Global Research

In greeting you, with affection, I take the liberty of addressing you on the occasion of denouncing the severe events taking place against the peace and stability of Venezuela, at a time when the concern of the States and Governments should be focused on the protection of the life and health of their citizens, due to the acceleration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As it is publicly known, last March 26, the government of the United States announced a very serious action against a group of high officials of the Venezuelan State, including the Constitutional President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro.

This action consisted in the presentation of a formal accusation before the American judicial system, which is not only by illegal in itself, by also seeks to support a false accusation of drug trafficking and terrorism, with the sole objective of simulating the alleged judicialization of the Venezuelan authorities.

This American performance includes the unusual offer of an international reward to anyone who provides information about the President and the high Venezuelan officials, leading to a dangerous moment of tension in the continent. I, therefore, consider it necessary to make an account of the facts, which reveal the perverse plot behind the accusations of the Department of Justice.

Just one day before, on March 25, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounced before national and international public opinion the development in Colombian territory of an operation aimed at attempting against the life of President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro Moros, his family members, and high State officials; as well as attacking civil and military objectives in our country, accusing Mr. Clíver Alcalá, a retired general of the Venezuelan armed forces, of being the military chief of that operation.

This denouncement was made with all responsibility, after a control operation in the road to the north of Colombia, near the border with Venezuela was announced on March 24, in which the police of that country captured a batch or war weapons in a civilian vehicle.

The investigations revealed that it was a sophisticated arsenal aimed at a group of former Venezuelan and Colombian military and paramilitary personnel who were training in camps located in Colombian territory.

On March 26, the aforementioned Clíver Alcalá, gave a statement to a Colombian media outlet -from his residence in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia- in which he confirmed his participation in the reported events, confessing to being the military leader of the operation and revealing that the weapons were purchased by order of Mr. Juan Guaidó, national deputy, who calls himself interim President of Venezuela and serves as Washington’s operator in the country. He also confirmed that the weapons were intended to carry out a military operation to assassinate senior members of the Venezuelan State and Government and to produce a coup d’état in Venezuela.

Mr. Alcalá clarified that the weapons were purchased through a contract signed by himself, Mr. Juan Guaidó, U.S. advisors and Mr.Juan José Rendón, political advisor to President Iván Duque, and carried out with the knowledge of Colombian government authorities.

In the face of this confession, the unusual response of the United States government has been the publication of the accusations mentioned at the beginning of this letter, with the extravagant inclusion of the name of Mr. Alcalá, as if he were part of the Venezuelan authorities and not a mercenary hired by the United States to carry out a terrorist operation against the Venezuelan government.

As a demonstration of this statement, I need no more proof than to mention the alleged capture of Mr. Alcalá by Colombian security forces and his immediate surrender to U.S. DEA authorities, in a curious act in which the prisoner, without handcuffs, was shaking hands with his captors, right in front of the stairs of the plane that would take him on a special VIP flight to the United States, which shows that in reality, this whole set-up is about the rescue of someone they consider a U.S. agent.

It must be stressed that the unsuccessful armed operation was originally designed to be executed at the end of this month, while all of Venezuela is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually, this is precisely the main battle that concerns humanity today.

A battle that our nation is successfully waging, having managed to stop the contagion curve, reinforcing health provisions and keeping the population in a massive quarantine, with a low number of positive cases and deaths.

For all these reasons, the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela alerts our brothers and sisters of political organizations and social movements around the world about the reckless and criminal steps being taken by the administration of Donald Trump which, despite the frightening acceleration of the growth of COVID-19 affecting the American people, seems determined to deepen its policy of aggression against sovereign states in the region, and especially against the Venezuelan people.

During the pandemic, the U.S. government, instead of focusing on policies of global cooperation in health and prevention, has increased unilateral coercive measures, has rejected requests from the international community to lift or make flexible the illegal sanctions that prevent Venezuela from accessing medicines, medical equipment, and food.

At the same time, it has banned humanitarian flights from the United States to Venezuela to repatriate hundreds of Venezuelans trapped in the economic and health crisis in the northern country.

By denouncing these serious facts, Venezuela ratifies its unwavering will to maintain a relationship of respect and cooperation with all nations, especially in this unprecedented circumstance that forces responsible governments to work together and put aside their differences, as is the case with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under such serious circumstances, I request your invaluable support in the face of this unusual and arbitrary persecution, executed through a new version of that rancid McCarthyism unleashed after World War II. At that time, they willingly labeled their adversaries as Communists in order to persecute them; today they do so by means of the whimsical categories of terrorists or drug traffickers, without having any evidence whatsoever.

Condemning and neutralizing today these unjustifiable attacks against Venezuela will be very useful to prevent Washington from launching similar campaigns against other peoples and governments of the world tomorrow. We must all adhere to the principles of the United Nations Charter, to prevent excessive unilateralism from leading to international chaos.

Brothers and sisters of the world, you can be absolutely sure that Venezuela will stand firm in its fight for peace and that, under any circumstances, it will prevail. No imperialist aggression, however ferocious it may be, will divert us from the sovereign and independent path that we have forged for 200 years, nor will it distance us from the sacred obligation to preserve the life and health of our people in the face of the frightening global pandemic of COVID-19.

I take this opportunity to express my solidarity and that of the people of Venezuela to all the peoples who today also suffer serious consequences from the effects of the pandemic. If we are obliged to draw any lesson from all this difficult experience, it is precisely that only together we can move forward. The political and economic models that advocate selfishness and individualism have demonstrated their total failure to face this situation. Let us firmly advance towards a new World with justice and social equality, in which the happiness and fullness of the human being is the center of our actions.

I appreciate the solidarity that you have permanently expressed towards my country and my people, denouncing the criminal blockade to which we and many other nations are subjected. I take this opportunity to reiterate my respect and affection, and to invite you to continue united, plowing a future of hope and dignity.

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He was known as “the Riddler.” Even “the Dark.”  Heraclitus of Ephesus was one of a kind. 

In his heart of hearts a contemptuous aristocrat, this master of paradox despised all so-called wise men and the mobs that adored them. Heraclitus was the definitive precursor of social distancing.  

We, unfortunately, owe the “pre-Socratic” reductionist label to 19^th century historians, who sold to modernity the notion that these thinkers were not so preeminent because they lived before Socrates (469-399 B.C.) throughout the 6^th and 5^th century B.C., in assorted latitudes found in today’s Greece, Italy and Turkey.

Yet Nietzsche nailed it: the pre-Socratics invented all the archetypes of all the history of philosophy. And if that was not enough, they invented science as well. Their Grandmaster Flash was, unequivocally, Heraclitus.

Perpetual detective story

Only around 130 fragments of Heraclitus’s thinking managed to survive – prefiguring Walter Benjamin’s intuition that the beauty of knowledge is encapsulated by the fragment.

Let’s start with “Nature loves to hide.” Heraclitus established that nature and the world are ambiguous par excellence, in a never-ending film noir. As nature is a nest of riddles, he could only use riddles to examine it.

It’s tempting to imagine Heraclitus as a doppelganger of the famous Delphic oracle, which “neither declares nor conceals, but gives a sign.” He’s certainly a precursor of Twin Peaks (the owls are not what they seem). Legend has it that the only copy of his book was consigned to a temple in Ephesus in the early 5^th century B.C., shortly after the death of Pythagoras, so the mobs wouldn’t have access to it. Heraclitus, a member of the Ephesus royal family, would not have settled for less.

So we, as a race, are essentially a misguided bunch.

“Men are deceived in the recognition of what is obvious, like Homer who was wisest of all the Greeks,” Heraclitus wrote. “For he was deceived by boys killing lice who said: ‘What we see and catch we leave behind; what we neither see nor catch we carry away.’”

Heraclitus compared our lot to beasts, winos, deep sleepers and even children – as in, “Our opinions are like toys.” We are incapable of grasping the true logos.

History, with rare exceptions, seems to have vindicated him.

There are two key Heraclitus mantras.

1) “All things come to pass according to conflict.” So the basis of everything is turmoil. Everything is in flux. Life is a battleground. (Sun Tzu would approve.)

