at one point, in response to a question from Labour MP Chi Onwurah, did Johnson finally go further, insisting that the Health and Safety Executive would do spot inspections. The rest of the session was devoid of meaning.

Labour leader Keir Starmer asked the prime minister a series of very specific questions about guidance provision, timetables, workplace safety requirements, public transport arrangements, childcare and gaps between policy in the home nations. He did not get any answers, just a series of platitudes – “there is far more that unites the UK than divides it”, “this is the moment for the whole country to come together”, all of that. It was an incessant stream of vapid tosh.

This is a government which simply does not know what it is doing. There is not even a trace-element of competence on display. After a week of planning, it is beyond comprehension that they should fail to decide on what day these measures are supposed to apply, let alone be unable to describe what they are.

Don’t expect them to improve. They will not. They are simply not up to it. If they’re unable to summon the gravitas and responsibility to handle this, they’ll be unable to do it over anything.

*

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Ian Dunt is editor of Politics.co.uk. His new book, How To Be A Liberal, is out later this year.

Featured image is from politics.co.uk

On May 3rd a bunch of mercenaries, led by Rambo-like US soldiers of fortune attempted to disembark on the coastal town of Macuto in the La Guaira state in Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, in a so-called Operation Gedeon.

Their leader, ‘contractor’ Jordan Goudreau, CEO of US ‘security company’, SilverCorp, in interview with Miami-based extreme right wing Venezuelan opposition journalist, Patricia Poleo, candidly explained that the aim of their military incursion against the South American nation was to attack the presidential palace so as to overthrow the government of President Nicolas Maduro and install a de facto Guaidó-led government. Goudreau claimed to have deployed a mercenary force of 300 to carry out the military ‘mission’.

The mercenaries received training in at least three camps in Riohacha, Colombia, had the full support of the Colombian government that has declared explicitly its desire to overthrow the government of President Maduro. All sorts of their logistical needs were resolved by well-known narco-trafficker and paramilitary, Elkin Javier López Torres, alias ‘Doble Rueda’¹, leading member of the La Guajira drug cartel, who offered his own ranch to host the mercenaries and financed all Gedeon’s preparation expenses. It would be impossible for Doble Rueda or any other Colombian drug kingpin to happily engage and participate in such a hefty political adventure without the Colombian government approving, supporting and collaborating with it. There is nothing surprising about this: It was the Colombian drug cartel Los Rastrojos who gave armed protection to Juan Guaidó after he illegally crossed the border to attend the Branson-led Cucuta concert in February 2020. After Los Rastrojos took pictures of themselves with Guaidó, handed him over to Colombia’s presidential guard who took him to the presidential helicopter who would fly him to the concert.

What was even more astonishing was that Goudreau showed on camera the contract for his services for which he would be paid US$212 million, “plus other expenses” (more on this later), signed by himself, ‘self-proclaimed interim president’ Juan Guaidó, Juan Jose Rendon, Sergio Vergara, and finally Manuel Retureta as witness. That is, Juan Guaidó and key members of his cabinet contracted the services of a mercenary company to launch a military attack on the presidential palace in Caracas, kidnap and/or assassinate president Maduro, also assassinate key members of the Bolivarian government such as president of the National Constituent Assembly and leader of the PSUV, Diosdado Cabello, Vladimir Padrino López, commander in chief of the armed forces, Delcy Rodriguez, vice-president of Venezuela and other high officials and Chavista political leaders.

Source: PRR

JJ Rendon, a Venezuelan extreme right winger, specialist on black propaganda, has been advisor to presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, to Colombian presidents Alvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos, Enrique Peña Nieto (Mexico), and a few other high level right wing politicians. Rendon signed the contract in his capacity as High Presidential Commissioner General Strategy and Crisis Management; Vergara, member of extreme right wing party Voluntad Popular, is Guaidó’s right hand and in charge of the his ghost cabinet, signed as High Presidential Commissioner for Crisis Management; Retureta, the witness, has been defense lawyer for Colombian paramilitary leader, Salvatore Mancuso; Dámaso Lopez, right-hand man to Sinaloa cartel leader, Chapo Guzman; Tony Hernandez, brother of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted by a US federal judge of large-scale drug trafficking; and Fabio Lobo, son of former Honduran President, Lobo, son condemned to 24 years in prison in the US for drug trafficking (Retureta is known as the ‘drug traffickers’ lawyer’). He is JJ Rendon’s personal lawyer.

The mercenary attack

A strategic objective of the mercenary incursion was to create distractions so as to disperse Venezuela’s military and police forces so as to facilitate their plans to drive in several SUVs with high calibre machine guns of their rooftops (a la ISIS) the 1-hour trip to central Caracas to both attack the presidential palace and secure the Simon Bolivar airport in Maiqueitía.

As a distraction, a fake confrontation between criminal gangs in the poor and populous Petare barrio was organized seeking to divert crucial military and police forces from the coastal areas. This was confessed in video by José Alberto Socorro Hernandez, alias ‘Pepero’, a Venezuelan drug traffickers who in video confessed to being a DEA agent and said: “The DEA asked me to bring about chaos in several poor areas of Caracas. The DEA asked me to contact drug traffickers, and threaten them so they collaborated in this.” Pepero goes on to say that he hired Petare gang head ‘Wilexis’ so as to feign armed confrontation between gangs with war weapons but no casualties. If anybody has strong connections with drug traffickers is the DEA. President Maduro correctly drew the conclusion that the DEA seemed to have been in charge of the operational and logistical aspects of Gedeon.²

To top it all up, it has transpired that Goudreau’s company have performed security services as part of the personal guard of President Donald Trump himself. Goudreau “had been introduced to Keith Schiller, President Trump’s long time bodyguard, and accompanied him to a Miami meeting with representatives of Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó in May 2019”.³ And, Goudreau was in charge of security of the Branson-led Cucuta February ‘concert’ aimed at pushing so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ into Venezuela by military force, seeking military confrontation so as to justify an external (US military) intervention.

The full complexion and cobweb of links and connections of the mercenary incursion began to emerge slowly but inexorably. As all trails of the conspiracy led to Bogota and invariably ends up in Washington DC, President Nicolas Maduro has charged the US and Colombian governments of being behind the mercenary incursion. As expected, presidents Trump and Duque strenuously denied any involvement. In TV interview Rendon admitted he had signed the contract, which he characterised as ‘exploratory’ but denied Guaidó had signed it. Guaidó himself has denied signing it, even though the whole world has actually seen the contract with his signature.⁴

Three gunships carrying large quantities of heavy ammunition belonging to the Colombian Navy that certainly were abandoned by mercenaries on the run ended up in Venezuela. They were seized by Venezuelan military authorities. The Colombian Navy issued a statement ‘explaining’ the gunships had ended up in Venezuelan territorial waters because they had been dragged there by water currents.⁵ President Maduro has publicly said that as soon as the Colombian government formally requests it his government would immediately return them.

On April 29th, Pompeo, announced that James Story, US ambassador to Venezuela and all his staff, who have been running a virtual US embassy for Venezuela from Bogota, “would soon be moving to Caracas’. Next day (April 30th) war criminal Elliott Abrams, Special US Envoy on Venezuela, twitted “Transition in Venezuela is coming”. And infamous John Bolton in twitter message announced (April 30th) “Morning is coming to Venezuela – again.” Similar twitter messages were posted by prominent oppositionists such as Ivan Simonovis, Guaidó appointee to the White House on matters of defence: “What is coming is unavoidable and unstoppable”. This was one or two days before the mercenary attack. The US clearly knew about it.

As has been widely reported, the mercenary attack failed because it was stopped in its tracks by the Bolivarian armed forces which had a confrontation with one contingent of mercenaries in one of the boats in the small coastal town of Macuto which resulted in the death of 8 of them on May 3rd. On May 5th, 8 more mercenaries were captured by the inhabitants of Chuao, a small fishing village in the Aragua state. The image of a Chuao barefoot Black fisherman, member of the people’s militia, holding a gun in his right hand, supported by the community and a few municipal police officers, ordering the mercenaries to raise their arms behind their head in surrender was indeed symbolic. In Chuao the captured mercenaries, including two US mercenaries, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, were tied one next to each other. It poignantly symbolises the struggle of Venezuela against a powerful but immoral world power. Both, Denman and Berry have appeared on videos confirming the key features of Operation Gedeon, including securing the airport to wait for the arrival of an airplane to take kidnapped President Maduro to the United States. Berry said that one of the tasks was to kill President Maduro.⁶ When Denman was asked who he received orders from, he said, ‘Jordan Goudreau’ and when asked who gave the orders to Goudreau, his reply was, ‘President Donald Trump.’

In the last few days, more fugitive mercenaries are being mopped up by Venezuelan security forces, the militia or communities in a national mobilization of alert and, though God knows what else Trump and Co have in store for Venezuela, Operation Gedeon has been defeated and crushed by what President Maduro calls the ‘Bolivarian fury’.

Who is really behind this?

Since it would be impossible for training camps for such a number of mercenaries to operate in Colombia without government knowledge and agreement, even less so if it happens with the collaboration of powerful drug kingpins, for which the knowledge and connections the DEA has in Colombia and elsewhere are very convenient. Despite massive US military presence (at least 10 military bases established in 2009 entrusted with the task of precisely combatting drug trafficking) the training went on without detection. Furthermore, the DEA would not have been so collaborative without the State Dept. and President Trump himself agreeing to the carrying out of Operation Gedeon. Guaidó and his corrupt entourage follow orders from the Yankee paymaster that not only finances but owns them.⁷ Thus, it looks like the line of command of all Colombia-originated terrorist operations against Bolivarian Venezuela perforce of existing hierarchies, can be traced to the Four Apocalypse Horsemen: Abrams, Pompeo, Pence and Trump, as must have been the case with Gedeon. Additionally it is impossible for Guaidó to have undertaken such a hefty financial commitments with SilverCorp without consulting and the specific authorisation of the US and especially Steven Mnuchin US Secretary of the Treasury, body that is managing all Venezuelan illegally confiscated monies.

The ostensibly puzzling feature of Operation Gedeon is the deployment of about 60-70 mercenaries who were expected, if one follows the full details of the tasks to be undertaken if Gedeon was successful, could not possibly have been carried out by such a small number confronting a well-armed, well trained, well equipped, and fully alert and mobilised Bolivarian armed forces and police supplemented by about 3.5 million people’s militia. This scepticism holds even if the number of mercenaries was 300 as claimed by Goudreau.

This has allowed the world corporate media to present Operation Gedeon as the narcissistic whim and money ambition of one crazy individual, Jordan Goudreau. In this regard, the worst was an AP piece by journalist Joshua Goodman who in an extremely long account of the whole saga desperately seeks both to ‘demonstrate’ no connection with Duque and Trump but also convince us that Guaidó and Co, having entered into ‘exploratory’ talks and even drawing a ‘drafts contract’, had abandoned the project with Goudreau. Goodman claims “Guaidó’s envoys, including Toledo, ended contact with Goudreau after the Bogota meeting because they believed it was a suicide mission, according to three people close to the opposition leader.”⁸ The Guardian’s Julian Birger, Joe Daniel Parkin and Chris McGreal echoed the narrative and mount a sturdy defense of Guaidó who they quoted as having said “that if the Venezuelan president let the operation go ahead in that knowledge, he had blood on his hands.”⁹ And the BBC forcefully reported that “Mr Guaidó denied having anything to do with Mr Goudreau. In a statement, he said he had “no relationship nor responsibility for any actions” taken by the US war veteran.”¹⁰ These two ‘bastions’ of the struggle for democracy rather than condemn a criminal and illegal mercenary attack against a sovereign nation they end up, though deviously, the side of the criminals.

So almost monolithically most of the corporate media pumped the same narrative. It was a big effort aimed to get international public opinion away from focusing on Trump, Duque, the DEA and, if possible, Guaidó. It feels as though the world corporate media is intensely compliant when it comes to communicational narratives required explicitly or not by the State Dept.

The feasibility of Operation Gedeon takes an entirely different complexion when other contextual factors are taken into account. First, not only La Guaira is at 1-hour drive from Caracas (the airport to be secured by the mercenaries is even closer), and Juan Guaidó was elected to the National Assembly for the state of Vargas, where La Guaira happens to be.¹¹ The plan, after the attack on the palace and the kidnapping (or killing) of President Maduro, mercenary forces involved taking control of Macuto, a Restauration Patriotic Government Junta headed by Juan Guaidó would be flown in, proclaimed it as ‘liberated territory’, calling upon the ‘international community’ to be recognised, followed by the immediate recognition by the US government and all its vassals in Latin America, starting from Colombia and probably, the European Union.

This was almost certainly to be followed by an intoxicating media frenzy ‘reporting’ the fall of Maduro filling the waves with images of confrontations, corpses, blood and ‘heroic resistance by freedom fighters’, showing Guaidó making an impassionate call for foreign assistance to be responded in the first instance probably by the anti-drug US-led air and sea fleet deployed recently by Trump in the Caribbean Sea (which includes warships from Holland, France and the UK).¹² Thirdly, where was the plane to take President Maduro to be flown to the US coming from? Not only the US has 10 military bases in Colombia, it also has military facilities in Aruba, Curacao, and recently they have obtained control over Brazil’s Alcántara military base and have also been granted control over military facilities in the Galapagos islands, Ecuador, plus plenty of more in the Lesser Antilles. When added up to the NATO bases in the region, Venezuela is completely surrounded by hostile military installations. The US-led air-sea combined fleet deployed on the false premise to ‘cut off links between the Venezuelan government and drug traffickers’, was followed after an indictment by US General Attorney, Bill Warren¹³, against President Maduro and his government on charges of drug-trafficking and terrorism, so as to purposefully create a scenario, legitimising and generously rewarding in law any endeavour leading to the capture of President Maduro and other indicted high officials in the Bolivarian government, as in 1989 Panama with Manuel Noriega.¹⁴

The Dept. of Justice held a media show with President Trump leading it, and accused President Maduro and 14 high ranking Venezuelan officials of Allegedly Partnered With the FARC to Use Cocaine as a Weapon to “Flood” the United States.”¹⁵ Incredibly as it may sound, during the whole media show, with all kind of speakers including President Trump and Barr himself who, with ardent rhetoric they castigated drug trafficking, Colombia was not mentioned once. Warren issuing of the indictment took place barely one month before the mercenary forces was unleashed. As though in the Far West the US offered a US$15 million reward for any information leading to the capture of Nicolas Maduro.

The US characterization of Venezuela as ‘narco-state’ (repeated by sections of the media ad nausea) are not only false but thoroughly contradict the DEA’s own reports whose data lead it to conclude that “92% of cocaine seized in the U.S. comes from Colombia”.¹⁶ Worse, since 2009, date of the installation of the 7 extra U.S. military bases in Colombia to combat cocaine production and trafficking, both problems have massively increased according to the DEA itself, institution whose data also shows that 82% of the cocaine produced in Colombia reaches the US through the Pacific Ocean.¹⁷ Figures and trends broadly consistent with official UN Office on Drug and Crime. Furthermore, Venezuela does not have geographical access to the Pacific.

US harassment, aggression and criminal sanctions against Venezuela have intensified during the pandemic because US strategists think that the complications, extra expenditure, lockdown and dislocation that Covid-19 brings in its wake are likely to be conducive to implement successful ‘regime change’ rogue operations. There must be the additional consideration that Venezuela has received international recognition for its efficient programme to control the pandemic (see article by Francisco Dominguez on this in Transform Nº8), something Washington finds intolerable therefore it is not reported in the world corporate media.

Thus, a coalition to carry out the mercenary attack was put together which must have had the OK from Washington with the DEA in charge of its operational and logistic features which involved high levels of decision making in the US, the Colombian government and its para-state outfits, including well known paramilitary drug traffickers (Doble Rueda), SilverCorp, Guaidó, his close entourage (JJ Rendon et al), and petty criminals in Caracas coerced by local DEA agents. All crisscrossed from top to bottom by vast sums originated in the cocaine trade in Colombia.¹⁸

What were the political objectives?

The speculation about the central role that large foreign military forces would play to support the mercenary attack, is relevant and valid when one considers the full plan of ‘regime change’ involved in the Guaidó-Goudreau contract, especially since the legal and political framework for a military strike against President Maduro had been created by the Dept. of Justice. Once the Guaidó-Goudreau contract’s appendixes were published the tasks to be carried out by a successful coup d’état are so enormous and so multifaceted that unless the golpistas had at their disposal a massive invading military force, they could not be accomplished. The plan amounts to the full and complete dismantlement of the Venezuelan state brick by brick until its total demolition. Given the size and commitment of Chavismo in all its thousands upon thousands of local committees, grassroots organizations, trade unions, women bodies, the 3.5-milllion strong people’s militia, the armed forces and so forth, the dismantlement of the Bolivarian state necessitates perforce a gigantic social and political purge involving mass killings to a level that would make Pinochet like a naughty school boy. The full 41-page Appendixes of the Guaidó-Goudreau contract¹⁹ stipulate among other tasks, for the military force in command – Goudreau – after the successful ‘regime change’ to stay for a preliminary period of 450 days, a year and a half, renewable depending on the evolution of the situation in the country. In short, US plans for Venezuela is total and thorough demolition of the Bolivarian state and for which Goudreau would be paid, to start with, US$212 million.

In the appendix (page 3), there is mention to an Investors’ Group, who would put together the US$212 million, but because such a sum was not immediately available, Goudreau would request a bank loan to finance the preliminary operations and for which Guaidó commits his government to pay it back with a 55% interest. If the mission has been accomplished, additionally Goudreau would receive an extra bonus of about US$10 million.

The mercenary military force would constitute itself in a Military Task Force who would be under the direct command of Guaidó, but it would exert military authority over all the existing military and police forces and over the whole of the Civil Service. Thus, by virtue of the Guaidó-Goudreau contract, the latter becomes the most powerful body in the land.

The Task Force would declare hostile certain military forces (military, naval, air, police, etc. both conventional and non-conventional) associated with the V Republic (page 8) and that have emerged and evolved with the 1999 Constitution and Bolivarian Revolution that must be “neutralised”, i.e., assassinated. Furthermore, any military force loyal to Maduro in the eventuality of putting up resistance, must be eliminated (sic). Among key figures to be eliminated are Diosdado Cabello and forces loyal to him and to Maduro would be declared hostile and also eliminated (page 9).

By decision of Guaidó (page 9) as stipulated in the contract, authorises Goudreau to order and approve any military attack and to start any hostilities he deems necessary, against groups such as non-conventional troops, over any private or public buildings, weapons storage facilities, roads, motorways, any media, and can order attacks on buildings associated with the V Republic government that have been declared hostile (page 7). Thus, for example a building of the Housing Programme where a local cultural committee operates can be declared hostile and be attacked so as to be eliminated. The same applies to thousands of such premises throughout the country that house trade unions, communal councils, local committees, cooperatives, and such like. That is, by virtue of the Guaidó-Goudreau contract the whole of the Chavista movement or anything that may resemble it can, to the prejudiced and racist eye of a Rambo-style gringo mercenary, be a military target for elimination. One can imagine extreme right wing armed Venezuelans ‘guiding’ members of the Task Force to attack just about any target as they themselves have done so many times during their guarimbas: health centres schools, universities, houses of the Housing Mission, crèches, and burning dark-skinned people alive. Guaidó, additionally authorises the Task Force to make use of any lethal weapon, including personal or other type of mines.

Page 15 authorises the Task Force to arrest any civilian ‘involved in a criminal activity’, that interferes with any military mission of the Task Force, that is on a list of persons to be arrested, for security reasons, this includes even priests can be arrested.

In page 20 of the contract, confirming how much US neocon mindset influences the desired outcome, since “Any person providing support to or a member of the following international terrorist organizations, or any group/cells/facilities associated therewith: ELN, FARC, Drug Cartels, Al Qaida, Hizballah, Hamas, Taliban and about 10 other organizations in the Middle East are deemed to be hostile forces and therefore targets for the Task Force (page 20).

Any form of disturbance, demonstrations, marches, etc., would be dealt with by force as follows, first a call to stop, then deployment of weapons showing the intention to use it, a shot is fired as warning and, if not heeded, then the threat or disturbance is eliminated. Any civilian can be arrested and held prisoner with no legal rights. The contract stipulates that the Task Force can make use of force at any time, even lethal force. The Task Force would also assume the role of security for Guaidó and his entourage, assistants and the golpista government. Furthermore, (page 21), the contract grants “all privileges, exemptions and immunities”” from prosecution for the use of lethal force as you would ‘to any country’s security force’, well before the perpetration of the announced Force’s military attacks. The contract also grants the Force and its members to get in and out of the country without passport and are exempted from visa protocols, all they need is to show their SilverCorp staff card and for travel they would only need a written authoritisation from Goudreau (page 24). And SilverCorp is not responsible for any destruction or loss of life that occurs in the carrying out of the mission contained in the contract and were there to be any litigations emanating from the US, Venezuela or any other source, the ‘Venezuelan Guaidó state’ would cover all costs and were the litigations to be lost Guaidó would indemnify them financially (page 38).

If any member of the Task Group is wounded, killed or arrested, Guaidó commits himself to insure them by paying US$450,000 to their closest relative, this means that because Berry and Denman have been captured, Guaidó already owes Goudreau’s SilverCorp US$900,000. And if any member of the Task Group loses a limb or eyesight during the carrying out of the mission they will be paid US$250,000 (page 28).

The chain of command in the planned golpista Guaidó government would be as follows: Juan Guaidó, Commander in Chief; Overall Project Supervisor, Sergio Vergara; Chief Strategist, Juan Jose Rendon; On Site Commander, To Be Determined. That is to say, the democratic institutional apparatus of the Bolivarian Republic would have been simply pulverised by a de facto rogue government supported militarily by a bunch of rogue US mercenaries very likely with the collaboration of invited ‘friendly’ military forces from at least the US and Colombia. A bunch of 300 mercenaries have no chance in hell to carry out such a mammoth task as the dismantlement of the Bolivarian state apparatus. As with the April 2002 brief coup against Hugo Chavez, all state institutions (National Assembly, Supreme Court, National Electoral Council, all ministries, the Ombudsman, the government, the Constitution, national sovereignty and so forth, would be simply dissolved). The difference with 2002 is this time their dissolution would have been carried out by military force followed by mass elimination of Chavistas.

Bolivarianism versus barbarism

President Maduro and the Bolivarian government have responded to yet another US-inspired, and probably US-funded mercenary attack with political calm and military efficiency. As we write social networks report that over 37 mercenaries have been rounded up whilst an intense search throughout the nation but especially around the areas La Guaira, Aragua and the whole Caribbean coast are being combed inch by inch, continues, and the border with Colombia is tightly secured. They have also responded by telling the truth and fully informing their people and the world through various press conferences on national TV to journalists from all around the world. President Maduro himself has led the truth offensive and it is clear that whatever the level of unscrupulous cynicism of Trump, Pompeo, Abrams et al, there is no question they did not expect such a swift outcome favourable to Maduro. Nor probably did they expect such a crushing and humiliating defeat for the US mercenaries. The Bolivarian government has already submitted a formal accusation against the US in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for all its aggression, sanctions and threats. On national TV President Maduro instructed Jorge Arreaza, minister of foreign affairs, to add the charges related to the US government involvement in the recent mercenary attack. Another accusation to the ICC will be presented by the Venezuelan government against President Duque and his government for his undeniable participation in Goudreau’s Rambo criminal adventure.

This is essential since the skilful diplomacy of the Bolivarian government has led to interesting and fruitful collaboration with various UN bodies, including the UNHRC Michelle Bachelet, but also with the International Red Cross, the WHO, plus powerful international voices such as the Non-Aligned Movement, several Latin American countries, Russia, China and plenty of others. Additionally Venezuela enjoys worldwide solidarity support from international trade union federations, mass political parties everywhere particularly in Latin America, social movements, intellectuals and solidarity bodies. During the few days following the mercenary attack, literally hundreds of messages of support came from all over the globe.

What is disgusting is the sickening silence of the European Union that has been so preoccupied with just about anything and everything with Bolivarian Venezuela for the last decade at least taking a highly negative stance and being led by the nose from Washington’s views and foreign policy on Venezuela. They knowingly took a skewed view of US-led extreme right wing forces violent efforts to oust the democratically government of Venezuela in 2014 and 2017. The EU pretended it did not see Guaidó collaborating with criminal gangs of Colombian narco-paramilitaries in February this year to attend the Branson-led concert in Cucuta. Worse still the EU did not condemn the coup attempt led by Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo on April 30 this year and they pretended. By then however doubtful Guaidó’s credentials were since he was never elected nor did he even stand as a presidential candidate yet most European governments recognise his thoroughly unconstitutional self-proclamation as ‘interim president’ which ought to have been sufficient for European governments to withdraw that recognition. And now Guaidó contracts mercenaries with the explicit and written aim to kidnap a head of state and assassinate him as a prelude to establishing a de facto rogue military dictatorship with the declared aim to eliminate a whole political current by the use of lethal force which is deemed genocide in international law nevertheless the European governments continue to recognise him as the ‘interim president of Venezuela’ and keeps silent about the mercenary attack. Is the EU decomposing politically as well as falling apart?

Conclusion

The US continues with its ‘regime change’ policy through violent means against Venezuela but keeps failing. The mercenary attack clearly took a long gestation period since it included the US Dept. of Justice indictment against President Maduro and high officials in his government of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism so as to create Panamanian conditions for US military intervention. However, they know Venezuela is not Panama and the US of 2020 is increasingly becoming a shadow of its 1989 self. Yet, US imperialism will persists because it desperately needs to lay its claws of the largest deposits of oil and gold in the planet but more importantly Venezuela’s resistance is a key obstacle in its efforts to fully reassert its hegemony regionally which will give it a better position from which to face the formidable China challenge.

Therefore, our solidarity with the heroic Venezuelan people must be redoubled and we must demand, echoing international voices such as UN General Secretary, Antonio Guterres, and Pope Francis I, the immediate suspension of US sanctions against Venezuela during the period of the pandemic so as to allow Venezuela to engage in financial transactions to purchase food, medicines and vital health inputs, essential to combat the pandemic and keep saving tens of thousands of lives.

The international labour movement should call upon the US stop interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela, a fully sovereign and proud nation and demand the immediate and unconditional return of all assets and resources illegally confiscated to the Venezuelan state by the Trump administration. By 12th May 2020, the US has about 1,4 million people infected with Covid-19 with over 80,000 deaths, greater than the deaths of US Marines of the entire Vietnam War, whilst Venezuela on the other hand has 422 cases of infection, with 10 deaths. The argument for the US to abandon its wasteful and criminal ‘regime change’ efforts against Venezuela to instead concentrate on saving US lives and allow Venezuela the breathing space to continue with saving Venezuela lives.

This applies to Europe as well where banks and financial institutions are illegally retaining Venezuelan assets to the tune of over US$5 billon (notably Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England), they should be immediately and unconditionally return to its legitimate owner the state of and the people of Venezuela.

There is no legal or political justification on earth for the EU to continue its untenable policy of recognising Juan Guaidó as ‘interim president’ of Venezuela when de facto they work with the Bolivarian government of President Maduro, especially now that his criminal credential have been (again) conclusively proved.

US Hands Off Venezuela! Fight the Pandemic Not Venezuela!

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Notes

It is not as if the battle of information warfare has not been going on for some time now. It was amply demonstrated in the runup to Brexit, throughout the three years to last December and is now fully deployed to contain the COVID-19 crisis.

The mainstream media frenzy over Prof Neil Ferguson’s apparent and not very extraordinary love life is just the latest example of a scientist who has been targeted for confronting parts of Britain’s political-media complex. He has been scapegoated by a government that is failing at every turn to manage the COVID-19 crisis and the political fallout it is causing. Ferguson is just one of a few in the list who will be used as Boris Johnson’s human shield against public outrage.

Was Ferguson, who sat on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) before his resignation, really so wrong in his actions as to require one of Britain’s best and most talented to resign. The PM has done much worse and not resigned. We shouldn’t forget, just prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the PM rushed off with his girlfriend to a secret (undisclosed) hideout, given by a Tory donor just as the Russia Report was raging and days away from being in the public realm. We shouldn’t forget that Johnson is as inappropriate a leader for Britain as can be. He proudly characterised himself as someone who is sexist, a homophobe, a racist and a misogynist.

But shock horror – Prof Ferguson is having an affair. The lurid front-page headlines are now following little more than the usual campaign to discredit him by those ideologically opposed to anything where experts, pressure groups and public opinion mean government could intervene in the public interest. For instance, it’s the same tactics used against scientists in other fields, most particularly climate change.

Bob Ward is policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Here’s what he has to say on the same subject:

“It is a further sign that some media commentators and politicians favour a version of Britain in which politicians and newspaper editors dictate the public’s understanding of biology and physics.

Ferguson has been under attack ever since his research team’s modelling suggested in mid-March that hundreds of thousands of deaths in the UK from Covid-19 were possible if stronger efforts were not made to curb the growing epidemic.

Within a week, the prime minister announced the current lockdown measures. The move was perceived as a U-turn because the government’s chief scientific adviser had days earlier suggested that allowing widespread infection might be an option to achieve “herd immunity” across the country.

Ferguson’s contribution was initially praised, but it was not long before his reputation was under assault from parts of the media traditionally sceptical of a so-called “nanny state”.

On 28 March, the Daily Telegraph published an article alleging that “the scientist whose calculations about the potentially devastating impact of the coronavirus directly led to the countrywide lockdown has been criticised in the past for flawed research”.

The story relied on the views of a handful of critics of how Ferguson’s models were used by the then Labour government to tackle the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The article failed to mention that Ferguson received an OBE in recognition for his important role in the crisis, or that he was afterwards elected a fellow of the prestigious Academy of Medical Sciences.

The next day, Peter Hitchens, in the Mail on Sunday, described the lockdown as “mass house arrest” and identified Ferguson as being “one of those largely responsible for the original panic”.

A few days later the Wall Street Journal published an article by two British commentators that argued “the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically demonstrated the limits of scientific modelling to predict the future”. It singled out Ferguson’s work and complained that “reasonable people might wonder whether something made with 13-year-old, undocumented computer code should be used to justify shutting down the economy”.

Bizarrely, this article was written by Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford, the director and deputy director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up by Nigel Lawson in 2009 to lobby against climate change policies. The foundation has a track record of attempting to discredit climate models that show rising greenhouse gas levels risk warming the world to dangerous levels.”

Only this week – government scientific advisers were found to be furious at what they saw as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public.

The Guardian published a report by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) last week designed to reduce growing criticism about the lack of transparency over the advice given to ministers responding to the coronavirus. However, large blocks of text in their report, produced by SPI-B, the SAGE subcommittee providing advice from behavioural scientists on how the public might respond to lockdown measures, were entirely blanked out.

One SPI-B adviser said: “It is bloody silly, and completely counterproductive.” A second committee member said: “The impression I’m getting is this government doesn’t want any criticism.”

One member of the government’s advisory committee called it “Stalinist censorship“. Another scientific adviser is understood to be considering resigning over the government’s secretive approach to science around the Covid-19 outbreak, which they believe is undermining public trust.

The big problem here is that the scientists are reporting their findings, which doesn’t sing in tune with the governments’ desire to get the economy fired up again – irrespective of the cost to human life. So the scientists report, the government censors those reports, it then goes against the science and then blames the scientists when it goes wrong.

All of this undermines the independence of scientific experts as well as trust and confidence – but worse, is supported by a media complex that spews out exactly what it has been given by the Downing Street office of propaganda.

A week ago, the behavioural scientists on the team said that in their four-page report that there was a consensus that the high levels of adherence to government guidelines “are likely to be maintained in the short-to-medium term, for as long as it is evident that Covid-19 poses a serious risk that cannot be managed in any other way”. Last night Boris Johson went against that advice in his speech to the nation, but only after various newspapers had been given several days to break the news that the lockdown was coming to an end.

And as Bob Ward says –

“Many other scientists in the UK working on issues that have implications for government policy know what it is like to be vilified, both publicly and privately, for their findings. They are regularly attacked by many of the British media commentators who are currently joining the pile-on to Ferguson.

It is time to put a stop to these media lynch mobs that risk driving Britain back into the Dark Ages. We must continue to base our decisions on the advice of experts such as Ferguson, and reject the irrational arguments of those who want political dogma to trump evidence.”

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NATO has a “sharing” treaty with Berlin where it delivers to Germany dozens of nuclear warheads, which are deposited in Buchel, at Ramstein Air Force Base.

The presence of these weapons in German territory has been controversial for a long time. In addition to violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the presence of American warheads on German soil constitutes an attack on NATO’s basic principles, being a case of true legal and political aberration on the international stage. However, the state of collective dissatisfaction with such passive subordination has been growing gradually in recent years. In this sense, the debate about the maintenance of such weapons is becoming increasingly fierce, with great opinions against these nukes taking hold among Germans and Europeans in general.

“I defend a clear position against parking, making available and, of course, using nuclear weapons,” said Norbert Walter-Borjans, president of the Social Democratic Party, in an interview published in the “Frankfurter Allgemene Zeitung” newspaper.

In the same vein, Rolf Mützenich, President of the Social Democratic Parliamentary Parliament, said that

“nuclear weapons on German soil do not strengthen our security, on the contrary. (…) The time has come for Germany to exclude nuclear parking”.

The moderate German left is beginning to take part in the cause of the country’s liberation from foreign occupation, shifting the anti-NATO discourse from the sphere of “political extremisms” (both left and right) to a spectrum of greater acceptability in European public opinion.

The challenges, however, are many. The most conservative wings in the country stand up fiercely against any speech in favor of banning arms. Annegret Kramp Karrenbauer, German Defense Minister, made a statement on the topic, arguing that the “needs” of these weapons are due to geopolitical political tensions:

“As long as there are states with nuclear weapons that do not want to be part of our community of values, we need a strong negotiating position. (…) The capacity to deter nuclear sharing provision serves this purpose. Those who want to abandon it are weakening our security”.

In the same vein, conservative Patrick Sensburg, in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper, stated that “nuclear weapons are first to protect Germans”.

Outside Germany, at NATO, any discourse critical of the American occupation is met with disgust and reactions are immediate and aggressive. The secretary general of the Western military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, spoke as follows:

“NATO’s nuclear sharing is a device (…) that guarantees benefits, responsibilities, and the risks of nuclear deterrence are shared among allies. (…) Politically, this is significant (…) Participating allies, such as Germany, make joint decisions on nuclear policy and planning, as well as maintain appropriate equipment. (…) All allies agreed that, as long as there are nuclear weapons, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance”.

The debate raises major controversies and is far from over. However, here we contemplate yet another example of the great problem of post-1945 international law: war is prohibited, except when the West determines it. Likewise, military occupation and weapons of mass destruction are illegal internationally, but they are easily used, without any punishment at the UN, when the West so desires, in its goal to exercise a global police function. NATO exists solely for this purpose: to act as a global police, overseeing the correct functioning of the hegemonic power structure of the West.

The argument that nuclear bombs provide a country greater sovereignty and can assist in international negotiations is valid. Indeed, countries with nuclear arsenals have greater power in the negotiations. However, these weapons on German soil do not belong to Germany and Germany itself does not have the power to use them according to its unilateral sovereign will. These weapons belong to the US and their use is the prerogative of Washington, which means that their presence in Germany decreases, does not increase, the country’s sovereignty and makes it more, not less, fragile in international negotiations.

For a country embedded in the secular and legal culture of Western Europe, strongly committed to the world’s pacification, the banning of arms is a fair and acceptable route and it is up to NATO and the US just to respect the sovereign decision of the German National State, abandoning the warlike mentality of the last century and the vision of Germany as a “dangerous nation”.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from The Sleuth Journal

In the early hours of May 3, and then again on May 4, heavily armed mercenaries on speedboats attempted to enter Venezuela from Colombia. They were confronted by the Venezuelan armed forces, militia, police and local fisherman. Eight were killed in an ensuing shootout, while the others were arrested. Among those detained were two former United States Army Green Berets. The isolated pockets of army deserters are still being rounded up as these lines are being written.

One of the leaders of the failed coup attempt is Canadian-born Jordan Goudreau, a former US Marine who heads up a private Florida-based security firm called Silvercorps USA. While he did not participate directly in the raid, he did leave behind a video recorded in Colombia in which he and his Venezuelan military partner take credit for the attempted coup. The other two Americans captured also testified to their involvement. The confessions lead us through a labyrinth of corruption and shady deals, from Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó all the way up to Donald Trump.

The goal of the coup plotters was the capture and arrest of President Nicolas Maduro. A contract signed by Goudreau, Guaidó and his advisors including exiled lawmaker Sergio Vergara and Juan José Rendon confirm in black and white the plan to overthrow the Venezuelan government. Maduro has blamed Trump and the Colombian government for the chaos, but the US has so far denied any involvement.

Not convinced about US involvement? Here is the clincher. On April 29, only several days before the May 3 adventure, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boasted:

“I’m pleased to report that the multilateral effort to restore democracy is continuing to build momentum. I’ve asked my team to update our plans to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Caracas so that we are ready to go. As soon as Maduro steps aside, I am confident that we will raise that flag again in Caracas.”

The Trudeau government was surely aware of Pompeo’s confident statement. In addition, the news about the May 3 fiasco even appeared on CBC television that morning. What’s more, we know that some Canadians were already online in the evening of May 3 and again the next day, appealing to Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne to take a stand against the US-sponsored paramilitary action.

Was Canada Unaware?

Yet, a full day and a half after the May 3 debacle, Champagne tweeted, tagging Guaidó:

Couching his message in concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears Champagne used the global health emergency as a pretext to discuss the coup attempt. The facts overlooked by Champagne, in his apparent haste to phone and tweet, show that the countries Canada mentions (Peru, Colombia and Brazil) are all facing domestic disasters because of right-wing policies. In sharp contrast, Venezuela has the best record in all of Latin America in containing the coronavirus.

Moreover, the tweet indicates that the Canadian government is still very much on board with the US narrative on Venezuela irrespective of the failed military incursion, without making explicit reference to it. This is further reflected in another tweet, posted after further captures of mercenaries and the release of additional proof of the international nature of the plot as it continued to unfold. On May 8, Champagne tweeted:

A few days later, on May 11, Trudeau spoke directly with Colombian President Iván Duque. According to the Canadian government readout:

“Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with the President of Colombia, Iván Duque Márquez, to discuss the latest developments on COVID-19 in each of their countries, and around the world… The two leaders also discussed the crisis in Venezuela and its humanitarian impact in the region which is heightened by the pandemic. They underscored the need for continued close collaboration and a concerted international effort to address this challenging situation.”

One would have to be naive to believe that both the successive tweets by Champagne and Trudeau’s statement were not coordinated to reiterate the government’s support for Guaidó as self-declared interim president, and its tacit alignment with Duque and Trump’s regime change agenda.

Trudeau Should Take a Public Stand Against US Intervention and Sanctions

On May 6, when Pompeo vowed to “use every tool available” to secure the release of “two American military veterans”, he was engaging in a rhetorical sleight of hand, portraying the mercenaries as “victims” in the fight against “human right violations” committed by the Maduro government.

Judging by Champagne’s tweets and the readout from Trudeau’s call with Duque, it is clear that Canada is pledging implicit support of the coup attempt without dirtying its hands in the murky waters of corruption and hitman politics. After all, if it wants to live up to its self-professed humanitarian role in global politics, Canada must maintain its image of peacemaker.

If one looks to previous crises, the Trudeau government is likely biding its time, waiting for events to unfold. Yet, its continued complicity in imperialist actions in Venezuela, and its failure to speak out against blatant violations of international law in Latin America speak volumes.

On May 8, Trump referred to the failed coup attempt and made it clear that he would have done things differently:

“I’d go in and they would do nothing about it… they would roll over. I wouldn’t send a small, little group. No, no, no. It would be called an army. It would be called an invasion.”

Canadians must demand that the Trudeau government publicly disavow all forms of military intervention against Venezuela, including the May 3 paramilitary incursion and Trump’s reckless threats of invasion. Irrespective of one’s views on Maduro, Venezuela has the right to self-determination and national sovereignty.

At the same time, one can have no illusions about Canada’s Venezuela policy under the Liberals, and thus a long-term alternative foreign policy direction must also be sought.

Canada’s Complicity in the US-Led War Against Venezuela’s Constitutional Government

Some may have forgotten that Canada was involved in regime change efforts in Venezuela a few years after Hugo Chávez was elected and sworn in as President in January 1999. Ottawa’s resentment was focused on Chávez’s nationalization of Canadian gold mines, and his general hostility to large-scale foreign investment. The Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s most international financial institution, was also involved in mining investments in Venezuela and joined the push for regime change.

More recently, in 2017, Canada was instrumental in establishing the Lima Group, a multilateral body composed of 13 mostly right-wing governments including Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Saint Lucia. The Lima Group’s stated objected is the peaceful “democratic transition” of leadership in Venezuela. It was formed because the US and Canada failed to obtain unanimous backing from the Organization of American States (OAS) to support regime change against Maduro. Thus, the Lima Group is, in the words of Nino Pagliccia, “totally illegitimate in its pretension to be an international body.” The US is not even a member.

Trudeau and his foreign affairs minister have played a key role in the Lima Group, and have also been instrumental in reaching out to European nations to bring them into the fold. Without Canada’s leadership, the Lima Group would certainly have collapsed or become almost irrelevant. It is precisely due to the perception of Canada’s foreign policy as devoted to “peacekeeping” and “humanitarianism” that the body has widespread approval, at least in elite circles.

The website of Global Affairs Canada contains almost 100 statements added since 2017 concerning Canada’s role in the Lima Group. All of these entries, without exception, provide cover for the numerous coup attempts by the US. Not one of them criticize in any way the aggressive and wanton actions of Washington to enhance the suffering of the Venezuelan people to achieve its imperial aims in the hemisphere.

Sanctions Kill and Canada Is Involved

Furthermore, the US has been carrying out crippling economic sanctions against Venezuela.

According to American economistsMark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

The sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the U.S. is a signatory. They are also illegal under international law and treaties which the U.S. has signed, and would appear to violate U.S. law as well.

One would expect the supposedly progressive Trudeau government to oppose these violent economic sanctions, given that they are illegal and constitute a war crime. Yet, Ottawa also carries out sanctions against Venezuela. This policy has been lauded by the Trump administration. Vice president Mike Pence stated in Ottawa, alongside Trudeau in a May 2019 press conference: “Canada has imposed sanctions on 113 of the dictator’s cronies. You’ve promoted the cause of freedom and free Venezuela inside the Lima Group and the OAS. And the two of us have said, with one voice, that Nicolás Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power, and Nicolás Maduro must go.”

The Trudeau government’s Venezuela policy is a disgrace to all peace-loving Canadians who support the right of self-determination. Irrespective of our individual political views, we ought to unite in support of the Venezuelan people against illegal and dangerous attempts to enact regime change. Is it asking too much for Canadian MPs to work towards a common ground, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, to demand that Canada rescind its sanctions against Venezuela, and rebuff the Trump regime for its support for the recent coup attempt?

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Arnold August is a Montreal-based journalist and author of three books on Cuba–Latin America–U.S. whose articles appear in English, Spanish and French in North America, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He is also a speaker currently concentrating on Trudeau’s foreign policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Source

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canada-and-the-coup-attempt-against-venezuela

The US is claimed to be hardest hit by COVID-19 with, at the time of writing, over 80,000 deaths attributed to the virus. The nation is also suffering from socioeconomic disaster as lockdowns have driven millions of Americans into not only unemployment, but predictable poverty and hunger as a result.

The crisis has been pounced upon by special interests to help propel various sociopolitical and economic agendas rather than confront and overcome the crisis, leading many to suspect the crisis itself has been deliberately overblown.

Health Impact

At face value the US would seem to be hit by an unprecedented health crisis. Hysteria spread by the mass media focusing on the numbers of infected and dead are provided to a panicked public without context.

Indeed, over 80,000 people have so far died with infections at nearly 1.5 million (confirmed).