2) “All things are one.” This means opposites attract. This is what Heraclitus found when he went tripping inside his soul – with no help of lysergic substances. No wonder he faced a Sisyphean task trying to explain this to us, mere children.

And that brings us to the river metaphor. Everything in nature depends on underlying change. Thus, for Heraclitus, “as they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them.” So each river is composed of ever-changing waters.

If you step into the Ganges or the Amazon one day, that would be something completely different compared with stepping in on another day.

Thus the notorious mantra Panta rhei, “Everything flows”. Flux and stability, unity and diversity, are like night and day.

One river may consist of many waters, and even if there are many waters, it’s still one river. That’s how Heraclitus reconciled conflict and unity into harmony – quite an Eastern philosophy concept.

No fragment tells it explicitly. But what’s fascinating is that flux in unity and unity in flux do look like moving parts of the logos, the guiding principle of the world, which no one before him had managed to understand.

Next to your fire 

Everything flows. And that brings us to war – and once again Heraclitus meets Sun Tzu: “War is father of all and king of all.”

That also brings us to fire. The world is “fire ever living” and “fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.” Here Heraclitus seems to be equating gold, as a vehicle of economic exchange, to fire as a vehicle of physical change. He would have despised fiat money; Heraclitus was definitely in favor of the gold standard.

No wonder Heraclitus fascinated Nietzsche because he was essentially proposing a cyclical theory of the universe – Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence – with everything turning into fire in serial cosmic bust-ups.

Heraclitus was a Taoist and a Buddhist. If opposites are ultimately the same, this implies the unity of all things.

Heraclitus even foresaw the reaction we should have towards Covid-19: “It is disease that makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; weariness, rest.” Lao Tzu would approve. In the Heraclitus framework of serial cosmic recycling, disease gives health its full significance.

This collective attitude could go a long way to explain the relative success of Eastern societies in the fight against Covid-19 compared with the West.

And once again, all this Heraclitean interconnectivity could not be more Eastern – from Tao to Buddhism. No wonder the grandmasters of Western civilization, Plato and Aristotle, didn’t get it.

Plato distorted Heraclitus like there was no tomorrow. Plato based his analysis on Cratylus, a philosopher who misunderstood Heraclitus in the first place. Because Plato and Aristotle basically regurgitated Cratylus’s reductionist interpretation everyone afterward followed them, not the original Riddler.

For Plato and Aristotle, it was impossible to understand Heraclitus because they seemed to have taken “You cannot step into the same river twice” literally.

Heraclitus in fact discovered, for all humanity to see, that rivers and everything else in nature change constantly. They’re all about flux, even when they seem still. Call that a definition of history.

At least Plato’s misguided interpretation raised a key question we are still debating 2,500 years later: How is it possible to have certain knowledge of an ever-changing world? Or as Nietzsche famously put it: There are no facts, only interpretations.

So because of Plato’s misunderstanding, Heraclitus the genuine article became a sideshow in the history of thought. The Riddler would not have given a damn. It’s up to us to do him justice in these anguished times.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”—Martin Luther King Jr. (A Knock at Midnight, June 11, 1967)

In every age, we find ourselves wrestling with the question of how Jesus Christ—the itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist who died challenging the police state of his time, namely, the Roman Empire—would respond to the moral questions of our day.

For instance, what would Jesus do in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic?

Would he disregard social distancing guidelines to visit and tend to the sick and dying?

Would he take the assets belonging to those massive megachurches—the expensive real estate, the lucrative bank accounts—and put them to work where they can do the most good right now, tending to the sick, housing the homeless, and providing for the needy?

Would he advocate, as so many evangelical Christian leaders have done in recent years, for congregants to “submit to your leaders and those in authority,” which in the American police state translates to complying, conforming, submitting, obeying orders, deferring to authority and generally doing whatever a government official tells you to do? Or would he defy government shutdowns to hold church worship services as some have done?

It’s a quandary, all right: what would Jesus do?

Suddenly, that evangelical message of abject compliance to the government, no matter how immoral or unjust that government may seem, is running up against government mandates that test not only how far the religious community will go to exercise its religious freedoms but what that even means in a COVID-19 world.

As the world prepares to spend Holy Week and Easter Sunday in a state of near-isolation, varying degrees of lockdowns imposed by world governments to blunt the deadly impact of this novel coronavirus pandemic have all but ensured that there will be no massive Easter Egg hunts, no Easter parades, and no flower-bedecked church services this year.

We can debate and litigate and legislate whether churches have a lawful right to remain open during this pandemic and allow their congregants to worship in person, but surely Jesus would have us fight an altogether different battle.

Study the life and teachings of Jesus, and you may be surprised at how relevant he is to our modern age.

A radical nonconformist who challenged authority at every turn, Jesus spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire, and providing a blueprint for standing up to tyranny that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him.

Those living through this present age of militarized police, SWAT team raids, police shootings of unarmed citizens, roadside strip searches, invasive surveillance, and government lockdowns might feel as if these events are unprecedented, but the characteristics of a police state and its reasons for being are no different today than they were in Jesus’ lifetime: control, power and money.

Much like the American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day was characterized by secrecy, surveillance, a widespread police presence, a citizenry treated like suspects with little recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, a military empire, martial law, and political retribution against those who dared to challenge the power of the state.

A police state extends far beyond the actions of law enforcement.  In fact, a police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

Indeed, the police state in which Jesus lived and its striking similarities to modern-day America are beyond troubling.

Secrecy, surveillance and rule by the elite. As the chasm between the wealthy and poor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class and the wealthy class became synonymous, while the lower classes, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms, grew disinterested in the government and easily distracted by “bread and circuses.” Much like America today, with its lack of government transparency, overt domestic surveillance, and rule by the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire were shrouded in secrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watch for any potential threats to its power. The resulting state-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by the military, which acted as investigators, enforcers, torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today that role is fulfilled by the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the increasingly militarized police forces across the country.

Widespread police presence. The Roman Empire used its military forces to maintain the “peace,” thereby establishing a police state that reached into all aspects of a citizen’s life. In this way, these military officers, used to address a broad range of routine problems and conflicts, enforced the will of the state. Today SWAT teams, comprised of local police and federal agents, are employed to carry out routine search warrants for minor crimes such as marijuana possession and credit card fraud.

Citizenry with little recourse against the police state. As the Roman Empire expanded, personal freedom and independence nearly vanished, as did any real sense of local governance and national consciousness. Similarly, in America today, citizens largely feel powerless, voiceless and unrepresented in the face of a power-hungry federal government. As states and localities are brought under direct control by federal agencies and regulations, a sense of learned helplessness grips the nation.

Perpetual wars and a military empire. Much like America today with its practice of policing the world, war and an over-arching militarist ethos provided the framework for the Roman Empire, which extended from the Italian peninsula to all over Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, extending into North Africa and Western Asia as well. In addition to significant foreign threats, wars were waged against inchoate, unstructured and socially inferior foes.

Martial law. Eventually, Rome established a permanent military dictatorship that left the citizens at the mercy of an unreachable and oppressive totalitarian regime. In the absence of resources to establish civic police forces, the Romans relied increasingly on the military to intervene in all matters of conflict or upheaval in provinces, from small-scale scuffles to large-scale revolts. Not unlike police forces today, with their martial law training drills on American soil, militarized weapons and “shoot first, ask questions later” mindset, the Roman soldier had “the exercise of lethal force at his fingertips” with the potential of wreaking havoc on normal citizens’ lives.

A nation of suspects. Just as the American Empire looks upon its citizens as suspects to be tracked, surveilled and controlled, the Roman Empire looked upon all potential insubordinates, from the common thief to a full-fledged insurrectionist, as threats to its power. The insurrectionist was seen as directly challenging the Emperor.  A “bandit,” or revolutionist, was seen as capable of overturning the empire, was always considered guilty and deserving of the most savage penalties, including capital punishment. Bandits were usually punished publicly and cruelly as a means of deterring others from challenging the power of the state.  Jesus’ execution was one such public punishment.

Acts of civil disobedience by insurrectionists. Starting with his act of civil disobedience at the Jewish temple, the site of the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish council, Jesus branded himself a political revolutionary. When Jesus “with the help of his disciples, blocks the entrance to the courtyard” and forbids “anyone carrying goods for sale or trade from entering the Temple,” he committed a blatantly criminal and seditious act, an act “that undoubtedly precipitated his arrest and execution.” Because the commercial events were sponsored by the religious hierarchy, which in turn was operated by consent of the Roman government, Jesus’ attack on the money chargers and traders can be seen as an attack on Rome itself, an unmistakable declaration of political and social independence from the Roman oppression.

Military-style arrests in the dead of night. Jesus’ arrest account testifies to the fact that the Romans perceived Him as a revolutionary. Eerily similar to today’s SWAT team raids, Jesus was arrested in the middle of the night, in secret, by a large, heavily armed fleet of soldiers.  Rather than merely asking for Jesus when they came to arrest him, his pursuers collaborated beforehand with Judas. Acting as a government informant, Judas concocted a kiss as a secret identification marker, hinting that a level of deception and trickery must be used to obtain this seemingly “dangerous revolutionist’s” cooperation.

Torture and capital punishment. In Jesus’ day, religious preachers, self-proclaimed prophets and nonviolent protesters were not summarily arrested and executed. Indeed, the high priests and Roman governors normally allowed a protest, particularly a small-scale one, to run its course. However, government authorities were quick to dispose of leaders and movements that appeared to threaten the Roman Empire. The charges leveled against Jesus—that he was a threat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Roman taxes and claimed to be the rightful King—were purely political, not religious. To the Romans, any one of these charges was enough to merit death by crucifixion, which was usually reserved for slaves, non-Romans, radicals, revolutionaries and the worst criminals.

Jesus was presented to Pontius Pilate “as a disturber of the political peace,” a leader of a rebellion, a political threat, and most gravely—a claimant to kingship, a “king of the revolutionary type.” After Jesus is formally condemned by Pilate, he is sentenced to death by crucifixion, “the Roman means of executing criminals convicted of high treason.”  The purpose of crucifixion was not so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immensely public statement intended to visually warn all those who would challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it was reserved solely for the most extreme political crimes: treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry. After being ruthlessly whipped and mocked, Jesus was nailed to a cross.

As Professor Mark Lewis Taylor observed:

The cross within Roman politics and culture was a marker of shame, of being a criminal. If you were put to the cross, you were marked as shameful, as criminal, but especially as subversive. And there were thousands of people put to the cross. The cross was actually positioned at many crossroads, and, as New Testament scholar Paula Fredricksen has reminded us, it served as kind of a public service announcement that said, “Act like this person did, and this is how you will end up.”

Jesus—the revolutionary, the political dissident, and the nonviolent activist—lived and died in a police state. Any reflection on Jesus’ life and death within a police state must take into account several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly against such things as empires, controlling people, state violence and power politics. Jesus challenged the political and religious belief systems of his day. And worldly powers feared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control of thrones or government but because he undercut their claims of supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a time when doing so could—and often did—cost a person his life.

Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the political dissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has been largely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smiling Jesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwise rendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power and politics.

Yet for those who truly study the life and teachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outright resistance to war, materialism and empire.

Ultimately, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the contradiction that must be resolved if the radical Jesus—the one who stood up to the Roman Empire and was crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be—is to be an example for our modern age.

After all, there is so much suffering and injustice in the world, and so much good that can be done by those who truly aspire to follow Jesus Christ’s example.

We must decide whether we will follow the path of least resistance—willing to turn a blind eye to what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the “evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence”—or whether we will be transformed nonconformists “dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

As King explained in a powerful sermon delivered in 1954, “This command not to conform comes … [from] Jesus Christ, the world’s most dedicated nonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challenges the conscience of mankind.”

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world.  Willingly they sacrificed fame, fortune, and life itself in behalf of a cause they knew to be right.  Quantitatively small, they were qualitatively giants.  Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests.  Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ… The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.  The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.  In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!

…Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?”  But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence.  Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.  To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way that comes only through suffering.

In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth.  We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds?  Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul saving music of eternity?

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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].

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Bread Lines in the US

By Stephen Lendman, April 07, 2020

It happened in the US before. It’s happening again in various ways at a time when perhaps harder than ever hard times may be just beginning.

First some background and related thoughts.

The Great Depression of the 1930s in the US followed prosperity marred by excesses in the 20s. The October 1929 stock market crash changed everything, ordinary people hit hardest.

“Orders to Kill” Dr. Martin Luther King: The Government that Honors MLK with a National Holiday Killed Him

By Edward Curtin, April 07, 2020

Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few books have been written about it, unlike other significant assassinations, especially JFK’s. For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth.

And few people, in a massive act of self-deception, have chosen to question the absurd official explanation, choosing, rather, to embrace a mythic fabrication intended to sugarcoat the bitter fruit that has resulted from the murder of the one man capable of leading a mass movement for revolutionary change in the United States.  Today we are eating the fruit of our denial.

A Tale of Two Stockpiles: Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Anniversary of His Murder in a Pandemic Year

By Brian Terrell, April 07, 2020

The United States Strategic National Stockpile of essential medical supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seems unable to respond to the present COVID-19 crisis.  There is much discussion in today’s news about who is responsible for the shortcomings. Did Trump find the shelves empty or full when he took office after President Obama? Is the stockpile meant to support local governments in dealing with shortages in such a crisis, as the DHHS website said until last Friday, or is it specifically meant for use by the federal government, “our stockpile… not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner insists, a view supported by the newly amended DHHS website?

Coronavirus: Sanctions and Suffering

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, April 07, 2020

By looking at three well-known victims of US sanctions, we shall show how the coronavirus crisis has helped to bring to the fore some of the issues that challenge them. Iran has been under comprehensive sanctions which have become increasingly harsh since 1980. There is no need to emphasise that it is because Iran after the Islamic Revolution of February 1979 refused to yield to US dictates and chose to champion the Palestinian cause through deeds rather than words that it found itself the target of the superpower of the day. Iran has made it very clear that though it is going through great difficulties as a result of the Coronavirus it will not accept any assistance from the US unless the US lifts the sanctions. It has however applied for financial help from the IMF which according to some sources has been blocked by the US government that exercises considerable influence over that multilateral institution. China and other countries from the European Union have come to Iran’s aid.

Ecuadorian Humanitarian Catastrophe Amidst Pandemic

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, April 07, 2020

Among the countries affected by the global pandemic, it is undeniable that there is a certain imbalance in media coverage, with some very affected countries being scarcely followed by the news, while in other locations the situation is overestimated. An example of what is being said here is the case of Ecuador, about which little or nothing has been said in the mainstream mass media around the world. The collapsed South American country began the biggest crisis in its recent history. The fragile Ecuadorian public health structure was not efficient to deal with even the first cases of COVID-19, causing the infection to spread quickly. The government’s slowness in taking action to control the crisis was also a key factor in building the current scenario: Ecuador, in a very short time, became the country with the highest number of deaths per capita due to the new coronavirus in Latin America.

Nicaragua and COVID-19 – Western Media’s Best Kept Secret

By Jorge Capelan, April 07, 2020

One of the best hidden secrets amidst the cacophony of panic and media terrorism caused by the current COVID-2019 pandemic has been how successfully Nicaragua, a small, impoverished country in one of the most climate change-prone regions on the planet, has been tackling the arrival of the new coronavirus.

With 6.5 million inhabitants, Nicaragua had as of April 5th only 6 cases of COVID-19, all imported, of which 3 were active, 2 were recovered and one, ill with AIDS, had died. At the same time, the authorities kept under close surveillance some 10 people who, despite having tested negative, continue to be monitored as a precaution.

COVID19 Distance-Learning Rules Help Big Tech Shut Down Brick-and-Mortar Public Schools, Replace Human Teachers with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

By John Klyczek, April 07, 2020

The DeVos Department of Education’s new “Proposed Rules” for federal regulations of “Distance Education and Innovation” (85 FR 18638) will effectively open the floodgates for online education corporations to put public brick-and-mortar schools out of business by streamlining “adaptive-learning and other artificial intelligence” technologies that replace “human instructors” with “competency-based education (CBE)” software which provide “direct assessment” through “subscription-based” courseware that data-mine students’ cognitive-behavioral algorithms to “personalize” digital lessons.