Yet a quick look at basic statistics provided by the US government’s own Center for Disease Control (CDC) shows that COVID-19’s impact on human health including total deaths has not even surpassed recent flu season burdens. For example, according to the CDC’s website, the 2017-2018 flu season (running from December 2017 to March 2018) left anywhere between 46,000 to 95,000 dead.

Deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been recorded for 2 full months longer with questionable methods used to attribute COVID-19 as the cause for death.

The death rate has been reported at anywhere between 1% to as high as 5% to 6%. Missing from these seemingly concerning numbers is the fact that widespread testing has not been undertaken. The few instances where it has been done has shown that the number of infected is many times higher than official reports. This means that the death rate is much lower and more comparable to the annual flu than any sort of novel and particularly dangerous pathogen.

Testing in California and New York have revealed that in these states alone millions are likely to have been infected by COVID-19 and simply showed little to no symptoms.

A CBS article titled, “Study shows 13.9% of people tested in New York state have coronavirus antibodies, Cuomo says,” admits:

New York’s first survey of coronavirus antibodies shows that 13.9% of those tested in the state had coronavirus antibodies in their system, meaning they have contracted and recovered from the virus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Thursday. That suggests that 2.7 million people have been infected statewide.

In other words, there are likely more people infected in New York state alone than infected nationwide according to “official” reports.

If information regarding how widespread COVID-19 actually is and how dangerous it is or isn’t, is not accurate, how can the United States formulate appropriate measures to respond to the outbreak?

Measures

Despite what appears to be similar to a bad cold or flu, the US has ground its society to a halt with lockdowns and social distancing measures.

“Non-essential” occupations have been encouraged to work from home or to not work at all. The food and beverage industry for example, the second largest employer in the United States, has been ground to a halt with employees furloughed for what has now been weeks or even months. Many of these employees do not expect to return to work until at least June.

In Los Angeles, county officials have extended “stay at home” measures for another 3 months meaning that people will have been shut in for nearly half a year if and when in late August people are allowed to return to their normal lives!

Social distancing is being enthusiastically enforced by police around the nation. In New York City, in order to “protect” people, those not practicing social distancing have been beaten, tased and even arrested. The physical and legal damage done “saving” the public from COVID-19 appears to be more extreme than the actual threat of COVID-19 itself.

Since most New Yorkers (and most people around the entirety of the United States) likely have been infected by the virus anyway, social distancing and lockdowns are more of a psychological exercise than one of isolating the pathogen and stopping its spread, an exercise aimed at addressing public panic, but public panic deliberately fuelled by the media and the government.

Socioeconomic Impact

For the United States, a nation’s whose economy was already in steep decline and losing ground to emerging economies around the globe, most notably China, these lockdowns amount to a self-inflicted mortal wound no conceivable plan of action can reverse.

Had COVID-19 been the deadly pathogen many may believe it is owed to mass media misinformation, the United States stood ill-prepared for it. This was not merely the doing of the current US administration, but a problem known for well over a decade with US presidents from George Bush Jr. to Barack Obama to current US President Donald Trump taking turns ignoring it.

The New York Times reported that things like ventilator shortages were known for at least 13 years and instead of rectifying the problem, large biomedical corporations were allowed by the US government to buy out small contractors tasked with fixing the shortage and ending programs to develop cheap ventilators in order to maintain artificial scarcity and the high prices (and profits) associated with it.

While COVID-19 appears to be far less dangerous than claimed by the mass media, the impact of measures taken by the US government and local state governments has created what is a disaster now being compared to the Great Depression.

Rather than rectifying it by simply rolling back lockdowns and social distancing measures, or even finding ways to aid the millions left unemployed, special interests are taking turns exploiting the crisis by blaming political opponents or even international competitors (like China). They are also looking for ways to cash in, with America’s deeply corrupt pharmaceutical industry being the most prominent example already teeing up massive profiteering by offering “vaccines” to solve COVID-19 fears.

The US, rather than uniting and overcoming whatever COVID-19 actually is, be it a pathogen or an unprecedented wave of widespread panic, has instead allowed itself to become divided and distracted, as well as exposed to the very worst sort of socioeconomic predators lurking amid America’s economic and political landscape.

It is difficult to predict what will happen in the weeks, months and even years to come regarding the state of America socioeconomically considering just how widespread and deep the damage being done now is. A nation as large as the United States plunging so quickly has never historically boded well for that nation nor the world it finds itself free falling in. The US already faced many challenges regarding its decline both at home economically and abroad geopolitically.

COVID-19 has simply exposed and accelerated the process, compounding an already uncertain future with a new degree of damage, danger and desperation.

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Gunnar Ulson is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

A report by New Economy found that “Turkey had significant foreign exchange outflows” because of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s costly wars. The report also found that “Turkey’s probability of bankruptcy is extremely high,” along with its three big banks of Garanti, Akbank and the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk-founded İşbank. “The country’s commercial banks, its last stronghold, have dried up from foreign exchange currency,” meaning that Turkey has nearly no money for its import and export companies.

Daily air violations of Greek airspace, the continued occupation of northern Cyprus, a failed invasion of Idlib province and continued financing of terrorist organizations in Syria, funding of Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, and overseas military bases in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, has all tallied up against the Turkish economy.

Turkey’s Ahval wrote that “there is no money in the treasury. Everyone knows why, but we are not supposed to talk about it. Today it is hard to speak openly about military spending in Turkey. It is also hard to even access information about Turkey’s war expenditure.” However, we can get some insights. A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released their latest report on global military spending and found that between 2009 and 2019, Turkish military expenditure increased by 27%.

On Thursday, the same day the Turkish lira fell to new all-time low of 7.26 against the U.S. dollar, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party Deputy Chairman Numan Kurtulmuş blamed his country’s economic woes because it is “under global attack.” This was mostly an outburst to distract the fact that his country has an out of control military spending.

Although Turkey is attempting to secure money from the U.S., Washington is unwilling to assist Turkey believing it is too high risk. Although Turkey has improved relations with Russia, Moscow could offer a few billion dollars, but this would be nowhere near enough to make a meaningful impact on the downturn.

So what are Turkey’s options?

The International Monetary Fund, which Turkey has already ruled out.

China, which Ankara is continually criticizing for alleged human rights abuses against the Turkic Uighur minority in Xinjiang province.

The European Union, which Turkey can always count on long-time ally Germany but faces a resistance from other states.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Saturday called for deeper bonds to be forged between the EU and Turkey, saying that his country “is open to all sincere and meaningful cooperation for our common future” and “we expect the EU to adopt a rational policy that goes beyond the narrow national perspectives of Member States and reflects the Union’s global responsibilities, as well as the EU’s motto of ‘unity in diversity’.”

It now appears that Turkey is so desperate for economic relief that it is turning to the EU for assistance, even after it attempted to flood EU-member Greece with illegal immigrants in February and March, and some weeks ago Turkish soldiers shot at EU border protectors. Negotiations with the EU are likely to reach a standstill as Turkey still occupies a part of EU-member Cyprus, restricted French bank PRB Paribas from FX transactions, violates Greek airspace on a daily basis, and continues to threaten the flooding of the EU with illegal immigrants. Although Turkey will surely receive support from long-time ally Germany, it is likely to hit a roadblock with many other EU members.

In speaking with Dr Konstantinos Vergos from the Portsmouth Business School at the University of Portsmouth, he explained that “Erdoğan set a 5% GDP growth target for 2020 and that it is unlikely Turkey will have anything less than a 6% drop in GDP.”

Although Erdoğan is adamant that he does not want assistance from the International Monetary Fund, according to Vergos, if Turkey “already has 10% deficit, this is going to increase the probabilities of knocking on the Fund’s door by September.” He urged that Turkey “should decrease any non-necessary expenses, such as excess military expenditure and to focus on the big issues, like the coronavirus.”

It is unlikely that Turkey will subside its militarism as it does not want to take a step back from achieving total regional hegemony, no matter the extreme cost to the Turkish economy.

Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a close ally of Erdoğan, said on November 29, 2019 that “only one hour of gasoline for an F-16 [war jet] costs $14,000.” Turkey in 2019 alone violated Greek airspace 4,811 times, meaning that up to $60 million could have been spent on penetrating Greek airspace with war jets. This does not include F-16 and naval violations in Cyprus, occupying northern Cyprus, airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, funding jihadists in Libya and Syria, continuing its domestic war against the Kurds, maintaining military bases in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East, buying the Russian S-400 missile defense system, and many other military related endeavours.

As much as Turkey may want to blame a “global attack” for its economic problems, it is for domestic consumption that aims to distract the Turkish people that its leadership’s war machine has a huge role in the weakening of the lira. Although Turkey is now opening up to the EU in the hope of having some financial pressure released, the EU will hardly assist Turkey so long as it continues to pressurise Greece and Cyprus. It is unlikely the U.S. will help unless Turkey ends its S-400 plans, something it will not do, too. Without foreign assistance and unwilling to end its military campaigns, it now appears that Turkey’s only hope can be the International Monetary Fund that it is desperately trying to avoid being trapped in.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

The European Union promised €3.3 billion to the West Balkan countries and provinces of Serbia, Montenegro Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia. In return, the European Union is demanding loyalty and renunciation of close ties with Moscow and Beijing. However this is unlikely after the initial refusal of Brussels to supply aid and relief and there is now little trust in European Union solidarity.

“The EU is mobilizing a substantial financial package, confirming the strong solidarity. Together we will overcome this crisis and recover. And beyond that, we will continue to support the region, including with the reforms needed on their EU path, as the recovery will only work effectively if the countries keep delivering on their commitments,” said European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Her comments about substantial financial packages only came when in March she announced in a Twitter video message that the European Union is restricting the export of medical devices and stressed that the ban on exports of these goods applies throughout the entire EU and is linked to the need to maintain sufficient supplies of medical supplies within the alliance. This announcement prompted Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to say that European solidarity is just a “fairy tale on paper” and that China was the only country who could help them.

European response to the #coronavirus: Protecting people‘s health and ensuring that goods flow in the internal market pic.twitter.com/9JNBzHjqvc

— Ursula von der Leyen #UnitedAgainstCoronavirus (@vonderleyen) March 15, 2020

Not only did China help Serbia, but so too did Russia. Obviously, the European institutions, even reluctant to help fellow member countries such as Italy and Spain, did not hesitate to make an indignant face by denouncing Moscow and Beijing of exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to ensure a greater presence in the Balkans. And with the usual hypocrisy they explained that the Commission had not denied aid, but simply stressed the need to obtain the consent of all 27 member countries before granting it. In short, a mockery. Aware that they have lost much of their credibility, the European Union are now attempting to recover lost ground.

The first move was the video conference on May 6 in which European Union leaders and the heads of state and government of the 27 member countries listened to the requests of the six states in the West Balkans who are waiting to be admitted into Union. This expectation was frustrated in mid-October by Emmanuel Macron’s veto who was determined to block the negotiations to Albania and North Macedonia. A veto officially returned last February when the French president, under pressure from other European Union members and NATO concerned about the favor given to Russia and China, agreed to adapt to the Commission’s decisions.

However, North Macedonia also faces difficulty from Bulgaria who has vowed to block any accession so long as Skopje continues to claim there is a “Macedonian minority” in Bulgaria and not acknowledge that the main language of North Macedonia, as Bulgaria claims, is actually a West Bulgarian dialect. Albania also faces difficulty as it could face a veto from Greece as Tirana continues to discriminate against the Greek minority in Northern Epirus.

However, ignoring these disagreements that exist in the West Balkans, European bureaucrats have put on the table €3.3 billion to be distributed to all the countries and states that agree to refuse any Russian or Chinese aid. The need to use money to buy Balkan loyalty is a clear sign of how unattractive the European project has now become – having itself been questioned and become widely unpopular in Italy and Spain.

In addition to the feared penetration of Russian soft-power based in centuries-old relationships of culture, identity and religious tradition with the Serbian people and their communities in Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo, the Chinese and the Turks are also exhibiting far more influence in the region compared to the European Union. China, in addition to donating health products needed in the fight against coronavirus is also building a new railway line. This new railway line agreement with Hungary and Serbia and financed by the Exim Bank of China, will connect the port of Piraeus in Greece to Budapest and Belgrade. In addition to traditional relations with the Muslim communities of Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania, Turkey has also developed very intense trade and exchanges with Serbia and Montenegro.

In short, the €3.3 billion promised by Europe risks proving to be the counterpart of an illusion that has already vanished. And to understand it, Milorad Dodik, the Serb Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said “the Europe we believed in ten years ago no longer exists today.”

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Former U.S. President Barack Obama is coming under increasing pressure, led by what President Donald Trump is calling “Obamagate.” This comes as Mexico has requested to finally clarify the affair with the secret sale of American weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Mexico is asking for the case to be clarified after almost ten years.

In this secret operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, weapons from the U.S. were sold to Mexican drug cartels. The U.S. claimed that about 2,000 automatic weapons were sold to Mexicans so that the Barack Obama administration could follow their path to the drug cartels. Instead, these weapons were used in massacres. Mexican authorities are now seeking answers from the United States.

In addition to selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels, Obama is responsible for a lot of global upheaval on the world stage – primarily the so-called “Arab Spring” that should be more accurately described as the “Arab Winter” as it brought death and destruction across the Arab world.

The sale of these weapons to Mexican drug cartels is another ugly legacy of Obama’s rule that liberals like to view as one of the best periods of American history. Let’s not forget that in 2009 Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for his apparent “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”

The majority of U.S. media will most likely try and find appropriate excuses so they can minimize Obama’s role in these scandals. It is completely clear that the battle over who will be in the White House in the next four years is now taking focus on the Obama era as of opposed to Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 80,000 Americans and infected more than 1.3 million people.

With endless tweets by Donald Trump dedicated to Obama over the past few days, it is as if the presidential battle in November will be fought between him and Obama, and not Democrat сandidate Joe Biden.

The reason for Trump’s many tweets against the former president was because of Obama’s private conversation that was leaked to the public in which he criticized the suspension of the investigation against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, while he called Trump’s fight against the coronavirus epidemic a “chaotic disaster.”

The American president started tweeting on the morning of May 10 and stopped late in the evening, making over a hundred tweets against Obama. This exchange between Obama and Trump is not common in American politics as former presidents usually do not interfere in the politics of their successors. However, there are suggestions that Obama still has connections to the deep state and is actively undermining Trump.

Obama, who openly admitted he would remain active in politics and wished he could contend for a third term, could be exerting influence through Hillary Clinton and Biden. It is likely Obama is becoming more public as Trump’s opponent Biden is proving inadequate and incapable of defeating Trump.

The battle between Obama and Trump started with the announcement that the Ministry of Justice is terminating the investigation against former Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn, who was probably the shortest-serving national security adviser in history, was sacked at the beginning of his term on charges of lying to Vice President Mike Pence about talks with the Russian ambassador to Washington. His removal triggered a chain of failed investigations and campaigns against Trump and his alleged links to Russian interference during the U.S. presidential election, which also ended in a failed impeachment.

In private conversations that leaked to the public, Obama described Flynn’s acquittal as a threat to the rule of law.

Trump also retweeted statements from CIA agent Buck Sexton, in which he accused Obama of sabotaging the Trump administration in the first days of his term. Sexton also called former FBI Director Andrew McCabe “a dishonorable partisan scumbag who has done incalculable damage to the reputation of the FBI and should be sitting in a cell for lying under oath”

Trump then continued with accusations on Twitter and said that Obama committed “the biggest political crime in American history, by far!” and ended briefly with “Obamagate.”

As for the affair with the secret operation of selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels, journalists of Forbes in 2011 wondered whether that operation would become Obama’s “Watergate,” and it appears that it very well could be. Obama’s attempts to smear Trump has not only backfired, but it could have very serious legal ramifications against him and others in his administration.

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To say that the public has become disillusioned and wary of constant doomsday media reports and news coverage is a gross understatement — people see their world changing and they want to understand what is happening, and why. They want to be informed and therefore be prepared. They want the freedom to make educated choices instead of being told what to do by the very individuals and institutions that have led them into chaos.

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US Government Fails to Prevent a Worsening Economic Downturn

By Abayomi Azikiwe, May 14, 2020

Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky suggested several weeks earlier that state governments facing shortfalls in revenue due to the drastic decline in sales, property and income tax revenues prompted by the massive economic dislocation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, should consider the federal bankruptcy courts as a possible solution to the enormous funding problems which are already jeopardizing education, municipal services and public construction projects.

April 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper Urges Testing and Tracing Entire US Population

By Makia Freeman, May 14, 2020

A 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper now proposes the next phase of the solution to the coronavirus crisis – after the 2010 Rockefeller Foundation Paper which predicted and analyzed the problem and reaction. It’s problem-reaction-solution, Rockefeller-Gates style. Last month on April 21st, the New World Order (NWO) manipulators released a 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper entitled National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan – Pragmatic steps to reopen our workplaces and our communities. This came after countless MSM appearances by NWO frontman, eugenicist and depopulation-via-vaccines enthusiast Bill Gatesclaiming you would need digital certificates and immunity passports to travel around again, and that your inherent rights such as the right to gather or assemble may never return unless you’re vaccinated.

Beginning of the End of German Support for NATO

By Mish, May 14, 2020

Make way for the Greens and the Leftists. They do not want US nuclear weapons on German soil.

Angela Merkel will soon be gone. The next German coalition already shares new ideas in many areas including NATO.

Don’t Expect to See Trump’s Tax Returns Before the Election

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, May 14, 2020

Donald Trump claims that while he is president, his pre-presidency financial records can’t be subpoenaed and he can’t even be investigated for criminal conduct. The Supreme Court will decide by the end of June whether Trump is indeed beyond the reach of the law.

On May 12, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether Trump can block subpoenas for his tax and other financial records that predate his presidency. Although prior presidents made their tax returns public, Trump has steadfastly refused to reveal his. In 2016, he promised to release them when the purported “audit” is complete. But they remain under wraps.

HR 6666: The Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act. Towards a Totalitarian State?

By Renee Parsons, May 13, 2020

Some weeks ago the UN’s World Health Organization  recommended house to house searches for family members infected with  COVID 19 and the removal of those infected into a mandatory quarantine.  The American reaction was mostly ‘it could never happen here’  but that has not stopped House Democrats from introducing HR 6666 also known as the TRACE (Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone) Act.

The COVID-19 Crisis in the U.S.: How Many More Innocent People Have to Die?

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, May 13, 2020

Since Trump took over the power in Washington in 2016, China has been considered as a serious threat to Washington’s global domination. Washington has deployed all possible means to discredit the Chinese regime, destabilize the Chinese economy and isolate China from international decision making.

In Trump’s eyes, China bashing has very useful roles to play in the dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis in the U.S. Trump can make China the scapegoat, generate anti-China feeling and attribute Washington’s poor anti-virus policy to China. China bashing can be a good tool of covering up the policy failure.

German Foreign Policy Is a CIA Front

By Aidan O’Brien, May 13, 2020

Is it really in Germany’s interest to destabilize a region that has already been crippled by multiple wars? On the surface Germany doesn’t appear to have a stake in the politics of Lebanon. Indeed, from whatever angle the situation is viewed from, Germany qua Germany doesn’t have a meaningful stake in Lebanon. Yet Berlin is assaulting the sovereignty of this small Mediterranean nation that means no harm.

As leaders of the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives in the United States attempt to pass new legislation introduced on May 12 costing $3 trillion which is aimed at providing assistance to state and local governments, households and healthcare workers, the White House and Republican-dominated Senate are opposing any additional measures. (See this)

Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky suggested several weeks earlier that state governments facing shortfalls in revenue due to the drastic decline in sales, property and income tax revenues prompted by the massive economic dislocation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, should consider the federal bankruptcy courts as a possible solution to the enormous funding problems which are already jeopardizing education, municipal services and public construction projects.

This new House bill, known as the Heroes Act, would allocate $1 trillion to municipal, state and tribal (indigenous) governments. In addition to aid for the cities, states and reservations, another $375 billion would be directed towards suburban and rural communities all of which were largely excluded from the previous Cares Act that provided a $2 trillion stimulus package for large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises as well as individual households filing taxes annually with the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) or receive benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA). (See this)

An article published by the Associated Press on May 13 said of the proposed legislation that:

“The bill will offer a fresh round of $1,200 direct cash aid to individuals, increased to up to $6,000 per household, and launches a $175 billion housing assistance fund to help pay rents and mortgages. There is $75 billion more for virus testing. It would continue, through January, the $600-per-week boost to unemployment benefits. It adds a 15% increase for food stamps, new subsidies for laid-off workers to pay health insurance premiums under a COBRA law and a special ‘Obamacare’ sign-up period. For businesses, it provides an employee retention tax credit. There’s $200 billion in ‘hazard pay’ for essential workers on the front lines of the crisis.”

These legislative debates are in direct response to the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the continuing rates of infections, which are leveling off in some areas while increasing in others, remain a threat to the health and security of all people living inside the U.S.

President Donald Trump has consistently undermined the guidelines issued by the White House and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These suggested behaviors related to mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are routinely contradicted through the making of false claims by the president misrepresenting the actual health situation in the U.S. along with encouraging those workers still on lockdown to return to their places of employment absent of safety guarantees.

A major problem with this argument from the administration is that officially 33 million people in the U.S. have lost their jobs over the last two months. Unemployment rates will undoubtedly increase as businesses and public institutions permanently eliminate positions leaving untold numbers of workers facing financial ruin. (See this)

United States unemployment rate at Depression levels during April-May 2020 (Market Watch graph)

Consequently, there are tens of millions of people who have no jobs to return to in the immediate period. Others are facing imminent lay-offs, furloughs along with salary and benefits reductions.

Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell has sounded an alarm in regard to the prospects for any immediate rebound of the U.S. economy. Powell strongly urged Congress and the White House to continue to implement policies which can prevent a prolonged economic downturn which could have grave implications for large segments of the population.

Jobs categories subject to large-scale lay-offs amid COVID-19 pandemic (Vox graph)

Another article appearing in the Associated Press said of the present situation:

“The Fed and Congress have taken far-reaching steps to try to counter what is likely to be a severe downturn resulting from the widespread shutdown of the U.S. economy. But Powell cautioned that numerous bankruptcies among small businesses and extended unemployment for many people remain a serious risk. ‘We ought to do what we can to avoid these outcomes,’ Powell said. Additional rescue aid from government spending or tax policies, though costly, would be ‘worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery,’ he said.”

Reductions in Education Funding to Impact Millions of Students and Workers

There has been much discussion about the shift to online distance learning in response to the closing of K-12 and pre-schools throughout the U.S. Nonetheless, many households in urban, suburban, small town and rural areas remain without internet connectivity and personal computers.

Moreover, in states such as Michigan, predictions are already being made by legislators indicating that there will be a severe funding shortage beginning in the next academic year. Whether schools, colleges and universities can open for on-campus learning remains to be seen as the threat of another wave of COVID-19 outbreaks are anticipated for the fall and winter seasons. (See this)

Bridge Magazine noted in a report based upon discussions taking place within the legislature in the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, emphasizing:

“The chair of the Senate committee that sets the K-12 school budget has a dire warning for Michigan schools: Prepare for a crippling decline in state funding. Wayne Schmidt, R-Traverse City, said Monday that he has told school officials in recent meetings to ‘prepare for the worst’ budget in decades — a possible cut in the per-pupil foundation grant schools receive of 20 to 25 percent in the 2020-21 state budget, which must be approved before Oct. 1. A 25 percent cut is the equivalent of a loss of about $2,000 from the roughly $8,000 schools received per enrolled student this year.”

The imposition of such austerity policies would translate into billions of dollars in reductions for school districts across the state. Teachers and other education employees would be laid-off while classrooms become even more crowded at a time when social distancing is essential to minimizing the spread of COVID-19.

Food Supply Threatened for Working Families as a Result of Economic Dislocation

White House officials said several weeks ago that the food supply in the U.S. was resilient and secure. However, the widespread infection levels within the meat processing industry has triggered the closing of plants and the rise in absenteeism among workers due to illnesses and resignations over safety concerns.

Prices for many food products have increased over the last month. Shortages of certain consumer goods found in supermarkets and pharmacies are noticeable despite statements to the contrary by the Trump administration.

There is of course a class character to the shortages. Bloomberg reported in a recent article that:

“While many regular American grocers are running out of meat, specialty food producers have plentiful supplies — for those who can afford it. Production of luxe varieties like heritage pork, grass-fed beef and Amish-raised chicken are expanding at a time when coronavirus outbreaks at mammoth plants operated by Tyson Foods Inc. and Cargill Inc. have wiped out about 40% of conventional U.S. beef and pork capacity in recent weeks. So while lower-income consumers are finding meat hard to come by — with Kroger Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp. rationing purchases — richer Americans have their pick of fancy offerings that often cost twice as much, or more.”

Progressive and Socialist-oriented Policies Needed to Address Crises

With the U.S. government divided among the two leading capitalist and imperialist political parties which dominant the bureaucratic landscape, the potential for effective and immediate remedies to the burgeoning economic difficulties remain elusive. The Heroes Act legislation proposed by the Democratic Party leadership may help working and oppressed people in the short-term nevertheless the passage of such measures over and beyond Senate and White House opposition could require the intervention of popular organizations and Labor.

What is obviously more appropriate in light of the projected long term economic downturn resulting in another recession or depression, would be the need for the redistribution of income and wealth from the ruling capitalist class and the state to the working class and nationally oppressed. International finance capital dominating the transnational corporations should be taxed and nationalized in order to effectively address the grim social conditions of the proletariat and the oppressed.

Resources needed to maintain the households of working families and the chronically impoverished could be diverted from the subsidies and privileges provided to multibillion dollar private firms, the Pentagon and Homeland Security. The deteriorating public health status of millions of people in the U.S. represents a national emergency and should be approached as such.

Strategically, socialism provides the only solution to the crises of capitalist production and property relations. Under socialism a planned economy would ensure the health and economic security of the masses of working people and the oppressed as a priority within the public policy framework of the state.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Since the appearance, March 11, of the first cases of COVID-19 in Cuba, the country’s Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) has reported that the inclusion of Recombinant Human Interferon Alpha 2b in treatment protocols for these patients has shown positive results.

Details on the effectiveness of the product were presented by Dr. Eulogio Pimentel Vázquez, director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), affiliated with the BioCubaFarma Enterprise Group, where the medication was first produced in the late 1980s.

“The strength of the Cuban health system, and its close ties with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, in our social system that prioritizes the people’s health, makes possible the medication’s availability for all Cubans.”

According to Dr. Pimentel, in accordance with the Minsap treatment protocol, this product, in combination with other drugs, is used as soon as a case is confirmed, and not with patients in serious or critical condition.

Data released April 14 shows that 93.4% of patients testing positive for SARS-COV-2 had been treated with Heberon (the commercial name of Recombinant Human Interferon Alpha 2b). Only 5.5% reached serious condition. The mortality rate reported by Minsap on that date was 2.7%, while for patients with whom the drug was used, the rate was 0.9%. On this same date, on the international level, 15 to 20% of patients were reported in serious condition, while the mortality rate was over 6%.

“The data shows that the protocol in our country is effective, and interferon plays a key role in these results.”

Referring to the medication’s use around the world, the doctor noted that important reports of preclinical and clinical evidence have appeared in several countries. One recent scientific article refers to a study conducted in Wuhan, China, regarding its use with medical personnel. Of the individuals included in the study, 2,944 received the drug and 3,387 did not. Fifty percent of those not treated contracted the disease, while there were no cases identified among those who benefited from Cuban interferon.

At this time, more than 80 countries have expressed interest in acquiring Heberon, reflecting confidence in its usefulness in confronting the pandemic.

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Featured image is from CIGB

Whether it’s India’s latest clashes with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), its selective embrace of “economic nationalism” to “poach” foreign companies from the People’s Republic, or its forthcoming leadership of the World Health Assembly (WHA) where it might very well take Washington’s side in demanding an investigation into Beijing’s response to World War C, India is indisputably intensifying its American-backed Hybrid War on China as a sign of loyalty to its new ally.

A 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper now proposes the next phase of the solution to the coronavirus crisis – after the 2010 Rockefeller Foundation Paper which predicted and analyzed the problem and reaction. It’s problem-reaction-solution, Rockefeller-Gates style. Last month on April 21st, the New World Order (NWO) manipulators released a 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper entitled National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan – Pragmatic steps to reopen our workplaces and our communities. This came after countless MSM appearances by NWO frontman, eugenicist and depopulation-via-vaccines enthusiast Bill Gates claiming you would need digital certificates and immunity passports to travel around again, and that your inherent rights such as the right to gather or assemble may never return unless you’re vaccinated. Predictably, the April 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper is a blueprint for the creation of a colossal nation-wide DNA database of the entire US population. In a moment of raw honesty, the paper even admits that “The Rockefeller Foundation exists to meet moments like this” although to be fair it would be more accurate to say ‘The Rockefeller Foundation on behalf of its NWO masters exists to orchestrate crises like this, then pose as the savior to solve them.’ It calls for testing and tracing of all Americans – initially 1 million per week, then 3 million per week and finally 30 million per week (the “1-3-30 Plan”) until every single American is assimilated into the database.

2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper Narrative: Testing, Tracking and Vaccinating is Our Only Way to Return to Normalcy

The brainwashing is nothing if not blatant and transparent. The Rockefeller Foundation and Bill Gates have the same puppetmaster and thus read from the exact same script. Gates has repeated the scheme ad nauseam: no return to normalcy until you’re vaccinated … no return to normalcy until you’re vaccinated … no return to normalcy until you’re vaccinated. The foreword of the paper paints a grim picture (with propagandistic ideas of a resurgence and a 2nd wave in the background):

“instead of ricocheting between an unsustainable shutdown and a dangerous, uncertain return to normalcy, the United States must mount a sustainable strategy with better tests and contact tracing, and stay the course for as long as it takes to develop a vaccine or cure.”

COVID Healthcare Corps

First of all, check this out. The 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper advocates a military force (a corps, which is etymologically similar to corpse or a dead body) to administer “health”:

“The plan also includes: launching a Covid Community Healthcare Corps so every American can easily get tested with privacy-centric contact tracing; a testing data commons and digital platform to track Covid-19 statuses, resources, and effective treatment protocols across states and be a clearinghouse for data on new technologies … at least 100,000 people and perhaps as many as 300,000 must be hired to undertake a vigorous campaign of test administration and contact tracing.”

Notice how the plan includes a “Healthcare Corps” which funnily enough is exactly what Bill Clinton was planning a few weeks ago in his talks with the Californian and New York Governors where they spoke of an “army of tracers” (Cuomo’s words) and using the AmeriCorps (founded by Clinton) to become America’s new national contact tracing force. What is truly audacious and disgraceful about this part of the scheme is that some governors are shamelessly calling for the very people who have been put out of work by their policies to now go and sign up to be a contact tracer or contact investigator, so as to continue to enforce the same tyranny on others that screwed them over and caused them unemployment. Wow. You just can’t make this stuff up.

The 1-3-30 Plan

The next quote pushes their insidious 1-3-30 Plan which aims to test every single American within the next 6 months:

“We are proposing our nation come together around the bold, ambitious, but achievable goal of rapidly expanding testing capacity to 30 million tests per week over the next six months. This 1-3-30 Plan would be achieved by: (1) creating an Emergency Network for Covid-19 Testing to coordinate and underwrite the testing market, (2) launching an eight-week National Testing Laboratory Optimization Initiative to increase output to 3 million tests per week from the current one million, and (3) investing in a Testing Technology Accelerator to further grow U.S. testing capacity from 3 million to 30 million tests per week.”

Please bear in mind 5 very important things about these so-called tests:

1. Initial batches of tests overseen by the CDC were found to be contaminated themselves with the coronavirus;

2. Scientific studies such as this one found the error rate for false positives was an astronomical 80%;

3. The tests are based on the RT-PCR or PCR test which merely isolates genetic RNA/DNA sequences and cannot prove causation or tell you if that genetic sequence has anything to do your state of health. Thus, a positive or negative result is meaningless in terms of telling you whether the alleged ‘virus’ has anything to do with your state of health or your capacity to ‘infect’ another;

4. The current tests use a DNA swab and thus are engaged in DNA harvesting. Corporations in this industry are coincidentally funded by Bill Gates; and

5. The virus allegedly causing COVID-19, SARS-CoV2, fails Koch’s postulates and has still never been isolated, purified, re-injected to cause disease and 100% proven to exist. How can these tests identify a virus which has never been conclusively proven to exist?

Real-Time Data Platform

The next quote is about surveillance and monitoring:

“Integrate and expand Federal, state, and private data platforms to cover the full range of data required to monitor the pandemic, deploy resources, and remove bottlenecks … develop and integrate a real-time data platform … monitoring the pandemic and adjusting social distancing measures will require launching the largest public health testing program in American history … coordination of such a massive program should be treated as a wartime effort.”

Notice the allusion to war (as in the new war on bioterror) and the tyrannical appeal to fear to justify more surveillance. This quote also brings to mind the late NWO insider Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wrote about the coming technetronic era as he called it (his neologism for what is essentially technocracy). He said that “Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

Unique Patient Identification Number

The 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper calls it a Unique Patient Identification Number, while Gates calls it a digital certificate or immunity passport, but it’s the same idea:

“Some privacy concerns must be set aside for an infectious agent as virulent as Covid-19, allowing the infection status of most Americans to be accessed and validated in a few required settings and many voluntary ones … Those screened must be given a unique patient identification number that would link to information about a patient’s viral, antibody and eventually vaccine status under a system that could easily handshake with other systems to speed the return of normal societal functions. Schools could link this to attendance lists, large office buildings to employee ID cards, TSA to passenger lists and concert and sports venues to ticket purchasers.”

In other words, this is going to determine whether you can travel, work, trade and partake in any inherent, God-given rights. Looks like all those biblical prophecies about the mark of the beast could come true if humanity lets these psychopaths get away with this.

A Pandemic Testing Board

This next one is about the formation of new board with new powers:

“The plan also includes … a Pandemic Testing Board, in line with other recommendations, to bridge divides across governmental jurisdictions and professional fields …”

“… with a public/private bipartisan Pandemic Testing Board established to assist and serve as a bridge between local, state, and federal officials with the logistical, investment and political challenges this operation will inevitably face.”

It is surely not too much a prediction to say that this Pandemic Testing Board may turn out to be another public-private monstrosity with way too much power, just as many Big Tech companies have become. The Pandemic Testing Board may just start in the US but what’s to stop it expanding? It funnily enough sounds just like the familiar appeals for World Government because ‘there is a big big problem which crosses jurisdictions and the only way to solve it is a big big government.’

Other Quotes from the 2020 Rockefeller Foundation Paper

Lastly, here is a final notable quote from the paper:

“The good news is that in the coming weeks the country could have the tools needed to allow governors and other officials to lift the most severe lockdowns and begin a phased reopening of some businesses. The goal is to allow enough economic activity to forestall a full-blown depression while keeping Covid-19 infection rates low enough to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed and thereby causing a wider and more deadly health crisis.”

The only thing which is full-blown is that this is assuredly a full-blown lie. The goal is actually to destroy as much of the economy as they can get away with (short of riot and revolution), but enough to annihilate numerous small and medium-sized businesses, and throw many people below the poverty line. This will usher in desperation, dependency and soften resistance to a UBI (Universal Basic Income), first with no strings attached, but later with conditions. The absurd lockdown policies will absolutely have the effect they say they are trying to avoid, because keeping people locked up (away from vitamin D and an active social lifestyle) lowers people’s immune systems, so when they are released, disease (and hospitalization) will increase, not from the fake COVID-19 virus, but from other opportunistic diseases which will strike those with weakened immunity. Doctors such as Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi have explicitly stated this.

Final Thoughts

Although this article has focused on plans within the USA, make no mistake about it – this engineered coronavirus crisis is a worldwide agenda. Whether it’s the Australian Government releasing creepy tracking apps (COVIDSafe) or corrupt Israeli PM Netanyahu calling for microchipping kids, the NWO agenda of surveillance, mandatory vaccination and microchipping is advancing full steam ahead around the world. This scheme is way, way beyond national borders. It affects every single person on Earth. At the rate at which this is unfolding, it won’t be long until it comes knocking at your door. Time is running out. Get informed, spread the word and gather with others who understand this nefarious agenda now. Informed and united, an awakened and determined humanity can stop this scheme and maintain freedom.

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This article was originally published on The Freedom Articles.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and FB.

Sources

https://thefreedomarticles.com/2010-rockefeller-foundation-paper-plan-exploit-pandemic/

https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/TheRockefellerFoundation_WhitePaper_Covid19_4_22_2020.pdf

https://thefreedomarticles.com/digital-vaccine-certificates-bill-gates-plan-post-coronavirus/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/bill-gates-no-mass-gatherings-unless-youre-vaccinated/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/operation-coronavirus-next-phases-resurgence-prediction-bioterror-attack/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/orwellian-contact-tracing-program-begins-in-usa/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/cdcs-failed-coronavirus-tests-were-tainted-with-coronavirus-feds-confirm/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/6-solid-scientific-reasons-to-assuage-your-coronavirus-panic/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-19-umbrella-term-fake-pandemic-not-1-disease-cause/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/new-war-on-bioterror-everyone-suspected-carrier/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/brzezinski-easier-to-kill-than-control/

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162691-the-technotronic-era-involves-the-gradual-appearance-of-a-more

https://www.bitchute.com/video/pv21BUMi06K3/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/msm-article-shames-those-refuse-surveillance-app-covidsafe/

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/benjamin-netanyahu-suggests-to-microchip-kids-slammed-by-experts-627381

Featured image is from TFA

Global media are so consumed by the public-health and economic consequences of COVID-19 that they have failed to pay adequate attention to growing political and institutional risks. In fact, if we are not careful, the biggest casualty of COVID-19 could be democracy.

The economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis occupy almost everyone’s thoughts and conversations. And for good reason: the European Union, for one, is headed toward the worst recession in its history, with the economy expected to shrink by 7-12% this year. But far less is being said about the danger the pandemic poses to democracy, even though the signals are similarly ominous.

The EU acted fast to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic. The European Central Bank launched exceptional monetary measures, and the EU introduced a recovery and reconstruction package amounting to €1-1.5 trillion ($1.1-1.6 trillion). Differences over how to finance an EU rescue package remain, but the primary objective is straightforward: to achieve a rapid V-shaped recovery, though a slower U-shaped recovery remains a distinct possibility.

Beyond a straightforward economic recovery, however, is the widely shared ambition of building a greener, more digitized European economy. Virtually everyone agrees that the COVID-19 crisis represents an important opportunity to accelerate such a transformation, though the jury is still out on whether the EU will seize it.

The outcome will depend partly on the pandemic’s impact on Europe’s political institutions. And, so far, there are serious reasons to worry.

From an institutional perspective, the biggest threat comes from Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, which recently ruled that the German government had violated the country’s Basic Law by failing to monitor adequately the ECB’s public-sector asset purchases. This ruling is not only remarkably detached from reality – saving the European economy must be the top priority today – but also reflects open contempt for the EU Treaties.

Juridical responsibility for the ECB – including oversight over whether it is overstepping its mandate – belongs to the Court of Justice of the EU, which deemed the ECB’s asset purchases legal in 2018. Yet the German court, using utterly torturous logic, claims that it is not bound by that ruling – all in an effort to impose German economic prejudices on the rest of the EU.

Far more worrying, however, are populist efforts to use the crisis to undermine democracy. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is a case in point. Having spent the last decade attacking the free press, NGOs, and political opponents, Orbán has used the COVID-19 crisis as pretext to push through legislation that enables him to rule by decree indefinitely. This is Europe’s first such dictatorial démarche since Adolf Hitler’s Enabling Act of 1933.

In Russia, the assaults on democratic institutions are even cruder. Three doctors treating COVID-19 patients have mysteriously fallen out of windows in recent weeks, after questioning or criticizing the country’s handling of the crisis. One cannot help but recall the fate of Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak foreign minister who was found dead below his apartment window in March 1948, two weeks after the Communist takeover.

This trend is hardly limited to Europe. The world’s largest democracies – the United States, Brazil, and India – are also in growing peril.

US President Donald Trump has managed to politicize the pandemic. He has refused to help governors – especially Democrats – secure needed equipment, and even attempted to intercept equipment that had been ordered privately. Moreover, he has been stoking resistance to stay-at-home orders in states, such as Michigan and Minnesota, under Democratic control.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been following the same playbook, albeit in a more openly thuggish and oligarchic way. And, beyond implementing a poorly thought-out lockdown that left millions of Indians jobless and hungry overnight, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been using the virus to advance its anti-Muslim agenda.

Shockingly, these assaults on democracy have so far received little international attention. The global media are so consumed by the public-health and economic consequences of COVID-19 that they apparently have little space for the political implications. This is particularly true when it comes to coverage of contact-tracing apps – possibly the biggest threat to democracy of all.

By informing users of possible exposure to COVID-19, contact-tracing apps are supposed to be the key to enabling economies to reopen while minimizing the risks to public health. Yet even the most “secure” versions – which use Bluetooth, encrypt data, and promise anonymity – raise serious questions.

Who guarantees the security of the data against hackers? If I want to delete the app, will all my data be erased? How soon? What ensures that governments won’t make the apps mandatory? If they do make the app mandatory during the pandemic, what stops them from keeping it that way? These questions go to the heart of our constitutional rights and freedoms.

Mass adoption of contact-tracing apps is a slippery slope. Before long, Europeans, Americans, or others could find themselves living more like the Chinese, with every move monitored, every violation – even of unwritten rules – punished, and a “personal rating” dictating one’s access to travel and public services.

This may seem farfetched, but one need only consider the latest developments in Hungary or Poland to see just how vulnerable democratic institutions can be. If we are not careful, the biggest casualty of COVID-19 could be democracy.

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Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, is President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament and the author of Europe’s Last Chance: Why the European States Must Form a More Perfect Union.

Featured image is from williamengdahl.com

The Pentagon is excelling itself in its enthusiastic march to war. There are countless thousands suffering from the effects of the Covid-19 virus, including hundreds of members of the U.S. armed services, while the world’s despots are relishing their freedom to persecute minorities, and the poor and downtrodden are dying in hideous misery because of starvation and lack of medical care. But the propaganda war against China continues, concurrent with ramping up of anti-China confrontation by Washington in its ongoing deployment of nuclear attack warships and bombers to the Western Pacific and the South China Sea.

The propaganda campaign is intriguing, and although amateur and absurd in content and dissemination its message is believed by many of the millions at whom it is directed.

The focus of the latest barbs is aimed at convincing the western world that China is responsible for the spread of Covid-19 – what the President of the United States and his Secretary of State refer to as the “China virus” – and it is not surprising that the major outlet for the latest Goebbels’ gambols is News Corp [sic; chaired by the egregious Rupert Murdoch] whose Australian Saturday Telegraph headlined on 4 May that “China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an ‘assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion. The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.”

The report was given much cover by Fox News in the U.S. (owned and directed by Rupert Murdoch) which noted that “A research dossier compiled by the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, that reportedly concludes China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus pandemic, is consistent with U.S. findings about the origins of the outbreak so far, senior U.S. officials told Fox News on Saturday [ May 2].” The reporter who produced the Telegraph story, ‘National Political Editor’ Sharri Markson, declared on Fox News next day that “It’s very clear from this 15-page dossier that has been prepared by concerned western governments that China deliberately covered up evidence of the virus early on in a pure case of negligence… this directly contributed to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people getting sick and dying.”

It was utter nonsense, of course, and was therefore seized upon by the UK’s gutter tabloid the Daily Mail which informed its millions of readers that “Bombshell ‘Five Eyes’ Western intelligence dossier claims China lied about coronavirus.” To give them their due, the majority of the UK media declined to spread such garbage, but the stink has lingered in spite of the revelation on 7 May that “Australia has determined the report is not a Five Eyes intelligence document. It is not believed to include original intelligence from human sources or electronic intercepts.” Of course not. But that doesn’t matter to the propaganda-meisters who scored a victory over truth and decency.

And even supposedly respectable organisations are not averse to slanting information when there is an opportunity. As pointed out by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “United States Strategic Command, the branch of the U.S. military responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons, recently released an imperially misleading infographic on Twitter. The graphic is confused – not only about when to use bold typeface, but also about the facts.”