The crazy thing about the COVID-19 “crisis” is how easy it is for the state and its media to frighten the public and manipulate ill-informed citizens into embracing economic and social decapitation. 

Blinded by scary headlines based on irrational speculation—subsequently revised downward and published on page C-23 of corporate newspapers demanding a bailout—the American people have embraced authoritarian measures supposedly imposed to win a battle against an invisible enemy. 

We are now beyond the point of no return. The inflicted economic and social damage has already taken a heavy toll and it will get worse the longer health bureaucrats, state governors, and a remarkably clueless president and his apparatchiks demand we stay imprisoned in our homes, frightened of a bug the state and its media have fictionally rendered as an insatiable and inescapable Gorgon of Doom. 

The COVID-19 crisis has been engineered by Bill Gates from seasonal flu in order to crash the global economy, normalise authoritarianism, and further the elites' goal of one world government. https://t.co/UVoOTB6OZE

— Barbara McKenzie (@BarbaraMcK42) April 3, 2020

Scott C. Tips, president of the National Health Federation, writes:

In February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO)—never known for its accuracy or consistency—declared a “Pandemic” for the coronavirus and claimed that the mortality rate for the novel coronavirus disease now designated as COVID-19 was 3.4%, while that for the seasonal flu was 0.1%. Of course, the news media ran with those numbers and splashed scary headlines across the World stating how much more deadly this new virus was than the seasonal flu. The problem with WHO’s statement, however, was that they applied two different formulas for the two viruses. For the COVID-19 disease, for example, they simply didn’t count any of the mild cases of COVID-19 that resolved themselves; yet, they did with the seasonal flu. If WHO were to apply the same formula to seasonal flu cases as it did with COVID-19 cases, then the seasonal flu is revealed more truthfully as being twice as deadly as the COVID-19 virus.

In other words, the globalist WHO—essentially a PR group for transnational Big Pharma and what should be considered the health-industrial complex—is engaged in massive fraud. 

The COVID-19 aggrandizement and propaganda campaign is not simply a public relations scheme for Big Pharma and its highly dubious—and often deadly—vaccines. It also serves as a cover for authoritarian measures the ruling elite have schemed to put in place for decades, measures designed to monitor and control everything you do. Orwell’s helicopters peering in bedroom windows in search of sex offenders—or drones in search of the infected and suspected vaccine scofflaws—are now a stark reality. 

Here French historian Mathilde Larrère compares the current political context with Orwell's famous dystopia, 1984, thanks to a subtle pun based on the disease's name (Covid 19) https://t.co/hm40OQnics

— Zalasta (@Zalasta) April 4, 2020

9/11 wasn’t sufficient. The reach of that false flag event’s fear quotient and authoritarian measures were limited and ultimately muted. The fairy tale prospect of cave-dwelling terrorists plotting dirty bomb attacks on kindergartens and other nefarious acts of deviltry had limited effectiveness and relatively short shelf life. 

However, an invisible virus portrayed as a pandemic on par with the Black Death is far more effective than a cartoon nemesis like Osama bin Laden in the ongoing effort to move cattle—as our rulers consider us—in the preferred direction. 

In addition to “smart” surveillance and control of the populace, the virus panic is being manipulated to cover and shift blame for a ransacked economy. 

“The economy was already faltering. The false boom stimulated by a decade of monetary meth was likely turning to bust even before the virus,” writes Keith Weiner. 

The real culprits pushing for economic collapse—the globalist financial class and kindred corporate fascists—want to attribute slamming on the economic brakes and toppling an already precarious house of cards to a virus that so far is little worse than seasonal flu, if that. 

It is now obvious a thoroughly propagandized populace will readily accept what amounts to an open-ended house arrest and the nonsensical authoritarian demands of the state—don’t go outside, don’t go to the grocery store or pharmacy, fashion DIY masks out of t-shirts and furnace filters, snitch on your neighbors if you suspect an infection, condemn the preppers as selfish hoarders, et cetera. 

Our future is no longer in doubt. The psychopathic control freaks are steering us toward world totalitarianism. Henry Kissinger recently advocated as much in the War Street Journal, following up a similar call for by the former “Right Honorable” Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. 

Henry Kissinger calls for a New Post-Covid World Order: https://t.co/YDHiUAhF4D pic.twitter.com/f0OTgjiYl6

— Aphorist 🌺 (@People1stPlanet) April 6, 2020

A virus has accomplished what the war on manufactured terror was unable to pull off—driving us with nary a bleat of complaint toward the rocks of economic and social destruction. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

A NATO teleconference last week saw Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu engage in a mini war of words, with accusations made by both sides against each other. Çavuşoğlu took the Council of Foreign Ministers of NATO meeting as an opportunity to push accusations that Greece tortured and killed illegal immigrants as they attempted to enter the European country illegally with Turkish support.

Dendias was quick to highlight that Turkey was blatantly violating the Alliance’s supposed core ‘values,’ prompting Çavuşoğlu to rise from his seat and demand that he be able to respond, which was quickly rejected by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The Turkish Foreign Minister even made another demand to be the final speaker of the teleconference, which was again rejected by Stoltenberg, prompting Çavuşoğlu to abruptly leave the meeting early.

In the aftermath of the meeting, Dendias went to Twitter to say

“There is a very basic misunderstanding on the part of Turkey. Alliance and solidarity between allied countries is not an option. They are not separate issues. It is total.”

He continued to highlight that it is well known that Turkey orchestrated the migrant crisis in March, but that Athens still wants to have positive relations with Ankara.

Although this may seem like a minor victory in Dendias’ eyes against the ‘Old Enemy,’ there is no suggestion that this has placed Greece on any higher pedestal than Turkey within NATO. Both Greece and Turkey became NATO members in 1952, becoming the first new members of the alliance since its formation with 12 original founders. Despite technically becoming NATO ‘allies,’ relations have remained hostile between Greece and Turkey, mostly notably during the 1955 Istanbul pogrom when the Greek population of the city decreased from 116,108 to 49,081, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the 1996 Imia Islet crisis.

A February 2020 poll by the highly-reliable Pew Research Center found that the majority of people in Greece (51%) and Turkey (55%) viewed NATO unfavourably – the only states of the 16 NATO members surveyed to view the U.S.-led organization in this way. For the Greek people, their frustration with NATO is that in 2019 alone, war planes belonging to NATO ‘ally’ Turkey violated Greece’s airspace 4,811 times and Ankara redrew the maritime borders of the Eastern Mediterranean on a map that claimed large swathes of Greece’s maritime space, including inhabited islands. From the Turkish perspective, they are frustrated that the U.S. openly supports the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, that Ankara claims is a terrorist organization, and NATO not backing Turkey’s invasion of Idlib because of Greece’s veto.

However, the key difference is that Ankara attempts to manipulate NATO to achieve its geostrategic goals by also pandering to Russia. The Greek leadership on the hand takes a completely subservient role regarding NATO and makes little effort to improve its relations with Russia or become an independent state in the new multipolar system. Although only 37% of Greeks are favourable to NATO, successive governments since the collapse of Yugoslavia have hedged its bets behind the Alliance, despite having little reason to.

Turkish air violations against Greece continue unabated on a daily basis, migrants continue to try and illegally enter Greece from Turkey, and challenges to the sovereignty of Greek islands are always made, yet there has been little to no condemnation from NATO for Turkey’s actions.

In fact, only last week Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the appointment of a group of 10 experts to support his work in a reflection process to further strengthen NATO’s political dimension. This “reflection group” included the participation of Turkey, but not Greece, once again demonstrating that the Alliance will always favour Turkey to Greece as it occupies one of the most geostrategic locations in the world.

Athens will once again be compliant and not push its stake to serve Greek interests. Although the Greek people are overwhelmingly anti-U.S. and pro-Russia, it has not been reflected on government policy. This has become especially apparent since the 2008 financial crisis that crippled Greece. The country has been ruled by governments subservient to not only NATO demands ever since, but also European Union ones to ensure that the crippling IMF debt can continue to be imposed.

Effectively Greece has been hijacked by a ruling elite that continues on the same path of subserviency to NATO – no matter the political party in power. So long as Athens refuses to acknowledge the world’s power structures are changing from U.S. global hegemonic unipolarity to a balanced multipolar system, it will continue to serve NATO and have none of its interests recognized or met by the Alliance.

Meanwhile, Turkey will continue its attempts to play both Washington and Moscow for its own interests. Ankara has acknowledged the changing world system, but rather than use this new reality to seek balance in the region, it is using it to project its own influence and power in an aggressive manner. Although it failed in its invasion of Idlib and Libya, and to flood Greece with illegal immigrants in March, it will continue its pursuit of regional hegemony.

Rather, it serves both Greece and Turkey well to truly accept multipolarity for what it is – a system of balanced power.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved to an intensive care unit at St. Thomas’ hospital in London, it was revealed last night. The PM had been suffering from coronavirus and had self-isolated for over a week, before being admitted to hospital on Sunday for ‘tests’ to be carried out. However, it was reported on Monday evening that the decision had been taken to move Johnson into an ICU in order for his care to be more closely monitored. A source has said that he has required oxygen, suggesting breathing difficulties, although a spokesperson said he was moved ‘as a precaution, should he require ventilation’.

The announcement came as rumours began circulating that Johnson’s condition was indeed worse than was being reported. At the daily coronavirus press briefing at 5pm on Monday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the PM was in ‘good spirits’ and was still leading the government, but this did not tally with his admission that he hadn’t spoken to Johnson since Saturday.  Speculation that something was afoot proved correct when a Downing Street spokesperson released a statement:

“Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the Prime Minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.”

The UK has no formal succession plan in the instance that a prime minister becomes incapacitated, indeed it is the first time in history a sitting PM has been admitted to intensive care. Nevertheless, Boris Johnson, aged 55, has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputize for him in the meantime. There must be concern however it is only a matter of time before other ministers in the cabinet start exhibiting symptoms. After all, Johnson must have already been experiencing mild symptoms of the virus as he continued to meet with his cabinet on a daily basis.

Leaders from across the globe – from Trump to Merkel – joined UK politicians from all parties in wishing Johnson a speedy recovery. There could not be more of a symbol of just how serious this virus is, when a country’s leader succumbs to it himself. And yet, to this day there are those espousing theories that governments are exaggerating, that in fact, flu kills as many people as coronavirus each year, and it is simply a way for our governments to enforce authoritarian measures. I hope that as time goes on, people will see just how virulent this disease is and how many people from across the social spectrum are suffering.  We can only hope that then such people will begin to rethink these conspiracy theories and be more responsible in their statements.

This pandemic is of historic proportions. There are already 1,240,296 cases worldwide and the death toll sits at over 69,346. Healthcare systems are being swamped by the amount of cases. For all our modern technology, it doesn’t feel as if we are much better placed for fighting Covid-19 than we were for grappling with the Spanish influenza of the early 20th century. It is estimated that it killed between 17 and 50 million people. We can only hope that through social distancing measures now in place in many of the affected countries, that we can somehow slow down the speed of the pandemic. But it’s important we realize that we’re in it for the long haul.  We don’t yet have a vaccine for this disease; it could be months and months before social distancing measures can be rolled back. Spanish influenza lasted for 2 years, and even if we manage to ‘flatten the curve’, as it is said, we are in danger of exacerbating the pandemic once again when measures are relaxed.

The economic consequences of this pandemic for the UK are beginning to be felt.

Not only travel and aviation companies are struggling, but retail, which was already suffering due to uncertainty over Brexit. Department store chain Debenhams, a high-street brand which can trace its history as far back as 1778, has now filed for administration.

Other retailers such as Primark have opted to cancel orders with their suppliers in order to try to save their brands. We will no doubt see many more casualties to the virus in the business world. It was reported last week that 6 in 10 UK firms have no more than 3 months of funds left. Indeed as many as one million small businesses across the country could collapse over the next month.  Chancellor Rishi Sunak has promised unprecedented levels of government support to businesses, including tax holidays, loan guarantees, and paying 80% of workers wages, but some employers have said this is not enough. It is said that gaps remain in the government’s proposals and that companies need urgent financial aid now, and cannot wait weeks and months.

Uncertain times for Britain lie ahead. With the PM in intensive care, the potential for other ministers and politicians to follow suit, and more coronavirus cases every day, it is clear that this crisis has the potential to escalate even further. And yet, even when the pandemic is over, we may still feel the economic aftershocks for years to come…

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from TruePublica

The United States has just declared war against the coronavirus, with President Donald Trump self-proclaiming that he is now a “wartime president.” Whether one believes that the virus must be confronted with maximum aggression by effectively shutting down the country or that the measures already in place are already an overreaction hardly seems to matter as developments over the next several months will likely demonstrate what could have/might have/should have been done. But meanwhile extreme views are proliferating, with Rush Limbaugh detecting a conspiracy by Democrats and communists to destroy capitalism under “the guise of saving lives” while a more restrained but ideologically driven libertarian Ron Paul meanwhile chose to pen an article entitled “Coronavirus Hoax” that personally pilloried as a “chief fearmonger” the government’s widely respected expert on the origin and spread of the disease Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Stalin famously said that the death of one person was a tragedy while the death of a million is a statistic. For both Limbaugh and Paul an epidemic that could kill tens or even hundreds of thousands Americans produces a statistic, of lesser importance than retaining a completely corrupt Wall Street and the individual’s “liberty” to go shopping. Indeed, if greed driven American “vulture” capitalism must be preserved in its current form to protect and empower the rich, radical change might be welcomed by most Americans to include a long overdue genuine health infrastructure safety net.

Meanwhile, more rational and legitimate concerns are being raised by those who are worried about what kind of American democracy and economy will emerge on the other side. They urge the public to be particularly alert to the continuation of emergency practices at both the federal and state levels, permitting respective governments to act autocratically with little in the way of transparency or accountability.

One particular step that has been implemented is the use of cell phone tracking, without the permission of the device owners, to monitor whether separation and isolation measures are being observed by individuals who are out and about, determining whether or not they are obeying the rules in place to penalize congregating in public. It appears that the government and even at least one private presumably Israeli company now have the capability to track hundreds of thousands if not millions of phones simultaneously. This “emergency” abuse of privacy rights amounts to an illegal search and should be challenged on its constitutionality, but the real danger is that the tools used to monitor locations of phones can also be used after the claimed crisis is over to monitor perfectly legal activities of citizens. There should also be the concern that once the technology is developed to track phones a bit more tweaking might well integrate that feature into the National Security Agency’s well-established ability to intercept and record private conversations.

To be sure a different world will emerge post-coronavirus, but one might observe ruefully that some things never seem to change even in the midst of a full-blown global health crisis. Indeed, one might actually suspect that the United States, far from putting its own house in order, has actually used the virus as cover for intensifying its aggressive activities in Asia and Latin America. Along the way, it has also deliberately exploited the disease to punish those countries with which is has an adversarial relationship.

Those promoting the Trump administration’s preferred regime change “maximum pressure” policies are the top White House civilians, namely Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. The generals, to include Secretary of Defense Mike Esper and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, view the military as already overextended and have so far resisted some of the crazier suggestions but that does not mean that the jingoistic proposals have gone away. They are still on the table being pushed most particularly by Pompeo, and as the president is remarkably easily convinced to take military action, they should be considered to be still viable.

The two proposed courses of action that recently surfaced that must be considered borderline insane both related to Iran. One of them is remarkable in that it creates two new active enemies simultaneously. It consists of a Pentagon order to regional commanders to make preparations to attack and destroy the Iraqi Shi’ite militia Kataib Hezbollah that the O’Brien/Pompeo twofer believe to be tied to Iran and responsible for recent attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.

Lt. General Robert P. White, the U.S. top commander in Iraq responded immediately to the order, objecting that such a move would risk war with Iran while also increasing pressure on the government in Baghdad to expel American forces from the country. White also observed that he did not have sufficient forces in Iraq and any attack on an Iraqi militia that is technically part of the Iraqi Army would produce open warfare within the borders of a country that is technically an ally. If other militias, to include the numerous and well-armed Badr Army, were to join in the attacks on U.S. bases there would be no way to defend them.