The graphic claims that “Russia, China, North Korea and Iran pursue new nuclear weapons and delivery systems to threaten the world” while, as the Bulletin points out “there’s no mention of Russia’s dramatic reductions [in numbers of nuclear weapons], which have outpaced those of the United States. Since 1990, the Russian stockpile has declined from roughly 37,000 warheads to 4,310 – an 88 percent decrease.” But the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, tweeted on 3 May that “The threats we face today and in the future are real, and have not changed during the pandemic. While we continue to seek and provide for a safe and secure world, others continue to act provocatively and irresponsibly.”

Perhaps nobody told Admiral Richard that the U.S. has 3,800 nuclear weapons while China has 300. And while his Command is alleging provocation and irresponsibility by China he should bear in mind the report on 30 April that “The U.S. military continued its weeklong show of force in the South China Sea with a sortie over the contested waters by two Air Force bombers. The B-1B Lancers from the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., flew a 32-hour round trip to conduct operations over the sea as part of a joint bomber task force by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Strategic Command.” Not only this, but in the waters of the South China Sea “The guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill sailed near the Spratlys on Wednesday as part of its so-called freedom-of-navigation operations” and “on Tuesday, the guided-missile destroyer USS Barry sailed near the Paracel Islands.” Provocation, anybody?

The Pentagon’s 2019 Report to Congress about China’s ‘Military and Security Developments’ notes that the Chinese navy’s “latest surface and subsurface platforms enable combat operations beyond the reach of China’s land-based defences. In particular, China’s aircraft carrier and planned follow-on carriers, once operational, will extend air defence coverage beyond the range of coastal and shipboard missile systems and will enable task group operations at increasingly longer ranges.” But nobody can believe that China will “follow-on” in the foreseeable future to the extent that it will have anything like the eleven nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed aircraft carriers that the U.S. Navy deploys all over the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a world crisis that should have resulted in all nations getting together and cooperating in every possible way to control the spread of the virus, combat its physical and economic consequences, and produce and administer an immunity vaccine. Instead, the priority of Trump Washington has been to denigrate China in every way possible. The exchange between Secretary of State Pompeo and Martha Raddatz on ABC television made this clear, when he was asked “Do you believe coronavirus was man-made?” to which he replied that “the best experts seem to think so.” Martha Raddatz wasn’t going to let him get away with that and pointed out that “the Director of National Intelligence says the consensus is it wasn’t.” Pompeo’s lame but most revelatory counter to her line of questioning was “What’s important is the Communist Party could’ve prevented this.”

And to further challenge the Communist Party, the Pentagon’s aggressive operations around China’s shores include the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group along with “the amphibious assault ship USS America, smaller than the Reagan but carrying F-35B Lightning II stealth strike fighters” and the USS Nimitz Strike Group is about to leave San Diego for an undisclosed Indo-Pacific mission. The health crisis affected the U.S. fleet, and there will be yet more instances of virus infection, but the Chief of Naval operations, Admiral Gilday declared that in spite of the world health emergency the U.S. navy has “a duty to ensure we are ready to respond. We cannot simply take a knee or keep everyone in port until this enemy is defeated. We are America’s away team. The uncertainty caused by [the coronavirus] makes our mission of protecting America at sea more important than ever. That is why the U.S. Navy continues to operate forward every day.”

So now we know. Forget the world health crisis. Concentrate on confronting China. The “away team” is considered to be Washington’s route to a peaceful and prosperous future.

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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.

Make way for the Greens and the Leftists. They do not want US nuclear weapons on German soil.

Angela Merkel will soon be gone. The next German coalition already shares new ideas in many areas including NATO.

Three Consequences

1. Germany will cease its nuclear sharing agreement with the US.
2. It will ask the US to remove its nuclear weapons from German soil.
3. Germany will abandon plans to purchase US military equipment such as the F/A-18 Hornet.

Justyna Gotkowska from the OSW think tank in Warsaw, laments in a Twitter Thread that Germany may soon abandon a key pillar of its NATO defence policy.

Eurointelligence picked up on the thread in its report Will Germany cease to host US nuclear weapons on its soil?

Gotkowska argues that it is highly probable that Germany will end its participation in the nuclear sharing programme within ten years. While the government itself, including the SPD leadership, is committed to it, the programme is not supported by the rank-and-file of the SPD. We would add that it is not supported by the Greens either.

Rolf Mützenich, the SPD leader in the Bundestag, has now formally come out supporting withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany, and quitting nuclear sharing. The SPD has also nominated an anti-nuclear MEP for the job of Bundeswehr ombudsman.

Gotkowska concludes that there is no longer a majority in the Bundestag for the procurement of the F/A-18 Hornet tactical aircraft, which forms a key component for the nuclear sharing strategy. The government has now pushed a decision on the F/A-18 into the next parliament, which is even less likely than the current one to support it. Germany’s exit from the programme poses important questions for Nato: whether Germany can still be useful in other ways, and whether others member will, or should, pick up the slack.

Fake News Headline

Defense News reports NATO chief backs Germany’s vow to keep war-ready US nukes

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has waded into Germany’s fiery debate about the decades-old pledge to retain American atomic bombs in the European nation as a way of deterring Russia.

Stoltenberg argued that only sticking to the doctrine of “nuclear sharing” would ensure Berlin’s continued seat at the table of strategic decision-making within the alliance.

Led by Rolf Mützenich, the chairman of the Social Democrats in parliament, a group within the governing coalition’s junior party want to exit the NATO atomic arrangement, arguing that deal, too, has outlived its usefulness.

Vow? What Vow? 

Both Eurointelligence and Gotkowska lament this result. I view this as a good thing.

I suggest we remove the nukes and the troops, not just from Germany, but everywhere.

If Germany or Japan or any other country wants US weapons or troops, they should pay for them, not US taxpayers.

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Donald Trump claims that while he is president, his pre-presidency financial records can’t be subpoenaed and he can’t even be investigated for criminal conduct. The Supreme Court will decide by the end of June whether Trump is indeed beyond the reach of the law.

On May 12, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether Trump can block subpoenas for his tax and other financial records that predate his presidency. Although prior presidents made their tax returns public, Trump has steadfastly refused to reveal his. In 2016, he promised to release them when the purported “audit” is complete. But they remain under wraps.

In April 2019, three committees of the House of Representatives and the New York district attorney issued subpoenas to banks and financial institutions to obtain Trump’s records. Trump sued to prevent the disclosures. Even though all four lower courts that considered the issue ruled that the records must be produced, Trump continues to stonewall, claiming in essence he is above the law.

During the oral arguments, the justices disagreed about what standard should be used to determine when a president can block subpoenas to third parties for records relating to his personal conduct before he took office. A majority of the justices seemed to reject the argument made by the lawyer for the House of Representatives, that congressional committees have broad authority to obtain a president’s personal records. But they were also skeptical of Trump’s argument that he has immunity from state grand jury investigations while he is president.

“One of the most important takeaways from the oral arguments is that no justice appears to accept the extreme argument made by Jay Sekulow, President Trump‘s personal lawyer, that the president is entitled to an absolute temporary immunity from a state grand jury investigation into his private conduct before becoming president,” Stephen Rohde, a scholar of constitutional law, told Truthout. “That argument only had an audience of one.”

Congressional Subpoenas Raise Separation of Powers Concern

The justices first took up the cases of Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank. In April, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed documents from Mazars USA LLP, Trump’s accounting firm, because the committee was investigating payments of hush money and whether Trump lied about his assets to underpay taxes. Pursuant to an investigation of whether there was foreign interference in the election, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Financial Services subpoenaed documents from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, which had loaned Trump large sums of money.

Both the district court and the Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s challenges to the subpoenas.

During the Supreme Court argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the Court’s precedent “that a congressional subpoena is valid so long as there is a conceivable legislative purpose and the records are relevant to that purpose.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, however,

“I think, pertinent to a legislative purpose is almost no limiting principle at all.”

Most of the justices appeared to agree.

Patrick Strawbridge, Trump’s personal lawyer, suggested a more rigid standard. He said that when Congress employs its subpoena power against the president, “it must yield absent any long-standing tradition or particularly compelling showing of need,” that is, a “demonstrated need standard.”

Strawbridge charged that “the committees have not even tried to show any critical legislative need for the documents these subpoenas seek.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch then asked Strawbridge, “Why should we not defer to the House’s view about its own legislative purposes?” and Strawbridge replied that Congress’s subpoena power was “an implied power” that can’t be used “to challenge the structure of government.” He added that “a subpoena targeting the President’s personal documents is a challenge to the separation of powers.”

But Sotomayor warned of a separation of powers problem if the Court were to establish “a heightened standard or clear statement” requirement. She asked Strawbridge whether he was disputing the Intelligence Committee’s stated purpose: “investigation efforts by foreign entities to influence the U.S. political process and related to the financial records.”

Justice Elena Kagan characterized Strawbridge’s position as asking the Court “to put a kind of 10-ton weight on the scales between the President and Congress and essentially to make it impossible for Congress to perform oversight and to carry out its functions where the President is concerned.”

Kagan noted that the subpoenas don’t request official records, where the president could assert executive privilege, and queried why a lower standard shouldn’t apply to personal records.

Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall appeared as amicus curiae (friend of the court) during the argument. Justice Stephen Breyer asked Wall, “why not apply the standard that is ordinarily applied to every human being in the United States … go to a judge and say: Judge, this is overly burdensome.” Wall argued that a congressional subpoena for a president’s records should be measured by “a heightened standard.”

When Kavanaugh suggested, “why not employ the demonstrably critical standard or something like that,” Douglas Letter, counsel for the House of Representatives, replied that would violate separation of powers. Kavanaugh stated that the demonstrably critical standard is used when the president invokes executive privilege, but Letter reminded him that this case doesn’t involve executive privilege because the subpoenas seek financial business records.

Executive privilege protects the need for confidentiality in presidential communications. In 1974, the Court held in United States v. Nixon that there is a qualified executive privilege and Richard Nixon was compelled to produce the Watergate tapes. “The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial,” the Court ruled unanimously.

Wall complained that the House of Representatives had not explained why it needs the requested documents in order to exercise its legislative powers, in spite of the findings of the lower courts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg charged that Wall would expect more from Congress than from a patrol officer.

“To impugn Congress’s motive, even the policeman on the beat, if he stops a car and gives the reason that the car went through a stop sign, we don’t allow an investigation into what the subjective motive really was. So, here, you’re — you’re distrusting Congress more than the cop on the beat,” Ginsburg said.

Prosecutor’s Subpoena Tests Whether Presidential Power Is Unlimited

The second case the justices considered during oral argument was Trump v. Vance. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., issued a subpoena to Mazars USA LLP for personal and business tax returns for a state grand jury investigation of hush money payments before the 2016 election. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the subpoena for most of the requested records.

Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow argued that the Court of Appeals decision “would allow any DA to harass, distract, and interfere with the sitting President.” He argued for “temporary presidential immunity” in a state criminal case, citing Article II of the Constitution (which establishes the executive branch) and the Supremacy Clause (that affirms the supremacy of federal over state laws).

Sekulow said he wasn’t arguing that a grand jury can’t investigate the president, just that the president should have immunity while in office. Chief Justice John Roberts retorted, “it’s okay for the grand jury to investigate, except it can’t use the traditional and most effective device that grand juries have typically used, which is the subpoena.”

In 1997, the Court decided unanimously in Clinton v. Jones that a sitting president does not have immunity from federal civil litigation arising from conduct that occurred before he took office. Bill Clinton was compelled to give a deposition in Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against him.

Roberts reminded Sekulow that the Jones Court was “not persuaded that the distraction in that case meant that discovery could not proceed.” Jones was a federal civil case and Vance is a state criminal proceeding, Sekulow argued. When he complained that 2,300 district attorneys could harass the president, Breyer responded, “of course, in Clinton v. Jones, there might be a million, I don’t know, tens of thousands of people who might bring lawsuits.”

Once again, Breyer suggested using the ordinary standard of whether compliance with the subpoena is “unduly burdensome.” Kagan echoed Breyer’s suggestion.

Gorsuch asked how this is more burdensome than Jones, which “sought the deposition of the President while he was serving,” whereas “here, they’re seeking records from third-parties.”

Kavanaugh raised the issue of statute of limitations which could prevent prosecution after the president leaves office.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who appeared as amicus curiae, argued that the Court should apply the “special needs standard” from the Nixon case and not even reach the issue of presidential immunity. Francisco said the district attorney must show that the requested information is critical to a responsible charging decision, that he can’t obtain it elsewhere, and that the information he has is insufficient.

Breyer and Sotomayor reminded Francisco that Nixon was an executive privilege case. Sotomayor suggested a standard of “harassment and interference,” in which the court would “ask whether the investigation is based on credible suspicion of criminal activity and whether the subpoena is reasonably calculated to advance that investigation.”

Carey Dunne, general counsel of the New York County District Attorney’s Office, argued for a case-specific analysis. Once the president establishes that his Article II powers are burdened, the prosecutor must show an objective basis for the investigation and a reasonable probability that the request would produce relevant information. Dunne said the lower courts already found that the district attorney had met that standard.

Justice Samuel Alito proposed “a somewhat more demanding standard,” where the prosecutor would have to establish that the information cannot be obtained from another source and that delay would cause “serious prejudice to the investigation.”

Not necessary, said Dunne.

“There’s no need here to upend precedent or to write a new rule that undermines federalism, especially when such a rule would create a risk that American presidents, as well as third-parties, could unwittingly end up above the law.”

When the high court issues its decision, we are likely to see several fragmented opinions. Whatever test ultimately garners five votes, the cases will probably be sent back to the lower courts to apply the new rule. That could take several months or even years, leaving the matter unresolved until after the 2020 presidential election. And even if the Supreme Court were to order Trump to release his tax returns, they would be transmitted confidentially to the grand jury.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

When he announced at the end of April that he would be retiring, thereby vacating the federal seat of Eden-Monaro, the Australian Labor Party’s Mike Kelly (image below) welled up.  He noted persistent “health issues” from his time in the service of the Australian Defence Forces, including a worsening osteoarthritic situation and deteriorating renal condition.  He had endured some ten invasive surgeries in recent times.  He spoke, implausibly, of having made no enemies in politics.  He had “stared into the face of true evil, whether it was genocidal warlords in Somalia, or murdering militia in Timor, or war criminals in Bosnia, or staring into Saddam Hussein’s face and the dirty-dozen, so called, in Iraq.” 

Labor leader Anthony Albanese was full of lapping praise.  “Mike Kelly is an extraordinary Australian, and he has brought a great deal of dignity, talent, capacity and commitment to this Parliament.” His labours “on defence and national security issues” in Parliament had been “second to none”.

Then came the revolving military door, where evil dons a different visage for its recruits. “I have been fortunate,” Kelly revealed even before the dust had settled, “to be able to take up a job offer with Palantir Technologies Australia that will enable me to work within my physical limitations but still be in a position to make a difference in relation to the issues that matter to me.”  Good of the Silicon Valley-based Palantir: generous to an ailing man; considerate of his limits but happy to stroke the ego.

To work with the data mining security outfit Palantir Technologies can hardly be regarded as ethically elevating, certainly for a former member of parliament who had supposedly spent time gazing at faces evil and malevolent.  But then again, his gaze must lack a certain resistance, bewitched as he is by this “amazing organisation” staffed by “some of the finest talent and quality personnel in the world.”   

In recent times Kelly has given Palantir some free parliamentary advertising.  In 2018, he told his fellow members that, “Companies like Palantir … effectively vectored Osama Bin Laden’s location so these are companies and capabilities that we need to work with.”  The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security was also informed by Kelly of the Palantir’s “massive $US12 billion international effort on security issues.”

The company oozes of the slime that is the military-industrial complex, and counts the Central Intelligence Agency as an exclusive customer, though its client list has ballooned to include other government agencies, hedge funds and big pharma.  In 2003, it got off the ground with US information analysts, among them Peter Thiel, champing at the bit to use data mining tools developed for Paypal. 

Since then, the entity has developed search tools have given it pride of place in the security environment, earning it a credible fourth place in the “evil list” of technology companies compiled by Slate.  Its software has found its way into the operations of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC).  But in addition to encouraging bouts of faux patriotic heroics (Kelly notes the company’s role “in over 30 countries in the fight against COVID-19”), it has also veered into disdainfully murky territory.  The same company, for instance, linked arms with Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal in 2011 to target WikiLeaks and smear the credibility of journalist Glenn Greenwald.  The plan was revealed in emails obtained by the hacker group Anonymous, which managed to penetrate the servers of HBGary to unearth the nasty proposal to wage a campaign of misinformation against WikiLeaks and its supporters.

At the time, Palantir chief-executive Alex Carp, in a statement, was all contrite in severing ties with HBGary.  With his hands firmly in the cookie jar, Carp claimed that his company “does not build software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain non-public information, engage in so called ‘cyber-attacks’ or take other offensive measures.”  He also apologised specifically to Greenwald “for any involvement that we may have had in these matters.”

Carp and his company have since busied themselves with such humane endeavours as finding, in his words in a CNBC interview, “people in our country who are undocumented.” Over the years, Palantir’s role in aiding US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s deportation efforts has been skirted over. Its public relations arm has insisted that only Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) within ICE is of interest to them, rather than Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).  This is a distinction with bare difference, given that ERO avails itself of Palantir’s technology in conducting its deportation operations.

Kelly’s decision has caused a flutter of interest in various media stables, from Crikey to Sky News.  Despite being at different ends of the journalist’s spectrum, they are in broad agreement that the decision to join Palantir reeks.  Chris Kenny, an anchor for Sky, picked up on the sick card played by Kelly and was far from impressed.  “Remember it’s less than two weeks since former Labor frontbencher Mike Kelly resigned from his seat saying he was too sick to serve out the term.”  Not to be deterred, he confirmed with some swiftness that he had “already taken up a new job”, one with “a major US technology firm that does a lot of defence work.”  Such behaviour demonstrated, in Kenny’s eyes, that the member was “apparently … not up to serving out another two years in parliament, but he is up to lobbying for a US tech giant.”

Kelly is yet another addition to the military-industrial complex that snaps up public servants and representatives at will.  In February 2020, Australia’s former domestic intelligence spy chief, Duncan Lewis, was appointed to the board of the world’s tenth largest weapons making concern, Thales.  He had waited a mere five months.  At the time, few pundits deemed it problematic that a man privy to a nation’s secrets would take up a post with a French company which, admittedly, has a 35 percent share of Naval Group, the lead contractor of Australia’s bloated Future Submarines project. 

A stint in public service, it seems, is merely a prelude for moneyed rewards in the security sector, where conflicts of interest cease to be relevant, and lobbies run riot.  Accountability is not so much diminished and ditched along the way.  Companies operating in this realm know that securing a notable ex-politician or civil servant will grease the wheels and lead to deals.  The gullible citizenry are left none the wiser. 

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from Flickr

Economic collapse that’s harming most ordinary people in the US, West, and elsewhere — that’s likely to be long-lasting — is far more serious than numbers of COVID-19 infections and their aftermath.

Hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses in the US alone are likely permanently shuttered.

Many more may only partially operate when reopened for many months to come — countless millions of jobs lost, less pay and few or no benefits to be the new normal for many others, perhaps for the majority of US workers.

During the 1930s Great Depression, an alphabet soup of New Deal programs put millions of Americans back to work.

In her book titled “Put to Work: The WPA and Public Employment in the Great Depression,” Nancy Rose explained the following:

“Although much of the business community steadfastly opposed federal unemployment relief, increasing destitution, continuing protests, the exhaustion of traditional sources of relief, and pleas from local and state governments compelled the Roosevelt administration to act.”

“The alternative, as historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., wrote in his study of this period, might be revolution.”

FDR’s first hundred days and what followed were polar opposite how the Trump regime and Congress are responding to what in hindsight may be seen as a Greater Depression.

At this time, half the US workforce is either unemployed or working reduced hours.

At the height of the 1930s Great Depression, unemployment reached around 25%.

New Deal programs cut to 11% in 1937 — before it spiked higher because of cutbacks in economic stimulus programs before early war production revived growth and created millions of jobs.

Two severe recessions produced the Great Depression — from 1929 to 1933, followed by recovery to 1937, the Dow average gaining almost 335% during this period.

It then fell sharply and bottomed down 89% from its 1929 high valuation because of a letup in pump-priming.

Instead of focusing on government programs to put unemployed Americans back to work, the Trump regime, Congress, and Wall Street owned Fed handed countless trillions of dollars in free money to major banks and other corporate favorites — ordinary people left largely on their own.

The National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that 42% of US jobs lost this year through layoffs and furloughs are likely to be permanently gone.

Many US workers “will suffer permanent job losses,” it said, adding:

“If the pandemic and partial economic shutdown linger for many months, or if pandemics with serious health consequences and high mortality rates become a recurring phenomenon, there will be profound, long-term consequences for the reallocation of jobs, workers and capital across firms and locations.”

Trump’s claim that 2021 will be a “phenomenal year” amounts to ignoring reality by whistling past the graveyard.

Over 40 million Americans became unemployed this year — on top of over 20% US unemployment before economic collapse — based on how the number was calculated pre-1990.

Official headlined Labor Department U-3 numbers conceal the US job market’s dismal state, reflecting thirdworldized America — things far more dire for most people today than before economic crisis began.

US job losses are likely to increase before things improve.

When economic hard times produce large-scale layoffs and keep private enterprises from hiring, it requires government to fill the void with projects to put people back to work — what was done during the Great Depression.

That’s not happening now, creating harder hard times for most Americans that are likely to be long-lasting, painful, and for many people devastating.

Things are in uncharted territory, numbers of food insecure and homeless growing exponentially.

COVID-19 didn’t cause economic crisis. It created conditions for the house of cards US economy to collapse.

If it wasn’t the coronavirus, it would have been something else in the months ahead.

Collapse was coming. Only its catalyst was unknown until now. Earlier economic crisis conditions were warmups for what’s unfolding in real time.

Potential longterm harm from COVID-19 infections may also be far more serious than reported.

A new Lancet medical journal assessment said “if routine health care is disrupted and access to food is decreased (as a result of unavoidable shocks, health system collapse, or intentional choices made in responding to the pandemic), the increase in child and maternal deaths will be devastating.”

According to a Thailand Medical News alert, “(r)ecovered (COVID-19) patients could suffer chronic health effects for the rest of their lives,” adding:

“(M)any recovered individuals report breathlessness, fatigue and body pain months after first becoming infected.”

Chinese research studies showed that “survivors grapple with poorer functioning in their lungs, heart and liver. And that may be the tip of the iceberg.”

COVID-19 is “known to attack many parts of the human body beyond the respiratory system, causing damage from the eyes to the toes, the gastrointestinal tract including the liver, to the kidneys, the nervous system and even the testes of males.”

“Patients’ immune systems can go into overdrive to fight off the infection, compounding the damage done.”

According to Nature magazine, patients who recovered from SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003 were vulnerable to other diseases, including “lung susceptibility to infections, tumors, cardiovascular disorders, and abnormal glucose metabolism” for as long as 12 years after becoming ill from the respiratory disease.

UK Dr. Nicolas Hart treated PM Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 infection. He called the coronavirus “this generation’s polio.” The fullness of time will tell if he’s right or wrong.

According to Hong Kong infectious disease Dr. Owen Tsang, half of 20 COVID-19 infected patients had below normal lung function — for up to two months after recovering.

A study of 25 COVID-19 recovered patients in Wuhan, China found that they hadn’t regained normal functioning whether their symptoms were mild or severe.

Another study of 90 COVID-19 recovered patients in Wuhan found that 66 of 70 who were discharged from hospitalization had mild to more considerable lung abnormalities — based on CT scans.

Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center researchers noted that some COVID-19 recovered patients had cardiac complications.

The above numbers of patients studied were small. It’s unclear if post-COVID-19 complications were because of age, obesity, and/or other pre-conditions.

COVID-19 is relatively new. So it’s unknown if serious longterm lung or other health issues could affect large numbers of recovered patients.

Professor of Medicine Dr. Jessica Justman noted that “(t)here is such a wide range in the way the illness affects people.”

“The various stakeholders need solid data to help them understand the breadth and duration of long term effects” that’s unknown so far.

Various diseases affect most people in their lifetimes, older individuals most vulnerable.

Protracted harm from economic collapse in the US and elsewhere will likely affect far greater numbers of people than COVID-19 or any other diseases.

It’s because of indifference toward public health and welfare — notably in the world’s richest country USA.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On March 30 Germany declared the important Lebanese political group, Hezbollah, to be a “terrorist” organization and banned it from German soil. By doing so it gratuitously increased the tension in the eastern Mediterranean and exposed Berlin’s lack of credibility on the world stage.

Is it really in Germany’s interest to destabilize a region that has already been crippled by multiple wars? On the surface Germany doesn’t appear to have a stake in the politics of Lebanon. Indeed, from whatever angle the situation is viewed from, Germany qua Germany doesn’t have a meaningful stake in Lebanon. Yet Berlin is assaulting the sovereignty of this small Mediterranean nation that means no harm.

Hezbollah is an organization that forms 10% of the current Lebanese parliament and is a significant part of Lebanon’s governing coalition. Because of its commitment to international justice, Hezbollah is, in fact, Lebanon’s most recognizable political group. And that’s the point. Hezbollah’s successful efforts to defend the sovereignty of Lebanon in the past decades, and the sovereignty of Syria in recent years, is a problem for that power which aims to destroy the sovereignty of both Lebanon and Syria. However, that power isn’t Germany, so what then explains Berlin’s hostility towards Beirut?

Germany is doing someone’s bidding. Germany’s problem is that it’s foreign policy is stuck in the late 20th century. At present, Germany’s political structure is stuck in post World War Two Europe. Ever since the Nazis were defeated in 1945, Germany has been a cutout. To begin with, it was either a Soviet or an American cutout. But when the Soviets had the decency to exit Germany in “1989”, the Americans remained. As a consequence, in the 21st century German independence is still an aspiration rather than a reality.

According to Deutsche Welle (DW), in 2019 there were “roughly 38,600” American soldiers based in Germany. “This is…more military personnel than the US keeps in any other country except Japan.” In other words, whether it likes it or not, Germany is a key part of American geopolitics. As DW explains:

“Germany’s strategic importance for the US is reflected by the location of US European Command (EUCOM) headquarters in the southwestern city of Stuttgart, from which it serves as the coordinating structure for all American military forces across 51 primarily European countries.”

And the purpose of EUCOM? “The mission of EUCOM is to protect and defend the US..” It’s purpose is not to defend the interests of Germany but the interests of the USA.

EUCOM though is only the overt dimension of US power in Germany. As intimidating and oppressive as EUCOM is, it is less sinister than the covert dimension of US power in Berlin and beyond. To bend German politicians and opinion towards warmongering in west Asia requires a level of deceitfulness that is too subtle for the straightforward American war machine. This need for sly covert action is the raison d’être of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). And Germany is as much under the control of the CIA as it is under the control of EUCOM. The evidence is the illogical German decision to make Hezbollah illegal.

The evidence is the fact that Germany’s “foreign” secret service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the BND), which reportedly has 300 bases inside and outside Germany, was a CIA creation. This means that infamous spymasters, like Allen Dulles (CIA/Nazi sympathizer) and Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi/CIA), developed a covert system within Germany in the late 1940s and 1950s – a system that continues to function surreptitiously today.

Recent evidence of this insidious CIA activity in Germany includes the US bugging of Germany’s prime minister, Angela Merkel (revealed in 2013); the US/German creation of a Swiss front company (Crypto AG) to spy on world governments (revealed in 2020); and the manipulation of German media, as revealed in the book Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA (2019), by Udo Ulfkoette. All of which confirms the claims made by CIA whistleblower Philip Agee in the 1970s. For example, in a 1976 interview with the German magazine Informations Dienst he stated:

“Since World War II, the aim of US foreign policy has been to guarantee the coherence of the western world under the leadership of the USA. CIA activities are directed toward achieving this goal….Left opposition movements had to be discredited and destroyed….After World War II, West Germany was a crucial area. In order to secure US interests there, the CIA supported not only the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) but also the SPD (Social Democratic Union) and the trade unions. The CIA wanted the influence of the two major political parties to be strong enough to shut out and hold down any left opposition…..Most CIA stations pay journalists to publish the CIA’s propaganda as if it were the journalist’s own work….”

And how does Hezbollah fit into this CIA / German matrix? Its an official US enemy. And so, ipso facto, its an official German “enemy”. As a key part of the “axis of resistance” (Lebanon, Syria and Iran) that’s fighting US imperialism in west Asia, Hezbollah has been in the crosshairs of Washington DC for sometime. Hence the March 2019 Aljazeera headline: “[US] Tells Lebanon to Choose Hezbollah or Independence”. A headline which can also be read: “US Tells Germany to Criminalize Hezbollah”.

The big geopolitical picture is, of course, the grand chessboard that stretches across the Eurasian landmass. On the western edge of this “world island” the US is anchored in Germany. And on the eastern side the US is anchored in Japan. The aim of US imperialism is to control or contain everything in between – primarily Russia and China. And in this US “game” of control and containment, the oil fields and pipelines in west Asia (the eastern Mediterranean) are fundamental.

Germany’s decision to criminalize Hezbollah is a part this great US “game”. As a key American base on the Eurasian landmass, the “mighty“ Germany is nothing but a pawn in the hands the US. This “German decision”, therefore, is in reality an American decision – a decision managed by America’s covert warriors: the CIA. The problem for the USA and Germany, however, is that the “game” is now so obvious that whatever decision is made lacks power and meaning.

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Aidan O’Brien is a hospital worker, Dublin, Ireland.

To me, an American-Palestinian, the world tainted by the corona virus is analogous to Israel tainted by the evil it contains.

Every day for the past few days, I have been listening to New York Governor Cuomo give his daily briefing on the virus. His words resonate with me eerily transforming themselves to advice on how to handle Israel’s cruel manifestation in Palestine as a Zionist Jewish apartheid colonial state. As talk of “re-opening” the New York increases in volume, so does my feverish imagination.

For those who don’t know, the Arabic word “Fateh” [فتح], the name of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, which is the political bloc now dominating the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, means “opening”. It also carries the meaning of “conquering”. What’s more, “Fateh” and “key” [مفتاح], that profoundly indicative word of Palestinian longing for return, have the same linguistic root in Arabic. Hence, all these unbidden associations in my mind as I listen to Cuomo.

Every day, I wait for Cuomo’s briefing impatiently and watch while perched, tense and hyper-alert, at the edge of my seat, mesmerized by the shifting lines of his charts that, I swear, often morph into the outline of the map of Palestine.

My mind automatically sucks in Cuomo’s words and echoes them back at the TV in an altered form. I am Muslim, but the dynamic gripping me is one akin to the relationship between a pastor and his congregation at a black church. Cuomo calls and I respond, sometimes aloud. I hold back from hollering and shouting at his image, so as not to scare my family.

I take in every word of his sane, hopeful message — facts, not “facts on the ground”; science, not myths; let’s learn from our mistakes. Yes!

I translate his sentences into something else, like this: After decades of land theft, when will Palestinians be finally in control of their destiny and not subject to the whims of Israel and the international community? You tell me how Israel behaves today; I will tell you how Palestinians will be resisting a year from now.

The Zionist virus that is the Jewish state of Israel has yet to be stamped out. Hot-spot outbreaks have been with us since the Nakba of 1948. Currently, they are in the form of Israel’s horrifying annexation of parts of the West Bank, preying on the most vulnerable of peoples. We need to look for solutions that make things better for the Palestinian people. We need to reimagine the status quo and pose such a solution.

“In the first phase, we had to figure out what we are dealing with because we had no idea.” Yes, we had no idea — just intimations of unbelievable cruelty and diabolical greed! In 1947–48, we really had little idea. Remember, Palestine was 80% agrarian then — not the sophisticated community of Basle, Switzerland, where the plot for our dispossession was hatched at the First Zionist Conference in 1897.

“In the first phase, stabilize, control the damage,” says Cuomo. It turns out the key (here is that word again!) is information.

“I worked hard every day to make sure they knew the facts. ‘Trust the people’ — Lincoln, right? An informed public will keep this country safe. True, and that’s exactly what happened here,” Cuomo continues.

Funny Cuomo should say that, because, just the other day, a Palestinian friend on Facebook, Imad Jibawi, was saying something similar. He was commenting on a Zoom discussion I had posted titled “What do we do now?” conducted by Hani al-Masri, Director General of Masarat — The Palestinian Center for Policy Research & Strategic Studies (Masri is also a Policy Advisor for Al-Shabaka).

Imad Jibawi wondered:

“What is it that would drive the Palestinian people to the streets to protest by the thousands? Is it the annexation of Jerusalem? No; is it annexation of the Jordan Valley? No; is it Israel’s new settlements, then? No.

Why is that so?

I think the answer is in the question: Who is it mainly that we expect to take to the streets? They are those who are primarily under 30 — i.e., the Oslo generation.

These Palestinians were born and brought up in the reality of the Palestinian Authority, a government, ministries, VIPs, jobs, loans, etc.

[Preserving that] has been the national project for which our people sacrificed for years. People’s very livelihoods are now the red lines, holding them back. Their concerns are the teachers’ movement, the social security movement, the “we want to live” movement.

The question that concerns the political class as a whole is this: What next? What to do? The answer is: We start with our ABCs all over again. The first lesson is: Who are the Palestinians? What are the borders of the homeland of Palestine? The second lesson is: Who is our enemy? And what do we want?

Wanted: a new national awareness ….” [my translation from Arabic]

But then, as I continued to listen to Cuomo, I realized that, even though he and Jibawi are appealing to people to act collectively in their best interests by looking to themselves, rather than to their governments, there is a fundamental difference.

Cuomo is invoking security of health, family and livelihood as a raison d’etre for a certain set of collective behaviors, whereas what Jibawi is pushing for, necessarily given the Palestinian condition, is a revolutionary national consciousness that calls for a sacrifice of the very same things Cuomo is protecting for New Yorkers.

To Jibawi, the ideal of home and hearth (job security, health care, education, etc., as provided currently by the Palestinian Authority and the Oslo regime) must be superseded by the ideal of liberty, justice and equality for a people under occupation, who have escaped Israel’s genocide so far, but who continue to be dispossessed, brutally subjugated and oppressed by a vicious, powerful judeo-fascist entity and its allies.

Cuomo says,

“I don’t know when government became so political. It all became about rhetoric rather than actual competence, but it happened somewhere along the way that government could not handle the situation. People had to get engaged; people had to be informed and that’s the new thing I did. They got engaged because it mattered — this is not an abstract issue we are talking about people’s lives and people’s health and the health of their children.”

They’ll get engaged, because it matters. For both Palestinians and New Yorkers, these are not abstract issues. Far from it. In our case, all you have to do to realize the concreteness is to tune in to the daily news of thievery and savagery in their myriad forms the Israeli regime inflicts on the Palestinian people.

Many ask, if not the Palestinian Authority, if not the status quo of self-government for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, what then? My answer is this: First, hard as it is for many, we must find the will and steadfastness to effect an insurrection to continue the interrupted Palestinian revolution, returning to the political and community structures that sprang up to further the first intifada. We need a supreme manifestation of popular resistance against both the Palestinian Authority and Israel in all of occupied Palestine from the river to the sea with aid from Palestinians in exile.

Cuomo is right! “No government can impose any of these things … Stay in the house. Close every school. Close every bus. State government can’t enforce that. People had to understand the facts people had to engage in governing themselves in a way they hadn’t in decades … We are tough, smart, united, disciplined and loving” — even if our governments aren’t. We are samidoun.

Amen to that! Hallelujah!
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

All images in this article are from the author

Only three countries are in control of more than three quarters of the world’s diamond reserves globally. Data gathered and calculated by Learnbonds.com indicates that Russia, Congo, and Botswana combined account for at least 80.6% of the world diamond reserves.

Russia has the largest reserves at 650 million diamond carats, representing about 52% of the global capacity. Congo comes second with 150 million carats or 13% of the global tally while Botswana is third with reserves totaling 90 million carats in diamonds. In total, the global diamond reserves stand at about 1.1 billion million carats. South Africa and Australia also account for notable reserves at 54 and 39 million diamond carats. Other countries control reserves totaling to 120 million carats.

Our research has also overviewed diamond mine production by the end of 2019 where Russia occupied the top spot with an estimated 19 million carats in mining. Australia is in the second spot with 13 million carats followed by Congo at 12 million carats. Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa produced six, three, and two million carats respectively. Other countries produced one million diamond carats.

A carat is a unit of measurement used to specify the weight of a diamond. ‘Carat’ is a diamond industry-unique term for the weight of a diamond stone. For example, one carat is equal to 200 milligrams, a 5-carat stone will then weigh 1 gram.

Global demand for diamonds to keep rising

The study acquired by Learnbonds editorial team shows that the buy and sell demand for diamonds is projected to keep rising in the coming years. By 2050, the demand is expected to be 292 million carats, representing a growth of 88.38% from 2018’s figure of 155 million diamond carats. By 2022, the global demand will stand at 178 million diamond carats.

Four years later, the demand is calculated to grow by 12.36% to 200 million carats. Notably, the demand for diamonds might surpass the 250 million carat mark by 2038 when the figure will stand at 250 million. In general, demand is expected to keep rising.

The demand for polished diamonds is mainly driven by two major factors including geopolitical and macroeconomic. These factors tend to increase or lower consumer confidence and thus affect the demand directly.

Additionally, the demand for diamonds has been impacted by conditions surrounding the mining. For example, diamonds from parts of Africa have been classified as ‘blood diamonds’ due to lack of environmental protection policies and the use of children in mining fields like in DR Congo.

Although production has declined in recent years due to constant political turmoil, DRC holds the potential for more diamond production. Over the years, DR Congo’s diamond mining has shifted from large scale to small scale with just a small area being explored.

It is worth noting that although Russia is the world’s largest producer of gem-quality diamonds based on carat weight. However, Botswana is the only country that has a higher production value. The South African country’s position can be linked to the quality of production which includes a high proportion of large, high-quality diamond mines. In most of the countries, diamond mining is done through the open pit system.

Diamond mining reserves depleting

Apart from mining, diamonds can also be produced in laboratories in the form of synthetic diamonds. The cost of these diamonds is at least 25% lower than the cost of natural diamonds for stones of similar size and quality. However, most consumers are still demanding “natural diamonds” because the supply of lab-created diamonds is relatively small.

For years, the highlighted countries have been leading the world by consistently producing over one million carats per year. In some countries, however, difficult mining conditions due to the remote location of mines has led to shut down of mining.

In general, production rates in mines globally have been slowing down, confirming that the natural diamonds are a finite resource and will eventually be depleted unless there are new discoveries. However, the depletion period is not known.

Miners are now turning to advanced technologies and underground mining techniques to extend the lifespan of some mines. With these technologies, some closed mines have begun operations again.

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Justin is an editor, writer, and a downhill fan. He spent many years writing about finances, blockchain, and crypto-related news. He strives to serve the untold stories for the readers.

All images and charts in this article are from LearnBonds

On January 9, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) alerted authorities worldwide of a potential novel coronavirus outbreak. Three weeks of investigations and conferences later (January 30) WHO declared a global public health emergency. Regions which subsequently posted extraordinarily high Covid-19 (C-19) fatalities did not encounter notable domestic C-19 cases until mid-February. Their governments, therefore, had weeks to plan pandemic responses. Such plans required death certification protocols. 

The 10-city Boston-Newark Megalopolis spans 30,000 square kilometres along America’s northeast coast and hosts 36 million people. Ninety percent of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island citizens reside in this Megalopolis. The area’s transportation and energy infrastructures are well-integrated, as is its commercial realm. Politically, it’s effectively a one-party state.

Rhode Island’s Democratic Party has ruled for a half century. Currently, all statewide executive officers are Democrats including Governor Gina Raimondo. The Party holds super-majorities in the Senate (33/38) and House (66/75).

New York’s Democratic Party holds all statewide executive offices including the Governorship (Andrew Cuomo). They occupy 40 of 63 Senate seats and 106 of 150 Assembly seats. They have maintained an Assembly majority since 1974.

New Jersey’s Democratic State Committee enjoys comfortable majorities in Senate and Assembly. Governor Phil Murphy is Chair of the Democratic Governors Association. This wealthy former Goldman Sachs banker served as Finance Chair for the Democratic National Committee.

Connecticut’s Democratic State Central Committee controls Connecticut’s Senate (22/36) and House (91/151). Democratic Governor ‘Ned’ Lamont (grandson of J.P. Morgan CEO, Thomas Lamont) pours tens of millions from his own pocket into campaigns. CT Dems control all statewide executive offices.

Massachusetts’ Democratic Party is a black sheep for failing to retain the Governor’s office. Republican Charlie Baker won by a hair in 2014, then handily in 2018. Nevertheless, Baker faces veto-proof Democratic super-majorities in Senate and House.

Collectively, these 5 states have 10 US Senators. All are Democrats, most are prominent.

Third-term New York Senator Chuck Schumer (twice elected with a 70% vote) Chairs the Democratic Caucus. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is Caucus Vice-Chair.

Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed (elected with 70% of the vote) is Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

New Jersey’s Bob Menendez (formerly Union City’s Mayor) is Ranking Member, and former Chair, of the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee. Jersey’s junior Senator, Corey Booker, served two terms as Newark’s Mayor.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, one of the wealthiest senators, was Connecticut Attorney General for 20 years. He sits on the Commerce, Science and Technology Committee.

(Blumenthal, Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) adorn the Senate Committee on Aging. Warren and Gillibrand promote euthanasia. Not so sanguine is Blumenthal but some of his CT Dems have pushed euthanasia legislation since 2013. Massachusetts Dems placed a ‘Death with Dignity’ question on the 2012 ballot (defeated by a 1% margin). New York Dems sought to litigate a right to assisted-suicide until 2015 when they proposed a legislative route. New Jersey’s euthanasia law came into force August 1, 2019. Five Rhode Island Democrats co-introduced an assisted-suicide bill on January 30, 2020.)

Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut send only Democrats to the House of Representatives. Ten of 12 New Jersey Reps are Democrats as are 21 of New York’s 27 Reps. The Megalopolis’s Congressional legation includes Joe Kennedy III and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Nine of New York State’s 10 largest cities have Democratic mayors. Bill de Blasio won New York City’s mayoralty by a landslide; carrying 48 of 51 Councillors with him.

All 10 cities inside the Megalopolis have Democrat mayors. New Haven has had only Democrat mayors since 1954; Newark since 1953. Minus a forgotten three-year blip, Hartford has had Democrat mayors for 72 years. Boston mayors have been Democrats for 90 years straight.

State and municipal employees are hand-picked by Democratic Party functionaries. Where workforces are organized, unions support Democrats.

State and municipal governments play leading healthcare roles.

NYC Health + Hospitals is America’s largest public healthcare provider. Its insurance plan covers 500,000 New Yorkers including all NYC government employees. It also serves the city’s immense uninsured population and funds hundreds of clinics and home support organizations. NYC Health + Hospitals owns 11 acute care hospitals and 5 long-term care facilities. They treat 1.4 million patients annually on a budget of $10.5 billion.

New York State’s Department of Health employs another 4,700 doctors, nurses, and lab technicians etc.

Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health runs 4 multi-specialty hospitals and 24 bureaus with titles like: Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences, Preparedness and Emergency Management, and Registry of Vital Records and Statistics.

Boston’s Public Health Commission employs an additional 1,100 medical professionals.

New Jersey’s Department of Health enforces regulations onto 2,200 healthcare facilities (including 375 long-term care facilities) whilst delivering services related to: vital statistics, surveillance systems, aging and the uninsured.

Scores of Democrat-led activist groups representing doctors, nurses and patients agitate for expansions to public healthcare. Unions are particularly effective. The 42,000-member New York State Nursing Association brays about its legions of door-knockers and phone-callers who assist Democratic candidates during elections. SEIU’s 450,000-member Healthcare Workers East is militantly pro-Democrat.

The Boston-Newark Megalopolis’s medical complex is designed, funded and run by Democratic operatives. They oversee the coroners, medical examiners, attending physicians, nurse practitioners and statisticians comprising the Megalopolis’s death certification system.