The order is a compromise due to strong disagreements inside the Trump administration over how to punish Iran and its proxy Iraqi militias. Pompeo and O’Brien see the coronavirus, which has hit Iran hard, as an opportunity to destroy the militias while Iran is in no position to react. Per the New York Times, Esper approved the planning only to create options for dealing with Iraq and Iran based on the possibility that attacks against U.S. forces will increase. So far, Donald Trump has warned that Iran or a proxy militia is planning a “sneak attack” on American bases in Iraq and has stated that Iran itself would “pay a very heavy price” if it were carried out. Nevertheless, the president has only agreed to letting the planning continue, though he has also threatened to “go up the food chain,” implying that he is prepared to attack Iran directly if there is any escalation against American troops.

Pompeo and O’Brien, joined by recently appointed Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, have also been promoting a more serious endeavor, namely attacking Iran without warning and without any pretext while it is in its weakened state from the health crisis. Pompeo, O’Brien and Grenell argued that a direct attack on Iran, possibly to include hitting its naval vessels, would so weaken the regime over its inability to defend the country that its leaders would be forced to open negotiations, i.e. to surrender to Washington.

Washington has both increased sanctions and denied medicines to Iran, as well as to Venezuela, to put additional pressure on their governments vis-à-vis the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump Administration has been able to block $5 billion emergency International Monetary Fund loans to both countries while also sending warships to the Caribbean and Persian Gulf to back up the message with force if necessary. The argument being used to punish Venezuela is that it is not clear who represents the legitimate government in the country, whether it is Nicola Maduro, the president, whom Pompeo has labeled a “drug trafficker,” or Juan Guaido, the aspirant to the position of head of state being promoted by the State Department.

Much of Washington’s maneuvering has been taking place under the radar given the cover provided by the crisis over coronavirus. Venezuela aside, most of the planning has focused on Iran, the Trump White House’s most hated adversary and also, perhaps not coincidentally, the perpetual number one enemy of Israel. In another move, on March 27^th, the U.S. State Department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency has announced approval of an $2.4 billion deal with Israel to buy eight KC-46A Pegasus aerial tankers.

The agreement is the first time the United States has sold actual purpose-built tanker aircraft to Israel. The KC-46A Pegasus is can carry 106 tons of fuel to refuel jet fighters and has a range of more than 6,000 miles. It will enable the Israeli Air Force to have sufficient refueling capability to directly attack Iran, its principal regional target. Israel has frequently stated its willingness to attack Iranian nuclear sites and might also exploit the opportunity afforded by the coronavirus and its aftermath to do so.

So, at a time when the American public is clamoring for assurances that everything possible is being done to deal with the coronavirus, some officials in the White House are planning new wars. If one were seeking evidence of just how dysfunctional the Trump Administration is, it would not be necessary to look any further.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

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One of the best hidden secrets amidst the cacophony of panic and media terrorism caused by the current COVID-2019 pandemic has been how successfully Nicaragua, a small, impoverished country in one of the most climate change-prone regions on the planet, has been tackling the arrival of the new coronavirus.

With 6.5 million inhabitants, Nicaragua had as of April 5th only 6 cases of COVID-19, all imported, of which 3 were active, 2 were recovered and one, ill with AIDS, had died. At the same time, the authorities kept under close surveillance some 10 people who, despite having tested negative, continue to be monitored as a precaution.

By comparison, in the Central American region, at that same date there were 4,598 confirmed cases of COVID-19 of which 4,360 were active, 167 dead and 71 recovered. In Central America, only Belize, with less than 400,000 inhabitants, has fewer confirmed cases than Nicaragua, with 5, all active.

In terms of cases per million inhabitants, Nicaragua has the lowest number of cases in the entire region, with 0.93 cases. It is followed by Guatemala, with 4.22 cases; El Salvador, with 9.56 cases; Belize, with 12.24 cases; Honduras, with 32.54 cases; Costa Rica, with 89.76 cases; and Panama, with 471.22 cases per million.

Note that the two countries with which Nicaragua has extensive and porous borders (Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south) have much higher levels of infection.

Likewise, in two countries characterized by draconian confinement and curfew measures to address the pandemic (El Salvador and Honduras), infection rates per million inhabitants are also much higher than in Nicaragua.

Sectors linked to the violent, failed 2018 opposition coup attempt in Nicaragua claim that the government figures are false and that it is not really doing anything to combat the pandemic. They say that there are so few confirmed cases because massive testing of COVID-19 has not been applied to the population.

These arguments are only viable for consumption abroad and for certain groups well out of touch with domestic opinion in the country, effectively living an illusion, since for any normal person living in Nicaragua the situation is obviously not like that.

Clearly, no health center in Nicaragua is overwhelmed with people with respiratory symptoms. According to statements by the Director General of the Ministry of Health, pneumonia cases this April, which generally increase nationally, show lower levels than last year. Last year, the population was given about one million vaccines against influenza (B, H1N1 and H3N2), while the pneumococcal vaccine was given to the elderly and to people suffering from chronic diseases.

On the other hand, where are the street protests against alleged lack of government action on the pandemic? Nowhere, only in cyberspace, in the fevered minds of people based in Miami and in some European Union countries.

The Sandinista Government’s response to the COVID-19 emergency is based on a number of pillars:

Firstly, the development of a social state based on the rule of law that has prioritized as central the social and economic rights of the population, especially health, education and the right to food. In Nicaragua, contrary to the propaganda of the Western media, there is no antagonistic relationship between the State and the population, which in the vast majority (even among a great many of the opposition minority) is confident that the police and health authorities are seeking the public good.

The secondl pillar has been the broadest possible development of public health. It should be no secret that genuine public health policy in Nicaragua only began with the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution. Before July 19th 1979, the poorest popular sectors were forced to sell their blood to the Plasmapheresis company in order to survive while endemic diseases were widespread in a country where more than half the population could not read or write.

With the first stage of the Sandinista Revolution in the 1980s came massive vaccination, prevention and hygiene campaigns, as well as training of health personnel and development of health infrastructure, all in the midst of and despite a bloody terrorist war promoted by the United States. This was because this policy was a fundamental part of the historic programme of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, formulated many years before the 1979 triumph. All that human infrastructure formed during the 1980s, based on valuing health as a basic and inalienable right, resisted the neoliberal counter-reform of 1990-2007, which sought to totally privatize health. So when the Sandinista Front returned to government in January 2007 it was able to implement the successful community health model that today confronts the emergence of COVID-19.

During the last 13 years, the Sandinista Governent has built 18 hospitals: 15 primary, 1 departmental and 2 national, all of them operating free of charge. In the medium term, there are plans to build 15 more hospitals, six of which are already under construction, including two major ones in León and in Ocotal. In addition, countless health centers and heath posts have been built from scratch or else refurbished throughout the country, as well as Maternal Shelters in Nicaragua’s prize winning system of maternity care for women from rural areas. Also, and as if this were not enough, there is a massive year round program that  actively visits urban barrios and rural communities week-in week-out providing information and free medical attention to the population who, for different reasons, cannot go to a health center.

To all this we must add the recent inauguration of a WHO approved modern molecular biology laboratory capable of analysis and testing for various diseases, including COVID-19. This laboratory is the second most advanced in the region.  In addition, since the end of 2018, Nicaragua has a drug plant with the capacity to produce 12 million influenza vaccines per year. The Cuban drug Interferon Alfa-2B, which has been successfully used to treat patients with COVID-19, is planned to be produced there.

Along with the development of this material base, the Sandinista Family and Community Health Model, conceptually formulated as early as 2008, has a broad social infrastructure in the form of sectoral, municipal, departmental and national networks that articulate public, community and private health resources that have been promoting all kinds of health campaigns for many years, especially to prevent diseases such as dengue, zika and chikungunya, in addition to all their other routine health tasks.

Several months before the alert about COVID-19, in July last year, the government had already declared an epidemiological alert to combat the above-mentioned diseases. In fact, for many years Nicaragua, due to its geographical location, has been in a permanent situation of epidemiological alert that the authorities have addressed together with local communities, giving the country better evels of health  at grass roots along with wide experience in dealing with this type of threat.

Due to its physical characteristics, Nicaragua is obliged to have a warning system for all types of threats including epidemiological, climatic (e.g. hurricanes), tectonic (seismological and volcanic) in preparation for which for many years the Sandinista government has been carrying out gigantic civil defence exercises involving millions of citizens.