This Megalopolis did not launch the C-19 deaths exaggeration crusade. The Lombards issued the pronunciamento on February 26. Madrid and France joined two weeks later; Belgium soon after.

Notable C-19 cases arrived in the Boston-Newark Megalopolis mid-February. Their first C-19 death came March 14. Over the next two weeks C-19 death reports popped-up across the area. By then New York reported over 1,000 deaths; New Jersey over 100. This period witnessed the rise of obvious efforts to write “Covid-19” onto as many death certificates as plausible. Results:

These 5 states (with 12% of America’s population) post 44,546 (55.2%) of America’s 80,789 C-19 deaths.

These 5 states’ combined population equals that of California’s (40 million). Having greater contact with Asia than the Northeast, California reported C-19 cases earlier. Now, California records only 2,717 C-19 deaths.

Utah, Nebraska, Arkansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, West Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and Tennessee collectively have a population of 40 million. They report 1,553 C-19 deaths; roughly half that of Connecticut.

Texas, population 28 million, reports 1,133 C-19 deaths.

The best explanation for these incredible discrepancies is that Boston-Newark Megalopolis’s death certification agencies are jacking-up their C-19 body-counts.

Some legerdemain is glaring. On April 14 New York City Health Commissioner added 3,778 C-19 deaths. These people had died in previous weeks, often at home. None were tested. In making this pronouncement the Commissioner described her marching orders as:

“We are focussed on ensuring that every New Yorker who dies because of Covid-19 gets counted.”

The number of “presumptive” C-19 deaths buried in the stats remains unknown, but looms large.

The main method of inflating C-19 fatalities is to insist, in every instance, that a positive test for C-19 warrants listing C-19 as a “cause of death.” This illogic also applies to presumed (untested) cases.

New York funeral directors express dismay at the cavalier writing of “Covid-19” on death certificates.

Between March 7 and 10 all five Governors declared “states of emergencies.” The next two weeks saw a ratcheting up of curfews and closures culminating in sweeping lockdowns decreed firstly (March 20) by Governor Cuomo and lastly by Governor Raimondo (March 28). Certain mayors, notably Boston’s Marty Walsh and Providence’s Jorge Elorza, pushed ahead of their Governors.

The hand that signs death certificates also signs: stay-at-home orders, bans on public assembly, postponements of elections, mobilizations of National Guards, and socially-transformative fiscal deficits.

The Megalopolis’s Democratic Parties exploit this manufactured crisis to ram through unpopular policies and to further cement themselves into power.

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Sources

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-14/nyc-adds-3-700-to-death-toll-to-count-victims-not-hospitalized

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

https://www.projectveritas.com/video/funeral-directors-in-covid-19-epicenter-doubt-legitimacy-of-deaths/

https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/

https://www.nj.gov/health/me/

https://www.mass.gov/orgs/department-of-public-health

As coronavirus has spread rapidly among meat plants across the country, it’s not just the workers that are getting infected. Many people have strongly criticized the industry’s response for waiting too long to implement safety precautions and close processing plants as thousands have tested positive for coronavirus and at least 20 workers have died. But the inspectors checking these facilities and their products are not immune to the virus either. 

FSIS inspectors are classified as essential workers, so they have continued to travel to monitor these facilities. But as the plants become coronavirus hot spots, reports have shown the inspectors haven’t been able to protect themselves adequately.

A FSIS inspector interviewed in Government Executive said moving inspectors exposed to an outbreak at one plant to another location isn’t safe because they could then be coronavirus carriers and further the spread.

Last month, Politico reported many of the inspectors were expected to find their own protective gear since USDA wasn’t able to secure face masks for all of its workers. In April, USDA said it would give a $50 reimbursement for inspectors to find their own, according to Politico. But now the department says it has enough masks.

Since more than 300 inspectors have either tested positive or self quarantined, that can make it challenging to inspect every plant. Recent closures, however, could make that easier. More than 20 meatpacking plants, including facilities run by Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Smithfield Foods and Cargill​, have closed temporarily or indefinitely following pressure from local authorities and their own workforce. But as plants start to reopen, the smaller FSIS workforce could weigh on meat processors.

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring meat plants as “critical infrastructure” using the Defense Production Act to keep these facilities open and help prevent shortages. But as plants reopen, inspectors will need to travel to them and there is still risk of the virus continuing to spread.

The new executive order puts USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue in charge of coordinating with companies to reopen or continue operations during the pandemic. Perdue previously said he anticipated plants would reopen in “days not weeks.” Already, a major beef and pork plant for Tyson reopened with limited production last week after nearly 900 of its workers tested positive. A Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where hundreds contracted the virus, also reopened with limited staff last week.

Several labor groups have criticized the USDA, asking if it can’t protect its own employees from the virus, how can it protect workers? ​”The health and safety of federal inspectors and plant workers is in the hands of an industry that the administration is now pressuring to stay open, no matter the costs,” Paula Schelling, acting president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 45, which represents 6,500 federal food inspectors, said in a release.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Occupational Safety and Health Administration created guidelines calling for distancing and other safety measures, there are no requirements forcing companies to reconfigure facilities. And if inspectors continue to catch the virus traveling from plant to plant, they could risk spreading it themselves, or if even more get sick, then there may not be enough inspectors to properly check each facility. It’s just the latest hurdle to challenge the meat industry hit hard during the recent pandemic.

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Featured image: U.S. Department of Agriculture. Retrieved from Flickr.

Return of the Brown Shirts? US Federal and State Governments to Hire Contact Tracers to ‘Hunt Down New Covid-19 Cases

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, May 13, 2020

The US federal and state governments are now hiring “Contact Tracers” to track those who are infected with the Coronavirus. The Daily Beast, a liberal online news site claims that in order to reopen businesses and institutions, the government needs to hire thousands of Contact Tracers, the article ‘Contact Tracing Is Vital to Reopening the Country. These States Are Recruiting Thousands’ calls for a mass hiring of Contact Tracers since “health experts are pressing more than ever the need for contact tracing”the article claims that “It’s a tool that proved effective in past epidemics like SARS and Ebola, and it’s regarded as essential to safely reopening the country with the looming threat of higher surges in cases.” Currently, there are around 2,000 contact tracers or disease detectives, but they are estimating that the US workforce will need between 100,000 to 300,000 contact tracers, and that is just the beginning.

Why China’s President Xi Won’t Repeat Ming Dynasty Mistakes

By Pepe Escobar, May 13, 2020

With hybrid warfare 2.0 against China reaching fever pitch, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, will continue to be demonized 24/7 as the proverbial evil communist plot for economic and geopolitical domination of the “free” world, boosted by a sinister disinformation campaign.

It’s idle to discuss with simpletons. In the interest of an informed debate, what matters is to find the deeper roots of Beijing’s strategy – what the Chinese learned from their own rich history and how they are applying these lessons as a re-emerging major power in the young 21^st century.

Holding Healthcare Hostage: The Making of a Ventilator Crisis

By Tony Cartalucci, May 13, 2020

When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began dominating headlines, it was accompanied by fears of potential shortages of critical medical equipment including personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.

Nations like Russia had large stockpiles of affordable ventilators on hand – so many that they were able to send them overseas to nations at risk of shortages.

Fifty Years Ago: The Lessons of Kent State. Open Fire on Unarmed Student Anti-War Protesters

By Donald Monaco, May 13, 2020

May 4, 2020 was the 50^th anniversary of the Kent State University massacre that saw Ohio National Guardsmen open fire on a group of unarmed student anti-war protestors killing 4 and injuring 9 on campus.  Not satisfied with the carnage, police forces killed 2 black students and injured 12 others at Jackson State University in Mississippi on May 15, 1970.  On two spring days in May the veil of democracy was momentarily discarded to expose the ugly face of state terror revealing its murderous intent.  The revelation uncovered a brutal reality.  The American ruling class will execute its own youth to preserve oligarchic power.

A Close Look at Efforts of Pro-NATO Propaganda Units Behind the Scenes of South Front Censorship

By South Front, May 13, 2020

On May 5^th, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), published a new piece designed to label SouthFront as official Russian propaganda. (LINK) The article employs a twisted, yet sophisticated, style of mixing words, pictures and public facts in order to support the Atlantic Council’s agenda. It largely attempts to build an association between SouthFront and News Front, and in so doing, relies heavily, if not entirely on guilt by association, to label SouthFront as official Russian propaganda. Throughout its report, the DFRLab fails to provide a single example of any association between the two entities, providing zero evidence.

COVID-19: An Ocean of Fears and Lies

By Dr. Pascal Sacré, May 13, 2020

In countries where prescriptions have been banned outside hospitals, such as in France and Belgium, some field doctors have “disobeyed” and done what they thought was right, with good results and without major side effects.

Just imagine!

Qualified, experienced doctors, normally responsible and free to prescribe, prohibited from doing their job!

Face Masks Pose Serious Risks to the Healthy

By Dr. Russell Blaylock, May 12, 2020

Researchers found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause. That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia).

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“Beloved Ghana, born with a deep sense of pride, nurtured with unshakeable courage, has said goodbye forever to reaction, to timidity and hypocrisy in Government, and to the suppression of the interests and welfare of the people. Together we shall make Ghana great. Long live the revolution. Long live Ghana. May God bless us all.” – Colonel Ignatius Acheampong speaking at a Durbar of Chiefs in August 1972.

Ignatius Acheampong, the one-time military ruler of Ghana occupies an unenviable position in the political history of the first Black African nation to have been granted independence by a colonial power. Deposed first in a palace coup by his colleagues, who stripped him of his rank and honours, he was later executed by firing squad after a perfunctory trial held by junior members of the armed forces whose violent uprising was in many ways a reflection of the groundswell of public anger at the parlous state Ghana found itself during the 1970s. It was a state of affairs for which many of his countrymen blamed him. Acheampong was held responsible for the acute economic problems that beset the nation, including shortages of basic necessities, a debilitating brain drain and endemic corruption. It was a far cry from the heady days at the beginning of his leadership when he projected a spirit of optimism and a sense of purpose grounded on firm ideas about how to create the conditions by which Ghana could eventually become economically self-sufficient. It is this neglected aspect of Acheampong’s rule that requires recapitulation and reappraisal. For it reveals a man with a clear vision about how a post-colonial African nation could be transformed, but who was hindered not only by extraneous economic events such as the oil crisis of 1973, but primarily by an inability to properly select and synthesize the appropriate ideas that could have enabled him to achieve this objective. Examining the political career of Acheampong also necessarily reveals certain constant features that have continually bedevilled Africa states and impeded their development: the inter-ethnic rivalries, the ineffectual post-colonial structures of governance, as well as a pervasive inclination to submit to tyranny. A visionary who succumbed to the temptations inherent to the wielding of untrammelled power; the tragedy of Ignatius Acheampong encapsulates the tragedy of the African continent.

Ignatius Kutu Acheampong was born in 1931 in Trabuom, a town in the Ashanti Region of British-ruled Gold Coast which came to be known as the nation of Ghana after it secured its independence in 1957. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith, Acheampong worked, among other things, as a stenographer before enlisting as a private in the British colonial army in 1951. He received officer-training at Aldershot in England and was commissioned into the Ghana Army as a Second Lieutenant in 1959. He was a member of the contingent of Ghanaian troops who served as part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in the Congo in the early 1960s and later during the period of military rule that followed the overthrow of the government of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and as a lieutenant colonel, Acheampong was appointed to serve as the Chairman for the Western Regional Committee of Administration. He was the Commanding Officer of the First Infantry Brigade at the time of the coup that led to the ousting of Dr. Kofi Busia on January 13th 1972.

Acheampong’s bloodless coup brought about the suspension of the 1969 Constitution, the proscribing of political parties and political activity, as well as the detention of those whom he suspected of threatening his government, a junta which he called the National Redemption Council (NRC).

He consolidated his power and was quick to notify his countrymen and the world that his coming to power was nothing short of a revolution. Indeed, he would declare that “ours is a Revolution that must achieve the permanent transformation of our nation”. He would from the start reveal a programme of national development which owed more than a passing reference to the ideology and nationalist sentiment of the Nkrumah era. He spoke of “the dignity of man, equal opportunities for all, (and) the equitable distribution of our resources.”

It is useful however, to explain why a man who was not trained to manage a national economy and who came to power by force should be deserving of a serious examination as a political agent. Writing in 1976, Samuel Decalo in Coups and Army Rule in Africasaw “nothing unique about the abilities or characteristics of ‘colonels in command cars’ that should incline us to expect them to hurdle the universal obstacles in the road to … political development.”

Yet, some of those who pour scorn over the idea of a military leader with a vision may not persist with their objection where the regime led by Capitaine Thomas Sankara, the widely revered Marxist-Pan-Africanist leader of Burkina Faso is concerned. Fidel Castro, a paragon of the political left, seized power by force of arms on the island of Cuba. And despite the murderous nature of his right-wing regime, a sizable segment of Chilean society consider General Augusto Pinochet’s overthrow of Salvador Allende to have saved his country from civil war, as well as preventing it becoming, from their perspective, a “pit of Marxist Misery”.

The armed forces of certain nations have spearheaded ideological movements which its adherents have considered were either socially progressive in objectives or as defining the elemental conditions for propelling the national destiny. In Japan, for instance, the ‘Imperial Way’ faction or Kodo-ha contended with the ‘Control Group’ or Tosei-ha for influence in government during the 1930s, while in Bolivia, the ‘Revolutionary Nationalism’ championed by General Alfredo Ovando reflected a reformist belief on the part of many military officers who felt that the military was better placed than the politicians to arrest the underdevelopment of the nation.

From the vantage point of time, the idea of a military government is correctly viewed with abhorrence. And during an era of many military regimes, some military men spoke out against the trend including the Chilean martyr General Rene Schneider who at a General Staff meeting on July 23rd 1970 enunciated his doctrine of the political neutrality of the Chilean Armed Forces by saying:

The armed forces are not a road to political power nor an alternative to that power. They exist to guarantee the regular work of the political system and the use of force for any other purpose than its defence constitute high treason.

So while any endeavour aimed at explaining the virtues of a man who seized power from a constitutionally elected government may understandably be treated with suspicion, if not with outright contempt, it is worth reminding why military regimes where at one point in time thought of as being capable of forming a viable form of political administration. This rationale was based on the genuinely held belief that the military ethos of discipline, prompt execution of duties and strenuously inculcated nationalist sentiment all combined to provide the framework through which the decision-making process could be much quicker and the implementation of policies more efficient that under the often chaotic and fractious conditions of post-independence Africa’s civilian governments.

Decisions would be made in the national interest by disciplined, highly-motivated and detribalised members of the armed forces. The sense that military governments could work in Africa also rested on the belief that democracy did not work in the artificially constructed nations where tribal sentiment often held sway. In contrast, the authoritarian culture of the military could, it was felt, harness the resources of the nation and efficiently mobilise the population. It was after all an authoritarian regime in Stalinist Russia which had succeeded in industrialising Russia within a generation.

The suitability and the ability of a military government involved in implementing national revival and indoctrinating a population could be seen in the administrations imposed by the Western Allies on conquered nations such as Germany and Japan. There, military governors such as US Army General Lucius Clay in Allied occupied Germany (later West Germany) and US Army General Douglas MacArthur in Japan were concerned with national reconstruction, running local economies, trying war criminals and re-tuning the minds of people who had been from the Allied perspective, “brainwashed” by the pernicious ideologies of Nazism and Emperor Worship. It could then stand to reason that a similar feat could be achieved in positively engineering post-colonial African societies. Thus, there were possibilities of military governance working in Africa, if the human and institutional elements were able to be merged with a central unifying idea.

Certainly, Acheampong’s inaugural press conference given a few days after he seized power explicitly alluded to the idea that military rule, with the assistance of “certain eminent civilian advisers”, was uniquely suited to stamping out what he described as “the malpractices which existed before the 1966 coup.” He said:

In simple terms, we are almost like a nation at war, without an external enemy. The National Redemption Council (has) therefore decided to place the economy of Ghana on a war footing. We are soldiers, who know one way of dealing with crisis situations, and that is action. I want to assure the nation that we shall spare no effort and no sacrifice will be too great for us in this gigantic task of winning a great economic war.

But Acheampong’s objective at the outset of his leadership went further than merely rescuing and stabilising a dysfunctional economy: it addressed the fundamental task of constructing the conditions in which Ghana could eventually become economically self-sufficient. A few months after taking power he assessed the situation thus:

Ghana is basically an agricultural country, but over the years we have been relying on foreign aid as far as food is concerned. And not only that: we rely more on foreign assistance so far as raw materials (is concerned). So we have decided that we must be self-reliant in this respect. We must produce the food we eat; we must produce the raw materials we need for the factories.

That he tried to live up to his words is evidenced by the policies he sought to implement in the spheres of food production, the manufacture of cloth, the development of light industry, energy, infrastructure, as well as the economic empowerment of Ghanaians in relation to the multinational corporations based in the country. He was also mindful of the part to be played in melding these facets together by creating an educated and technically proficient workforce who would need to be sufficiently infused with a spirit of patriotism.

And what is more, Acheampong appeared to have been keenly conscious of a key obstacle purposely designed to keep the economies of the developing world in a persistent state of dependency: the creation of indebtedness. He therefore sought to renounce the debts accrued by the Busia government -which he claimed were incurred through “corruption”- and he also denounced the Bretton Woods organisations responsible for imposing debt on ‘Third World’ economies.

A recapitulation of the projects pursuant to creating the conditions for self-reliance is warranted. The irony of importing large quantities of food was evidently not lost on Acheampong or anyone who bothered to survey Ghana’s abundant resources in quality agricultural land, as indeed was the absurdity of Ghanaians having to purchase imported canned fish of what was caught off Ghana’s own shores. Acheampong’s response, his green revolution dubbed “Operation Feed Yourself”, proved a success. The Agricultural Development Bank, which had been created by the Nkrumah government, was encouraged to support the revolution and the government made sure that farming equipment was made duty free. It also set up a transport task force to move produce from farms to the regional centres. By the end of the year of his coming to power, Ghana had achieved food sufficiency and in 1973 and 1974, Ghana was a net exporter of rice.

Then there was the manufacturing of cloth; another essential indicator of national self-sufficiency. The Acheampong government set up a sister project to Operation Feed Yourself named the “Operation Feed Your Industries”. This involved the Cotton Development Board supplying Ghana’s textile industries with cotton. The result was that some industries began the manufacture of items such as towels and underwear. This fed into the goal of developing light industry; a difficult task under Acheampong’s policy of Yentua (the renunciation of foreign debt), which made capitalisation from overseas extremely difficult, but one nonetheless which claimed a measure of success through for instance, the maintenance of sugar factories at Asutware and Komenda as well as the Bonsa Tyre Factory which supplied tyres for road transport, farming and construction. Vehicle assembly plants were established and there were even indigenous creations of vehicles known as the Boafo and the Adom.

Acheampong tried to build upon Nkrumah’s Volta Region Project by initiating the building of the Kpong Dam and mulled over resuscitating the Atomic Energy Commission. He also promoted the idea of economic empowerment through the acquisition by the Ghanaian state of 51 percent of shares in some multinational companies which were taken up by Ghanaian citizens.

Striving for self-reliance requires a workforce that is adequately educated and it was under the Acheampong government that the most far-reaching policy statement on the structure and objectives of pre-university education was made. The Dzobo Committee on Educational Reform recommended the implementation of the Junior Secondary School (JSS) concept through which young people could receive vocational training. The regime started with a pilot of ten schools which were called “the continuation school”. Students were also mobilised to become involved in community projects such as the construction of irrigation canals and the harvesting of crops. And the objective of providing shelter for the masses was not neglected: Housing projects were boosted under the auspices of the State Housing Corporation, the Tema Development Corporation and certain regional development corporations which built over 2000 housing units annually. Home ownership was prioritised and organisations were encouraged to set up housing loan schemes for their staff as was done in regard to the Armed Forces and Civil Service. Finally, the regime, which trumpeted a slogan “One nation, One People, One Destiny”, tried to foster an atmosphere of patriotic feeling by introducing the National Pledge.

But Acheampong knew that his goal of securing Ghana’s economic emancipation could not be achieved while the nation was saddled with debt; debts which he alleged were “tainted with corruption”. He defiantly issued a pledge not to pay for those debts that had been contracted in bad faith which he encapsulated in the Twi word Yentua i.e. “We will not pay”. He based this on the rationale of Kafo Didi (“the debtor too must eat”).

It was a high risk policy to defy the Western banks and corporations, as it would mean that Ghana would not be able to attract foreign investors. And self-sufficiency would have to be achieved by means which would be similar to the hugely resented austerity measures imposed by the Busia government. The deeply ingrained habit of preferring foreign-produced goods to those that came with the “Made in Ghana” label -derisively referred to as “Made in Here”- would have to be changed; something that William Raspberry, an African-American syndicated columnist of the Washington Post thought would require “major re-education and psychological readjustment”. But Acheampong clearly believed that Ghanaians would have to accept any hardships attendant to such readjustment. His position was that Ghanaians, who he claimed were “living in false glory”, had to wean themselves off their self-inflicted dependencies. Ghana had to stop importing items for its basic sustenance. Going without would, he calculated, breed an urge to provide for themselves, and in providing for themselves the resultant enforced self reliance would serve as a boost to national pride. In his words:

If someone is living in this false glory and you try to remove him, he will try to capitalise on any hardship … There is no hardship as such. Ghanaians can do without corned-beef. They can do without sardines which we are subsidising.

There were some dividends. Apart from the aforementioned successes in food production and light manufacturing, Acheampong’s regime managed to turn around a trade deficit of US$56 million in 1971 to a trade surplus of US$204 million in 1973. The slashing of imports clearly played a major role in reversing the foreign exchange deficit inherited from Busia. The use of military men in settling state accounts, albeit in crude fashion yielded success. Soldiers were sent on debt-collecting missions while armed with lists of those in arrears in payment of power supply and rates. More than 30% of the government’s bad debts were cleared up under a “pay up or go to barracks” ultimatum. Those defaulters who were sent to the barracks were subjected to two hours of drills conducted under the gaze of a sergeant-major. The health of the economy was also aided by a clampdown on custom evasion and smuggling across Ghana’s borders, most notably with that of the Ivory Coast.

But these gains were short-lived. The oil crisis brought about by the Arab embargo against those nations perceived as having supported the State of Israel during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 certainly played a part in disrupting Acheampong’s brave new world.

Writing a special report for the New York Times in December 1973, Kathleen Teltsch’s “Oil Crisis Could Halt Poor Nations Growth” explained how countries such as Ghana were likely to be confronted by a threefold loss. First, they would have to pay more for the petroleum products they needed for industry and agriculture. Secondly, the expected recession in the industrialised world would result in huge cutbacks on the prices they had been able to get for exported commodities such as cocoa. And thirdly, there would be an expected cut back in regard to developmental assistance to poorer countries.

As with other countries, the extraordinary increase in oil prices had a negative impact on economic growth for Ghana. Indeed, 1973 saw the beginning of a decade-long per capita decline in GDP at an average of 3%. Industrial output declined and the budget deficit increased. Acheampong’s solution was to print more money leading to an inflationary rate of 116.4 percent by 1977. He also stubbornly refused to adjust the domestic price of petroleum products to reflect the increase in the world price of crude oil. Instead, he opted to absorb the increases in the price of crude oil through the mechanism of subsidies rather than passing the cost to the consumer. Additionally, the price of cocoa on which Ghana relied for foreign currency earnings remained as volatile as ever.

Acheampong may have felt trapped in a cul-de-sac. His stance on the non-payment of debts earned him the same level of derision the likes of the American conservative commentator William F. Buckley reserved for the Chilean leftist leader Salvador Allende. His syndicated column of April 1973, accused Acheampong of finding a groundless excuse for not paying his country’s debts. And like Allende, Acheampong committed the cardinal sin of nationalising over half of Ghana’s foreign-owned gold, diamond and timber operations. With undisguised contempt, Buckley wrote:

But suddenly things began to happen to Ghana. Credit dried up -completely. Forced to pay cash for its imports, Ghana’s prices skyrocketed. In no time at all, Acheampong was crawling back to the creditors, suggesting a modification of his previous boisterous, carefree solution to his country’s economic problems, which was to steal from foreigners.

There were already signs that Acheampong had capitulated in other areas including that related to the moral sphere. His indictment of the Busia government for what he termed its “hypocrisy” and the “huge fortunes” amassed abroad began to ring hollow as reports of nepotism and corruption within his military regime began to filter out.

There were allegations that Acheampong, in league with his Commissioner for Industry, was depositing foreign currency into a Nigerian bank. A report by the New York Times in July 1979, the month after his execution along with other senior officers who had served in his regime for “using their positions to amass wealth while in office and recklessly dissipating state funds to the detriment of the country”, described the seven years of military rule as “to have been among the most corrupt in modern-day Africa”. It was claimed that two-thirds of the licenses needed to deal in foreign exchange were issued through Acheampong’s office rather than the Bank of Ghana. He reportedly received a kick-back of at least 10 percent on major transactions.

Among the nepotistic appointments made by Acheampong were the appointment of a cousin of his as the head of the Ghana Supply Commission; this notwithstanding the man’s earlier dismissal for mishandling bank funds during a previous appointment. Another cousin was appointed head the Electricity and Sewerage Control Commissions, while an uncle, an Ashanti chieftain turned businessman, had been extended government credit to the tune of 7 million Cedis. The military kleptocracy at which Acheampong stood at the head permitted a culture of fraud and corruption which in the popular language of the day came to be known as Kalabule. The “big men” in power wielded power to acquire wealth and dispense patronage including those related to the rendering sexual favours. Thus the regime, if not Acheampong himself, who was rumoured to have many mistresses, received the nickname Fa Woto Begye Golf meaning “bring your backside for a golf”, a term inspired by the habit of government officials giving Volkswagen Golf cars to their concubines.

By the mid-1970s when Acheampong had dissolved the NRC and revamped the junta under the aegis of what was named the Supreme Military Council (SMC), he appeared to have run out of ideas about how to arrest the desperate economic situation which had engulfed the country. There were shortages of basic commodities in markets and stores, and smuggling was rife. Many educated Ghanaians fled abroad to secure employment particularly in Nigeria which was experiencing an economic upsurge owing to the increased revenues from the exploitation of crude oil. That his government could launch a national essay writing competition seeking suggestions as to how the economy improved only confirmed its level of incompetence. And Acheampong’s decision in 1977 to declare a “Week of National Repentance” from June 27th to July 3rd during which Ghanaians would repent before God and pray for the revival of the economy only confirmed the view that he had become out of touch with reality and even delusional.

The proposal by Acheampong of what he termed “Union Government” (UNIGOV) in October 1976 was his last major political initiative. This was a form of multilateral state governance that Acheampong envisaged would dispense with the acrimony and rancour that had accompanied multi-party politics in Ghana. He may have been impressed by the diarchy of military-civil rule as developed under the rule of his Egyptian contemporary, Anwar Sadat. There the mixed economy model allowed for a free market alongside a state monopoly of heavy industry with control over imports and the financial speculation market. Interestingly, Acheampong’s proposals did not attempt to include any elements of the methods by which Ghana’s pre-colonial feudal-organised kingdoms operated. For instance, Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava, a short-lived military ruler of the Malagasy Republic, had as a Minister of the Interior pioneered a concept of governance based on the traditional system of Fokon’olona that aimed to unify the diverse political movements whose differences had led to outbreaks of violence.

But in this coming together of the “estates” of military, police and civilian components, most saw an attempt by Acheampong to preserve his power and avoid setting Ghana on a path to democratic civilian rule. UNIGOV, or Nkabom Aban was met with widespread opposition from professional associations such as the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) and student groups. In 1976, the GBA called on the Acheampong regime to take immediate steps to return the country to civilian rule. And the following year, the National Union of Ghana Students organized demonstrations at the University of Ghana, the University of Cape Coast and the University of Science and Technology to call for the resignation of General Acheampong. He refused and closed down each university on May 13th 1977.

Opposition to UNIGOV also came from Lt. General Akwasi Afrifa, the retired soldier who had handed power to Kofi Busia in 1969, and the man whom Acheampong had arrested and detained in January 1972 on the grounds that Afrifa had been plotting a counter-coup designed to restore Busia. In a letter dated December 18th 1977, Afrifa advised his former colleague that “the political forces militating against it are too strong.” Acheampong went ahead with a referendum for UNIGOV on March 30th 1978. He secured a victory for the proposal with 55% of the claimed 1,983,678 votes cast (less than 24% of the registered voters), but the figures were almost certainly manipulated. Further, the margin of approval was far from the overwhelming endorsement envisaged by the regime.

It was the final straw for those of his colleagues who could see only a wall in front of them. On July 5th, a palace coup initiated by several senior military commanders forced Acheampong to resign. At the beginning of May 1979, the new Supreme Military Council, by virtue of the Armed Forces (Miscellaneous Provisions) Decree, stripped him of his rank, all honours he had acquired during his tenure in office, as well as his entitlement to retirement benefits. After specifying that Acheampong would be subject to a sentence not exceeding 5 years imprisonment without the option of a fine if he entered “any military barracks, camp, establishment or installation”, the decree went on to set out a exhaustive list of economic, administrative and other forms of personal misconduct “against the state and the people of Ghana”.

The decree also confined him to Trabuom, his home village.

Although his successor Lt. General Frederick Akuffo made arrangements for a return to civilian rule, the continuing economic malaise and discontent felt in all parts of Ghanaian society came to a head in the early part of June 1979 when an uprising by junior ranks of the armed forces seized power. A new leader named Jerry Rawlings, a half-Scottish air force flight lieutenant who had been sprung from a prison cell where he had been ensconced since leading an abortive coup a few weeks earlier, was installed as the leader of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). The AFRC immediately made clear its intention to hold to account those it considered responsible for Ghana’s economic woes and proceeded with what it described as a ‘House Cleaning’ operation. Acheampong and a number of other high-ranking military officials including two former Heads of State, Lt. General Akuffo and Lt. General Akwasi Afrifa, were apprehended and placed in detention.

During his detention, Acheampong was interrogated about his activities while in power. Then on Wednesday, June 13th he was allowed to give a press conference in Accra. The reason for this, a spokesman for the AFRC explained, was not to afford Acheampong the “opportunity to exonerate himself from the allegations made against him”, rather, it was to openly demonstrate to all, particularly to former high-placed government officials, that Acheampong in his statements to his interrogators had been “persistently shifting blame away from himself to other people” in a bid to “save his own skin”.  The AFRC’s statement ended on an ominous note:

The Council wishes to assure the public that Mr. Acheampong’s professed support for the objectives of the revolution will not deter the Council pursuing relentlessly, its stated aim of punishing severely, the selfish pillage of the nation’s wealth by past regimes.

Acheampong was treated to a last dinner of fufu brought to him by his 25-year-old daughter Elizabeth. His last words to her were “Tell everybody I was a good man and pray for me.”  The next morning, Acheampong and E.K. Utuka, the major general who had served as the Commander of the Border Guards, were driven to an Anglican Church situated in Camp Burma, the seat of power for successive Ghanaian military governments. Both men prayed for a short period before being taken to the firing range in Teshie that was to serve as the place of execution. Captain Budu Koomson who had been charged with transporting both men recalled Acheampong’s quiet demeanour in contrast to Utuka who kept repeating that he had not received a trial.

What Acheampong’s final thoughts were as he contemplated his life coming to an end are anyone’s guess. But his mind doubtlessly at some point then or at some other time after the AFRC takeover must have tread back to the contents of the letter written to him by Afrifa in December 1977. In it, Afrifa had warned Acheampong about “the vengeance that is about to be unleashed on us.” He had been concerned about the growing public revulsion at the conduct of the military and the threats from Nkrumaists to exact revenge after a return to civilian government. At one point Afrifa wrote: “In order to discourage the military from staging coups in the future, how about if they line all of us up and shoot us one by one?”

Afrifa, along with Akuffo and four others, would be executed ten days later.

When the car arrived at the range, the execution stakes were still being prepared, so Koomson drove them to the nearby military academy and returned when the site was ready. Acheampong waved his ever present white handkerchief at the onlooking crowd. He took off his watch and handed it to a soldier. Koomson then placed a hood over his head and saluted him one final time before the firing squad took aim and obeyed the command to “fire”.

What then is the legacy of this former military Head of State whose mortal remains lay in a makeshift wooden coffin for over two decades at a cemetery reserved for common criminals? Today, the discourse on Acheampong among his countrymen often recalls a corrupt and incompetent leader who inexorably manoeuvred his country to disaster. The man whose time in power brought about the entrenchment of Kalabule culture and economic atrophy. His execution is also alternately remembered as a case of just retribution for the magnitude of his failings as a leader on the one hand, or as a gross injustice perpetrated by those infused with a mob mentality on the other.

Those who assert that Acheampong paid the price for the commission of treason by virtue of his supplanting a democratically elected government point to the Ghanaian Criminal Code of 1960 which expressly made the overthrow of a constitutionally elected government a criminal offence subject to capital punishment. Furthermore, the establishment by Acheampong of the NRC and the SMC facilitated the creation of   ‘illegal’ regimes through which participants were incriminated by virtue of the Armed Forces Act of 1962, as well as the Superior Order Rule attendant to the Armed Forces regulation. Major Kofi Boakye-Gyan, the spokesman for the AFRC, insisted at the National Reconciliation Hearings in the early 2000s that this had been brought to the attention of his colleagues after consulting figures such as Colonel Peter Ageko, the head of the Armed Forces Legal Services Directorate; Justice Mills Odoi, the Advocate-General of the Armed Forces; and Justice Austin Amissah, an eminent jurist.

Others are not convinced, pointing out that Acheampong and other senior officers were not properly tried given the absence of any semblance of natural justice. There are also allegations that the executions were tribally motivated; that Akan officers, most notably the former Heads of State Acheampong, Afrifa and Akuffo were specifically targeted. Others dispute this by pointing out that the executed came from different ethnic backgrounds.

But it is worth noting that the army has been the centre of ethnic tensions which have only reflected the fears and grievances related to tribal affiliations in the wider society. And with the advent of the military into politics in 1966 there is much evidence of how ethically motivated manoeuvrings were undertaken. This has often centred on the rivalry between the Akan (including the Ashanti) and Ewe ethnic groups, the latter of which, together with the Ga) dominated Ghana’s army at the time of independence. When Colonel Emmanuel Kotoka, an Ewe, led the coup which overthrew Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, there followed a junta with a preponderance of Ewes. But this began to lessen after Kotoka’s assassination the following year during an abortive coup led by the subalterns Samuel Arthur and Moses Yeboah. The death of Kotoka and two other soldiers of Ewe ethnicity raised tensions between Ewe and Akan soldiers because of the preponderance of Akan military personnel who took part in the putsch and the fact that three of the four fatalities during the operation were Ewe.

If there is any truth to Samuel E. Finer’s maxim that “military leadership always tries to control the political product of any successor regime they establish”, then this was clearly exhibited by the manner in which Afrifa did all that he could to smoothen the path of his fellow-Ashanti Kofi Busia in the run-up to the 1969 elections during which time he arranged the removal of Ewe policemen from areas where it was felt they could threaten Busia’s campaign. At the same time, he arranged for Akan army officers to replace Ewe ones stationed at strategic army commands. This policy of ethnic manipulation continued during Busia’s time in office when Lt. Colonel Ignatius Acheampong, an Ashanti, was deployed to a series of strategically important positions of commands, the last from which he launched his coup. Busia’s purges, it should be noted, extended to positions in the civil service where mass dismissals disproportionately affected Ewes and Gas.

Although Ewe domination of the military had been largely eroded by the time of Acheampong’s putsch (only one Ewe was in a senior army position at the end of 1971), his action received critical support from two army majors of Ewe origin, namely Anthony Selormey and Kodzo Agbo. But both men were removed from the NRC by Acheampong who apparently succumbed to the perennial Akan fear regarding Ewe aspirations to political hegemony. It meant in effect that he was perpetuating the sort of marginalisation that had been practised by Afrifa and Busia. Indeed, Acheampong had accused Busia of increasing ethnic factionalism in the Ghanaian Army which if unchecked, he believed, would mirror the tragic consequences of the Hausa-Igbo rivalry in the Nigerian Army:

I watched the seed of tribal conflict being slowly sown by the actions of the Busia regime and with the blood of millions of our Nigerian brothers to warn us. I acted to nip the threat in the bud.

This is the context in which those who brandish the argument that the half-Ewe Rawlings was the instrument of Ewe vengeance when Acheampong and his Akan kinsmen were executed have to contend with. In any case the executions, which would have been extended but for international protests including an oil embargo imposed by the Nigerian military regime, met with a good deal of public approval. The crowds at the execution sites had jeered at the prisoners and encouraged the executioners by yelling “Action! Action! Finish them all!” Away from the baying-for-blood, proletarian crowds, the executions were endorsed by a range of media and public organisations. For instance, the June 24th editorial of the Catholic Standard, which was entitled “The Great Lesson”, approved of the first round of executions which included Acheampong by noting that it was “a means of instilling discipline and justice” in the country.

The lessons to learn from the tragedy of General Ignatius Acheampong invite not only an analysis of historical ethnic rivalries in the Ghanaian military and society, they also warrant an appraisal of the nature and objectives of African leadership, the forms of governance that are chosen, as well as the reaction of people to the manner in which they are governed.

An appraisal of any leader including a military ruler such as Ignatius Acheampong has to necessarily scrutinise the ideas which informed the man. Acheampong was not an intellectual by any stretch of the imagination. But his words after he came to power and his initial policies did present a tangible vision of what he perceived Ghana should become.

Several of his military-ruler contemporaries such Colonel Mathieu Kerekou in Dahomey (later Benin) and Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia led regimes which were explicitly Marxist-Leninist in orientation. But Acheampong’s regime did not project itself as one which adhered to a specific ideological format. It is claimed that he once described himself as a “socialist”. And some have gone as far as to label him as an Nkrumaist. Acheampong appears to have been greatly influenced by Nkrumah although there are clear distinctions in the means each man attempted to utilise in order to make Ghana a self-reliant nation. Although the words that he uttered in the Twi language such as Yentua and Kafo Didi became popularised short-handed expressions of the major planks of his policies, he never prescribed a overarching ideological concept such as Ujamaa, the socialist-orientated programme of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere. He also did not promote any socio-cultural policies such as the varieties of Authenticite as were attempted by Francois Tombalbaye in Chad and Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo (Zaire).

Nonetheless, from his early policies, Acheampong clearly led a government which operated within an economy that was centrally planned and had a free market. There is little evidence that he had any grounding in the disciplines of political economy and political science. He would therefore have been dependent on those “eminent” civilian advisers to whom he referred during his first press conference after seizing power. This lack of intellectual preparation for governing a country put Acheampong, as was the case with most of the military leaders who came to power on the African continent at a serious disadvantage. At the same time, it is also important to note that even those leaders who held far greater levels of academic training and who had definable ideological approaches, such as Nkrumah and Nyerere ultimately did not ultimately succeed in their objectives.

But having a greater level of intellectual curiosity could have enabled Acheampong to have performed better in managing the economy as well as in positively re-shaping the Ghania psyche. He was born a Roman Catholic but almost certainly did not have the inclination or the ability to extract any of the substantive body of knowledge from the rich intellectual heritage of Catholicism which could have served as a resource in enhancing his understanding of economics, as well as serving as a reservoir of ideas on how to mobilise labour.  An understanding of the works of Catholic scholars such as Heinrich Pesch might have provided a clearer vision on how to construct a “third way” of approaching economics that was neither capitalist nor socialist. A familiarity with Catholic social teaching and an appreciation of its universalism may also have given him concrete ideas ranging from how to foster national unity to translating Cistercian values on work ethic to the Ghanaian masses.

In fact, it is clear that by the time he had assumed office, Acheampong was no longer a practicing Catholic, and instead was heavily influenced by a succession of charismatic Christian churches. This factor severely limited Acheampong during his time in power and actually contributed to his downfall. He was a member of the Nazirite Healing Church, a mystical circle at Korle Gonno, Accra, at the time he led the coup which overthrew the Busia government. He also belonged at some point to an organisation named the Mystery of Mysteries Research Society.

It meant that Acheampong was captive to his spiritual psyche, one based on superstition and of taking solace and inspiration from the advice of charismatic leaders who prayed for him and saw visions for him. This background did not allow for a consistent pattern of rational thinking and reasoned decision-making, albeit that it did supply him with resolve and courage at some critical moments. For instance, an officer who was on duty in the operations room at the Ministry of Defence when Acheampong’s coup was underway in the early hours of January 13th told the Ghanaian Christian theologian John S. Pobee that he remembered Acheampong bursting into a room looking as if he were possessed and then telling the officer: “With effect from today, I have taken over the administration of this country. I have support, both spiritually and in men.”

Acheampong took his immersion in the spiritual vagaries of his religion when he set aside the days between June 27th and July 3rd a Week of National Repentance. This was one of Acheampong’s greatest errors of judgement. It earned him a great deal of derision from his countrymen who correctly interpreted as an attempt by Acheampong to lay the blame of the nation’s economic woes on the ‘sinfulness’ of the mass of people and divert the attention from the true culprits: the military regime headed by Acheampong.

By 1977, it was clear that the idealism of 1972 was a thing of the unrevivable past. But the subsequent degeneration and the dysfunctionality of his regime only make Acheampong’s lost vision all the more poignant and relevant today given the prevalence today of weak and dependent economies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The cause of this state of affairs does not rest solely with the quality of African leaders and their governments which have been generally incompetent, as well as lacking in both courage and imagination. A great deal of it is caused by the prevailing global economic and financial arrangements put in place by the Western powers which serve to create a permanent state of indebtedness among developing nations. The economic powers of the West have also consistently worked towards stifling the development of local manufacturing industries in the developing world which would serve as unwanted competition. The sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department on several East African nations who sought to reject the importation of Mitumba (imported used clothing) so as to develop their local cotton growing sector and cloth-making industries serves as a contemporary example. Furthermore, it can be strongly argued that those powers who possessed colonies only gave them an illusory independence because it was less expensive maintaining them in the sort of neo-colonial relationship that has persisted after “independence” was granted than bearing the cost of maintaining them when ruling them.

Acheampong’s renunciation of some, and not all debts, accrued by the Busia government provided one of the few instances where an African leader challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, debts which were unnecessarily foisted on a developing economy. It is tempting to believe that Acheampong may have been thinking as an orthodox Catholic who recalled the Church’s teaching of the sinfulness of usury. Yet, even if he (or his “eminent ” civilian advisers) were merely using their commonsense, his reaction was a precedent of great relevance given the contemporary state of understanding of the way the IMF and the World Bank function.  For the modus operandi of the Bretton Woods institutions has been to create debt among nations; debt of course being a vital feature of the capitalist system. If this assessment of Acheampong is correct, then he had a greater level of insight into this issue than even the learned Julius Nyerere.

Nyerere was shrewd enough to ward off every attempt by the CIA to overthrow his government and he had the courage to persist with his uncompromising policy of giving a home to a multitude of Africa liberation movements, most of which were political left and perceived as “anti-Western” at the height of the Cold War, but he was very trusting of the Bretton Woods institutions with which he worked closely to bring his intended socialist paradise to fruition. The IMF and World Bank were amenable to what was termed “development economics” during an era when many Western states were ruled by left-of-centre political parties and when their economies were run according to Keynesian principles. But under Ujamaa the Tanzanian economy faltered: self-sufficiency in food production declined and debt increased. And while Nyerere admitted to mistakes, (the war successfully prosecuted against Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin did not help matters) the time he spent ruminating during his retirement enabled him, finally, to understand the mechanism causing the perpetual state of indebtedness that plagued developing nations; a phenomenon which was clearly extended to European nations such as Greece. While it would be presumptuous to anoint Ignatius Acheampong as a soothsayer of sorts, the veracity of his stance in regard to the accrual of tainted debts should be acknowledged inspite of his later incompetent management of the economy.

Acheampong’s initiative to create UNIGOV, albeit a misbegotten one, also raises an enduring question about the ways in which African states have chosen to govern themselves in the aftermath of their independence. These states have slavishly followed the systems prescribed by the colonial powers that had previously ruled their territories or have subsequently adopted the American model. Often, these ostensibly democratic systems have been tainted by corruption and despotic rulers. They have often appeared to be unworkable.

It is an issue which has not been retained in the consciousness of Ghana’s political leaders since the time of Acheampong, although Brigadier Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, a short-term member of the military government established after the second coming of Flt. Lt. Jerry Rawlings had cause to say the following in March of 1982: “We have had party politics brought down to us from Europe. We have worked with it for twenty five years. It has been disastrous. The people are disillusioned. They are disenchanted. They’ve lost faith in the system, and I don’t believe they will go back to that system again”.

Rawlings, of course, went on to transform himself into a civilian leader and a system based on the liberal democratic tradition remains. But although Acheampong’s attempt to adopt UNIGOV was largely seen as a cover for his objective of holding onto power, the rationale which he proffered for the adoption of a different sort of governing system still resonates. The “divisions, tribalism, victimisation and various forms of social evil brought by party politics” persist and the idea of UNIGOV ought not to be condemned to the proverbial ‘trash can of history’, at least in the sense of Ghanaian and other African nations thinking of developing institutions of governance that are tailor-made to their cultural and historical circumstances.

Another issue which the Acheampong years of military rule raises is that of the reaction of the people to those who govern them. A foreign observer based in Ghana in the late 1970s spoke of its people as perpetually throwing up their hands “as though accepting that they will always be victims.” The inaction of people was not one of “patience” but one of “apathy”. This fatalism that leads to the acceptance of tyranny was expounded upon by Elizabeth Amoah, an academic who wrote:

Whatever has been ordained as part of a man’s nkrabea is believed to have a specific time ordained for it. This belief influences greatly how man goes about his daily activities. Man finds from his group that he should not rush to do things, for it is believed whatever is bound to happen will come true in the time appointed for it.

The Akan concept of predestination has been argued by some including Pobee to have enabled tyranny and oppression to have gone unchecked during long periods of Ghanaian history. The saying Onyame asem, meaning “it is God’s business”, encapsulates this mentality. It is a mentality aided by the influence of the charismatic churches to which he belonged which was firmly inculcated into Acheampong’s belief system. His favourite song at the time that he led the coup which brought him to power in 1972, was titled Afedia wura beba, which literally means “the owner of the trap will come.” Thus, as Pobee put it:

In God’s own appointed time a man is raised to subdue the oppressor of the nation. Meanwhile the masses do practically nothing or, at the best they will complain behind closed doors, to await the appointed time.

It is worth noting that Acheampong was not a bloodthirsty tyrant in the mould of a Mengistu. He never resorted to murdering colleagues who he may have perceived as threats to his position. And those who were convicted of plotting to overthrow his regime and sentenced to death had their sentences commuted. Nonetheless, he ruled as a dictator ruled by exercising a good deal of arbitrary authority including when it came to dealing with opposition and dissent which was channelled through the media. In their book entitled Press Freedom and Communication in Africa, Festus Eribo and William Jong-Ebot describe Acheampong as having “restored the authoritarian method of press control” after the overthrow of the Busia government. For instance, his military regime issued a decree indemnifying the state-owned press against libel suits by opposition figures who alleged that they had been defamed by state-owned media outlets. In March 1973, his government revived the Newspaper Licensing Decree and the Rumour Decree to tighten control of Ghana’s media institutions and in the course of imposing a regime of official censorship in the media; he arrested and detained editors and journalists.

The Acheampong regime was of course challenged by various professional and student groups and in doing so displayed a great amount of courage. But the overall tendency of African societies to live under intolerable circumstances created by military regimes, as well as dictatorial and unresponsive civilian governments is a tangible one.

After the execution of Acheampong and his military colleagues, the Times of Zambia editorialised that “The fact must remain startling clear that the situation in Ghana is symptomatic of a rottenness that is slowly eating away at the very vitals of African independence.” Yet, the description of “rottenness” is a suitable one to apply to the condition of many nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Though there might have been a diminution of bloody coups, civil wars, retributive executions of the pillars of an ancien regime and famine, the scourge of bad governance continues and with it the resultant widespread poverty and lack of true independence from outside powers.

The legacy of Ignatius Acheampong must not only be to draw lessons from his failings as a leader, but to also draw some inspiration from what he attempted to achieve at the beginning of his ill-fated rule. In his announced “guiding principle” he called on all Ghanaians to “look inward to themselves, to their resources; human as well as material, for defining the way of life, the system of government, the social and cultural practices, and the general economic policy to be pursued for national development and survival.”

His words remain a blueprint for any African country that seriously envisages building a strong and progressive nation.

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Adeyinka Makinde is based in London, England. He has a keen interest in history and geopolitics. He writes on his blog, Adeyinka Makinde, where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from Camera Press Ltd

And so it begins with the first Congressional effort to codify what may be the first of many unconstitutional legislative attempts to create a totalitarian One World Government under the guise of attacking the coronavirus COVID 19.

Some weeks ago the UN’s World Health Organization  recommended house to house searches for family members infected with  COVID 19 and the removal of those infected into a mandatory quarantine.  The American reaction was mostly ‘it could never happen here’  but that has not stopped House Democrats from introducing HR 6666 also known as the TRACE (Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone) Act .

Introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill) on May 1,  the TRACE Act would establish a nation wide contact and quarantine program, has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee for a yet to be scheduled hearing before the Health Subcommittee.

That subcommittee has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, May 14 on “Protecting Scientific Integrity in COVID 19 Response” with no published description of the hearing or list of witnesses.  With 39 co-sponsors, HR 6666 could be rolled into a larger CV response legislative package yet to be introduced.

HR 6666 grants $100 billion to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to establish a local mobile health unit in each community to conduct a diagnostic door to door COVID 19 testing program.  With the ACLU nowhere in sight, there is no doubt of HR 6666’s unconstitutionality as the Act states that such testing will take place “at individuals’ residences.”  

The bill goes on to establish the effort to ‘trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals and to support the quarantine of such individuals.’  

In other words, TRACE not only allows a massive dragnet type effort to seek and find those infected in what may amount to enforced home invasions but to force compliance by requiring the names of all individuals an infected person has had contact with – all of which raises the constitutionality of the entire CV effort with the ultimate goal being mandatory worldwide vaccinations.

HR 6666 is unconstitutional as it violates the Fourth Amendment which guarantees every American citizen the right to be secure in their own home.

Dr. Rashid Buttar has said that Ventura, California will be the first test location to initiate the TRACE program.

In addition, Microsoft was recently granted Patent #060606 for a “crypto currency system using human body activity data.”  In other words, Gates, a maniacal control freak, now owns the patent to conduct global surveillance via a quantum tatoo  inserted as a chip into the human body.  Gates has been advocating for digital surveillance system for some time.

Reminiscing about how British children were evacuated to the countryside during the WW II bombing of London, The Queen says it all:

”…evacuated from their homes and sent away for their own safety. Today,  once again, many will feel a painful separation from their loved ones but now, as then, we know, deep down, it is the right thing to do.”

Presumably the royal family will line up for public inspection to allow its children to be tested and quarantined, ‘away from home’ if necessary. Belated kudos to Harry and Meghan for making their break to freedom – they got out just in time.

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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Renee is also a student of the Quantum Field. She may be reached at [email protected].

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The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was a hardliner Republican before Trump appointed him the head of American premier civilian intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and later on to serve as the top US foreign diplomat.

Although the post he was elevated to is highly demanding and sought him to be well-balanced, the ex-spymaster has overly botched to offload his ham-fisted and parochial instinct that seemed to have dominated in his numerous photo shoots.

During his term so far, his hostile tone has further ruptured US ties with several countries including the US’ European allies. The opening of too many frontages at one fell swoop reveals that he is naive in handling the delicate international relations.

In order to overcome his serious diplomatic lacking, the former army captain greatly banks on incongruous theories and lies. Recently, he accused China for ripping up the US and global economy by not sharing the information it had on coronavirus.

Pompeo trashed all the diplomatic norms and crowed the reprehensible allegations over the killer bug that by not sharing the data, “they (China) failed to comply with their most fundamental obligations as a nation” and then “to cover that up.”

Lately, he has been spreading blunt lies about origin of the virus, alleging that it has emanated from Wuhan Institute of Laboratory. The former intelligence chief has “enormous evidence” about his sham contention but doesn’t “have certainty.”

While the attack on the Chinese nation was woeful and unforeseen, it was  deplorable for a top US official delegate to drag the people of another country or the government to justify his shallow claims without providing any evidence at all.

Even though the international analysts and intelligence experts including the intelligence-sharing group of the Five Eyes – including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have confirmed it is “highly unlikely” that it was an accident – he continues to parrot his spurious lab theory.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University said that these kinds of charges by Trump administration are “reckless and dangerous” and could drag the world into a “conflict just as Bush Administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq pushed the US into war in 2003.”

In an interview with CGTN separately, he blasted Trump for shifting the blame of his failures on China such as loss of jobs, loss of competitiveness and now the deaths from the Covid-19. “And this is working in the United States, unfortunately, as a political tactic, but it’s a very dangerous one.”

Sachs consistent warnings about the “dangerous” campaign of the Trump administration toward China, led by Secretary Pompeo, tells that the US president and his hawkish advisers are laying the country on a suicidal track for their egocentric and sporadic political ambitions.

By propagating the venomous thoughts, Trump is redirecting his 2020 presidential campaign in lines with 2016 canvassing when he used to smear China to fire emotions of Americans by pledging to reduce trade deficit and relocate the US manufacturing facilities back in the country.

On the other hand, Pompeo, one of the worst US secretaries of State ever, has been irrationally and rashly knocking Beijing to placate Trump so that he may book a chair in the cabinet of next government. And the whole dirty politicking flits around only one exploitative socket: blame China on the coronavirus pandemic to cover up offending lapses in containing Covid-19.

While the outbreak outsmarts American life and economy – the US federal government cannot escape from its statutory duty to ensure the citizens’ health and protect businesses and thus would eventually be accountable to the people for a chain of bloopers – slackened response to the highly contagious disease that exterminated thousands of people, erased millions of jobs and floored trillion-dollars of economy.

In order to galvanize his election probability amid surging unemployment and tumbling economic numbers, the US president wants to reroute trade war with China. Last Friday, Trump said he was “very torn” about whether to terminate the hard-won phase-one deal with Beijing.

On Monday, a top White House trade adviser Peter Navarro fueled speculation after he said “A bill has to come due for China” and accused it for inflicting tremendous loss to the global economy. “It’s not a question of punishing them; it’s a question of holding China accountable, the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”

The rabble-rousing statement emerged just days after the trade officials from China and the US discussed economic and trade issues including the phase one deal – appreciated the progress on creating the governmental infrastructure necessary to make the agreement a success and pledged to meet their obligations.

Such an act, if committed by the US president, would be a disaster for the US economy and thousands of small businesses that rely on cheap Chinese raw material, as well as manufactured goods, to survive in a highly competitive international market.

As the move would provoke Beijing to slap retaliatory tariffs, American exports to China, which had just started to climb, would immediately take a swipe while millions of domestic farmers, who have put everything at stake on Trump’s advice to buy more land and “huge tractors” and are seeing the farm exports mounting, will be furious too.

Despite the strong wave of coronavirus in the country, Beijing had radically increased its farm imports from the US. In the first quarter of 2020, the US shipments of soybean, meat, cotton and fiber to China witnessed a whopping surge of 210%, 640%, 43.5% and 17% as compared to the same period of last year.

In April, there were reports that China was planning to buy 30 million of crops, mostly from the US, to fulfill its purchase commitments and boost its state stockpiles including 10 million tons of soybean, 20 million tons of corn and 1 million ton of cotton worth of more than $6.25 billion. The US poultry and product exports to China in March were also the largest for any month since August 2013.

While economists have repeatedly shown that the US businesses and consumers are paying the duties Trump enacted on Chinese goods – millions of enraged American businessmen and farmers alongside their families could retaliate in the upcoming US presidential elections, ignoring his spending of more than $23 billion from the US taxpayers’ money to the farmers.

Though the hostile attitude and tariff saber-rattling being actively promoted by the hawkish White House officials may probably help to stoke hatred about China, the political hoax can no way revive US economy or retrieve millions of jobs – which would continue to haunt Trump throughout the rest of his presidential campaign.

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Azhar Azam works in a private Organization as “Market & Business Analyst” and writes on economy, geopolitical issues and regional conflicts.

Featured image is from FAIR

The COVID-19 is sweeping the U.S. land leaving behind mountains of dead bodies. This is just incredible. Soon, millions of persons may be inflicted. God knows how many more lives will be sacrificed.

What is frightening is the disorderly easing of lockdown and social distancing in many states, which will surely bring another upsurge of infected people and deaths.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world. Its GDP in 2019 was $21.4 trillion; its GDP per capita was $ 65,000. Militarily, it is the most powerful country in the world and in human history.

It is therefore normal that the world was expecting Washington to show how to fight the global enemy, COVID-19.

The world is disappointed. It is worried. But it is hoping to see the Americans conquer the virus, with dignity, as citizens of the most powerful nation in the world.

This paper argues that the following factors are responsible for Washington’s less than poor performance: China bashing, the counter-productive legacy of neo-liberalism and the doubtful quality of leadership of Washington.

To conclude, I will add a few words on the possible messages of COVID-19 to the American society.

China Bashing

Since Trump took over the power in Washington in 2016, China has been considered as a serious threat to Washington’s global domination. Washington has deployed all possible means to discredit the Chinese regime, destabilize the Chinese economy and isolate China from international decision making.

In Trump’s eyes, China bashing has very useful roles to play in the dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis in the U.S. Trump can make China the scapegoat, generate anti-China feeling and attribute Washington’s poor anti-virus policy to China. China bashing can be a good tool of covering up the policy failure.

China bashing has taken two forms.

First, Washington argues that the spread of the virus in the U.S. is due to the lack of cooperation of China in the sharing of information on the virus.

We must remember that it was December 31, 2019 when the corona -virus broke out in the city of Wuhan.

On January 3, 2020, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) was aware of the cases of pneumonia in Wuhan city.

On January 4, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported in social media the cases of the virus.

On January 6, the Chinese National Center Diseases Control and Prevention issued level-2 emergency warning.

On January 7, Xi Jinping recognized the danger of virus.

On January 8, the U.S. CDC issued a statement warning about the disease.

In the meantime, the urgent issue was whether the virus led to inter-human transmission. In fact, because of this issue, the adoption of proper measure was delayed.

This is understandable, because Chinese did not know the nature of the virus never seen before; it might have come from outside China. Finally on January 28, it was found out that the virus could be transmitted from person to person.

The U.S. was well informed about the virus directly or through the WHO.

The White House created Corona-virus Task Force on January 29 under the leadership of Alex Azar, Secretary of the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services.)

On January 30, WHO declared the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

On January 31, U.S. HHS declared the Public Health Emergency.

This sequence of these events shows that China provided quickly the information on the corona virus. The U.S. could have taken more proactive actions based on this information.

The U.S. argues this. If China had provided more quickly the information concerning the corona-virus, it could have prevented the pandemic in the U.S. But, in a situation where China was dealing with a mysterious disease, it was, perhaps, normal to have taken some time to know it better.

In fact, Trump was very satisfied with China’s cooperation.

On January 24, Trump said this:

“China has been working hard to control corona-virus. The United States appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work well. In particular, on behalf of American people, I want to thank President Xi Jinping.”

Thus, the U.S. was well aware of the danger of the corona-virus. And, it had ample time to prepare for the onslaught of the virus. But, for two month, the U.S. and other countries in Europe did not pro-act soon enough; this could have led to the huge backlog of infected people.

It is not clear why these countries have not pro-acted earlier. They might have thought that the virus would be confined in Asia or they might have had the over-confidence in the capacity of their public health systems to cope with the crisis.

Trump says that he cannot trust the Chinese statistical data on the number of the infected and the death. It is possible that the number of the infected and deaths looks small, given the population of China.

But, there is no way to judge the reliability of the data. For that matter, we may question the reliability of American data, too; there are reasons to suppose that the number of deaths in the U.S.is very much under estimated.

One wonders how the poor quality of Chinese data on the number of infections and deaths can prevent Washington from taking more effective anti-virus war.

Second, Trump has been trying to tell the world that the corona-virus was originated in China. Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State of the U.S. is repeating the expression ” Wuhan virus”, while Trump seems to love the expression” Chinese virus”.

The U.S. pretends that the virus was originated in China. Trump argues with no proof that the virus was leaked from a lab near the city of Wuhan.

The argument of Trump and Pompeo implies that the virus was engineered or man-made. But the U.S. Intelligence people and scientists including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of CDC, are denying the Trump-Pompeo argument.

Furthermore, there are important papers published by authors including Asian scientists and those of the Center for Research on Globalization which claim that the virus could have been brought to China from the U.S.

What is important to point out, here, is that Washington’s argument that the virus was originated in the City of Wuhan has no proof. If there is any, it is about the time to produce it.

Of course, it is important to identify the origin of the virus. But, we should let the scientists to do the job of identifying the virus origin. The politicians should not intervene in the debate. Above all, they should not politicize and use the debate for political purpose. .

The China bashing has damaging effect on the anti-virus war. To begin with, policy makers in Washington may try to attribute their policy failure to China and this will certainly compromise the effectiveness of the anti-virus fight.

China bashing is already stirring up, in China, anti-Trump feeling; this would surely hamper the Washington-Beijing concerted efforts to fight the virus.

The U.S. needs China as much as China needs the U.S. for information, scientific research and production of medical equipments.

We are facing the common enemy of mankind; all nations should unite to kill the virus. Without the close cooperation of the two most powerful nations, it will be difficult to win the present anti-virus war, let alone the future wars against the virus that are surely coming.

There is another danger in China bashing; it is generating anti-Chinese sentiment and even anti-Asian racial discrimination, which surely hurts the global concerted efforts to fight the virus.

In fact, In San Francisco, in two weeks, in April, there were, 141 incidences of racial discrimination against Asians. The discrimination against Asians is taking place in major cities throughout the world. This is very unfortunate, for it is the time for unified cooperation of every American.

Neo-liberalism and COVID-19 

The neo-liberalism is one of the factors which make the anti-virus war unusually difficult to win. The negative impact of neo-liberalism is the privatisation of the public health system on the one hand, and, on the other, the creation of the huge army of alienated low-income people who have difficulty in participating in the anti-virus fight and who are the most vulnerable targets of virus infection.

In the U.S., the neo-liberalism is the gospel of the privatization of public sector establishments. The credo underlying this gospel is the superior efficiency of private firms compared to public corporations.

Here, the issue is the definition of efficiency. In the context of neo-liberalism, it is profit. But, the value of public goods is not profit; it is the value of people’s welfare; it is the value of welfare per dollar spent.

The trouble is that once the public goods are privatized, they are no longer public goods; they don’t care about people’s welfare. One of the most important public goods in all countries is public health.

In the U.S. everything is privatized; even the prison is privatized. What is most frightening is the fact that the medical service system is privatized; there is no public health system. More than 30 million Americans have no medical insurance.

In the U.S., every medical service is profit motivated. The U.S. has the dishonour of being the nation of the most expensive medical service in the developed world.

The number of the American with no health insurance increased from 10.9% in 2016 to 13.7% in 2018.

Those who do have health insurance have to pay “co-pay” and burdensome “deductable” amounting to more than $3,300 a year in average.

The absence of a public health system means chronic shortage of hospitals, medical staff and medical equipments. For instance, the number of hospitals decreases by 30 a year; there are fewer than 45,000 intensive care units (ICU), while 2.9 million are needed.

Only 160,000 ventilators are available in addition to the federal government stock of 8,900. But, the U.S. needs millions to cope with corona-virus crisis. The situation has been improved a little lately, however.

Another credo of neo-liberalism is economic growth led by exports of goods and services. To export goods, one has to make profit. To make profit, one has to cut down the production cost. To cut down the production cost, one has to use high technology and save labour cost. To save further the labour cost, one has to develop the global value chain and exploit cheap labour and raw materials of developing countries.

The use of high technology creates unemployment or under-employment. The use of the global value chain allows the large multinational firms to make huge profit but the off-shoring of manufacturing leads to fewer jobs in developed countries. In short, one of the defects of neo-liberalism is the creation of the huge army of jobless and quasi-jobless.

The end result of neo-liberalism is the widening income gap. The popular index of the inequality of income distribution is the Gini coefficient. The higher the Gini, the wider is the income gap in favour of the higher income group. The Gini varies from zero to 100.

The present Gini of the U.S. is 50, which is level of Gini in developing countries.

This is just incredible! Remember, the U.S. is the richest country in the world, yet it is as poor as a developing country as far as the Gini is concerned.

In 2018, 1% top income group had 70% of household wealth. The bottom 50% of Americans had no income increase for thirty years. The minimum wage remains at $7.25.

The unequal income distribution combined with the absence of a public health system makes the fight against the corona-virus terribly difficult.

As we saw above, everything is in grave shortage. There are not enough hospitals, let alone the intensive care units (ICU); the number of nurses and all other health-care related human resources are in great shortage. The State governments and cities are asking Washington’s help in vain.

State governments, city governments and hospitals have to get, without much Washington’s help, needed masks, ventilators, gloves, gowns and other equipments.

Even if all these equipments are available, the great number of Americans who are jobless with no savings cannot have tests, self-isolation or social distancing.

Being poor, testing is expensive; living in crowded housing environment, social distancing is difficult; having no savings, they have to go to work, quarantine is not easy.

Leadership of Washington 

The global media seems to rightly suggest that Trump’s administration’s anti-COVID-19 fight has not been very successful, because Trump has lacked the following qualities.

• Respect for science and professionals of medical and public health
• Apolitical approach to the problem, transparency in handling data and the facility of government-people communication
• Ability to coordinate sectional and regional anti-corona-virus efforts
• Ability of mobilizing the general public’s participation in the anti-virus fight

Respect for science and professionals of medical and public health

One of the key features of daily briefing of the White House is President Trump’s lack of respect for the advice of medical science and public health experts; he often makes his personal views with no scientific or professional backing.

This attitude might have delayed the whole process of anti-virus war. As early as January-February, 2020, Trump was warned six times (January 8, 25, 30 and February 21, 23 and 25) by his close advisors about the propagation of the COVID-19.

However, Trump did not take the advice seriously for some reasons. He was quoted to have said that experts had told him that the virus would not touch the U.S. One wonders on what ground his advisors would have so advised.

Finally as late as March 13, Trump declared the National Emergency and timidly started to “re-act” not “pro-act”.

In other words, Trump lost a whole month before reacting. In the case COVID-19, one month is terribly long period of time. Nobody knows how many people in the U.S. were already infected.

In the literature on epidemic diseases, there is the coefficient R₀ (reproduction ratio) which is the multiplier of virus propagation.

If triple-day coefficient R₀is 3, it means that the number of the infected triples every three days. On the first day there is one person infected. On the third day, there will be 3 persons infected; on the sixth day, 9 persons; on the ninth day, 27 persons; on the twelfth day, there will be 81 persons infected.

If we have 100 persons infected on day one, in 12 days we will have 8,100 infected.

Thus R₀is a very important indicator of the extent of the virus propagation. For instance, if R₀is 5.7, no less than 82% of the population must be immunized. It is estimated that the multiplier for COVID-19 is about 3.

There is no doubt that a very large number of persons in the U.S. could have been infected due to the delayed reaction of the federal government.

Politicization of the Anti-Virus War

One thing a national leader should not do, during the urgent pandemic crisis, is the temptation to find a balance among various conflicting interests.

The big business may want to delay the knockdown because of the fear of losing profit caused by the lockdown.

Trump may want to maximize his political TV exposure in order to win the presidential election.

Religious leaders may ask Trump to let open the church during the crisis for religious and financial reasons.

The search for a balance among these different interests is the best way to speed up the propagation of the virus. In the fight against the virus, each minute counts. In the anti-virus war, the saving of lives should be given the top national priority.

It is understandable that the government wishes to ease lockdowns and social distancing to recover the shrinking economy and help skyrocketing jobless.

But, the timing is important. If it is too soon, there will another onslaught of the virus. On the other hand, if it is too late, the economy will be further destroyed.

Each country should choose the timing and the extent of easing in function of the cost acceptable by the people.

However, the saving of lives should have the priority, because the lost lives cannot be restored, while the broken economy can be recovered.

Another unpleasant picture of the briefing is the arrogant attitude of Trump toward reporters. He is reported to ask the reporters to praise his deeds before asking questions; this is surely politically motivated. When the reporters ask the data or proof of his claims, he shows even hostility toward the reporters. He is not transparent; he often contradicts himself.

Poor Coordination of Anti-Virus war Efforts 

There are fifty states and a number of metropolitan cities in the U.S. The corona-virus ignores the state demarcation borders; it likes to travel from one place to another. Therefore, the only way to win over the virus is to have unified approach of all states and all cities.

So, we need one single central authority which should coordinate the anti-virus efforts of states and cities. Such authority is the federal government.

The federal government must coordinate the whole process of anti-virus war beginning from the identification of the infected to the stage of healing the infected.

The access to medical equipment can vary from state to state and from city to city depending upon the financial capacity of states and cities on the on hand, and, on the other, the condition of virus propagation.

Unfortunately, there is no real coordination by the federal government. At present time, there is no Washington’s real coordination of testing, lockdown, hospitalization and the curing of the infected, the production and the distribution of medical equipments.

What is alarming is this. In the absence of a unified policy, in some states, golf clubs remain open. In some other states, there is no effective social distancing or lockdown.

The federal government’s coordination is so bad that the governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo is proposing a creation of regional inter-state coordination of anti-virus fight for the North-Eastern region. So is the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, for the South-Western Region. But, they still need the federal coordination of the inter-State efforts of coordination.

People’s Voluntary Participation in the Anti-virus Fight

One of the qualities of the national leader in time of crisis is the mobilization of the people for the unified efforts to handle the crisis; this is the necessary condition for the success in the fight. To beat the virus, people should be united.

But, the U.S is perhaps one of the most divided countries in the world. The American culture is essentially based on the competition in all fields of human activities.

It is a country where the strong rules over the weak, where the rich is indifferent to the poor and where the skin colour determines the social hierarchy. In this situation, the marginalisation and the alienation of people become a challenging social problem.

The sad thing is that under the neo-liberalism, the marginal group has become more marginal; the alienated people have become more alienated.

Under such conditions, it is very difficult to expect to see the unified cooperation of the people for the fight against the virus. Indeed, there are signs that the people do not respect the guidelines put out by the federal government.

It is just unbelievable to see that so many people make a mockery of the government instruction on self-quarantine and social distancing. In some states, heavily armed crowds protest the government’s guidelines. This shows how little the people do have confidence in the federal government.

Lessons of the Corona-virus Crisis to the American Society 

One thing sure is that for all these reasons, it will be difficult to prevent further propagation of the virus in the U.S. Nonetheless, one day, it will be over. But what lesson can we learn from the corona-virus crisis?

If there is any lesson to learn from this crisis, it is the crying need for major investments for people’s security. America has been investing heavily for military security and world supremacy. Regrettably, this policy has resulted in the negligence of other kinds of security, namely, income security, physical security and public health security.

The income security in the U.S. is in bad situation, in very bad situation. As we saw above, the U.S. is suffering from unjust income distribution. The lack of income security for the people is not only unjust but also it could lead to decades-long economic stagnation, as it has happened in Japan.

Another terrible phenomenon in America is poor physical security, let alone psychological security. In fact, the American society is the most dangerous society among the developed countries. The number of mass killings is 415 a year, or 1.13 a day. In 2019, as many as 39,052 were killed by gun violence; the number of guns per capita is 1.25.

The preparation of the public health security in the U.S. is urgent, because the next global pandemic of virus will surely come. As far as the public health is concerned, Americans should free themselves from the god of neo-liberalism which has destroyed public health.

These three kinds of security is something which even a poor country tries hard to assure. But, it is just incredible that a country where the per capita GDP is $65,000 does not seem trying hard to provide. So, we ask why?

The sad answer is the massive investments in military muscles. The annual national defence budget is more than $ 738 billion in 2020 as against mere $260 billion in China. No less than three quarter of the “discretionary budget” goes to the military.

Washington justifies heavy military investment and dozens of wars carried out since WWII in the name of the national defence security. But are these wars necessary? The wars are justified, if there are enemies which threaten the U.S.

Is there any country which can be a real threat to the U.S.? Even China cannot be a military threat, because China does not want war with the U.S.; its GDP is caching up, but, as far as the per capita GDP is concerned, it is still a near middle-income country. Besides, China wishes to live in a peaceful global order.

It is hoped that once this virus crisis is over, the Americans should persuade their government to cut down the military spending and heavily invest for the assurance of income security, physical security and public health security.

History shows us that any major changes in the society are not done by the politicians alone because of their interconnected political and financial interests; only the ordinary people can do itunder a real leader. We have seen it in South Korea.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economcs and co-director of l’ Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) of le Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration et la mondialsation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is a Research Associate of the Center of Research on Globalisation (CRG).

Featured image is from CODEPINK

The US federal and state governments are now hiring “Contact Tracers” to track those who are infected with the Coronavirus. The Daily Beast, a liberal online news site claims that in order to reopen businesses and institutions, the government needs to hire thousands of Contact Tracers, the article ‘Contact Tracing Is Vital to Reopening the Country. These States Are Recruiting Thousands’ calls for a mass hiring of Contact Tracers since “health experts are pressing more than ever the need for contact tracing”the article claims that “It’s a tool that proved effective in past epidemics like SARS and Ebola, and it’s regarded as essential to safely reopening the country with the looming threat of higher surges in cases.” Currently, there are around 2,000 contact tracers or disease detectives, but they are estimating that the US workforce will need between 100,000 to 300,000 contact tracers, and that is just the beginning:

Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden estimates that the country needs at least “several hundred thousand” in order to effectively trace the network of those infected with COVID-19. The National Association of County and City Health Officials recommends 15 tracers per 100,000 people in normal times, increasing to 30 tracers during a pandemic.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that contact tracers will “identify an infected person and track down every person and location that might have been exposed “for a prolonged period of time” during the incubation period. They’re not told the identity of who might have exposed them.” Then contact tracers will notify potential carriers through “via phone, email, or social media” the article claims. “But a big challenge is that state and local public health departments need a huge amount of people and resources to conduct widespread tracing.” There will be various agencies that will be hiring this new breed of “professionals”. The Daily Beast mentioned Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration chief under President Trump reportedly claimed in a recent interview with NPR that “as many as 180,000 contact tracers will be needed “if we want to enter into the fall with the kinds of resources we need to try to trace infection to prevent large outbreaks.” Another mainstream media network who knows how to put the fear in people was published by CNN ‘Experts say the US needs teams ready to hunt down new Covid-19 cases. But so far, there aren’t nearly enough’, “hunt down” sounds like they will be hunting down criminals. “Contact tracing is a widely used method in public health that relies on identifying every person who tests positive with an infection, isolating them, and then finding anyone that person could have infected” CNN reported. It seems that Trump is also on board with a massive hiring phase which would give him an opportunity to claim that he has provided jobs while the job market is in a downfall:

Trump unveiled a three-phase return-to-normal plan to all 50 state governors on Thursday. It outlines steps each state should take once they meet a certain threshold for number of cases declining over two weeks and certain level of capacity and ability to care for all patients in hospitals. The 17-page document makes a brief mention of contact tracing, saying states should have the ability to do it, but does not offer guidance on how to do it, how many people will be needed to do it, or explain how the federal government will help build up contact tracing systems

Many states are quickly moving into this direction. An NBC News report, ‘Inside an ‘army’ of COVID-19 contact tracers in Massachusetts’ said that “the program in Massachusetts has a virtual workforce of 1,000 contact tracers. Roughly 9,000 applied in the first 24 hours, and the job pays the rate of a federal census worker, $20 to 25 an hour.” NBCinterviewed Christian Arthur, who was formally employed at a addiction recovery center in South Boston until he found a job as a contact tracer:

Christian Arthur was out of a job when the addiction recovery center in South Boston where he worked closed last month. It took him two weeks to find a new one — as a “contact tracer” on the virtual front lines of Massachusetts’ effort to halt the spread of COVID-19. “There’s an army of us,” Arthur, 29, told NBC News

To justify these positions, NBC made sure to mention that contact tracing has been around for some time:

Contact tracing has long been used in the U.S. and other countries to help curb the spread of such diseases as tuberculosis, cholera and Ebola. It has also been used to great effect to mitigate the virus in countries like South Korea and Germany, public health experts say

Under Massachusetts Governor, Charlie Baker, the chief medical officer of the Boston-based Partners in Health Dr. Joia Mukherjee is in charge of the contact tracing program. The president and executive director of Partners in Health, Ophelia Dahl, was recently on a Clinton Global Initiative University online video discussion with Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton with governors Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom about contact tracing.  Dahl and both governors all basically said the same thing, and that is a significant “army” of contact tracers is needed to fight Covid-19.  Dr. Joia Mukherjee is currently overseeing the recruiting, training and the deployment of newly hired contact tracers throughout the state of Massachusetts:

The program in Massachusetts has a virtual workforce of 1,000 contact tracers. Roughly 9,000 applied in the first 24 hours, and the job pays the rate of a federal census worker, $20 to 25 an hour, according to Mukherjee. The job is done exclusively by phone and the workers are trained in handling what could be difficult conversations

NBC News mentioned was Krysta Cass, a 2010 West Point graduate and a former orthopedic physician assistant who was an Army officer for eight years in Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East before she became a supervisor in the Massachusetts tracing program:

Cass now oversees a team of 100 contact tracers, divided into 10 units with two to three case investigators in each. The case investigators interview those who tested positive and then pass along the list of contacts and places they went to the contact tracers in the unit.

“Most military recruits volunteer for public service in response to a global need,” said Cass, whose team focuses on Boston. “The people I’m working with are so similar. They care about the mission”

The state of California under its governor, Gavin Newsom wants to increase the number of contact tracers to at least 20,000 according to a report produced by CBS13.com, a news network based in Sacramento, California. During a recent press conference, Newsom said that “This is all foundational so that we can more quickly move to modify our stay-at-home order.” The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) are now offering Online contact tracer academies the report said. The Daily Beast said that “Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in late April that the state would immediately launch a “nation-leading” coronavirus contact tracing program, with between 6,400 and 17,000 tracers—equivalent to 30 per 100,000 residents.” Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is partnering with Governor Cuomo to collaborate within the tri-state area in the East coast “The program, in collaboration with former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s charity, “will be done in coordination with the downstate region as well as New Jersey and Connecticut.”

The main question that has to asked is what if the government, multi-national corporations including major pharmaceuticals and the private billionaire class and others with special interests might find this new contact tracing model appealing? With billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates supporting and funding Covid-19 tracing programs and mass vaccination campaigns in the US and around the world, individual liberties are slowly being taken away. This same system can be used to create an “army” to combat any perceived crisis they see fit.  What if they targeted anti-war groups, civil rights activists, anti-GMO groups to pro-2nd Amendment organizations, to regular citizens who hold different political views? The point is that they can use a tracing program model for almost any situation they see as a threat to their agenda.

It definitely reminds me of the history of Nazi Germany with their creation of “the brown shirts” or The Sturmabteilung, a legion of both the unemployed and the underemployed German people, high-school students and others who became “political soldiers.” The brown shirts were originally created to protect rallies who supported the Nazi Party and fought against those who opposed them including the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) known as the Red Front Fighters League, the Romani, Jews and others.

With an increasing unemployment rate with more than 30 million people who had lost their jobs so far since the Covid-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic thus forcing businesses to close and companies to lay-off a massive amount of workers in an already fragile economy. It is estimated that more than 18.6% of the labor force is now unemployed. The more realistic picture of the unemployment numbers should be measured in U-6 unemployment rate because it counts people who have given up looking for jobs and those that are working part-time but would prefer working full-time and are considered underemployed. The Federal Bank of St. Louis (see this) states that the U6 unemployment rate as of April stands at 22.8% and it could be allot worse.

The US population will certainly face an economic decline and a pending world war with one of Washington’s adversaries, but one of the immediate effects they will encounter is long-term unemployment. The unemployment numbers are only going to increase in coming months and even years as more businesses close or lay-off workers due to the already weak economy and Covid-19 pandemic scare. A recession has essentially started and its starting to take its toll on the working class. Many people will apply for these contact tracing jobs in desperate times, and a certain percentage of government-trained recruits will violate the civil rights of ordinary citizens just like those incidents in the past that occurred with the TSA at US airports. The US government and the 50 states of the union are actively hiring a new army of contact tracers as the unemployment numbers gets worse, creating a complete totalitarian police state.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

The fear that the global pandemic of the new coronavirus will be used to justify a new world order based on a hyper-surveillance system becomes increasingly real. All over the world, multiple projects abound to build a global surveillance and remote monitoring system that stores data about all citizens and controls them partially or totally to prevent the spread of a new infection. Civil liberties, which for centuries have been a real pillar of Western thought and liberal ideology, now appear to be expendable in the name of “preventing a new pandemic”.

In fact, this reality has already begun. On this topic, a group of researchers recently published an article in Reuters, making a large and well-elaborated denunciation about the projects of surveillance and violation of civil liberties. According to this text, at least eight cyber intelligence companies are already involved in monitoring projects under the excuse of helping governments to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of these companies is Israeli Cellebrite, a renowned corporation in the field of data technology. The authors of the article tracked an email pitch from Cellebrite to police authorities in Delhi, India, where the company briefly exposes its work, stating that it can use to control the quarantine of infected people the same technology it uses to assist authorities in controlling fugitives and wanted by the police, quickly identifying the location, data and contacts of any person infected with COVID-19. In the e-mail, the company states that such a mechanism should be used at first by consensus; however, nothing prevents it from being compulsorily applied in some more delicate cases in order to safeguard general security. In practice, this means that being infected with a virus will very soon be analogous to being a criminal.

The expert and technologist Chris Garaffa, in a recent statement, expressed his opinion about the proposal presented by Cellebrite saying:

“Ultimately what Cellebrite’s GrayKey does is get a copy of everything on your device. Now, think about what’s on your phone. Not just the photos or emails… So, now Cellebrite is offering these tools to more governments under the guise of tracking the spread of COVID-19. They’re suggesting to governments that they purchase these GrayKey and other devices, and when someone is diagnosed with coronavirus or dies from it, the government actually takes their phone so they can see all of their locations”.

The eight companies referred by the article reported that their surveillance products have already been purchased by governments in more than a dozen countries on almost every continent – however, the names of the countries have been kept confidential. Only Israel is a country publicly involved in testing remote control and monitoring systems. In addition to the very powerful Cellebrite, another Israeli company involved in such tests in collaboration with the state is NSO Group. The Group is already openly working in cooperation with the Israeli ministry of defense and is just waiting for the resolution of some legal problems for the definitive implementation of its technology in the control of epidemics. Despite the fact that such tests are known to occur, their operations are strictly confidential and absolutely no one has any information about how these experiments are conducted, which raises even more suspicion about the case and generates a series of questions that still unanswered.

Security engineer and analyst Patricia Gorky, in a recent interview, reported the following testimony about such tests:

“These surveillance companies, these Israeli surveillance companies in particular, the way that they test out their software and they test out these surveillance platforms is directly on the Palestinian people… Israel uses these surveillance companies to track what these Palestinians are saying on social media, to track their location, to surveil them… and the fact that these companies are even being floated as possibilities to fight the coronavirus shows the fact that this is not about fighting COVID at all. This is about really deepening the surveillance apparatus and adding to it”.

So, what we have so far is the simple implementation of several forecasts by experts about the scenario provided by the pandemic. The great profit that the coronavirus brought to the global financial elite was the possibility of circumventing the basic principles of liberalism to create an even more liberal and brutally excluding system. We are facing the birth of a liberalism without freedoms, of an overwhelmingly global capitalism, which cannot be limited by absolutely nothing, neither laws nor principles.

Capitalism brought the world the Absolute State when it needed it and likewise discarded it when no longer needed it. What emerged then was the legacy of liberalism, constitutionalism and the rule of law; now, these elements are also outdated for capitalism, which, in its new dynamics, aims to purge these principles in favor of a new one: biological security. In the name of prevention, world elites will try to spy, supervise and control everything and everyone.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Are we lab rats? Milgram-Asch-Laborit

In this article, I refer to the experience of countries that are confined in an authoritarian and arbitrary manner, with more than 3 billion human beings under the authority of a few people and under house arrest [1] :

No choice but confinement?

The virologists would confine us for a year, if it were up to them [“If it were up to the virologists, it would be simple: everyone in confinement for a year“]!

In my case, it would be those virologists that I would confine for a year, without hesitation. Nothing personal!

Do your children know Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch and Henri Laborit?

I don’t think so. Do you?

I don’t know. I think these are the people and their experiences that should be taught in schools.

I’ve interviewed mine, 14, 16, 17 and 19… No. They don’t know, or barely know. Milgram, they look familiar.

You can be sure that these people who want to govern us are familiar with these subjects, and they exploit them.

If we don’t take control of our minds, others do it for us.

Let’s go back to that unflattering comparison.

I have tried to understand how billions of people have been so easily caged.

Fear, of course [COVID-19 – Media Choice: Fear!].

Guilt. No one wants to make their loved ones sick.

But once the untruths started coming out:

1. Raoult, professor published in all the major infectious disease journals and author of several books on the subject – Raoult – Fear versus Data

Divergent opinions of multiple experts, including several in virology, infectiology, epidemiology, statistics 2. … [2-3-4-5]: “Stop the confinement! »
3. Dissenting reports from field doctors… [6]

Once it became obvious that something was wrong with the statistics exaggerated by the media (contaminations, deaths, hospitalizations), with the official discourse, with the interest of the measures advocated by our rulers [Facts about Coronavirus], why did the majority of people continue to obey?

Some are ready to let themselves be stalked, to let their children be masked, to let people put an ankle bracelet on them! [In a nursery school in Varese, Italy, electronic bracelets for the social distancing of children] – original Italian version [7].

How can it come to this?

Stanley Milgram – Submission to Authority

Stanley Milgram is an American social psychologist. He conducts a famous experiment in the early sixties.

 Excerpt from the film I comme Icare (1979), with Yves Montand playing the lead role…

• 20 minutes, on Stanley Milgram’s real-life experiment, carried out in the USA between 1960 and 1963 at Yale University.Using the pretext of a study on memory, he puts a “master” (the real subject of the experiment) in contact with a “pupil” who has to memorize words and repeat them.The “students” are actually actors. They are in the game with the experimenter in the white coat who plays the role of the authority.The subject being tested is the teacher, who has to punish the pupil with an increasingly powerful electric shock in the event of a wrong answer or no answer.In fact, the student actors receive nothing and simulate the pain by shouting, crying or contorting.Under verbal pressure from the experimenter who embodies authority, most masters will inflict very high electric discharges, 450 volts for the most intense.

  However, teachers are well aware of the suffering inflicted and the risk of death among students.

  For Milgram, these shocking actions can be explained by the notion of the “agentia state:

 The individual sees himself as the executive agent of an alien (his) will, as opposed to the “autonomous state” in which he feels responsible for his actions. The individual, in this perspective of submission, considers himself to be committed to authority and therefore does not feel responsible for the orders given by it.This experience demonstrates the extraordinary degree of subjection of individuals to authority.Despite the contradictory decisions of our governments, their amateurism or, on the contrary, their authoritarianism, despite the fact that general practitioners have been prevented from prescribing certain drugs, despite the scandals about masks, tests, the isolation of the elderly, the brutal police supervision of a population under house arrest, despite the absence of disaster in countries that have not resorted to confinement, despite all these aberrations, the majority of confined populations continue to obey.

To go further: In the name of science, obey me!

Solomon Asch – the weight of conformism

Solomon Asch is a psychology researcher at Swarthmore College, USA.

In the early 1950s, he too conducted a very interesting social experiment: how an individual can go so far as to renounce his own judgment, and lie to conform to the decisions of the group.

© image taken from the site: Surprising tendency to conformism: the Asch experience

The experience is presented as an experience of visual perception.