As can be seen on the website of the Ministry of Health, it is false that the Government does not report on the progress of the pandemic in the country, in addition to the daily press conferences offered by its representatives and the abundant information provided through the media. Just as, in Nicaragua, there is also unrestricted freedom of disinformation, since not a single one of the deceitful right-wing media outlets has been shut down, so too there is genuine information communicated via the country’s Citizen Power media.

Since the end of February, the Nicaraguan Government has been announcing the policy to be followed in the face of the coronavirus:

• Nicaragua has not established, nor will it establish, any kind of quarantine.
• People who have symptoms of COVID-19 and also have some link to someone with the proven disease will be admitted to a health unit for study and follow-up.
• Those who also test positive for COVID-19 will be admitted to one of the centres for the treatment of patients with the disease.
• People who are admitted from countries at risk (as defined by WHO) will not be restricted from moving within the country, but will be alerted to the precautionary measures to be taken and asked for a contact number and address to follow up by phone and visits.

On January 21st, the day after Chinese authorities reported a third death from COVID-2019 and 200 infected people in Hubei province, as well as dozens of infected people in other Asian countries, the Nicaraguan Health Ministry, together with Pan American Health Organization, announced the epidemiological alert.

Ten days later, the Inter-Institutional Commission in charge of dealing with the emergency had drawn up a detailed protocol, based on its own experiences and those of the WHO, covering all aspects of the strategy for dealing with the pandemic, which is updated month by month as knowledge of the new coronavirus and COVID-19 advances.

The protocol contains detailed measures on epidemiological surveillance, laboratory and sampling procedures, organization of health services, inter-institutional organization, communication plans, etc.

During the first weeks, all health personnel were trained and all the medical infrastructure necessary to deal with the pandemic was prepared, including the inauguration on March 3rd of the molecular biology laboratory mentioned above, which allows testing for the new coronavirus.

Already on March 12th, the presidents of Central America (except Bukele of El Salvador) participated in a virtual conference to coordinate actions in the face of the pandemic. In addition, the Nicaraguan government held meetings with its border neighbours Costa Rica and Honduras to coordinate efforts against the pandemic. Certainly, Nicaragua has not adopted strident and conflictive attitudes, but rather total collaboration in the common effort to confront the pandemic.

A country like Nicaragua, dependent on foreign trade and labour income, without major natural sources of income in the form of hydrocarbons or other energy resources, cannot afford to “close” the economy lightly, much less in a situation when, at the time, there had not even been any imported cases of COVID-19.

In Nicaragua most families live from self-employment and depend on their daily income. This is similar to Honduras and El Salvador, where the draconian quarantine measures implemented have led to strong popular protests and breaches of the quarantine decreed by those governments. In El Salvador, the disruption of the delivery of $300 support payments led to protests and looting. In Honduras, the failure to deliver promised food to the population forced people to take to the streets.

With similarities to Sweden’s successful strategy to tackle the pandemic, Nicaragua bases its strategy on confidence in the population’s ability to take preventive measures while avoiding restrictions on economic activity to the greatest extent possible.

In addition, Nicaragua combines this work of public health education with a system of detection of possible cases of COVID-19, ranging from customs posts, ports and airports to work with border populations both to the north with Honduras and to the south with Costa Rica, and too with the activities of health centers and posts throughout the country as well as civil society structures in all neighborhoods and regions.

Nicaragua is a small country, it is very difficult to hide a situation of the seriousness of a COVID-19 infection. The health authorities have so far been able to track down any suspicious cases, not so as to restrict the freedom of the affected person, but to follow up and help them.

One event heavily manipulated by the Western press, and by the coup media within Nicaragua, was the “Love in the Time of COVID-19” walk held on Saturday, March 15th. This national event was interpreted in a tendentious way as a show of contempt for public health and for the protection measures against the coronavirus, when in fact the Citizen Power media supportive of the government had been covering COVID-19 promoting preventive measures against it for a couple of months.

The message conveyed by thousands of Sandinistas and people who support the Sandinista government who marched to all Nicaraguans that Saturday was that we should not lose our heads and “shut down” the country, that we should continue working but take the precautionary measures recommended in the media for weeks.

It was not until March 18th, with the report of the first case of coronavirus from a citizen who had been in Panama, that Nicaragua left the initial phase of preparation to enter the phase of imported cases, in which it currently still is. Since then, five more cases have been reported, of which two have recovered, one has died and three are under treatment.

On March 19th, now that Nicaragua has entered phase two of the pandemic, Vice President Rosario Murillo reported on the training of 250,000 volunteer health brigadistas who will visit more than one million homes throughout the country. By now, most Nicaraguan households have been visited more than once to follow up on the situation of the COVID-19 in the country.

It should be noted that all this work is by no means limited to informing the population and preparing the health system for COVID-19. The regular programs of the health system are still in place, as well as the days of free operations for the people who need them, etc. At the same time, the COVID-19 prevention campaign is also carried out alongside prevention of influenza, dengue, zika, chikungunya and other diseases that threaten the population.

At present, the Nicaraguan people are enjoying the Easter holidays in peace and with great responsibility. Many people have stayed in their neighborhoods with their families, which can be seen when they go out to the streets, which in many cases have become a space for socialization for the neighbors. However, many others have preferred to go to the different bathing spas in the country, or even in religious activities, also avoiding large crowds and observing the rules of hygiene.

For Easter Week, state employees have been given a break from April 4th to April 15th or April 17th (depending on the activity), and students until April 20th, in a kind of soft quarantine for the entire sector, which also serves to care for people in groups at risk from COVID-19 without burdening family members who are self-employed.

The future development of the pandemic in Nicaragua is not yet known. It could be, as indicated by some U.S. researchers, that the higher levels of vaccination of the population with BCG against tuberculosis compared to those of the Euro-American countries as well as Latin and Central American countries, will translate into a lower impact of COVID-19 in Nicaragua. If so, this would become a tribute to the massive vaccination campaigns that Sandinismo has promoted over the past 40 years.

Another element to be taken into account to explain the lower incidence of this pandemic in Nicaragua so far is the decline of Euro-American tourism following the defeated violent coup attempt in April 2018. In any case, there are a number of factors at play in this regard, especially the attentive operational activity, devoid of hysteria that the Sandinista government has shown in facing this emergency.

One thing is certain, however: If the Sandinista Government had acted before the COVID-19 as its neighbors in Honduras and El Salvador, the economic losses would have been enormous even before entering the peak of the pandemic in our region. Let us remember that the levels of contagion per million inhabitants in Central America are still much lower than those in Europe or North America. By the end of Holy Week, both Honduras and El Salvador will have suffered enormous losses, incurring unpayable debts and irretrievable damage to their relationship with the population.

Meanwhile, Nicaragua is still waiting for the pandemic to develop, so far without local community contagion, with all the resources of its health system intact, with valuable experience accumulated in treating the few cases that have occurred and with a strengthened relationship with the civilian population.

The Sandinista Front, and especially under the leadership of President Comandante Daniel Ortega together with Vice President Compañera Rosario Murillo, is expert in the art of mass political manoeuvring, or in other words, in rapid, operational political manoeuvring involving organised, disciplined and broad masses of people.

There are many historical examples of this, for example: the organization in a few months of the award-winning National Literacy Crusade in 1979-80; the organization of the Patriotic Military Service in the 1980s; the exchange of the entire national currency in less than 24 hours in 1988 (which deprived the Contra of billions of córdobas that had fled to Honduras); the years of disciplined restraint when faced with unremitting right wing government provocations, right up to the defeat of the failed “soft coup” of 2018, when many people outside Nicaragua believed that the Sandinista Front was defeated.

To the changing scenarios of COVID-19 the Sandinista Government will respond in a flexible but decisive manner, prioritizing the most vulnerable sectors so as to affect the popular economy as little as possible, aware that, more than a disease to be defeated, COVID-19 is a challenge to the ability of society as a whole to function, more a virus of society than a virus of the individual.