On an image, a first vertical line is represented.

In a second image, three vertical lines designated by A, B and C are represented. Only one of the strokes (C) is the same length as the one represented in the first image.

The correct answer is obvious.

In Asch’s experiment, 8 people are evaluated. 7 of them are accomplices of the experimenter.

The subject studied is always questioned last. The 7 accomplices, questioned first, give their answer out loud and specify, on the second image, the line which has the same length as that of the first image.

When the 7 accomplices start to give a false answer, the subject studied, in spite of his intimate conviction, gives in his turn a wrong answer.

This was observed in 3 out of 4 subjects.

This means that the majority of people prefer to conform to the rest of the group, even if it means making a mistake or lying.

An interesting point is that at the end of the test, the real purpose of the experiment was finally revealed to the test subjects.

Asch then collected three types of responses from those who had followed the group’s erroneous advice:

1. Denial. Some subjects continued to believe they had given the correct answer.
2. Influence: Some subjects admitted that they had been misled by the group.
3. Acceptance: some subjects had the right answer but did not dare to denote in relation to the general   opinion.

The conclusion of this experiment is that we are much more vulnerable than we would like to believe!

The experiment has been replicated many times.

Henri Laborit – The inhibition of action

What happens when you can neither run away nor fight in the face of a conflict situation?

Professor Henri Laborit, a French surgeon and neurobiologist born in 1914, conducted these experiments on laboratory rats.

Framework of the experiment:

Laborit uses a wire cage with an electrified floor. The cage has two compartments separated by a partition with a door. The floors of each compartment are subjected to alternating electrical discharges.

Four seconds after a flash of light and a sound signal, an electric current is sent to the floor of one of the compartments of the cage.

Laborit first conducts two experiments.

                                                           Photo source: huffingtonpost.fr

In the first experiment, it allows the rat to leave the electrified compartment by leaving the door open.

The rat very quickly associates the luminous flash, the sound signal and the occurrence of the electric shock. Thus, as soon as it perceives the flash and hears the sound, it moves to the other compartment, and so on each time it hears the sound and perceives the flash, thus avoiding electric discharges.

In the second experiment, he places two rats in the compartment and the door is closed. The two rats cannot leave this compartment. They are subjected to electric shocks without being able to escape. So they fight, bite and scratch each other.

In both experiments, this electrical stress is applied for 10 minutes a day, for 10 days.

At the end of both experiments, when you look at the rats, even the ones that fought (except for their scratches), they are all healthy.

Laborit then conducts a third and decisive experiment.

A rat is placed in the compartment with the door closed. It is alone and cannot escape. After a while, Laborit observes that the rat doesn’t even try to move anymore. It remains prostrate, covered with electric shocks. At the end of the experiment, he experiences significant weight loss, prolonged high blood pressure (several weeks) and multiple stomach ulcers.

This experiment shows that a living being confronted with stress, if he cannot act on it, flee or fight, freezes, prostrates himself and develops diseases.

This is the inhibition of action.

Among the billions of confined human beings, many have submitted themselves to authority, some ready to follow all the orders given, even absurd ones, and to make them be respected in turn.

Others have preferred to believe a lie or to act as if it were true, for fear of facing pressure from their group.

The majority, finally, frozen, prostrate, under the combined effect of fear and confinement, inhibited all action, reflection, subject to the order to stay at home, to respect an aggressive isolation without being able to move or fight.

I filled this gap and told my children about Milgram, Asch and Laborit.

There is hope.

Stanley Milgram relativized the significance of his experience by recalling all the historical situations in which resistance to a malevolent authority was able to develop through collective action.

Similarly, Solomon Asch pointed out that as soon as the subject studied was no longer alone, but another resisted the false pressure of the group, then the subject studied in turn resisted much more and the rate of conformity dropped considerably. It only takes several to resist.

Finally, Henri Laborit demonstrated that it is not the stress that happens to us or that is inflicted on us that counts, but our reaction to it! The important thing is to react to it and not to endure it without doing anything.

Take action.

Together, as here in Switzerland, protesters demonstrated this Saturday in several cities in German-speaking Switzerland against the measures imposed by the government during the coronavirus pandemic.

Only collective, concerted, intelligent and determined action will overcome the intrusive powers that VIDOC-19 has unleashed on us.

Dr. Pascal Sacré

Anesthesist-Intensivist

Featured Photo: The Emperor’s new clothes

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Notes

[1] Coronavirus : quels sont les pays confinés ? Plus de trois milliards de personnes sont confinées, soit la moitié de la population mondiale.

[2] 12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic, 12 experts s’interrogent sur la panique du coronavirus

[3] 10 MORE Experts Criticising the Coronavirus Panic, 10 autres experts critiquent la panique du coronavirus

[4] 8 MORE Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic, 8 experts de plus s’interrogent sur la panique du coronavirus

[5] Covid19 et confinement aveugle, combien de morts évitables ?, par le docteur N. Délépine, pédiatre et oncologue

[6] Fausse pandémie de COVID-19 : deux médecins sur le terrain expliquent pourquoi le confinement est inutile

[7] In un asilo di Varese il braccialetto per il distanziamento a 150 bimbi, 6 mai 2020

 

Last week, Chinese scientist Bing Liu was shot and killed inside his home in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, USA. The researcher was a doctor of computer science at the National University of Singapore and lived and worked in the US, more specifically at the University of Pittsburgh, where he developed a research project on the new coronavirus. Recently, the scientist had announced some “important discoveries” about the virus, but he did not reveal the real nature of the topic. The researcher’s unexpected and violent murder in his own home brought some questions about such discoveries.

The identity of Bing Liu’s killer is already known: Hao Gu, a 46-year-old man whose body was found in the surrounding area shortly after the crime, indicating the occurrence of a suicide. According to reports of preliminary investigations by the American police, the crime has a passionate nature and a deeply intimate reason, showing no relation to the theme of the virus or his research. Following protocol by the American police, due to the fact that Gu and Liu were not American citizens, the case was transferred to US federal authorities for investigation.

The University of Pittsburgh issued a statement saying it “is deeply saddened by the tragic death of Bing Liu, a prolific researcher and admired colleague of Pitt.” According to the institution, the researcher was trying to understand “the cellular mechanisms underlying the SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of complications”.

The whole dynamics of the crime seems to be surprising. It is minimally curious that a personal relationship of the researcher has led to such a tragic result, taking the lives of two men, precisely in the midst of promising laboratory investigations that would lead to discoveries about the new coronavirus. A truly tragic coincidence that, by itself, cannot lead to any conclusion outside the police reports themselves, but, when taken in its proper global context, can lead to legitimate suspicions. For reasons far less convincing and absolutely unfounded, the American government formally accuses China of having produced and developed the new coronavirus in laboratory as a biological weapon. Such a speech is no longer identified as a “conspiracy theory”. So, what is the reason for considering “conspiracy” the suspicion of a political nature behind the crime against Professor Bing Liu?

As exhaustively treated in the previously, the global pandemic of the new coronavirus brought with it the emergence of a new arms race: the pharmaceutical race. In this race, nations are facing the development of pharmacological research to obtain faster and more efficient results against the new evils of our times. This new arms race has a civil-military dimension and is equally noticeable among States, corporations and international organizations, being a common target for all the global agents of our age. In fact, we do not know exactly what Liu discovered and it is likely that we will never know it, but, certainly, his research had some high degree of scientific relevance and strategic interest, so, believing that there is a political and strategic reason for Liu’s murder is fully consistent. If his findings about the cellular mechanisms of the infection were relevant to the development of a cure for COVID-19, Liu may actually have been the victim of a political attack or of an intelligence-level operation, aimed at preventing the publication of his findings, which are now adrift and can be stolen and patented by other international agents.

Little is known about the details of Professor Liu’s personal life, which is why the idea of a passionate crime of such magnitude clashes with everything that was publicly known about him until then. This fact endorses the possibility of having an artificial “passionate crime” scene intentionally prepared. Coming to such conclusions, for sure, is not our goal, but just to consider that the different theses about the crime must be seriously analyzed, undertaking a real and deep study of the evidences. The fact is that this investigation is on the hands of the US federal authorities, so the official version reported so far is unlikely to be contradicted, which means that we may never know the truth about what really happened to Bing Liu.

The accusations against China do not stop; they are going ahead on all fronts. Every day, an avalanche of fake News is launched against the Asian country on the new coronavirus. In addition to accusing Beijing of having created the virus, Washington also creates the myth that China would have omitted the real state of the infection through reprisals against Liu Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who collaborated with the regime and that the West tries to portray as an “opponent”.

The fact is that China has countered all accusations and it remains proven that Wenliang was never “silenced” by the Communist Party and, likewise, research reports from the Wuhan Laboratory do not provide any evidence that the coronavirus was artificially developed in China. On the other hand, what will Washington say about Bing Liu? What will the investigations by federal authorities conclude about his death?

Probably, the case will not only be dismissed by the authorities, but it will also be forgotten soon due to the strong role of the one-sided mainstream media.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from the University of Pittsburgh

The coronavirus outbreak has caused a significant impact on European companies, confronting them with the worst market declines in the last few decades. As one of the most-affected countries in Europe, Germany is set to witness a significant collapse in the business sector.

According to data gathered by AksjeBloggen, nearly half of the German companies expect major revenue drop in 2020 due to coronavirus pandemic. More than 25% of them expect revenue declined by more than 50%.

Coronavirus Outbreak Affected 92% of the German Economy

The DIHK survey conducted in March 2020 among 15,000 German companies showed that 23% of respondents expect profits drop between 10% and 25% due to coronavirus outbreak. Another 26% of businesses stated they would probably experience a revenue decrease between 25% and 50%. Only 3% of respondents believed the coronavirus is not going to affect their revenue at all. Statistics showed 2% of German companies expected their income to increase in 2020.

Source: aksjebloggen.com

The survey also revealed the coronavirus outbreak affected almost 100% of German businesses in the hospitality and travel industry. More than 90% of companies in the wholesale, transport and storage, retail and business-related services also significantly noticed the impact of the pandemic. Manufacturing, health management, and construction industry follow with 88% and 86% of troubled companies, respectively. Statistics show that 92.4% of the entire German economy is affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

Two-thirds of German Companies Require Emergency Government Grants

The coronavirus also influenced how German companies evaluate their future. According to the DIHK survey, 63% of them expected less demand for their products and services in the following weeks. Cancellation of orders ranked as the second-leading problem with a 48% share among respondents. The standstill of business activity, liquidity shortfalls, and reduced investments followed with 43%, 41%, and 38% share.

The survey also revealed almost 70% of German firms found emergency government grants and reduced hours compensation as the most relevant support measures during the coronavirus outbreak. Another 60% of them require a cut of advance payments. Government and bank loans follow with 31% and 16% share of companies who preferer this type of support measures.

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With hybrid warfare 2.0 against China reaching fever pitch, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, will continue to be demonized 24/7 as the proverbial evil communist plot for economic and geopolitical domination of the “free” world, boosted by a sinister disinformation campaign. 

It’s idle to discuss with simpletons. In the interest of an informed debate, what matters is to find the deeper roots of Beijing’s strategy – what the Chinese learned from their own rich history and how they are applying these lessons as a re-emerging major power in the young 21^st century.

Let’s start with how East and West used to position themselves at the center of the world.

The first Chinese historic-geographic encyclopedia, the 2^nd century B.C. Classic of the Mountains and the Seas, tells us the world was what was under the sun (tienhia). Composed of “mountains and seas” (shanhai), the world was laid out between “four seas” (shihai). There’s only one thing that does not change: the center. And its name is “Middle Kingdom” (Zhongguo), that is, China.

The principle of a huge continent surrounded by seas, the “exterior ocean,” seems to have derived from Buddhist cosmology, in which the world is described as a “four-petal lotus.” But the Sinocentric spirit was powerful enough to discard and prevail over every cosmogony that might have contradicted it, such as the Buddhist, which placed India at the center.

Now compare Ancient Greece. Its center, based on reconstituted maps by Hippocrates and Herodotus, is a composite in the Aegean Sea, featuring the Delphi-Delos-Ionia triad. The major split between East and West goes back to the Roman empire in the 3^rd century. And it starts with Diocletian, who made it all about geopolitics.

Here’s the sequence: In 293, he installs a tetrarchy, with two Augustuses and two Caesars, and four prefectures. Maximian Augustus is charged to defend the West (Occidens), with the “prefecture of Italy” having Milan as capital. Diocletian charges himself to defend the East (Oriens), with the “prefecture of Orient” having Nicomedia as capital.

Political religion is added to this new politico-military complex. Diocletian starts the Christian dioceses (dioikesis, in Greek, after his name), twelve in total. There is already a diocese of the Orient – basically the Levant and northern Egypt.

There’s no diocese of the Occident. But there is a diocese of Asia: basically the Western part of Mediterranean Turkey nowadays, heir to the ancient Roman provinces in Asia. That’s quite interesting: the Orient is placed east of Asia.

The historical center, Rome, is just a symbol. There’s no more center; in fact, the center is slouching towards the Orient. Nicomedia, Diocletian’s capital, is quickly replaced by neighbor Byzantium under Constantine and rechristened as Constantinople: he wants to turn it into “the new Rome.”

When the Western Roman empire falls in 476, the empire of the Orient remains.

Officially, it will become the Byzantine empire only in the year 732, while the Holy Roman Empire – which, as we know, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire – resurrects with Charlemagne in 800. From Charlemagne onwards, the Occident regards itself as “Europe,” and vice-versa: the historical center and the engine of this vast geographical space, which will eventually reach and incorporate the Americas.

Superstar admiral 

We’re still immersed in a – literally – oceanic debate among historians about the myriad reasons and the context that led everyone and his neighbor to frenetically take to the seas starting in the late 15^th century – from Columbus and Vasco da Gama to Magellan.

But the West usually forgets about the true pioneer: iconic Admiral Zheng He, original name Ma He, a eunuch and Muslim Hui from Yunnan province.

His father and grandfather had been pilgrims to Mecca. Zheng He grew up speaking Mandarin and Arabic and learning a lot about geography. When he was 13, he was placed in the house of a Ming prince, Zhu Di, member of the new dynasty that came to power in 1387.

Educated as a diplomat and warrior, Zheng He converted to Buddhism under his new name, although he always remained faithful to Islam. After all, as I saw for myself when I visited Hui communities in 1997 when branching out from the Silk Road, on my way to Labrang monastery in Xiahe, Hui Islam is a fascinating syncretism incorporating Buddhism, the Tao and Confucianism.

Zhu Di brought down the Emperor in 1402 and took the name Yong Le. A year later he had already commissioned Zheng He as admiral, and ordered him to supervise the construction of a large fleet to explore the seas around China. Or, to be more precise, the “Occidental ocean” (Xiyang): that is, the Indian Ocean.

Thus from 1405 to 1433, roughly three decades, Zheng He led seven expeditions across the seas all the way to Arabia and Eastern Africa, leaving from Nanjing in the Yangtze and benefiting from monsoon winds. They hit Champa, Borneo, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz, Aden, Jeddah/Mecca, Mogadiscio and the Eastern African coast south of the Equator.

Those were real armadas, sometimes with over 200 ships, including the 72 main ones, carrying as many as 30,000 men and vast amounts of precious merchandise for trade: silk, porcelain, silver, cotton, leather products, iron utensils. The leading vessel of the first expedition, with Zheng He as captain, was 140 meters long, 50 meters wide and carrying over 500 men.

This was the original Maritime Silk Road, now revived in the 21^st century. And it was coupled with another extension of the overland Silk Road: after all the dreaded Mongols were in retreat, there were new allies all the way to Transoxiana, the Chinese managed to strike a peace deal with the successor of Tamerlane. So the Silk Roads were booming again. The Ming court sent diplomats all over Asia – Tibet, Nepal, Bengal, even Japan.

The main objective of pioneering Chinese seafaring has always puzzled Western historians. Essentially, it was a diplomatic, commercial and military mix. It was important to have Chinese suzerainty recognized – and materialized via the payment of a tribute. But most of all this was about trade; no wonder the ships had special cabins for merchants.

The armada was designated as the Treasury Fleet – but denoting more a prestige operation than a vehicle for capturing riches. Yong Le was strong on soft power and economics – as he took control of overseas trade by imposing an imperial monopoly over all transactions. So in the end this was a clever, comprehensive application of the Chinese tributary system – in the commercial, diplomatic and cultural spheres.

Yong Le was in fact following the instructions of his predecessor Hongwu, the founder of the Ming (“Lights”) dynasty. Legend rules that Hongwu ordered that one billion trees should be planted in the Nanjing region to supply the building of a navy.

Then there was the transfer of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421, and the construction of the Forbidden City. That cost a lot of money. As much as the naval expeditions were expensive, their profits, of course, were useful.

Yong Le wanted to establish Chinese – and pan-Asian – stability via a true Pax Sinica. That was not imposed by force but rather by diplomacy, coupled with a subtle demonstration of power. The Armada was the aircraft carrier of the time, with cannons on sight – but rarely used – and practicing “freedom of navigation”.

What the emperor wanted was allied local rulers, and for that he used intrigue and commerce rather than shock and awe via battles and massacres. For instance, Zheng He proclaimed Chinese suzerainty over Sumatra, Cochin and Ceylon. He privileged equitable commerce. So this was never a colonization process.

On the contrary: before each expedition, as its planning proceeded, emissaries from countries to be visited were invited to the Ming court and treated, well, royally.

Plundering Europeans

Now compare that with the European colonization led a decade later by the Portuguese across these same lands and these same seas. Between (a little) carrot and (a lot of) stick, the Europeans drove commerce mostly via massacres and forced conversions. Trading posts were soon turned into forts and military installations, something that Zheng He’s expeditions never attempted.

In fact Zheng He left so many good memories that he was divinized under his Chinese name, San Bao, which means “Three Treasures,” in such places in Southeast Asia as Malacca and Siam’s Ayutthaya.

What can only be described as Judeo-Christian sadomasochism focused on imposing suffering as virtue, the only path to reach Paradise. Zheng He would never have considered that his sailors – and the populations he made contact with – had to pay this price.

So why did it all end, and so suddenly? Essentially Yong Le run out of money because of his grandiose imperial adventures. The Grand Canal – linking the Yellow River and the Yangtze basins – cost a fortune. Same for building the Forbidden City. The revenue from the expeditions was not enough.

And just as the Forbidden City was inaugurated, it caught fire in May 1421. Bad omen. According to tradition, this means disharmony between Heaven and the sovereign, a development outside of the astral norm. Confucians used it to blame the eunuch councilors, very close to the merchants and the cosmopolitan elites around the emperor. On top of it, the southern borders were restless and the Mongol threat never really went away.

The new Ming emperor, Zhu Gaozhi, laid down the law: “China’s territory produces all goods in abundance; so why should we buy abroad trinkets without any interest?”

His successor Zhu Zanji was even more radical. Up to 1452, a series of imperial edicts prohibited foreign trade and overseas travel. Every infraction was considered piracy punished by death. Worse, studying foreign languages was banished, as was the teaching of Chinese to foreigners.

Zheng He died (in early 1433? 1435?) in true character, in the middle of the sea, north of Java, as he was returning from the seventh, and last, expedition. The documents and the charts used for the expeditions were destroyed, as well as the ships.

So the Ming ditched naval power and re-embraced old agrarian Confucianism, which privileges agriculture over trade, the earth over the seas, and the center over foreign lands.

No more naval retreat

The takeaway is that the formidable naval tributary system put in place by Yong Le and Zheng He was a victim of excess – too much state spending, peasant turbulence – as well as its own success.

In less than a century, from the Zheng He expeditions to the Ming retreat, this turned out to be a massive game changer in history and geopolitics, prefiguring what would happen immediately afterwards in the long 16^th century: the era when Europe started and eventually managed to rule the world.

One image is stark. While Zheng He’s lieutenants were sailing the eastern coast of Africa all the way to the south, in 1433, the Portuguese expeditions were just starting their adventures in the Atlantic, also sailing south, little by little, along the Western coast of Africa. The mythical Cape Bojador was conquered in 1434.

After the seven Ming expeditions crisscrossed Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean from 1403 for nearly three decades, only half a century later Bartolomeu Dias would conquer the Cape of Good Hope, in 1488, and Vasco da Gama would arrive in Goa in 1498.

Imagine a historical “what if?”: the Chinese and the Portuguese bumping into each other in Swahili land. After all, in 1417 it was the turn of Hong Bao, the Muslim eunuch who was Zheng He’s lieutenant; and in 1498 it was Vasco da Gama’s turn, guided by the “Lion of the Sea” Ibn Majid, his legendary Arab master navigator.

The Ming were not obsessed with gold and spices. For them, trade should be based on equitable exchange, under the framework of the tribute. As Joseph Needham conclusively proved in works such as Science and Civilization in China, the Europeans wanted Asian products way more than Orientals wanted European products, “and the only way to pay for them was gold.”

For the Portuguese, the “discovered” lands were all potential colonization territory. And for that the few colonizers needed slaves. For the Chinese, slavery amounted to domestic chores at best. For the Europeans, it was all about the massive exploitation of a workforce in the fields and in mines, especially concerning black populations in Africa.

In Asia, in contrast to Chinese diplomacy, the Europeans went for massacre. Via torture and mutilations, Vasco da Gama and other Portuguese colonizers deployed a real war of terror against civilian populations.

This absolutely major structural difference is at the root of the world- system and the geo-historical organization of our world, as analyzed by crack geographers such as Christian Grataloup and Paul Pelletier.  Asian nations did not have to manage – or to suffer – the painful repercussions of slavery.

So in the space of only a few decades the Chinese abdicated from closer relations with Southeast Asia, India and Eastern Africa. The Ming fleet was destroyed. China abandoned overseas trade and retreated unto itself to focus on agriculture.

Once again: the direct connection between the Chinese naval retreat and the European colonial expansion is capable of explaining the development process of the two “worlds” – the West and the Chinese center – since the 15^th century.

At the end of the 15^th century, there were no Chinese architects left capable of building large ships. Development of weaponry also had been abandoned. In just a few decades, crucially, the Sinified world lost its vast technological advance over the West. It got weaker. And later it would pay a huge price, symbolized in the Chinese unconsciousness by the “century of humiliation.”

All of the above explains quite a few things. How Xi Jinping and the current leadership did their homework. Why China won’t pull a Ming remix and retreat again. Why and how the overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road are being revived. How there won’t be any more humiliations. And most of all, why the West – especially the American empire – absolutely refuses to admit the new course of history.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the Jiayu Pass, a famed MIng Dynasty era part of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan City, during an inspection tour of northwest China’s Gansu Province, August 20, 2019. Photo: Facebook

Since the Trump administration declared national emergency in mid-march over the rapid spread of COVID-19, the task of developing a vaccine has fallen on the U.S. Army’s top virus research lab in Fort Detrick, located in suburban Maryland some 50 miles outside of Washington, D.C..

Over the past decades, leading researches on a wide range of viruses and bacteria were conducted inside the sprawling complex. Its state-of-the-art facilities also store some of the most dangerous toxins known to mankind, including Ebola, anthrax and the SARS coronavirus.

The obscure army base came under the spotlight in 2008 after one of its scientists was suspected to have perpetrated the 2001 anthrax attack, where several letters containing the deadly germ was mailed to American media and government offices.

Last year, one of the most prominent high-security labs inside the campus was shut down by health authorities due to safety violations. Besides a few incidents here and there, Fort Detrick seems like an ordinary place for modern medical science. Dialing back to history a little further, however, a period of purely freakish history begins to emerge.

After World War II, Fort Detrick became a site of horrifying scientific experiments conducted under a top-secret CIA quest to control the human mind, known as Project MK Ultra. After more than 20 years, the project ended in abysmal failure and led to an unknown number of deaths, including a scientist who participated in the project, and at least hundreds of American and Canadian victims subjected to mental and physical torture. The experiments not only violated international law, but also the agency’s own charter which forbids domestic activity.

Project MK Ultra was brought to life by the godfather of America’s intelligence empire – CIA Director Allen Dulles, whose ever-fiery rhetoric about Soviet threat helped him prop up an omnipotent national security apparatus that would come to define American politics. In 1953, after capturing American pilots who admitted to deploying anthrax during the Korean War, Dulles began touting theories that they had been brainwashed by then communists of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. To ensure national security, he argued, the U.S. must devise its own brainwashing program.

Dulles’ claim turned out to be based on nothing more than pure Cold War fantasy as a report he later commissioned rejected the communist brainwashing claims. Yet, the cunning spymaster Dulles who was known to have actively rescued several top Nazi officials against the will of his own government, continued the program for a far more nefarious reason.

As explained by David Talbot in his book The Devil’s Chessboard, many spies recruited in the early days of the Cold War were sketchy, undependable characters motivated by inner vulnerabilities such as greed, lust or revenge. Meanwhile, the agency was looking for ways to rule out these psychological variables by creating human machines that would act on command, even against his own conscience.

In official terms, the main goal of the program was “research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior,” according to a declassified memo produced by the CIA Inspector General. It quickly ballooned in scale, branching into 149 sub-projects involving at least 80 institutions including universities, hospitals, prisons and drug companies across the United States and Canada.

To master mind control, a cadre of rogue scientists freely tested extreme methods on humans that would land anyone in prison had it not been inside the parameters of Fort Dertrick. These include forced administration of psychoactive drugs, forced electroshocks, physical and sexual abuses, as well as a myriad of other torments all silently carried out behind the high walls of “national security.”

Dulles was especially keen on finding out if hallucinogens like LSD could induce selected individuals to carry out “acts of substantial sabotage or acts of violence, including murder,” recalled the agency’s top poisons expert Sidney Gottlieb who spearheaded the program.

Declassified documents reviewed by CGTN showed the premises being investigated under the program ranged from the bizarre to the extremes of science fiction: Drugs that would “cause mental confusion;” “provide a maximum of amnesia;” “produce pure euphoria with no subsequent let-down;” “lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men;” and many others.

Throughout its two-decade lifespan, MK Ultra was executed in extreme secrecy as the agency had expected significant political backlash had it become public knowledge. It was so secretive, in fact, that only a few top agency officials were aware of its existence.

Unbeknownst to neither the White House nor Congress, people of the forgotten corner of America – the prisoners, prostitutes and the homeless – were picked off the streets as unwitting participants in the mad science at Fort Derrick: “People who could not fight back,” in the words of Gottlieb. However, the program also relied on people who could, including American soldiers and unsuspecting patients who inadvertently stumbled into MK Ultra-associated hospitals and clinics across North America.

In July 1954, airman Jimmy Shaver at the Lackland Air Force Base was accused of raping and killing a three-year-old girl in San Antonio. Throughout the incident, he was often reported to be in a “dazed” and “trance-like” state. While under arrest, Shaver also seemed to have lost a tremendous amount of his memory, including those involving his wife. Four years later, he was executed on his 33rd birthday. It wasn’t until later the public learned that Shaver, who had no previous criminal record, was one of the guinea pigs used by MK Ultra. The mind-control project had played a significant role in sending Shaver to the electric chair, according to The Intercept.

Others who survived the brutal experiments revealed the horrendous aftereffects of the CIA-sanctioned brainwashing. Linda McDonald, a 25-year-old mother of five young children, reported that she had essentially turned into an infant after going through the notorious Sleep Room experiments, which she was told would treat her non-existent acute schizophrenia. For 86 days, McDonald was in a coma induced by rounds of powerful narcotics and electroshocks that fried her brains 102 times.

“I had to be toilet trained,” McDonald said. “I was a vegetable. I had no identity, no memory. I had never existed in the world before. Like a baby.”

Yet, of all the 180 doctors and researchers who took part in these illegal experiments, few had expressed any suspicion or remorse. The one who did turned up dead.

Frank Olson was a biochemist and father of three children who worked in the Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Detrick. He was one of the MK Ultra scientists who regularly traveled between “black sites” in Europe to observe different human experiments. After a 1952 visit to the Camp King, a notorious CIA safe house in Germany, he was particularly shaken by the cruelty to which Soviet prisoners were subjected to, according to Talbot.

“He had a tough time after Germany … drugs, torture, brainwashing,” Olson’s former colleague at Detrick, researcher Norman Cournoyer was quoted as saying. By the time he returned from Germany, Olson had suffered a “moral crisis” and was ready to give up his science career to become a dentist, according to Olson’s family. Yet, before he could change his life, the scientist himself had unknowingly become one of many unwitting victims of MK Ultra.

A week before Thanksgiving, Olson was invited to a weekend retreat in a secluded CIA facility at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. One night after dinner, Olson and other unsuspecting scientists were given LSD-laced drinks, after which he began to hallucinate wildly. The ordeal ended a week later, when he crashed through the 10th floor window at the Statler Hotel in Manhattan. The scientist’s death was hastily concluded by CIA officials as suicide. However, Olson’s children could hardly accept the “narrative” and began their own investigation into the tragic end of their father.

After decades back and forth with the U.S. government and investigation by Frank’s son Eric and Nils, including an exhumation autopsy, substantial evidence have weighted toward the possibility of the scientist’s murder. After examining Olson’s remains, Forensic pathologist James Starrs pointed out several key inconsistencies that contradicted with the official narrative suicide. Despite having landed on his back, the skull above Olson’s eye had cracked, suggesting a blunt force to the head prior to crashing through the window.

“The death of Frank Olson on 28 November 1953 was a murder, not a suicide,” Eric Olson declared. “This is not an LSD drug-experiment story, as it was represented in 1975. This is a biological warfare story. Frank Olson did not die because he was an experimental guinea pig who experienced a ‘bad trip.’ He died because of concern that he would divulge information concerning a highly classified CIA interrogation program in the early 1950s, and concerning the use of biological weapons by the United States in the Korean War.”

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Featured image is from CGTN

When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began dominating headlines, it was accompanied by fears of potential shortages of critical medical equipment including personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators.

Nations like Russia had large stockpiles of affordable ventilators on hand – so many that they were able to send them overseas to nations at risk of shortages.

One of those nations included the United States.

Reuters in an article titled, “Russian plane with coronavirus medical gear lands in US after Trump-Putin call,” would admit (emphasis added):

The State Department said that following the call between the two leaders, the United States “has agreed to purchase” needed medical supplies, including ventilators and personal protection equipment, from Russia and that they were handed over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday in New York City.

As generous and impressive as Russia’s response was – the real question was – why was it necessary in the first place?

America’s Ventilator Shortage: Known for Over a Decade  

While many may believe America’s ventilator shortage was a result of being blindsided by the speed COVID-19 spread, the truth is America’s shortage was know for at least a decade.

A 2010 MIT student project would set out to design a cheap, easily manufactured, and portable ventilator to address the shortage. The project paper titled, “Design and Prototyping of a Low-cost Portable Mechanical Ventilator”, would note:

While there are enough ventilators for regular use, there is a lack of preparedness for cases of mass casualty such as influenza pandemics, natural disasters and massive toxic chemical releases. The costs of stockpiling and deployment of state-of-the-art mechanical ventilators for mass casualty settings in developed countries are prohibitive. According to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November 2005, the United States would need as many as 742,500 ventilators in a worst-case pandemic. When compared to the 100,000 presently in use, it is clear that the system is lacking.

The New York Times would also note just how long the shortage of ventilators in the US loomed in an article titled, “The US Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed,” which reported:

Thirteen years ago, a group of US public health officials came up with a plan to address what they regarded as one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.

The breathing-assistance machines tended to be bulky, expensive and limited in number. The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis.

The NYT article explains that the plan fell apart – specifically because the company that was eventually contracted to build the fleet of inexpensive, portable ventilators was bought out by a multi-billion dollar medical device manufacturer.

It is only 30 paragraphs into the NYT article that the company is named – Covidien. After the buy out, Covidien not only demanded more money to develop the ventilator, but also demanded a higher price for them once developed. They also reassigned staff working on the project, essentially shelving the effort. The motivation was simple – the company already sold much more expensive ventilators whose market position would be threatened by the development and deployment of cheaper alternatives.

Many more paragraphs later it is reported that Covidien has since been acquired by Medtronic – a US company based overseas to avoid paying US taxes and which made headlines recently when it waffled on releasing the designs of its ventilator to help aid in the shortages the company it acquired helped precipitate in the first place.

What emerges is a story of systematic corruption, monopolization, profiteering, and indifference by not a single company – but an entire industry – indifference to the actual purpose of human healthcare which is preserving human health.

The highjacking of human healthcare in the United States profit-driven corporations not only created an easily remedied ventilator shortage, but did so to the extent of leaving the US at the mercy of supposed “enemies” like Russia.

While Washington’s current adversarial footing with Russia is based on perpetuating American hegemony rather than any actual threat Russia poses, the fact that the greed of American corporations driving US foreign policy has in this case undermined US objectives and its leverage against Moscow helps illustrate how America’s current power structure is its own worst enemy.

For the average American the problem of national healthcare being highjacked by greedy corporations leaving them at the mercy of unaccessible, overpriced, and often ineffective medication and medical equipment is obvious and immediate. Growing numbers of Americans are investing their time and energy into opensource alternatives which – while unlikely to solve immediate problems – is creating an ecosystem of innovation that may eventually help replace existing monopolies.

For those invested in American hegemony – the fact that it is demonstrably unsustainable and often counterproductive should encourage serious rethinking.

For nations abroad targeted by American special interests, using alternative media to raise awareness of cheaper and more effective alternatives – helping Americans understand that the current state of US healthcare is neither tolerable nor necessary – will help undermine these corrosive special interests and make room for more honest and productive interests – interests that will better serve the American people and better serve America’s relationship with the rest of the world.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from NEO

Pro-NATO propaganda units have broadcasted a new episode of their censorship excuse series.

On May 5^th, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), published a new piece designed to label SouthFront as official Russian propaganda. (LINK) The article employs a twisted, yet sophisticated, style of mixing words, pictures and public facts in order to support the Atlantic Council’s agenda. It largely attempts to build an association between SouthFront and News Front, and in so doing, relies heavily, if not entirely on guilt by association, to label SouthFront as official Russian propaganda. Throughout its report, the DFRLab fails to provide a single example of any association between the two entities, providing zero evidence.

The DFRLab “hit piece” fully confirms the conclusions reached by our analysis “An In-Depth Look Behind the Scenes of SouthFront Censorship”, published last week. Thus, we would like to extend a big thank you to the team of DFRLab. Thanks to their incompetence, they provided us with overwhelming evidence for the upcoming court case against Facebook and YouTube.

Screenshot: Medium

Let’s take a closer look at the DFRLab’s published “report”. As we have already pointed out, in order to label SouthFront as official Russian propaganda, NATO propagandists first identify another media site with a similar name, and then proceed to emphasize the similarity of the two brands.

The name of this organization is “News Front”, which indeed shares the word “Front” in its name, yet the similarities end there. News Front is an official Russian organization that is located in Crimea and publicly pursues an acute pro-Russian patriotic informational agenda for a Russian speaking audience.

During the entire article, DFRLab proceeds to regularly put the SouthFront name next to that of News Front, as if in a crime witness line-up, and yet 90% of the text is dedicated to News Front. The first 12 paragraphs are dedicated to an overview of open data about the founders and editors of News Front. In order to paint a picture of the supposed malign behavior of News Front, the DFLab authors added to the report such names as RT, Sputniknews, Mehr, Press TV. In other words, media sites whose affiliation with state governments is a declared matter of public record.

SouthFront is only sparingly mentioned during this entire segment. For example, the authors added a single screenshot of the deleted Facebook page of SouthFront claiming that “Most of the assets that DFRLab had access to did not hide their connection to South Front or News Front.”

Screenshot: Medium

Any reader, even the most loyal of DFRLab followers, would be surprised by such an almost subliminal attempt to conflate the two organizations. What is the aim of the authors in presenting to the audience this screenshot? If they were trying to display their deep investigative research in concluding that the screenshot belongs to SouthFront, then we can only say, thank you Captain Obvious.

At this point, this brilliant investigation once again forgets about SouthFront all together and focuses on publishing screenshots demonstrating that News Front’s various Facebook pages were linked with one another. All Facebook pages run by a single organization are linked. What a surprise! Bravo DFRLabs for this brilliant deduction.

Screenshot: Medium

We do not know if there are any violations of journalistic norms or Facebook’s Terms of Service on the part of News Front. In any case, it remains unclear how the big international team of authors working under the brand of SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence is linked to News Front in any way. Instead the   DFRLab authors resort to a little bit of journalistic “sleight of hand.”

“Though the DFRLab did not find that the accounts involved used inauthentic means at scale, there were clear attempts to use sockpuppet accounts to push content, especially in promoting News Front and South Front stories.”

From this quote, it becomes clear that they accuse SouthFront’s Facebook page (see this) of using “sockpuppet” accounts to push content;  however, they decline to provide any evidence to confirm this claim, because it is simply a blatant lie.

At this point in the article, DFRLab focuses on juggling screenshots of News Front and Anna News accounts related to various aspects of the pro-Russian agenda they are trying to peddle to the reader. Vague conspiracy reasoning of the authors regarding News Front and Anna News continues almost until the end of the article. After this, they once again, without any pretext, mention SouthFront.

“South Front features similar content to News Front, but the former mostly posts military-related analysis.”

Screenshot: Medium

This claim demonstrates that DFRLab team members have never actually read any of the content available on southfront.org and know nothing about SouthFront’s long history of accomplished work, content and editorial policy. Instead, they resort to simple dishonesty. To push their stated agenda, they enlist the aid of our old acquaintances from EUvsdisinfo:

“According to EUvsDisinfo, the outlet shares Russian talking points “verbatim” and is “frequently featured in [its] database of cases of disinformation.”

If EUvsdisinfo is the only source of DFRLab’s revelations about SouthFront, this explains the poor quality of the article. On May 6^th, SouthFront released an in-depth look at claims made by EUvsdidinfo regarding SouthFront. In its recent article vilifying SouthFront, this pro-NATO propaganda unit cherry-picks a mere 3 of approximately 3,000 articles released by SouthFront since the start of the year.

Near the end of the report, having realized that their ‘investigation’ is long on inuendo and short on facts implicating SouthFront in their imaginary conspiracy, DFRLabs presented the coup de grace. They found two Facebook pages “ZuidFront” and “South Front Netherlands” and published 3 screenshots of posts from these pages dated 2015, 2016 and 2017. The Facebook post of “ZuidFront” demonstrates the position of then DPR head Alexander Zakharchenko towards Brexit, while two SouthFront Netherlands posts are dedicated to the MH17 case. The DFRLab article then presents a screenshot of the “South Front Netherlands” description which states that the page is run by a group of Dutch citizens that translate content of SouthFront and other media organizations.

The screenshots posted by DFRLab are below:

Screenshot: Medium

Screenshot: Medium

Screenshot: Medium

SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence is an independent group of authors from around the world that focuses on issues of international relations, armed conflicts and crises. The individuals that run “ZuidFront” and “South Front Netherlands” made use of the umbrella brand of SouthFront, but operated independently. We regularly receive emails and messages from people that want to contribute their efforts to share and promote an independent point of view on key developments around the world. SouthFront always tries to provide them with technical help, advice and other assistance. We have repeatedly done this in the past and will continue to do this.

Another ridiculous attempt by the DFRLab authors to link SouthFront with News Front is through the use of various screenshots and statistics regarding the posting of content on News Front’s Facebook page. The main point is that News Front published some southfront.org content on their Facebook page.

Until recently, and largely as a result of this issue, the SouthFront team knew very little about News Front. The only contact that we had with any of the other sites mentioned was with Anna News in 2016, when Anna News translated several SouthFront videos into Russian on their own initiative. These examples are the few meager “contacts” that SouthFront has had with the group of nefarious Russian organizations mentioned in the DFLab hit piece. Furthermore, DFRLab failed to specify how many News Front articles were published by SouhFront’s Facebook page. Why? The answer is simple: the SouthFront Facebook page has never posted News Front articles. All content published on our Facebook page originated from southfront.org.

SouthFront is also mentioned again in the conclusion of the DFRLab piece. The incompetence of the authors is perplexing, as they assert that in general, SouthFront specializes in covering the conflict in Ukraine.

Screenshot: Medium

The conflict in eastern Ukraine is just one among the many conflicts covered by SouthFront. In the recent years, accounting for only 1.5% of SouthFront content. Now that we realize how especially concerned the pro-NATO propagandists are by alternative coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, we promise to contribute far more time and energy in our efforts to cover developments in Ukraine and Eastern Europe in general.

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As every day reveals yet another failure of the state to tackle the COVID-19 crisis and it merges into the next, it is becoming apparent that this government does not really understand the scale of damage being done to the very fabric of Britain’s society. It is a fair question to ask if they even care that much. Institutions such as the Bank of England, World Bank, IMF and so on are not known for doom-mongering, if anything, they are usually so over-optimistic that their forecasts are rarely right when it comes to oncoming recessions. But this latest one from the BoE is pure comedy.

Their assumptions for a drop of 14 per cent GDP in 2020 followed by a bounceback of 15 per cent in 2021 is as farcical as anything I’ve ever read in my life.

To get to this bounceback, the BofE assumes the Stirling exchange rate will be unaffected by what looks more like an inevitable hard-Brexit. It assumes the lockdown will have little effect on employment and therefore household consumption will come straight back as it was before the crisis. It assumes an immediate bounce-back of business investment and that productivity will remain the same and that wages will be unaffected. Whatever these guys are smoking, I’m sure we’d all like some if all it does is make you happy and fulfilled by our future prospects.

The economy of Britain has already entered a deep recession – the biggest. By what pace and for how long is anyone’s guess. Insolvencies and debt defaults will cripple the country as banks take the hiding of their lives. Unemployment will soar, business investment will collapse. No-one will sell anything on credit unless they’ve been smokin the weed of the BofE. From an economic standpoint, the crisis Britain faces is as bad as anything it has ever faced. And to put some perspective on that – the Bank of England has said Britain faces a deeper recession now than it has done since the 1700s – when the total population of the country was barely 8 million. At this moment, Britain has 9 million unemployed so the comparison is meaningless.

No-one will care about the climate crisis, corporate profits, food standards or the NHS when unemployment is 15 per cent, when poverty trebles, homelessness quadruples and food banks are as common as a Tesco store

Right now, our government and all of its resources should be focused on the COVID crisis to ensure the nation is as protected as is humanly possible. In that challenge, so far, they have failed almost all of the tests put before them. They failed to listen to the experts, they failed the NHS, its medics and key workers and failed to lockdown early enough. Procurement tests have failed, testing has failed and Europe’s biggest death rate is the sum of all that failure. It is sad to witness it all. The economy is being bolstered by massive public spending and currently on life support and it remains to be seen if the government did the right thing or not. If the government fails that test – it will be truly catastrophic for us all.

With most of the world focused on stopping the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump and Johnson administrations are moving forward with US-UK trade negotiations. As if that matters right now. Their ideology is more important than the crisis at hand and the one that’s coming next.

Civil society groups in both countries are now diverting attention away from what they should be doing and worrying about how corporations will act to secure their profits at the expense of the environment, consumer safety, public health and worker rights. Actually, it’s at the expense of everything we really need right now.

A powerful and diverse array of unions and public interest groups from both sides of the Atlantic sent a unified message that trade negotiations between the United States and United Kingdom must prioritize working families, public health and the environment over corporate profits.

The organizations expressed their concerns (pdf letter), which include environmental, animal welfare, health, food, farming, labour, digital, development, faith and social justice organizations. They demanded the inclusion of binding climate and labour standards and the exclusion of terms that undermine consumer health and safety, financial, privacy and other public interest safeguards.

And even they, with all their economic and legal expertise, are missing the point right now. They themselves have not got to grips with reality.

Here is just one of many comments made from the campaigners:

“The Government has failed to convincingly set out what it hopes to achieve through a US-UK trade deal, despite the risks it could pose to the environment, food standards and public health. It is difficult to see how the deal is consistent with our climate change commitments, especially the goal of net-zero by 2050. The deal poses severe risks to UK agriculture and food standards, which the Government has refused to protect in law. And the deal threatens the NHS and medicines pricing – a key priority for US negotiators” -David Lawrence, Trade Justice Movement.

What these good people are missing here is that no-one will care about the climate crisis, corporate profits, food standards or when unemployment is 15 per cent, when poverty trebles, homelessness quadruples, violent crime skyrockets and food banks are as common as a Tesco store. This is the next failure of the state. Western democracies dramatically miscalculated giving so much ‘market freedom’ to banks and in 2008 the financial system imploded. That event threatened our world, ushered in the likes of Trump, Johnson and others – but what’s coming next will be much worse.

The amount of money lost in asset prices over global stock markets in March was something in the order of $25 trillion. Corporate profit warnings in the four weeks of March (in Britain) eclipsed that of the entire year of the financial collapse in 2008 that took ten years for Britain to stabilise. In six weeks, the Bank of England has committed to new stimulus funding and is doing behind the door deals to save British businesses. It’s secretly thrown over £100bn in 6 weeks at them – and that ‘s what we know of. £660bn has been committed by the government. In 2008, it took two years to dish out £500bn to save the banks and six weeks this time to dish out three-quarters of a trillion. And there’s a long way to go yet.

A back of a fag-packet calculation looks like we are in for something like three times the crisis of 2008.

The rules of the current world order are over. If France or Germany wants to trade illegally and outside of the constraints of the EU with another country it will. They will be more worried by protesting farmers and factory workers than a bureaucrat from Brussels wagging their finger at them. No-one will care about the WTO, trade agreements, handshakes, nods, the rule of law or anything else. By this time next year, the public will have reacted. People like Putin, Bolsanoro, Macron, Trump and Johnson could have been kicked out of office for their mishandling of phase one (human death toll) and phase two (economic death toll). Who knows – and that’s the point.

COVID-19 will teach us all that each country will do what it takes to survive. Anything outside of this is utter nonsense. The real question is – will Britain come out losing or winning because winning only means we’ve survived it.

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“The things we were worried would happen are happening.”—Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York

No one is safe.

No one is immune.

No one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living under the shadow of an authoritarian police state.

That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.

Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

Now there’s talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

These may seem like small, necessary steps in the war against the COVID-19 virus, but they’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further undermine the Constitution, extend its control over the populace, and feed its insatiable appetite for ever-greater powers.

Nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police.

The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention.

The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

This war on COVID-19 will be yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry at the government’s disposal: thermal imaging cameras, drones, contact tracing, biometric databases, etc.

So you see, when you talk about empowering government agents to screen the populace in order to control and prevent spread of this virus, what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which ID cards, round ups, checkpoints and detention centers become routine weapons used by the government to control and suppress the populace, no matter the threat.

This is also how you pave the way for a national identification system of epic proportions.

Imagine it: a national classification system that not only categorizes you according to your health status but also allows the government to sort you in a hundred other ways: by gender, orientation, wealth, medical condition, religious beliefs, political viewpoint, legal status, etc.

Are you starting to get the bigger picture yet?

This is just another wolf in sheep’s clothing, a “show me your papers” scheme disguised as a means of fighting a virus.

Don’t fall for it.

The ramifications of such a “show me your papers” society in which government officials are empowered to stop individuals, demand they identify themselves, and subject them to patdowns, warrantless screenings, searches, and interrogations are beyond chilling.

By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to be able to exit a state of lockdown and engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a society in which you are required to identify yourself at any time to anygovernment worker who demands it for any reason.

Such tactics quickly lead one down a slippery slope that ends with government agents empowered to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books.

It used to be that unless police had a reasonable suspicion that a person was guilty of wrongdoing, they had no legal authority to stop the person and require identification. In other words, “we the people” had the right to come and go as we please without the fear of being questioned by police or forced to identify ourselves.

Unfortunately, in this age of COVID-19, that unrestricted right to move about freely is being pitted against the government’s power to lock down communities at a moment’s notice. And in this tug-of-war between individual freedoms and government power, “we the people” have been on the losing end of the deal.

Curiously enough, these COVID-19 restrictions dovetail conveniently with a national timeline for states to comply with the Real ID Act, which imposes federal standards on identity documents such as state drivers’ licenses, a prelude to this national identification system.

Talk about a perfect storm for bringing about a national ID card, the ultimate human tracking device.

Granted, in the absence of a national ID card, which would make the police state’s task of monitoring, tracking and singling out individual suspects far simpler, “we the people” are already tracked in a myriad of ways: through our state driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; by way of our correspondence and communication devices—email, phone calls and mobile phones; through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing.

Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, data companies such as Acxiom are capturing vast caches of personal information to help airports, retailers, police and other government authorities instantly determine whether someone is the person he or she claims to be.

This informational glut—used to great advantage by both the government and corporate sectors—has converged into a mandate for “an internal passport,” a.k.a., a national ID card that would store information as basic as a person’s name, birth date and place of birth, as well as private information, including a Social Security number, fingerprint, retinal scan and personal, criminal and financial records.

A federalized, computerized, cross-referenced, databased system of identification policed by government agents would be the final nail in the coffin for privacy (not to mention a logistical security nightmare that would leave Americans even more vulnerable to every hacker in the cybersphere).

Americans have always resisted adopting a national ID card for good reason: it gives the government and its agents the ultimate power to target, track and terrorize the populace according to the government’s own nefarious purposes.

National ID card systems have been used before, by other oppressive governments, in the name of national security, invariably with horrifying results.

For instance, in Germany, the Nazis required all Jews to carry special stamped ID cards for travel within the country. A prelude to the yellow Star of David badges, these stamped cards were instrumental in identifying Jews for deportation to death camps in Poland.

Author Raul Hilberg summarizes the impact that such a system had on the Jews:

The whole identification system, with its personal documents, specially assigned names, and conspicuous tagging in public, was a powerful weapon in the hands of the police. First, the system was an auxiliary device that facilitated the enforcement of residence and movement restrictions. Second, it was an independent control measure in that it enabled the police to pick up any Jew, anywhere, anytime. Third, and perhaps most important, identification had a paralyzing effect on its victims.

In South Africa during apartheid, pass books were used to regulate the movement of black citizens and segregate the population. The Pass Laws Act of 1952 stipulated where, when and for how long a black African could remain in certain areas. Any government employee could strike out entries, which cancelled the permission to remain in an area. A pass book that did not have a valid entry resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the bearer.

Identity cards played a crucial role in the genocide of the Tutsis in the central African country of Rwanda. The assault, carried out by extremist Hutu militia groups, lasted around 100 days and resulted in close to a million deaths. While the ID cards were not a precondition to the genocide, they were a facilitating factor. Once the genocide began, the production of an identity card with the designation “Tutsi” spelled a death sentence at any roadblock.

Identity cards have also helped oppressive regimes carry out eliminationist policies such as mass expulsion, forced relocation and group denationalization. Through the use of identity cards, Ethiopian authorities were able to identify people with Eritrean affiliation during the mass expulsion of 1998. The Vietnamese government was able to locate ethnic Chinese more easily during their 1978-79 expulsion. The USSR used identity cards to force the relocation of ethnic Koreans (1937), Volga Germans (1941), Kamyks and Karachai (1943), Crimean Tartars, Meshkhetian Turks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars (1944) and ethnic Greeks (1949). And ethnic Vietnamese were identified for group denationalization through identity cards in Cambodia in 1993, as were the Kurds in Syria in 1962.

And in the United States, post-9/11, more than 750 Muslim men were rounded up on the basis of their religion and ethnicity and detained for up to eight months. Their experiences echo those of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were similarly detained 75 years ago following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite a belated apology and monetary issuance by the U.S. government, the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to declare such a practice illegal. Moreover, laws such as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) empower the government to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone they “suspect” of being an enemy of the state.

You see, you may be innocent of wrongdoing now, but when the standard for innocence is set by the government, no one is safe.

Everyone is a suspect.

And anyone can be a criminal when it’s the government determining what is a crime.

It’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

Remember, the police state does not discriminate.

At some point, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white. It will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen. It will not matter whether you’re rich or poor. It won’t even matter whether you’re driving, flying or walking.

After all, government-issued bullets will kill you just as easily whether you’re a law-abiding citizen or a hardened criminal. Government jails will hold you just as easily whether you’ve obeyed every law or broken a dozen. And whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, government agents will treat you like a suspect simply because they have been trained to view and treat everyone like potential criminals.

Eventually, when the police state has turned that final screw and slammed that final door, all that will matter is whether some government agent—poorly trained, utterly ignorant and dismissive of the Constitution, way too hyped up on the power of their badges, and authorized to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fit—chooses to single you out for special treatment.

We’ve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we don’t seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.

All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government today—warrantless surveillance, stop and frisk searches, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, indefinite detention, militarized police, etc.—started out as a seemingly well-meaning plan to address some problem in society that needed a little extra help.

Be careful what you wish for: you will get more than you bargained for, especially when the government’s involved.

In the case of a national identification system, it might start off as a means of tracking COVID-19 cases in order to “safely” re-open the nation, but it will end up as a means of controlling the American people.

For those tempted to justify these draconian measures for whatever reason—for the sake of their health, the economy, or national security—remember, you can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if you’re inclined to advance this double standard because you believe you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, beware: there’s always a boomerang effect.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured image is from The Crux

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu

Are you too waiting for the second wave?

What type of waves are we talking about?

Your eyes are riveted perhaps on a multifaceted agent called Covid-19 [1] and you hear that this agent will be coming back every year, or even several times a year.

Personally, I am more afraid of waves of panic, and downpours of fears and lies inflicted on us every year, even several times a year.

Your minds are fed with various of fears and contradictory measures, sometimes as absurd as forcing thirteen-year-old children to wear face masks.

It is not surprising that people of all walks of life, nationalities and cultures are starting to lose faith in what they are told.

We hear ad nauseam the alternative voices being called ‘conspirational’ by the ‘official’ commercially sponsored media.

Among those accused of promoting ‘conspiracy theories’, we find university professors, serious scientists, level-headed researchers and highly qualified doctors.

These persons have a proven track record of seriously done work.

They are reliable. They can be trusted.

In fact, as soon as you deviate even so slightly from the official line, you are called a conspiratorialist spreader of dangerous disinformation, a conspiracy theorist, or more simply, an unreasonable person. Yes, idiot.

Fortunately, despite the insistence coming from some quarters to discredit any alternative to the official discourse, the people themselves are waking up. Citizens feel that something is amiss, and they are more and more losing confidence in the narrative of the ‘Ministry of Truth’.

Lie # 1: Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work

Lie # 2: Hydroxychloroquine is too dangerous

Some countries use it with good results and without major side effects.

In countries where prescriptions have been banned outside hospitals, such as in France andBelgium, some field doctors have “disobeyed” and done what they thought was right, with good results and without major side effects.

Just imagine!

Qualified, experienced doctors, normally responsible and free to prescribe, prohibited from doing their job!

I refer you to my previous article (in French): Covid-19: And what now?  ( Covid-19: Et maintenant?)

Beyond the controversy over the scientific merits of giving an inexpensive drug (that has been known and prescribed in huge amounts for more than 70 years) to infected and symptomatic people or people at risk (caregivers, residents of nursing homes or hospital patients), in a specific setting (cardiac monitoring, compliance with contraindications, dosages, earliness) and this without waiting a year or more for a “gold standard double blind randomized clinical control trial” which hasn’t even been scheduled yet, my question is:

Do the authorities, helped by the media, want to take away all hope from the people?

Any hope that could overshadow expensive, unknown and very profitable treatments for merchants who infiltrate all governments and health institutions, especially in France and Belgium [See my article: Covid-19: Check the Source of your Information!  War against…  Corruption?], but also throughout Europe, worldwide [Politics and Corruption at the World Health Organization (WHO …].

Let us be clear: any new vaccine, although it can bring huge benefits to the vaccine industry, is potentially dangerous for the vaccinated.

Any new drug is potentially dangerous, and for some, they are very expensive, especially those ending in –ab [2-3] and in -ir, like Remdesivir which already does a lot of good for the finances of the Gilead firm [4] despite proof of its ineffectiveness, as stated in the Economic Times site, on Apr 23 2020 [5].

These molecules are even more risky if they are prepared under special emergency authorizations, in haste, without respecting the standard steps of marketing authorization that every drug must follow, according to the very same rigorous procedures that university establishment requests loud and clear for hydroxychloroquine, vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc…   maybe the next will be H2O…

Lie # 3: Do not look to food supplements such as ZINC, Vitamin C and Vitamin D

Let me make it simple so that everyone understands.

Our best ally against any aggressive pathogen, or any infection, is our immune system.

It is not the masks, the physical distance, nor the vaccines, but first and foremost our immune system in perfect good working order that will protect us.

Our immune system!

By analogy, this system is like the defense of a country, with its borders, its soldiers, its planes, its radars, its armored vehicles, its artillery, its snipers …

For all of the following statements, please refer to the footnotes.

Zinc [6], vitamin D [7], vitamin C are all three essential elements of our immune defense system.

These are ammunition, missiles, gasoline and body armor when you go to war.

Now read the following carefully:

Most populations are deficient in these three elements [8].

Our Health Authorities know this well.

For Zinc in particular, this deficiency affects populations precisely at risk of developing a serious form of COVID-19 (leading to intensive care, and death): the obese, diabetics and the elderly [9].

Not to supplement these populations in zinc, today, it would be like sending the soldiers of an army to go to the front without ammunition for their rifles, without gasoline in their armored vehicles.

In addition, intense and prolonged confinement resulted in under-exposure to the sun and lack of sunlight is aggravating the deficit of vitamin D, which is otherwise produced in the skin under the effect of by the sun’s rays. Sunlight also kills viruses in minutes, yet they tell us to hunker indoors.

What is more, such an excessive and prolonged lock-down has brought about a dropin physical activity and phenomenal level of stress, thus further diminishing the effectiveness of our immune systems [10-11], even more than it was before.

Findings from the outset!

Findings from research provide solid grounds for giving supplements of these three elements, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D to help the immune system fight coronavirus infections [12].

Side effects from these three time-tested nutrients are rare, and are easy for general practitioners to control [Read: It Is Not Only the COVID-19 Virus that Is Dangerous. It Is How Our …  ].

But, as expected, here in Belgium the Health Authorities disapprove of these potential natural treatments.

“No multi-center, double-blind, peer-reviewed studies. ”

“No evidence of effectiveness. ”

“There is no clinical evidence. ”

Always the same screeds repeated ad nauseum to disqualify these inexpensive therapeutic avenues, devoid of side effects but that they are very unprofitable for anyone, except for the patient.

Above all, it is clinical common sense to admit that there is value in using these substances for any infectious disease and for COVID-19 more specifically, and also to trust general practitioners who know their job.

Lie # 4: “COVID-19” deaths are all due to “COVID-19”.

No!

This may be the hardest thing to believe.

However, no, the “COVID-19” counted deaths did not all die from the “COVID-19”.

Many reliable testimonies bear witness to the fact that the dead labelled “COVID-19” have not all died from that cause.

Especially in the old-peoples nursing homes that were under an authoritarian lock-down like in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy.

Thousands of frail and elderly people have died of loneliness, stress, physical inactivity, deficiencies in zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, inability to move to eat and drink and receive love from their closest ones.

With or without COVID-19.

Thousands of people may have died or may have had to be hospitalized, threatened with the use of damaging respiratory ventilators, because they could not be treated by their general practitioners with drugs such as hydroxychloroquine.

Looking back at what was done with the benefit of perspective, could it even be that a large scale, planned euthanasia has been presented as the covid-19 pandemia?

I could have gone on listing the many more lies.

Other whistleblowers are doing that, and this story is not over.

For instead of this unleashed ocean of fears and lies, I suggest that we substitute it with a peaceful ocean of calm and common sense.

More and more people are starting to realize that something is wrong.

There will be a demand for accountability.  We will need to confine the mad captains that led us astray to these troubled waters to their cabins and take back control of our bodies and our minds.

Soon.

I have good hope we shall.

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Dr Pascal Sacré is an Anesthesiologist-Intensivist in Belgium.

Notes

[1] Covid-19 : une maladie virale aux multiples visages, « Covid-19 : a viral disease with multiple faces », Le Monde, 2 avril 2020

[2] Pharmacoeconomic Review Report : sarilumab (Kevzara), Table 1 Cost Comparison Table of Biologic Treatments for Rheumatoid Arthritis in Adult Patients

[3] Actemra (tocilizumab) is a member of the interleukin inhibitors drug class

[4] Gilead could make a profit from COVID-19 drug

[5] Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir flops in first trial

[6] The Role of Zinc in Antiviral Immunity :

The role of zinc as an antiviral can be separated into 2 categories : 1) zinc supplementation implemented to improve the antiviral response and systemic immunity in patients with zinc deficiency, and 2) zinc treatment performed to specifically inhibit viral replication or infection-related symptoms.

Zinc is essential for the immunity and most humans have low levels :

https://www.hug-ge.ch/sites/interhug/files/structures/coronavirus/documents/zinc_et_covid-19.pdf

In infectious context, most humans should take zinc, because zinc is an essentiel component of many physiologic parameters, notably the immune system.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19523191

Immun Ageing. 2009 Jun 12 ;6 :9. Doi : 10.1186/1742-4933-6-9.

The immune system and the impact of zinc during aging.

The trace element zinc is essential for the immune system, and zinc deficiency affects multiple aspects of innate and adaptive immunity.

Many studies confirm a decline of zinc levels with age.

Even marginal zinc deprivation can affect immune function.

Consequently, oral zinc supplementation demonstrates the potential to improve immunity and efficiently downregulates chronic inflammatory responses in the elderly. These data indicate that a wide prevalence of marginal zinc deficiency in elderly people may contribute to immunosenescence.

[7] VITAMINE D :

Vitamine D and the immune system:

Vitamin D supplementation and respiratory infections

[8] Deficiences:

Vitamin C Deficiency

Vitamin C deficiency is common, even in industrialized countries

Vitamine D deficiency:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024173/

To mitigate Vitamine D epidemic deficiency:

https://www.revmed.ch/RMS/2011/RMS-319/Vitamine-D-actualite-et-recommandations

Vitamine D deficiency is frequent and under-diagnosed.

Vitamin D is in a way a marker of good health and a marker of the evolution of our society

Globally, an estimated one billion people are said to have such a deficit. In Western countries, more than 40% of the population over 50 years of age are said to be in deficit. In Europe, a study has shown that 80% of older people have 25 (OH) D levels below 30 ng / ml.

[9] ZINC deficiency:

https://www.ulb-ibc.be/oligo-elements/

Page 3/6 :

Obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes

Zinc

• Zinc and selenium deficits linked to eating habits (foods with high caloric density low in micronutrients) and increased needs linked to oxidative stress and inflammation.
• If the zinc deficit is significant and if the coverage of needs is difficult, the use of oral forms of zinc is sometimes justified.

Geriatric population

Zinc

• Zinc deficiency more frequent in institutionalized people : insufficient food intake, frequent polypharmacy. Associated with an increased incidence of infections, poor wound healing (pressure sores) and dysfunction of the immune system.

[10] Anxiety about coronavirus can increase the risk of infection

[11] The Impact of Everyday Stressors on the Immune System and Health,Research over the past three to four decades has clearly established that psychological stress affects clinically relevant immune system outcomes, including inflammatory processes, wound healing, and responses to infectious agents and other immune challenges

[12] CORONAVIRUS LINKS:

Links between Zinc and coronavirus SARS-CoV-2:

https://www.hug-ge.ch/sites/interhug/files/structures/coronavirus/documents/zinc_et_covid-19.pdf

An in vitro experiment indicates that when the limitations to intracellular penetration of Zn2 + were lifted, it effectively inhibits, at doses equivalent to 2.0 μmol / L, the activity of synthesis of viral RNA by the replication complex and multiprotein transcription of SARS-CoV, prompting some authors to consider zinc as a therapeutic option in patients affected by SARS-CoV-2

29. Velthuis AJW te, Worm SHE van den, Sims AC, Baric RS, Snijder EJ, Hemert MJ van. Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture. PLoS Pathogens [Internet]. Nov 2010 [cité 16 avr 2020] ;6(11). Available on : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973827/
30. Zhang L, Liu Y. Potential interventions for novel coronavirus in China : A systematic review. Journal of Medical Virology. 2020 ;92(5) :479‑90.

Links between Vitamine C and coronavirus SRAS CoV-2

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04264533

Vitamin C Infusion for the Treatment of Severe 2019-nCoV Infected Pneumonia

Vitamine D and Coronavirus:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3593258

Vitamin D Level of Mild and Severe Elderly Cases of COVID-19: A Preliminary Report

Basic healthy solutions such as Vitamin D supplementation could be raised even in the community level and awareness on Vitamin D benefits in fighting infections, such as COVID-19, should be disseminated especially to the vulnerable elderly population.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484

Vitamin D Supplementation Could Possibly Improve Clinical Outcomes of Patients Infected with Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19)

The results suggest that an increase in serum 25(OH) D level in the body could either improve clinical outcomes or mitigate worst (severe to critical) outcomes, while a decrease in serum 25(OH) D level in the body could worsen clinical outcomes of COVID-2019 patients.

Featured image: Healthcare workers were registered Wednesday when they performed rapid coronavirus tests on citizens in their cars, enabled by the government of Brasilia, Brazil. April 22, 2020. | Photo: EFE

At a time of COVID-19 related lockdowns and social distancing in most countries, Pompeo showed up in Israel Tuesday.

He came to meet with and bolster Netanyahu ahead of his upcoming trial to start later this month for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

He’s the only indicted figure in Israeli history to be sworn into office as prime minister — heading a coalition regime with Benny Gantz in a junior partnership role, at least for now.

Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against the Movement for the Quality of Government in Israel’s urging to disqualify Netanyahu because of serious charges he faces, clear evidence proving them.

For the first time, the High Court ruled (unanimously) that it’s OK for a corrupt figure to lead the Jewish state — effectively legitimizing his criminality, instead of demanding that the judicial process should decide his fate.

Pompeo was also at Netanyahu’s swearing in to highlight the Trump regime’s approval of his illegal plan to annex settlements, the Jordan Valley, and northern Dead Sea.

Taking these steps will officially end the illusion of a possible two-state solution Israel never accepted throughout its history.

Annexation will formally steal around another 30% of historic Palestinian land.

The Trump regime approved the grand theft in its farcical no-peace/peace plan no one for peace, equity, and justice would accept. Palestinians rejected it before released.

Days earlier, US envoy to Israel David Friedman noted the Trump regime’s support for annexation, adding that talks with Palestinians should accompany it.

He failed to explain that Israel, like the US, doesn’t negotiate. Both countries demand, wanting things their way no matter how harmful their policies are to most people or that they repeatedly breach the rule of law.

According to what Netanyahu and Gantz agreed to in forming a ruling coalition regime, Likud and Blue & White must jointly approve legislative proposals to advance them, including annexation of Palestinian land that requires Knesset authorization.

When the moment of truth arrives in the coming weeks or longer, will Gantz go along with Netanyahu’s annexation scheme or will he block it because it risks a potentially damaging international reaction?

If both sides deadlock on this and/or other issues, the outcome could be a fourth election — what most likely will happen if Netanyahu’s trial ends in conviction and imprisonment.

In late April, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel wrote Israeli attorney general Mandelblit, warning against Netanyahu’s illegal annexation plan.

It cited the International Court of Justice’s 2004 ruling on Israel’s Separation Wall on stolen Palestinian land that called for completed sections to be dismantled.

The ICJ also ordered reparations to be paid to Palestinians for the “requisition and destruction of homes, businesses, and agricultural holdings (and) to return the land, orchards, olive groves, and other immovable property seized.”

Israel ignored the ruling. Wall construction continued, along with other theft of historic Palestinian land.

In its letter to Mandelblit, Adalah also stressed that the Netanyahu/Gantz coalition agreement breached international law by ignoring Security Council resolutions, the right of Palestinians to self-determination, and it bypassed other “international legal barriers.”

The West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are illegally occupied territories. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara said the following:

“We do not recognize any precedent anywhere in the world in which a political agreement to form a government coalition stipulates a commitment to violate international law,” adding:

“Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank – which this coalition agreement seeks to advance – constitutes another step toward abolishing the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and the establishment of an apartheid regime.”

This action if taken “cannot stand the test of international or Israeli law, and we will continue to take action against it.”

An earlier Adalah press release stressed that the Trump regime’s approval of Netanyahu’s annexation scheme may result in the “forced transfer of 260,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

Adalah referred to “over 260,000 Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel living in 10 towns in the Triangle region in the center of the country…”

“According to the (annexation) plan…Israel’s borders would simply be redrawn to leave (these Palestinians) outside its borders…strip(ping) them of Israeli citizenship” — leaving them permanently occupied.

The annexation scheme “establishes Israel as the sole full sovereign regime in Israel and in the 1967 Palestinian occupied territories – mandatory Palestine – effectively controlling Palestinian enclaves in that territory, and granting no political rights for most of the Palestinians living in self-governed bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza, and now, also in the Triangle region.”

If formal annexation occurs as planned, the only option for Palestinians is resistance.

Making their case in an international tribunal like the ICJ or International Criminal Court (ICC) will accomplish nothing as long as the US approves of Israel’s actions.

Palestinians are on their own in their longterm struggle for justice denied them by the Jewish state and its allies.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Humanity is imprisoned by a killer pandemic. People are being arrested for surfing in the ocean and meditating in nature. Nations are collapsing. Hungry citizens are rioting for food. The media has generated so much confusion and fear that people are begging for salvation in a syringe.

Billionaire patent owners are pushing for globally mandated vaccines. Anyone who refuses to be injected with experimental poisons will be prohibited from travel, education and work. No, this is not a synopsis for a new horror movie. This is our current reality.

Click picture to access the video documentary

 

GR Editor’s Note

The documentary is no longer accessible. This is the message we get when clicking the link

***

Tips for staying safe

• Wear a mask
• Social Distance
• Don’t listen to Plandemic Bull Shit

***

The window of opportunity is open like never before. For the first time in human history, we have the world’s attention. Plandemic will expose the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system, while laying out a new plan; a plan that allows all of humanity to reconnect with healing forces of nature. 2020 is the code for perfect vision. It is also the year that will go down in history as the moment we finally opened our eyes.

To view the documentary: 

https://plandemicmovie.com  

 

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For this writer there are events and incidents that transcend the usual causes of sadness for many of us. Yes, we all have a myriad of memories of sadness. Perhaps when a loved one or pet becomes ill or passes away. Perhaps when someone we love moves away from us, and we hurt from missing them.

My earliest memory of a transcending type of sadness was when, as a five year old, I was standing in my bedroom viewing a movie on our 12 inch black and white TV. It was a scene from the film Of Mice and Men, based on John Steinbeck’s novel. This was near the end of the film, when George knew he could not let his mentally handicapped pal Lenny be murdered by vigilantes for accidentally strangling to death a young woman. As he got Lenny to stand with his back to him, George repeated the plans they both shared for the future. He had his gun hidden from view as his friend was focusing on the rabbits he loved so much. George then blew Lenny’s brains out! Not knowing, yet intuitively understanding that this was a ‘Mercy killing’ I began to cry. My mom heard me and rushed into the bedroom shouting ‘That is NOT a movie for a little boy!! Turn it off!!’ That sad feeling has remained with me my entire life.

When I was seven there were these two kids, a girl from my class with her younger brother, waiting with me for the dismissal gong. As we stood on the steps by the exit doors, I saw a bunch of kids teasing the two. The brother and sister had red hair and lots of freckles, unique to many in our school. Some of the kids were taunting at them, calling them fat little piggies. The younger brother started to cry. I turned to the both of them and said ‘No one is gonna hurt you two. Just follow me out.’ With that, the gong went off and the mob of us pushed through those heavy steel doors. I made this nasty face at some of  those who were bothering the two, and walked the brother and sister to the safety of their mom waiting by the curb. My sadness was for the fact that people could be so damn mean to the vulnerable among us… for no reason.

When I was eighteen the call came from my grandmother (my mom’s mother) that my grandfather, who had emphysema, had been rushed to the hospital. She was a nervous wreck, so my brother and I were told to go to the emergency room and check things out. When we arrived, and we were escorted into the area where he was, the sadness overwhelmed me. My grandfather was laid out on a stretcher, unconscious and just in his underwear. I broke down at the sight of this! My brother had to push me out of the area, I was so overcome with sadness. Seeing the man who would take me for walks in the country, or cook me my favorite dinner (homemade German style clam chowder and fried flounder), now looking like a corpse…

In previous columns this writer has mentioned the two neighbors of mine who came back from the ‘Nam’ in wooden boxes. My sadness was for the mom of one of them, our school crossing guard, and  for the younger brother of the other soldier. Both of these people were devastated by the loss of their loved ones to a (so called) ‘War’ we had no business ever being involved in. The mom of the Marine lost her wonderful bright smile after her son died. The brother of the Army Ranger got into drugs a few years later, and  died of an overdose soon after. It seems at times how sadness can be so contagious. This was the impetus to get me into becoming an anti war activist, which I remain today.

The morning of March 19th, 2003 I awoke early on, as the night before we knew something heinous was going down real soon. When I stood by the television and watched what was called ‘Shock and Awe’, I cried, and took some time to stop. Once again intuition can take over and instruct us. In my heart of hearts I knew that this illegal and immoral action was the worst I had ever experienced, even more evilly potent than the Vietnam debacle. Matter of fact, it was on par with my sadness when studying the JFK conspiracy, knowing that Lee Harvey Oswald was truly a patsy for the real Deep State. Oliver Stone did this nation a tremendous service with his 1991 film JFK, which I watch at least twice a year. When I come to the part when Kevin Costner, as Jim Garrison, almost breaks down giving his summation, I break down. There are no time limits on sadness.

Now we have a new sadness, this pandemic. Too many people, worldwide, are dying from this virus for it to be taken with anything but a grain of salt. This writer dismisses the talk, from both sides of the political spectrum, that this virus is overblown and part of a plan. Yes, there are most likely plans by those who run things, the Uber Rich who own the corporate world and our government, for more control over us working stiffs…  that’s a given. The secondary sadness I and others feel is the callous and evil (yes, evil) manner in which so little money is created for the millions of small businesses and hundreds of millions of working stiffs. Yet, they ‘give away the store’ to the big businesses and Wall Street. I see and hear and read about mega millions of us working stiffs out of work, knowing that those lucky to get benefits will see that end soon.

Meanwhile, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of us will be at risk, virus wise and financially wise. Why won’t the mainstream media and our politicians flood the airwaves with an idea that 99+% of us need NOW, the Universal Basic Income stipend (which Spain is already adopting)? You know why, don’t you? This phony Two Party/One Party system and embedded  media, taking their orders from the Military Industrial Empire, cannot do the possible… by calling it… duh, impossible! For whom? For the banks and large corporate world, who just got their second bone -the first being the 2008-09 bailout? Do those who control things actually believe that one or even two $1200 gifts is going to keep families afloat? Maybe it takes sadness to wake people up and take off the clown makeup this empire’s propaganda conned them into wearing for so long.

Isn’t it bad enough that the Deep State wanted a circus and got enough people to elect a clown?

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Cross Currents and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected]

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth,” – Henry David Thoreau

The moon is in trouble. And so are we.

Bruce Gagnon:

NASA is not really looking for the ‘origins of life,’ as it tells school children today. Instead, it is laying the groundwork for a new gold rush that will drain our national treasury and enrich the big corporations that now control our government. It is beyond time for the American people to wake up to the shell game underway.[1]

Americans haven’t awoken, despite the environmental damage these projects already inflict and the peril to Earth’s future and that of other planets. That damage will dramatically escalate with the U.S. Space Force and Artemis Accords.

The moon is key to the U.S. and other countries for commercial mining, military bases to control access to Earth and space, and for launching military and commercial conquest of space. On April 6, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Secretary of State to “take all appropriate actions to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space”.

“Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons.” [2]

The Artemis Accords are being drafted to establish legal justification for commercial space resource extraction, exploitation, and ownership [3] (reminiscent of the Bush administration memos by Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury on torture). They would be an international pact for “like-minded nations”, foregoing the United Nations treaty process.

Vice President Mike Pence:

“The United States has always been a nation of restless pioneers, from those Americans who crossed the western frontier to settle in California to those who first stepped onto the Moon. We are ever striving to explore uncharted lands, reach new horizons, and venture into the unknown.

Today, we are renewing the legacy of those courageous space pioneers and all they represent. As part of our re-engagement in human space exploration, the Trump administration’s policy is to return to the moon by 2024, ensuring that the next man and the first woman on the moon will both be American astronauts. From there, we plan to put men and women on Mars.

To accomplish this next big leap, we will develop the technologies to live on the moon for months and even years. We will learn how to make use of resources that the moon has to offer. That includes mining oxygen from the lunar surface and rocks to fuel reusable landers, extracting water from the permanently shadowed craters of the south pole, and developing a new generation of nuclear-powered spacecraft that will help us fly further and faster than ever before. [4]

Former Nazi Major General Walter Dornberger, head of Hitler’s V1 and V2 program, told Congress in 1958 that America’s top space priority ought to be to “conquer, occupy, keep, and utilize space between the Earth and the Moon.”[5] The Apollo missions were the first phase — on-site assessments to gather samples, run experiments, and test human interaction with the lunar environment.

Since 1959, lunar missions and crashes by the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, India, Israel, and European Union have left over 413,000 pounds of debris and toxic substances on the formerly pristine lunar surface,[6] including 96 bags of bacteria-laden human excrement dumped by the Apollo missions.[7] Apollo also left a nuclear generator on the moon.[8]

Governments have intentionally hit the moon 22 times as part of experiments and conducted 17 other post-mission crashes. The U.S. did the majority — 16 post-mission crashes and 14 intentional strikes, including the 2009 LCROSS hit, equivalent to 1.5 tons of TNT, to blast 350 tons of rock and dust and create a six-mile-high cloud for data gathering and public relations. That mission cost $49 million, and NASA’s Ames Research celebrated with an all-night party.[9] In the 1950s, the U.S. even planned to drop an atomic bomb on the moon — Project A119 – but cancelled it as too risky.[10]

Why should the moon be protected? There are many reasons.

The moon

• stabilizes Earth’s rotation
• has a major role in maintaining the Earth’s magnetic field
• regulates the climate
• creates the tides
• affects plant cycles and likely affects all biology and human cycles in profound ways
• regulates the procreation of some creatures, including coral [11]

The light of the moon is essential for life, and the moon may well be a stabilizing force for every living being on the planet,

The moon is also a sovereign body with its own rights, and it belongs to no one. It is revered by Earth–based indigenous peoples and has been considered a living, sentient being by people worldwide throughout human history. The moon and earth’s self-protective systems demonstrate far more intelligence, wisdom, and life than “civilized” society understands.[12]

None of this matters to NASA, the U.S. government, other countries, and related businesses. Laser-focused on their mission objectives, with virtually no checks or public oversight, they wield the ultimate in “big toys.” The United States alone budgets millions of tax dollars every year to develop space technology for future outposts and has spent billions on the Artemis Program. For their space program, the overarching priorities are American supremacy, empire, and profit — the unflinching mandate of manifest destiny projected into space.

The United States is by far the biggest threat to space and the moon.

When you don’t initiate the boys, they burn down the village. — African saying

The 1979 United Nations Moon Treaty prohibits military bases and national appropriation of territory but only minimally protects the moon environmentally. It enshrines depredation “on the basis of equality” — “The Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind.” [13] Former astronaut Harrison Schmidt, who formed his own company to mine the moon, complained the treaty would “complicate private commercial efforts.”[14] He was not alone. The U.S. did not sign, and only 18 nations have ratified it.

“…the United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies. Accordingly, the Secretary of State shall object to any attempt by any other state or international organization to treat the Moon Agreement as reflecting or otherwise expressing customary international law.” [15]

Companies such as Bechtel and Bigelow Aerospace [16] are securing contracts from the FAA and other agencies to own land on the moon and mine the moon. Helium-3, used for nuclear fusion, may be worth $3 billion per metric ton, and there are millions of tons of helium-3 in the moon’s upper layer. This is one cause of the new gold rush to the moon.[17] Lunar water deposits are being assessed to see if they can provide drinking water for military and commercial bases there. Moon tourism is being pursued internationally.[18] A Japanese startup even wants to put billboards on the moon.[19]

There are direct and immediate impacts to Earth from these space programs. They accelerate climate change and will eventually torch the climate if allowed to continue. Each fossil-fuel-burning rocket launch not only uses toxic chemicals and causes toxic fallout. They also put particulate matter and exhaust into the atmosphere, and destroy part of the ozone layer.[20]

For example, before leaving Earth’s atmosphere, each shuttle spewed thousands of pounds of metals and other chemicals into the air, including lithium, nickel, mercury [21], bismuth, manganese, aluminum, iron, and zinc. “People think of a shuttle launch as a short-term, finite event, but each launch expels a huge amount of debris into the atmosphere with the potential for long-term effects on the surrounding ecosystem. The plume contains hydrogen chloride, a strong acid. After launches, the pH of the [nearby] lagoons may plummet for a short time, rendering the water nearly as caustic as battery acid.” — John Bowden, environmental chemist at Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, S.C., 2014 [22]

The Earth and its atmosphere have never experienced the sheer volume of launches planned. Dramatically worsening this are the thousands of rockets to put Wi-Fi and 5G satellites into earth orbit that began last year by Elon Musk/SpaceX and others.[23]

This is sheer insanity.

Congress continues to divert more taxpayer dollars into these extremely costly space projects — the next moon visit could cost trillions. This resource extraction from taxpayers robs cities, counties, and states of critical financial resources to solve real problems right here, especially now, while ignoring the planetary environmental cost.

Where are the environmentalists, the biologists, the ocean scientists, and consumer advocates?

We must break out of the NASA trance. Everything that is done to the moon has repercussions to Earth. “National security” is protecting Earth and the moon.

Human history with empires and invaders that subjugate and plunder is being repeated again, with an addiction to “command and control” permeating these space programs. These values and policies are opposed to life, peace, and a future. The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space just sponsored a webinar on these plans “War in Space — Weaponising the final frontier”.[24]

The film “Independence Day” got it wrong, and Pogo got it right – the enemy is human. Tell children the truth: astronauts are not heroes.

Humans must repair Earth and themselves first with all available creativity and resources, and the COVID19 shutdown has worsened everything. If humans are incapable of fixing the dire messes they’ve created on Earth, incapable of stopping wars, incapable of living cooperatively with their neighbors, then they cannot go off planet or contaminate anything else.

The future is at stake. The moon must be defended. Shut NASA and these space ventures down.

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Nina Beety is an investigative writer and public speaker on governmental policy, the environment, and wireless radiation hazards. She has written two reports for officials on Smart Meter problems which are on her website www.smartmeterharm.org. She lives in California.

Notes

[1] 2006. Bruce Gagnon is co-founder of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

http://www.space4peace.org

http://www.space4peace.org/articles/nasa_moon_base.htm

[2] https://www.whitehouse(dot).gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-encouraging-international-support-recovery-use-space-resources/

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-moon-mining-exclusi/exclusive-trump-administration-drafting-artemis-accords-pact-for-moon-mining-sources-idUSKBN22H2SB

https://opiniojuris.org/2020/05/08/the-artemis-accords-one-small-step-for-space-law/

[4] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/11/14/opinion-under-president-trump-america-is-again-leading-in-space/

[5] http://www.space4peace.org/articles/nasa_moon_base.htm

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_on_the_Moon

https://www.rt.com/news/466856-lunar-orbit-rover-india/

https://www.rt.com/news/477248-india-third-moon-mission/

https://www.rt.com/news/456482-israel-second-lunar-mission-netanyahu/

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_on_the_Moon

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/why-nasa-wants-to-bring-back-96-bags-of-poop-from-moon/articleshow/68788626.cms

[8] http://mozilla.github(dot)io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html?file=https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull12-1/12104700912.pdf

[9]

https://www.forbes.com/2009/10/12/nasa-bombing-the-moon-opinions-contributors-kenneth-anderson-glenn-harlan-reynolds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1218768/Revealed-The-flash-saw-Nasas-49million-bomb-crashed-Moon-quest-discover-water.html

[10] http://beforeitsnews.com/space/2012/11/project-a119-the-u-s-plan-to-blow-up-the-moon-2449996.html

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/15481803/us-planned-to-blow-up-moon/

[11] https://astronomynow.com/2016/04/01/moon-thought-to-play-major-role-in-maintaining-earths-magnetic-field/

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/how-moons-gravity-influences-earth

https://beta.iop.org/how-does-moon-affect-earth

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-does-the-moon-affect-life-on-earth.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/02/7-ways-earth-would-change-if-our-moon-were-destroyed/

[12] for example, www.cerncourier(dot)com/cws/article/cern/50778

[13] http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/moon/text

[14] http://www.space4peace.org/articles/nasa_moon_base.htm

[15]

https://www.whitehouse(dot).gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-encouraging-international-support-recovery-use-space-resources/

[16]

http://www.moondaily(dot)com/reports/US_Issuing_Licenses_for_Mineral_Mining_on_Moon_999.html

[17] http://www.space4peace.org/articles/nasa_moon_base.htm

[18] https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/02/space-travel-russian-companies-develop-unmanned-spacecraft-for-tourists/

[19] https://www.digitaltrends(dot)com/cool-tech/glowing-space-billboards-could-light-up-the-night- sky-in-2020/

[20] https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/the-appeal/

www.stopglobalwifi.org

[21] https://www.peer.org/news/press-releases/mercury-may-reach-orbit-through-regulatory-blindspot.html

[22] http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/may/space-shuttle-contaminants

[23] https://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/planetary-emergency/

[24] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shoeFQZculM

Anxiety is a widespread phenomenon that often accompanies people from the earliest days of childhood until old age. It is part of life and has many causes. When unscrupulous despots – whether medieval popes, modern dictators or so-called philanthropists – stir up this everyday fear from outside, they are concerned with satisfying their own greed for power and subjugating the peoples. In doing so they are “doing the work of the devil”. Most people react to this diabolical “game” of the rulers with a reflex of obedience or even with unconditional submission.

At present, totalitarian governments fuel people’s fear of a virus and aggravate the problem by denying freedom to their citizens and isolating them from their fellow citizens. Neurological anxiety disorders, psychosis or suicide are the consequences. However, adults with an open mind can get a grip on their anxiety reaction if they see through the lies of the ruling class and their hidden agenda – the establishment of a New World Order (NWO) – and support themselves with safe friends and in the community. In an emergency, psychological experts provide professional help.

In the Middle Ages, it was the Church that justified its claim to power by saying that the popes were appointed by God and maintained it by threatening those who would not obey the commandments of God with ending up in hell. These fears of hell continue to affect many contemporaries to this day.

Another example of the diabolical “game” with fear is the method by which dictatorships or even democracies win the common people over to war. In an interview in April 1946, one of the main war criminals of the Second World War, Hermann Göring, made the following statement:

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. (…) That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”(1)

Today it is the totalitarian governments of dictatorships and so-called democracies that are playing the diabolical game of fear. With the help of the journaille, they spread an enormous panic and do not let independent scientists have their say. They deny citizens fundamental freedoms and demand social distancing and spying on their neighbours. The inmates of old people’s homes are denied family visits, school children are denied the necessary education and learning together with classmates. Who will one day call these dishonourable politicians to account?

At present, a video excerpt of a speech by the former German “Atomic Minister” and later Bavarian Minister President Franz Josef Strauß from the early 1980s is circulating on the Internet, in which he is visibly outraged:

“Those who confuse people, who without reason cause them uncertainty, excitement and fear, are doing the work of the devil and not the work of God.”(2)

Even if Strauß did not mean his political colleagues with this statement, but demonstrators against the then planned reprocessing plant for spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors Wackersdorf (WAW), one can only agree with it completely.

But independently thinking citizens with an open mind are not at the mercy of this diabolical “game” of the ruling class. They see through their infamous lies and hidden goals and are in close contact with safe friends. They are also not deterred by the primitive manslaughter argument that a journalist or scientist with a different opinion from the mainstream is a “conspiracy theorist” from finding out about different opinions on a subject. In this way they can get their fear reaction under control.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) Interview with Gustave Gilbert in the prison cell, 18 April 1946, Nuremberg Diary (1962; original edition: “Nuremberg Diary 1947”), p. 270 books.google. (en:Hermann Göring#Nuremberg Diary (1947) p. 278–279 books.google)

(2) Franz Josef Strauß on the politics of fear – www.youtube.com

This past Friday, May 8, the US Labor Dept. released its latest jobless figures. The official report was 20 million more unemployed and an unemployment rate of 14.7%.

Both mainstream and progressive media reported the numbers: 20 million more jobless and 14.7%. But those numbers, as horrendous as they are, represent a gross under-estimation of the jobless situation in America!

One might understand why the mainstream media consistently under-reports the jobless. But it is perplexing why so many progressives continue to simply parrot the official figures. Especially when other Labor Dept. data admits the true unemployment rate is 22.4% and the officially total unemployed is 23.1 million.

US unemployment rate (Source: Trading Economics)

Here’s why the 20 million and 14.7% is a gross under-representation of the magnitude of jobless today:

Only Half Month Data

First, the 20 million for April is really only for data collected until mid-April. Nearly 10 million more jobless workers filed, and received, unemployment benefits after mid-April. And likely millions more jobless have been attempting to get benefits but haven’t. Even officially, more 33.5 million have filed for benefits, with several millions more in the pipeline. So the April numbers of jobless—both receiving benefits and not yet getting them—are more than 20 million!

Only Full Time Employed Layoffs

An even greater misrepresentation is that the official 20 million unemployed represents only full time workers becoming unemployed. It’s the figure from the government report that is the category called U-3, or full time workers. There are between 50-60 million more workers who are part time, temp, contract, gig and otherwise ‘contingent’ workers (i.e. not full time) who are not considered in the 20 million and 14.7%.

Check out the Labor Dept’s own data, in Table A-8, which shows for March and April no fewer than 7.5 million part time workers became unemployed. In April jobless in this group doubled over the previous month, rising by about 5 million in April, according to the Labor Dept.’s own monthly ‘Employment Situation Report’. 5 million to 7.5 million represent what’s called the U-4 government unemployment rate.

But there’s still more. It’s what’s called the U-5 and U-6 unemployed. Who are they? They are what the government calls workers without jobs who are ‘marginally attached’ to the labor force and workers who are too ‘discouraged’. They are just as ‘jobless’ as full time and part time workers. But they’re put in another category simply because they haven’t actively looked for a job in the most recent four weeks.

You see the US government defines unemployed as that subset of jobless who “are out of work and actively looking for work”. If you haven’t looked in the last four weeks, you may be jobless but aren’t considered unemployed! Go figure. Add them to the U-3 unemployed, and the totals for unemployed in America rise to 22.4%. Add in those who filed for benefits in the last half of April, or tried to, and we get closer to the publicly admitted 33.5 million without jobs and receiving unemployment benefits.

The Disappeared 8 Million Unemployed

But that’s not even the whole real picture. The way the government defines unemployment a worker must be part of the labor force. The labor force is composed of two groups: those who have jobs and those who are officially unemployed—i.e. out of work and looking for work in past four weeks. If you are not looking, you’re ‘marginally attached’ (U-5, U-6). It assumes if you have stopped looking in the past four weeks you are part of the 850,000 ‘marginally attached’. But that figure is not credible. Somehow there are less than a million jobless who simply haven’t tried to find a job in the last four weeks? Really? There are many millions.

A government stat that suggests there are likely millions more not in the labor force who are jobless nonetheless is called the ‘Labor Force Participation Rate’. It estimates the percent of the working age population who either have a job or are officially unemployed.

There’s approximately 164.5 million employed/officially unemployed in the US labor force as of May 1, 2020. In February 2020 the labor force participation rate was 63.4% of the US labor force. As of May 1, that had dropped to only 60.2%. That means roughly 8 million had dropped out of the labor force. And remember: if they aren’t in the labor force they can’t be counted as unemployed. So where did the additional 8 million dropping out go?

The US government doesn’t consider them unemployed so they don’t show up in the U-3 or even U-6 statistics! But if they aren’t in the labor force they are jobless by definition. Perhaps 850,000 are counted as the ‘marginally attached’. But what about the remaining 7.2 million or so? The government has no category for them except the estimation of them in the labor force participation rate. It tries to explain the large number away by saying they retired or went back to school. But did 7.2m (63.4% in Feb. drop to 60.2% in April) retire in 2 months? And they certainly can’t have gone back to school in mid-March/April 2020.

Another government statistic that corroborates this ‘missing 8 million’ in the labor force participation rate is called the Employment to Population Ratio stat. It measures how many are in the labor force as a percent of the total US population of nearly 340 million.

If the EPOP percentage goes down, then fewer are working even though they’re obviously still alive and part of the US population. That figure has declined from 61.1% of the US population employed to 51.3% of the population employed as of May 1, 2020. That’s a nearly 10% drop. 10% of 340 million is about 34 million. And 34 million is not 20 million for April, or even the Labor Dept.’s total 23.1 million.

So both the labor force participation rate and the employed to population ratio both suggest the Labor Dept.’s official U-3 (or even U-6) unemployed figures are grossly under-representations of the total Americans without jobs today.

Voluntary Jobless Are Not ‘Unemployed’

One possible reason for the discrepancies between the official unemployed of 23.1 million vs. the 33.5 million receiving benefits, or the 7-8 million not being counted per the labor force participation rate and EPOP ratio, may be due to the government in this current crisis choosing not to count as unemployed those workers forced to leave work since February to care for dependents.

Remember the government’s driving definition of unemployed is the worker must be ‘out of work and actively looking for work’. Millions of workers who have been forced by the current crisis to leave their job to care for elderly and disabled family members, or to care for young children forced to stay home due to school closures, are not ‘actively looking for work’. Few Americans can afford nannys to watch their young children so they can work. But those in this situation are not considered unemployed by the US Labor Dept. because they don’t fit the definition of ‘actively looking for work’! It’s not clear how many in this category the Labor Dept. has recently refused to acknowledge as officially unemployed.

In America you may be jobless, but that doesn’t necessarily mean per the government you are unemployed!

The above stats and data show that the under-reporting of the jobless in the US is not some kind of conspiracy by the Labor dept. and the government. The data are there, buried in the monthly labor reports beyond the executive summaries. The government stats, moreover, are not perfect. There are serious problems related to raw jobs data recovery, to the various assumptions on that raw data the government makes to come up their jobs ‘statistics’ (always operations on raw data with assumptions which data to count and how). There are conflicting conclusions often between this or that data or statistic. Furthermore, in recent years changes in statistical processing have sought repeatedly to change definitions and processes in order to ‘smooth out’ swings in the statistics—whether employment, unemployment, wages, or inflation. The government has a vested interest in ensuring the smoothing. It reduces government (and especially business) costs of programs and operations.

If there’s a conspiracy of sorts, it’s in the media that purposely seems to always ‘cherry pick’ the most conservative stat to report. Thus we get the media trumpeting every month the nearly worthless statistic of the U-3 unemployment rate—a stat that applies only to full time workers and ignores part time, temp and other contingent labor who make up now nearly a third of the US labor force; a statistic based on a narrow definition of unemployed that has become an oxymoron when estimating unemployed; a statistic based on questionable assumptions and data gathering; and a statistic that can’t be reconciled with other statistics like the labor force participate rate.

The real unemployment rate is not the U-3 figure of 14.7% but easily 25% today. And the real total jobless are not the U-3 20 million, or even 23 million, but somewhere between 35-40 million… and rising!

However, what’s really disappointing is that many progressive and left economists simply parrot the government’s and mainstream media’s misleading U-3 statistic. One can understand why the corporate mainstream media keep pushing the U-3 stat and thus trying to make the unemployment situation look better than it is (or today not as bad as it is). But progressive economists should know better.

 

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Dr. Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020; and the previously published ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and tweets at @drjackrasmus and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, Fridays at 2pm eastern time. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The pandemic has shown the need for medical care and interventions that have nothing to do with profit. But not even SA’s proposed National Health Insurance would fit the bill.

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Covid-19 has been linked to a number of truth claims long made by activists in South Africa and around the world. Perhaps most glaring is the need for universal healthcare and fortified public healthcare.

Following the mid-March announcements of measures to deal with the pandemic and the global financial crisis, researcher Sameer Dossani argued that while universal basic income and other income supports would help boost flagging economies, Covid-19 reveals universal healthcare as the most important need.

More recently, researcher and writer David Hemson draws attention to the 4 960 critical care beds in South Africa’s private sector versus the 2 240 ones in the public sector. Hemson underlines that one of the most pressing questions is how the private beds will be used equitably as Covid-19 spreads to the uninsured majority in the face of conflicting claims from the minority with medical insurance.

Brought to the surface by the current pandemic, these issues beg for unity through a common analysis and popular mobilisation in terms of solutions. For advocates and activists from a wide spectrum of political views – Sibongiseni Dhlomo, Shehnaz Munshi and Oupa Lehulere, to mention a few – National Health Insurance (NHI) is the solution for South Africa.

Deeper analysis that draws on medicines being used to treat the pandemic and decades of public healthcare experience in other countries, however, brings out the fundamentally flawed model of the NHI. The analysis is also relevant for other African countries in which public health insurance similar to the NHI is being designed and discussed.

Cuba and medicines 

Interferon Alfa 2B is one of 22 medicines that Cuba is producing to treat Covid-19 internationally and a major antiviral used in China from the onset of the pandemic. The story of how the antiviral came into being helps paint a picture of people-oriented, decommodified public healthcare that stands in contrast to the proposed NHI.

Interferons are proteins produced and released by cells in response to infections. The release, in turn, prompts other cells to heighten their antiviral defences. Cuba began investing in interferons in the 1970s. Interferon Alfa 2B is a product of one of Cuba’s 31 state-owned pharmaceutical firms, which fall under the umbrella agency BioCubaFarma. These firms research and produce drugs and vaccines as per the healthcare needs of the majority in Cuba.

Developed to crush the Dengue virus outbreak in Cuba in 1981, Interferon Alfa 2B was successful and has since been used to fight hepatitis B and C, shingles, HIV and Aids in Cuba and elsewhere.

Like its use, the origins of Interferon Alfa 2B is also multinational. As economic and social history lecturer Helen Yaffe explains in a London School of Economics blog, interferons were first identified by London-based researchers in 1957. By the 1970s, United States oncologist Randolph Clark Lee shared successive work with Cubans during then-president Jimmy Carter’s easing of the US embargo on Cuba. Fidel Castro saw the promise of interferons for curbing infectious diseases typical in countries like Cuba.

By September 1981, having learned from Finnish doctors how to isolate human interferon and produce it en masse, Cubans created Interferon Alfa 2B to treat Dengue fever, which affected 344 203 people in 1981. Due to the success of the antiviral, only 158 deaths resulted from the outbreak.

Multinational as it is, Interferon Alfa 2B could not have been a project for the multinational pharmaceutical industry. This is because such a drug cannot realise the level of profit required by pharmaceutical corporations. Johnson & Johnson’s profit, for example, rose 1,077% between 2018 and 2019, despite more than 13 000 lawsuits concerning ovarian and lung cancers linked to the company’s famous baby powder. Looking further back and calculating from Fortune 500 annual figures, Johnson & Johnson has had average annual profit increases of 201% since 2015.

Beyond antivirals, Interferon Alfa 2B is one of 569 medicines produced in Cuba. This is two thirds of the 857 medicines approved for use in the Cuban health system. Comprising about 21 000 workers, including 6 158 university graduates — 270 with PhDs and more than 1 000 with master’s degrees — BioCubaFarma also contributes to foreign exchange generation. As of 2015, Cuban pharmaceutical and biotechnology products were exported to 49 countries. This includes China, which has a joint venture with Cuba to produce Interferon Alfa 2B and was the first country to add it to the list of medicines to treat Covid-19.

Implications for Africa

The lesson here for South Africa and other African countries is simple. For a continent that is struggling to strengthen public healthcare and suffering from poor population health as well as high unemployment, a people-oriented, decommodified model like Cuba’s can turn healthcare into a means of transformation.

The production of health goods that prioritises the needs of the majority – and trains and employs local people in the process – helps strengthen population health while keeping costs down. It also avoids the draining of resources and lives as in the Johnson & Johnson case of soaring profits and destructive products. In addition, healthcare production driven by the needs of the majority creates the potential for exports that spread yet greater good.

In South Africa, this could take shape by socialising the private healthcare industry, which the government’s own health market inquiry has found is controlled by just four mega-corporations: Remgro, AfroCentric Investment Corporation, the Life Healthcare Group and Netcare. They own and control a number of sub-sectors that range from pharmaceutical production, pharmacies, hospitals and homes for the ill and elderly to medical scheme administration and managed care.

The monopoly of these four corporations has evolved largely after 1994 and, like many other aspects of the post-apartheid economy, is a problem that can be rectified now for the benefit of the majority. If activists mobilise around socialising the private health industry, it would be a people-centred solution for the long term, far beyond temporary solutions such as the nationalisation of healthcare industries in Spain and Italy to tackle Covid-19.

This contrasts sharply with the private health industry-dependent model of the NHI, which amplifies the current organisation of public healthcare in which the state subcontracts to private firms. As is well known in South Africa and has been documented for several European countries which have divided public healthcare between the state as funder and private firms as care providers since the 1980s, the major results are under-delivery of goods and services and wastage of public funds through overpricing, corruption and patronage.

Socialised, decommodified universal healthcare also contrasts with models of public healthcare like Canada’s, where delivery of hospital care is fully public but dependent on privately produced pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. Over the past 50 years, this dependence has meant that an increasing proportion of public funds has gone to pharmaceutical and medical equipment firms like Johnson & Johnson, while hospital funding has fallen to a bare minimum. Clearly this is not the model of universal healthcare that can take on epidemics and pandemics the way Cuba’s system has and continues to do.

As Covid-19 relief packages in many countries suggest, the risk of neoliberal solutions is high, with the largest share of benefits going to big employers, banks and other corporations rather than workers, the underemployed and the unemployed. Health systems are also at risk of being shaped and reshaped along neoliberal capitalist lines – unless activists seize the moment. The fast spread and multiple impacts of Covid-19 make the demand for decommodified, fully non-profit, people-driven universal public healthcare the basis from which to begin rebuilding society in South Africa and beyond.

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Sino/US relations are more dismal than at any time since Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao during his weeklong visit to China.

Are bilateral differences irreconcilable? Is the breach between both countries too great to restore more cooperative relations?

Is a new trade war inevitable? Has it already begun unnoticed?Has a new Cold War begun that could turn hot?

Mistrust and friction between both countries continue worsening.

On the one hand, bilateral differences stem from Trump’s reelection strategy.

His manipulating the public mind blame game aims to shift responsibility for failure to effectively address the US public health issue and economic collapse onto China.

A far greater issue is wanting the country’s rise on the world stage as a political, economic, industrial, technological, and military powerhouse undermined — a prescription for longterm friction and possible confrontation.

Trump’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy director Peter Navarro said

“(w)e are at war. Make no mistake about that. The Chinese unleashed a virus on the world (sic).”

Big Lies repeated endlessly get most people to believe them. Recent Gallup poll data show two-thirds of Americans view China mostly or very unfavorably.

Russia and China are jointly viewed as America’s greatest enemies — despite both countries at peace, pursuing cooperative relations with other countries, threatening none, in contrast to US war on humanity at home and abroad.

Like other hardline members of both right wings of the US war party, Navarro wants China to pay damages for COVID-19 outbreaks — what it had nothing to do with.

The Big Lie has taken on a life of its own. No letup is likely through November presidential and congressional elections.

As long as dire US main street economic conditions continue, what’s likely longterm, China bashing will likely persist, falsely blaming its ruling authorities for made-in-the-USA misery.

Michel Chossudovsky explained that COVID-19 outbreaks gave US ruling authorities, Wall Street, and other dominant corporate interests “a pretext…to trigger the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.”

Their diabolical scheme is all about consolidating corporate America to greater size and market dominance by “eliminat(ing) (maximum numbers of) (s)mall and medium sized” enterprises.”

Their plot is aided and abetted by the Wall Street owned and controlled Fed — handing trillions of dollars in free money to major banks and other corporate favorites while the White House and Congress give crumbs alone to millions of ordinary Americans in need, leaving them largely on their own during the hardest of hard times.

Given weakness in China’s economy and export markets, along with calls in the US to bring back offshored production in the country, it’s highly unlikely that Beijing will purchase $200 billion worth of US goods and services above 2017 levels in 2020 and 2021.

According to China’s Global Times (GT) on Monday, unnamed sources in Beijing are urging a renegotiation of the so-called phase one trade deal with the US — because of China’s weakened economy and hostile Trump regime rhetoric and threats, adding:

“(A)dvisors close to the trade talks have suggested Chinese officials rekindling the possibility of invalidating the trade pact and negotiating a new one to tilt the scales more to the Chinese side…based on force majeure provisions in the pact,” — unforeseen circumstances that prevent fulfillment of the deal.

One unnamed source told GT that “(i)t’s…in China’s interests to terminate the current phase one deal. It is beneficial to us.”

Another source believes that the US can’t start another trade war because of its collapsed economy.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences trade expert Gao Lingyun said “China knows how to respond (to a renewed US trade war war), and it is able to retaliate quickly and inflict serious harm on the US economy” ahead of its November elections.

According to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China’s purchases of US goods will fall way short of what was agreed on in the phase one deal.

It estimates about $60 billion worth of US imports in 2020, far short of $186 billion to fulfill its annual commitment.

CSIS analyst Scott Kennedy believes that even if Chinese purchases of US goods and services increase later this year, the “overall picture” won’t change, “just the details,” adding:

“The targets were never realistic. They were just gaudy numbers meant to impress. The pandemic made the unrealistic the impossible.”

Q I US energy exports to China fell 33% year-over-year. Commercial aircraft sales were virtually zero. US auto exports to the country were down by nearly 50%, soybean exports lower by 39%.

When Q II numbers are reported, they’ll likely be worse across the board, what lies ahead highly uncertain for a protracted period during troubled economic times.

Dismal Sino/US relations are more likely to worsen than improve ahead — heightening the risk that escalating Cold War could turn hot.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

More than 500 UK Jewish students and youth movement members have put their names to a letter urging the Board of Deputies to speak out against what they claim are the Israeli government’s plans for the ‘’unilateral annexation of the West Bank”.’

The letter, sent to the Board’s honorary officers, warns that the organisation’s historical support for a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians will be ‘’impossible to achieve’’ if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes ahead with the proposed annexation of a portion of the West Bank.

It goes on that the Board’s ‘’relevance’’ to the younger generation will be questioned if it does not speak out.

Among those supporting the letter – whose signatories say they are ‘’a true friend to Israel’’ and in favour of a ‘’Jewish and democratic state’’ – are J-soc members from many  universities and youth movements including Habomim Dror, FZY, LJY-Netzer and Noam.

And with many signatories listing their shul affiliation, it is evident the campaign has attracted support from young United Synagogue members.

The Board’s under-35 representative Noah Libson is among the signatories – alongside senior figures from Yachad and the Jewish Labour Movement.

Jack Lubner, one of the group behind the letter, told the JC it was initiated ‘’because we were angry and worried about annexation and wanted the communal organisations to take a stance.’’

A video circulating online to promote the campaign under the headline We Need To Talk features brief statements from supporters who say annexation would be “a violation of international law’’ and would risk Israel becoming ‘’undemocratic.’’

Mr Lubner, the JLM’s youth and students officer, added:

“The huge response to this campaign clearly shows that young British Jews are in consensus when it comes to annexation.

‘’We want the Board of Deputies and other communal organisations to listen to our concerns and represent them.”

The letter claims annexation would lead to the collapse of security co-ordination with the Palestinian Authority and Jordan and highlights statements from ‘’former Israeli generals of Shin Bet, police and Mossad’’ warning that ‘’this unilateral action is a security nightmare for Israel”.

It adds that the campaign is ‘’not about rejecting Israel and Zionism but defending a vision of them which does not compromise our broader belief in democracy and equality.

“Serious questions regarding the relevance of the Board of Deputies for our generation,” would be raised if it did not speak out.

Mr Lubner also told the JC:”Our community has a deep and strong relationship to Israel, based on our shared Jewish values of peace and justice.

‘’Being a good friend to Israel means speaking up when these values are under threat, so that we can strengthen our only Jewish state. None of us can afford to keep quiet in the face of annexation, which will endanger Israel as a secure, Jewish, democratic state.”

Last week, Board president Marie van der Zyl spoke of the UK debate around Israeli government actions, highlighting her concern “that the Jewish community stays together as a community at what is clearly a divisive time”.

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The former Polish Minister of Defense accused Germany of conspiring with a few other foreign actors to replace the patriotic Polish government with Europhile puppets, arguing that the country’s latest political controversy over the date of its presidential elections is proof of an attempt being made to carry out regime change in this geostrategically positioned country.

The powers-that-be behind the banning of “Plandemic” and the disparaging and slandering of Dr Judy Mikovitz are obviously afraid of something that will expose them for planning something evil. Tyrannical corporate forces, starting with Google and YouTube and the CDC and Big Pharma and the MSM have kicked into high gear before any more of us ‘Sheeple” are allowed a chance to view some unwelcome truths that are considered dangerous to the powers-that-be.

There have been any number of pro-over-vaccination trolls that are being well-compensated by Big Pharma/Big Vaccine corporations (that have ruled the world for awhile now) by recommending the banning of the documentary. Examples include any number of similarly-ignorant, shameful lobbyist/troll “journalists” that write for newspapers like the Times, the Post, the Herald, the Tribune, the Daily News, the Journal, the Chronicle, the Register, the Observer, the Sentinel and virtually every other Big Pharma/Big Vaccine-controlled major media outlet all over America and the world.

I urge readers to watch the Pandemic clip before it has been banned

Click here to watch the documentary.

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Dr Kohls is a retired rural family physician from Duluth, Minnesota who has written a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine since his retirement in 2008. His column, titled Duty to Warn, is re-published around the world. 

He practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping psychiatric patients who had become addicted to their cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His Duty to Warn columns often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “FrankenFoods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at: 

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and 

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

The UK’s covert propaganda programmes in war-torn Syria were poorly planned, probably illegal and cost lives, according to a scathing internal review of the initiative that has been seen by Middle East Eye.

Using news agencies, social media, poster campaigns and even children’s comics, communications companies working under contract to the British government attempted to undermine both the Assad government and the Islamic State group and bolster elements within the Syrian opposition.

The UK embarked on its propaganda efforts in the country in 2012 and stepped them up dramatically the following year as the government sought to maintain a strategic foothold after parliament had voted against any British military intervention in the conflict.

The series of programmes was given the codename Operation Volute, and those involved in the work talked not of propaganda, but of “strategic communications”, or “SC”.

However, a review that was conducted during the summer of 2016 concluded that the “fundamental shortcomings” of the initiative included “no conflict analysis [and] no target audience analysis”.

The review also reveals concerns within government about the need for the programmes, which were pushed most enthusiastically by the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) from 2013 onwards because of “policy restraints” imposed by the vote against military action.

Too many projects appeared to be completed because “we had to be seen to do things” or were designed to impress the US government, the review concluded.

“Projects have pushed quick wins and shallow, numbers-driven outputs,” it said.

It concluded that there was a “major risk” that some of the government contractors’ activities were “in contravention of UK law”, although the authors do not spell out how they believe the law may have been broken.

Moreover, so much material was being produced by the propagandists that they had created “a constellation of media outlets”, in which “Syrian audiences and activists got lost and were distracted” and people no longer knew who or what to believe.

‘Lack of understanding’

The review examined two programmes that were managed by a unit within the MoD called Military Strategic Effects, and two managed by a group within the UK foreign office called the Counter-Daesh Communications Cell.

A fifth was managed by a cross-government programme called the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), which aims to tackle conflicts that threaten UK interests.

Four of the programmes were outsourced to British communications companies, some of them run by former army officers or intelligence officers. These companies set up offices in Istanbul and Amman, where they recruited Syrians to carry out much of the day-to-day work. A fifth was outsourced to a polling company based in the United States.

The five programmes were intended to amplify the work of Syrian citizen journalists; bolster groups that the British considered to be part of what it termed “the moderate armed opposition”; counter violent extremism; and encourage dissent among members of Syria’s Alawite communities, from which the ruling Assad family comes.

Syrian staff recruited further Syrian workers, who were employed as “stringers” inside the country. Many were unaware that the projects that they were working on were being funded and managed by the British government.

Initial blueprints for at least three of the five the programmes were drawn up by an anthropologist working in counter-terrorism for the foreign office in London.

Their combined budgets from the UK government came to £9.6m ($11.9) during 2015-16, with more money earmarked for later years. The review noted that the programmes were intended to be guided by a strategy drawn up by the government’s National Security Council (NSC), but concluded that that strategy was both “weak” and “opaque”.

Many in the British government appeared to be unclear about what strategic communications could and could not achieve, the review found, and among government officials there was said to be “a lack of understanding about what the Syrian audience really wants and thinks”.

There was also said to be “a tension between the behavioural changes the SC programmes envisage (which are long term) and the short-term opportunistic aims of the CSSF programme”.

‘Reputational damage’

The review criticises a “lack of coherence” between the different strands of the programme and a “duplication” of efforts. It also highlights the complexity of working with Syria’s ever-shifting opposition forces, warning of “potential credibility damage and/or reputational damage to HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] if links between certain MAO [moderate armed opposition] and UK HMG funding leaks.”

The review addresses the deaths of some of the Syrian staff, but is not critical of this aspect of the work.

It says that that “some IPs [implementing partners] have lost several staff members”. One of the contractors is described as having “suffered losses of core staff that damaged the organisation quite fundamentally”.

One of the communications companies delivering UK government propaganda programmes was said to appear to be “an aggressive commercial organisation” which took both personal and political risks.

“There is a danger that they go too far and therefore take risks that may have an indirect negative impact for those through whom they work,” the review found, adding that there was a need to “rein in” the contractor.

The programme’s stringers and the “moderate armed opposition” on which they were reporting were also acknowledged to have caused unspecified harm: “Stringers or MAO are operating in an environment dominated by armed groups undertaking work which could cause (and has caused) harm following their activities.”

Enthusiastic military 

The review acknowledges that concerns were being expressed both inside and outside the programme.

In 2013, it says, the only UK government ministers who had been fully committed to launching new strategic communications programmes in Syria – in the absence of any British military activity on the ground – were those at the Ministry of Defence.

Some in the British government continued to “ask themselves whether taxpayers’ money should be spent on some of the activities of the programme”, while there was also said to be “substantial doubts about the programme among some HMG partners”.

But the UK’s MoD remained enthusiastic, the review said, not least because “the annual cost of the programme (i.e. non-kinetic targeting) represents extraordinary value for money given current policy restraints”.

Nevertheless, the review questioned the costs of the programme, and advised that all of the communications companies were “long overdue an intrusive external financial audit”.

Some of the programmes were intended not only to achieve behavioural change among Syrian audiences, the review noted, but also to gather “very useful” intelligence, particularly on the alliances, tactics and activities of opposition forces.

One of the communications companies was providing intelligence to international military forces based on information provided by a network of 240 stringers working on one online forum.

A key benefit of the propaganda programmes was assessed to be the British government’s “connectivity to different (armed or non-armed) networks”.

However, the review concluded that more thought needed to be given to the balance to be struck between the requirements of the British government and the needs of the Syrian people.

The best way to do this would be “to make sure that the structures that emphasise intelligence gathering are separated from the communications structures aimed at targeting the Syrian audience”.

The review does not question the UK government’s decision to run propaganda programmes in Syria, and says that “focus group discussions, anecdotal feedback and surveys indicate that target audiences bonded with products and took up intended messages, demonstrating that project delivery has been effective”.

Opposition fighters had been given training in international humanitarian law as part of one programme, and one campaign was said to have “brought about behavioural change in pro-regimists”, as it had successfully encouraged them to speak out about the number of people who were being detained by the Assad government.

The UK’s foreign office declined to answer a series of questions about the internal review of its propaganda operations in Syria.

The department declined to say whether the effects hoped for were weighed against the risk to life; how many people died; and whether the UK was supporting their dependents.

It also declined to answer questions about the risk that UK propaganda operations contravened UK law, and would not say whether government ministers had read the review.

Overall, the reviewers regarded the UK’s propaganda programmes as a failure. Asked to give them a mark of A*, A, B or C, the reviewers gave them a B, meaning that they concluded that “outputs moderately did not meet expectation”.

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“I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression, and I can remember one bleak night in the Thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he’d lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you – and that’s a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again. Today’s young people must never be held hostage to the mistakes of the past.”  —Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), American actor and politician, former Governor of California and 40th U.S. President, 1981-1989, (in an address to the Nation, on Oct. 13, 1982.)

“In the Great Depression in which I grew up and remember vividly, unemployment was over 25 percent, and over 35 percent where I lived. A grown man would work all day, 16 hours, for a dollar. I remember hundreds of people walking by, people who had come down from the North just to get warm. They would come to our house as beggars even though they might have a college education. People didn’t have money. They bartered; they’d trade eggs or pigs. It was just completely different.“  —Jimmy Carter (1924- ), 39^th U.S. president (1977-1981), (in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on Feb. 4, 2009, talking about his book ‘An Hour Before Daylight: Memories Of A Rural Boyhood‘, published in 2001.)

“The 1929 [Great] Depression was so wide, so deep, and so long because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and U.S. unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it by discharging five functions: (1) Maintaining a relatively open market for distress goods; (2) providing countercyclical, or at least stable, long term lending; (3) policing a relatively stable system of exchange rates; (4) ensuring the coordination of macroeconomic policies; (5) acting as a lender of last resort by discounting or otherwise providing liquidity in financial crisis.”  —Charles Kindleberger (1910-2003), American economic historian, and author of The Great Depression 1929-1939, 1973, revised and enlarged in 1986. (Quote in, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (2nd ed., 1986), Ch. 14: ‘An Explanation of the 1929 Depression’.)

So far, it can be said that central banks and governments in most advanced economies have acted correctly to prevent the economic lockdown of large segments of the economy from turning into a total economic disaster. They have, at least, saved the day.

At the microeconomic level, nevertheless, there has been costly inefficiency when wage replacement programs had the unintended consequences of creating labor shortages in the very essential sector of health care centers and nursing homes.

Indeed, many deaths caused by the virulent coronavirus occurred in under-staffed institutions, where the contagion remained unchecked for months as some workers quit their job to qualify for a government wage stipend. In the haste to inject money into the economy, funds were dished out to unqualified corporations, which should not have received them. —On the whole, however, the main macroeconomic objectives seem to have been attained and the worse case scenario seems to have been avoided.

It has been estimated, according to a compilation made by Bloomberg, that governments around the world have committed themselves to spending some $ 8 trillion in fiscal measures, excluding central banks’ intervention, to prevent their economies from collapsing. The question now is to know if such a large injection of purchasing power has been enough to prevent a severe recession from turning into a long lasting economic depression.

5 to 10 percent decline in GDP, and possibly more, is not out of the question for 2020 in total

In the United States, preliminary figures for the decline in the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during the first quarter of 2020 are not giving a complete assessment of the total economic damage caused by social distancing measures and the closure of many businesses. Indeed, it is estimated that the economic decline during the first quarter of 2020 was 4.8% of GDP, at an annual rate. It is reasonable to expect that the second quarter, which runs to the end of June, will likely show a more important decline.

That is why an economic decline of 5 to 10 percent for all of 2020 can be expected in the United States, and possibly even more, if there is a second and a third wave of coronavirus infections in the fall and next winter, as some experts have been predicting.

What to expect in Canada? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Canada’s real GDP could decline 6.2 per cent in 2020. This assumes that most of the decline would have occurred during the first half of the year, with a rebound during the second half, as the economic lockdown is progressively lifted. —That figure could be too optimistic. As a matter of fact, the Canadian economy is expected to suffer somewhat more from the economic lockdown than the U.S. economy because of the collapse of the relatively important oil sector.

The relative importance of the service sector

It is important to realize that today’s advanced economies have a larger share of production of services than of goods or products (primary sector: agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining; secondary sector: construction, manufacturing, energy, etc.). For example, the tertiary service sector (consumer personal services, health care, education, retail and wholesale commerce, financial services, tourism, transportation, media, culture, etc.) accounts for 80 percent of GDP in the United States, and it is also where 80 percent of the jobs are.

In Canada, because of the importance of the resource sector, the service sector accounts for only 70 percent of GDP, but it employs about three quarters of Canadians.

All this to say is that the decline in production during the current economic lockdown is really a loss. This will not be fully recovered when the economy rebounds. There cannot be an inventory of services.

As a preliminary conclusion, we can say that even with an important economic bounce back in the second half of 2020 and in 2021, as many economists expect, this would far from erasing the economic damage already done by the lockdown, during the first half of this year.

In the U.S., a 5 percent decline in real GDP for 2020 as a whole would mean a loss of output of some $1.1 trillion US. However, in the event of a more pessimistic scenario of a 10 percent decline in GDP, this could translate into a loss of output of some $2.1 trillion US.

In Canada, similar percentages would entail a loss of $117 billion CAN, in the first scenario, but a loss of $234 billion CAN, in the second scenario.

A paramount objective: To stop the advent of a persistent structural deflation

The need for central banks and governments to intervene massively in such a time of viral and economic crisis is to prevent the economic downturn from turning into a structural deflation.

A structural or malignant deflation is the result of insufficient demand in an environment of excess capacity, and that may be the consequence of an aging population. The result is a persistent downward pressure on prices and wages. Such an economic condition happens when numerous sectors (ex. financial markets, agriculture, energy, mining, etc.) experience falling prices when firms are forced to reduce prices to move their inventories in an environment of stagnant demand. This results in a drop in profits and in the demand for labor. With a high level of unemployment, wages fall with prices, and a dangerous downward wage-price spiral can be set in motion.

Indeed, when an economy faces declining asset prices, business closings and massive unemployment, banks, companies and consumers with the most debt suffer great financial losses under a crushing debt burden. This could lead to bank closures, loan delinquencies, business defaults and bankruptcies and house mortgage foreclosures… and also to lower prices and wages, and less demand. This could transform an ordinary economic recession into a full-ledged economic depression, with unemployment rates above 20 percent and lasting many years.

Deflation can bring on a destructive debt deflation

In an economy loaded with debts, as is the case presently in many economies, the advent of a structural deflation can signify a death knell for any sustainable future economic growth. Indeed, the Achilles heel of the current economic environment is the historically high level of debt as compared to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Here is a quick look at the level of the U.S. total debt picture in mid-2019:

1. Total U.S. corporate debt (nonfinancial corporate debt of large companies, debt of small medium sized enterprises, family businesses, and other business debt) was $15.5 trillion or 72% of American GDP.
2. Total U.S. consumer debt (credit cards, auto loans, student loans, home mortgages and other household debt) was $13.95 trillion or 65.2% of GDP.
3. Total U.S. government debt (outstanding debt owed by the federal government) was $22.7 trillion or 106.1% of GDP.

All together, the total nonfinancial U.S. debt level in 2019 was about $52 trillion or 243% of GDP, for an economy that produces around $22 trillion annually of goods and services. It’s like having a 500-pound man riding a pony.

With soaring budget deficits of some $3.7 trillion in 2020-21 and of about $2.0 trillion in 2021-22, the total U.S. government debt alone could reach $27.7 trillion next year.

When there is no expected inflation, governments may rely on the central bank to purchase newly issued treasury bonds and let the money supply increase. This is not an option, however, that is open to heavily indebted private companies and consumers. The latter may have no other choice but to default on their debt, or severely curtail their expenses.

For the immediate future, the economic consequences of such a debt deflation could put an important brake on the strong recovery that many observers expect, once the pandemic crisis has run its course and the economy returns to normal.

The leveraged loan market

To add to all public and private debts, policy makers and regulators should keep an eye on the largely unregulated $1.2 trillion leveraged loans market, which is a market for speculative or low-grade high-yield corporate loans.

These relatively new debt instruments are somewhat reminiscent of the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage fiasco, which led to the 2007-2009 Great recession. They could be the first category of debts to collapse if the current recession were to deepen.

Conclusion

It is very unusual that a major public health issue is intertwined with a major economic decline. In the current double-crisis world, nobody can predict with certainty what will happen in the coming years.

That is why I submit three possible scenarios of things to come: A short-term optimistic scenario in which everything goes as wished; a mid-term stagflation scenario when both inflationary pressure and slow economic growth go side by side; and, a more pessimistic scenario, in which widespread deflation and wrong responses and bad policies combine to push the economy into a prolonged economic depression.

1. An optimistic scenario: Everything turns out just right, public bailouts are enough to prevent the onset of a structural deflation, and the unfolding of a dangerous debt deflation spiral is avoided. Unemployment returns to its historical levers. —It is based on the assumption that the threat of a virus contagion fades away permanently, and does not linger on for months, if not for years. Moreover, it is expected that disturbed commercial supply chains are easily reestablished without destructive trade wars.
2. A mid-term stagflation scenario: The current state of affairs gives rise to important shortages in certain lines of production; prices jump and there are calls for some form of rationing; and stagflation sets in. Unemployment remains high.
3. A more pessimistic scenario: After years of fiscal irresponsibility and the piling on more and more debt, the current economic recession turns into a full-fledged global economic depression and the economy struggles under a process of debt deflation. Policy mistakes are made and are a repeat of the 1930’s errors, i.e. rising interest rates, a contracting money supply, beggar-thy-neighbor trade policies, which combine to precipitate a worldwide economic depression where every country loses. Unemployment remains stubbornly above 20 percent for many years.

Geopolitically speaking, as judging by some repetitive aggressive rhetoric, again and again, the Trump administration (Trump himself, Pompeo, Kushner, Miller, etc.) seems to be tempted to start a war, commercial or otherwise, with China and/or with Iran. Such an occurrence could throw gasoline onto the fire and turn a bad situation into an economic disaster, with a galloping inflation, even possibly hyperinflation on the horizon. This does not happen often, but such events did occur in the past.

Therefore, there are many reasons why it would seem to be too early to declare victory on the economic front and think that everything will go back to normal, once the viral crisis subsides and the economic lockdown is completely lifted.

—Only time will tell.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, of the book “The New American Empire”, and the recent book, in French « La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018 ». He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization  (CRG)

Please visit Dr. Tremblay’s site:http://rodriguetremblay100.blogspot.com/

The southern part of the Idlib zone has once again turned into a hot point with the Syrian Army and al-Qaeda militants openly clashing with each other.

On May 10, fierce clashes erupted between the Syrian Army and forces of the coalition of al-Qaeda-linked militant groups, wa-Harid al-Mu’minin, in northwestern Hama. Terrorists stormed army positions in the town of Tanjarah and seized it after a series of clashes. Intense artillery duels were also reported in al-Ankawi, al-Qahirah, Qulaydin, Kafr Uwayd, Mawzarah, Kansafrah and Ayn al-Arus. Early on May 11, the Syrian Army launched a counter-attack and recaptured Tanjarah. According to pro-militant sources, 37 soldiers and 24 militants were killed.

Earlier, on May 9, wa-Harid al-Mu’minin launched 4 rockets at Russia’s Hmeimim airbase from its positions in the village of Tardin in northern Lattakia. The rockets did not reach the airbase and fell into farmlands.

On May 8, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) struck a position of the Syrian Army near the town of al-Burayj with an anti-tank guided missile injuring several soldiers. On the same day, the army captured two field commanders and a fighter of the Turkish-backed militant group Jaysh al-Ahrar near Saraqib.

The situation is destabilizing not only on the contact line, but also inside the militant-held part of Greater Idlib itself.

On May 10, unidentified gunmen attacked a headquarters of the Turkish-backed Sham Corps near the town of Binnish in eastern Idlib. This became the second attack on the group in the last few days. On May 7, gunmen stormed the group’s HQ near the towns of al-Fu’ah and Kafriya. Pro-Turkish sources claim that the attacks were staged by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or its allies like wa-Harid al-Mu’minin and the Turkistan Islamic Party.

These attacks happened despite the recent Turkish tactical deal with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to de-block the M4 highway near Nayrab and allow extending the joint Russian-Turkish patrols west of Saraqib. In return, Ankara stopped opposing the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham decision to open a commercial crossing between the militant-held part of Greater Idlib and the government-controlled area in western Aleppo and impose fines on the commercial traffic there.

However, the contradictions between the sides are too high and the de-escalation did not last for a long time. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies openly sabotage Ankara’s attempts to at least formally demonstrate that the March 5 de-escalation agreement reached in Moscow is being implemented successfully.

A series of ISIS attacks targeted positions and personnel of Syrian forces in the province of Raqqah. On May 7, Lt. Col. Ahmed Mohamed, an Air Force Intelligence Directorate officer, was killed in Dibsi ‘Afnan. On May 10, an IED explosion struck an army vehicle near Resafa reportedly killing 2 soldiers.

Meanwhile, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, the US-led coalition and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces carried out a series of anti-ISIS operations. The most widely-covered of them took place in the village of al-Zawr. Two supposed ISIS members blew themselves up, while a third one was detained. Pro-US sources speculate that this was a high-ranking ISIS member. Some of them even speculated that he was Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the current leader of the terrorist group.

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Dr. Francisco Durán, national director of Epidemiology of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, reported on  Sunday that a considerable part of the population will be given tests to detect possible positive cases of COVID-19.

Durán explained that a representative sample of the population in provinces and municipalities will be taken on Tuesday, May 12, to know in real time the progress of COVID-19 with tests known as TCR, which detect the new coronavirus before the disease manifests itself.

The case is to detect cases in apparently healthy people in regions that have not reported numerous infections with COVID-19 on the island and act accordingly, Durán said in his traditional press conference to offer a balance on the state of the pandemic in the island.

The tests will be carried out in remote parts of the island to detect if cases of COVID-19 have developed in those sites that have not been previously detected to carry out a major intervention, he said.

Massive studies will begin in Cuba to find cases of coronavirus and study the contacts that may have been made, in order to reduce the spread of the pandemic in the Caribbean country, he said.

Both pharyngeal examinations and rapid tests look for cases that are important in the transmission of the disease, the spread of which is three times faster than other known coronaviruses.

The great alarm that exists for this coronavirus is due to its contagion power, which is why it is necessary to maintain confinement and health measures, he considered.

On May 9, Cuba reported 12 new positive cases for COVID-19, along with three dead and 53 medical discharges, Dr. Francisco Durán reported at a press conference.

1,824 patients have been admitted to hospitals for clinical epidemiological surveillance, while 4,081 people are monitored at home from primary health care.

The doctor specified that 1,826 samples were studied on Saturday, and 13 samples were positive. The country accumulates a total of 67,335 samples made and 1,766 positive cases.

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Featured image: Cuba has been fighting the coronavirus within their own borders, while also providing aid to several countries across the world. | Photo: Granma

Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina has slammed the World Health Organization for not endorsing its COVID-19 herbal cure.

Last month, the Malagasy president officially launched Covid-Organics (CVO), an organic herbal concoction, claiming that it can prevent and cure patients suffering from the novel coronavirus.

“If it were a European country which had discovered this remedy, would there be so many doubts,” he said in an exclusive interview with France 24, Paris-based international television news network and Radio France International.

”The problem is that it comes from Africa. And they cannot accept that a country like Madagascar, which is one of the poorest countries in the world, has discovered this formula to save the world,” he added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) had warned against the use of CVO without any medical supervision and cautioned against self-medication. The WHO further said that they have not approved the concoction for the patients suffering from COVID-19.

On Thursday, the WHO, however, has called for clinical trials of CVO.

“Covid-Organics is a preventive and curative remedy against COVID-19, which works very well,” said President Rajoelina.

He attributed recovery of 105 COVID-19 patients in Madagascar to the herbal potion.

“A marked improvement was observed in the health of the patients who received this remedy just 24 hours after they took the first dose. The cure was noted after seven days, even ten days. This remedy is natural and non-toxic,” he said.

Madagascar has donated CVO, which is claimed to cure the COVID-19 to several African countries.

Last week, the African Union in a statement said it is talking with Madagascar to obtain technical data regarding the safety and efficiency of the herbal remedy.

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Featured image is from AA