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Featured image: 250,000 volunteer health promoters have made 2.3 million house to house visits to educate about COVID-19, just one of many activities undertaken by the Sandinista government to address the pandemic. (Photo El 19 Digital)

The DeVos Department of Education’s new “Proposed Rules” for federal regulations of “Distance Education and Innovation” (85 FR 18638) will effectively open the floodgates for online education corporations to put public brick-and-mortar schools out of business by streamlining “adaptive-learning and other artificial intelligence” technologies that replace “human instructors” with “competency-based education (CBE)” software which provide “direct assessment” through “subscription-based” courseware that data-mine students’ cognitive-behavioral algorithms to “personalize” digital lessons.

What Is Computerized CBE? No More Classrooms, No More “Credit Hours”:

As I have documented in several articles, “CBE” is a euphemism for educational methods that deploy computer modules based on Harvard Psychologist B. F. Skinner’s “teaching machines,” which implement operant-conditioning methods to “shape” student learning into “competent” behaviors geared toward college or career readiness. The terms “competency-based education” and “CBE” are used 147 times in the new Proposed Rules for 85 FR 18638, which is a total of 64 pages long. Compare this to the 392-pages of federal legislation that cover the entire Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which only contains 6 references to “competency-based education.”

According to Skinnerian CBE advocates, competency-based computer learning at home is better than human instruction in a classroom because the one-to-one student/computer ratio enables each student to learn at his or her own pace. 85 FR 18638 states “CBE programs . . . measure student progress based on their demonstration of specific competencies rather than sitting in a seat or at a computer for a prescribed period of time. Many CBE programs are designed to permit students to learn at their own pace.” Stated differently, when a student enrolled in CBE courseware is ready to move on to the next lesson, he or she can click on the next learning module without having to wait for the teacher to deliver the next lecture. And if a CBE student is not ready to move on to the next virtual lesson, he or she can remediate by repeating the same digital learning module without being “left behind” when the teacher moves on to the next lecture.

“Subscription-Based” Distance Learning, Pay-as-You-Go

To facilitate “self-paced” CBE learning, online education corporations and other software companies are offering “subscription-based” e-learning services that enroll students on a pay-as-you-go basis. These self-paced CBE courses allow a student to “subscribe” for enrollment into virtual-learning modules which can be rolled over with monthly subscription fees for as long or as soon as it takes for the student to demonstrate “competency” in the course.

Now that basically every US school has converted to virtual “distance learning” through computers, 85 FR 18638 is attempting to loosen federal requirements for self-paced CBE courseware so that online education corporations can rake in federal funding for delivering more subscription-based “competency” lessons through digital platforms:

[c] urrent regulations require an institution to evaluate a student’s pace of completion by dividing completed credits over attempted credits. This calculation is difficult to apply in competency-based programs, including subscription-based programs, because there is often no set period of time during which a student “attempts” a competency in such programs; rather, the student works on a competency until he or she can demonstrate mastery of it. Given the limitations in this proposed definition on a student’s eligibility to receive additional disbursements [of federal funds], we believe it is unnecessary and needlessly burdensome for an institution’s SAP policy to include pace requirements for subscription-based programs.

In other words, these new (de)regulations will relax the legal requirements for online education corporations to receive federal funds, such as financial aid grants, as payments for students’ CBE subscription fees. It should be noted that “subscription-based” e-learning is referenced 112 times in these new Proposed Rules.

Adaptive Learning = Post-Human Artificial Intelligence

As I have documented in numerous articles, self-paced CBE subscriptions and “adaptive-learning” software basically go hand in hand. CBE “courseware” subscriptions “personalize” lessons for students through “adaptive-learning” computers, which are nothing less than modern digitalized versions of the “Skinner box,” or “teaching machine.” Adaptive-learning software revamps B. F. Skinner’s “programmed instruction” with “artificial intelligence” that automates “stimulus-response” methods of educational psychology to train students for academic and career “competences.”

Essentially, adaptive-learning courseware enables “self-paced” learning because the psychological-conditioning software “adapts” its lessons based on how the student “responds” to the virtual “stimuli,” such as multiple-choice or short-answer modules on digital windows. The faster the student responds with correct answers, the faster the learning stimuli will progress the student towards full “competence” at the end of the subscription-based course’s module sequence.

Incentivizing broader enrollment in subscription-based adaptive-learning courseware, 85 FR 18638 expands the definition of accreditable “academic engagement” as ” participation by a student in . . . an online course with an opportunity for interaction or an interactive tutorial, webinar, or other interactive computer-assisted instruction. . . . Such interaction could include the use of artificial intelligence or other adaptive learning tools.” Under this revised definition of “academic engagement,” schools will be given expanded flexibility to accredit a vast range of self-paced CBE curriculums delivered by online education companies through adaptive-learning AI that programs students with operant-conditioning algorithms.

Moreover, “academic engagement” is being further expanded to give adaptive CBE courseware the greenlight to phase out certain requirements for human instruction: “[a]ctive engagement . . . could include the use of artificial intelligence or other adaptive learning tools so that the student is receiving feedback from technology-mediated instruction. The interaction need not be exclusively with a human instructor.” Indeed, adaptive AI can deliver “feedback” on student learning through “direct assessment,” which is referenced 226 times in the new Proposed Rules.

Of course, in a bankrupt economy where people are locked down under emergency pandemic pretenses, such adaptive AI courseware will be more convenient since the software can be available for the student 24-hours a day (unlike a human teacher). In addition, the non-human AI bots will be much cheaper than human instructors who need to be fed and housed. So it looks like the proposed (de)regulations will set up incentives which will ensure that the virtual-learning industry is able to swallow up federal education funds while public brick-and-mortar schools and human teachers are starved out into obsolescence.

To be sure, AI adaptive-learning algorithms are evolving faster than legislators can deliberate on new regulations for such new “machine learning” innovations. Thus, to get out of the way of “progress,” 85 FR 18638 is basically writing a blank check for AI corporations to sell schools and students new e-learning products and ed-tech “updates” without preliminary regulatory permission from the federal government:

[t] he current regulations [which] do not address subscription-based programs or consider programs made possible through artificial intelligence-driven adaptive learning. . . . Because of the time it takes to implement new regulations, it is unlikely that the Department will be able to keep pace with developing technologies and other innovations in real time. These proposed regulations attempt to remove barriers that institutions face when trying to create and implement new and innovative ways of providing education to students, and also provide sufficient flexibility to ensure that future innovations we cannot yet anticipate have an opportunity to move forward without undue risk of a negative program finding or other sanction on an institution.

To put it another way, AI-learning algorithms evolve faster than legislators can regulate, so these new federal rules will “remove barriers” to AI ed-tech progress by allowing educational institutions the “flexibility” to rubberstamp new AI courseware programs without prior regulatory approval from the US Department of Ed.

But if the federal government allows AI ed-tech to develop faster than Congress can regulate, then the Department of Ed will render itself into a mere ceremonial bureaucracy that has abdicated its authority to AI algorithms, which means artificial intelligence will be in the driver’s seat taking control of the future of education policy as virtual distance learning becomes the mainstream mode of schooling in a post-corona economy.

It should be noted that Edgar McCulloch, who is a Government Relations representative of the IBM Corporation, sat on the “Accreditation and Innovation negotiating committee” involved in the proposal of these new federal rules. This is worth noting because IBM develops AI ed-tech through its Watson artificial-intelligence program which partners with the globalist Pearson Education LLC: the “world’s largest education company,” which also runs online schooling companies including Connections Academy.

How much stimulus money will be vacuumed up by online education corporations and AI courseware companies under these new federal rules? Will brick-and-mortar schools be able to survive in a post-corona economy in which people are either heavily travel restricted or too poor to pay for school buildings and human employees? Will human teachers, or even human ethics, survive in a world in which the total deregulation of technocratic advancement exalts AI as the judge, jury, and executioner of human learning?

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This article was originally published on OpEdNews.com.

John Klyczek has an MA in English and has taught college rhetoric and research argumentation for over eight years. His literary scholarship concentrates on the history of global eugenics and Aldous Huxley’s dystopic novel, Brave New World. He is the author of School World Order: The Technocratic Globalization of Corporatized Education (TrineDay Books); and he is a contributor to the Centre for Research on Globalization, OpEdNews, the Intrepid Report, the Dissident Voice, Blacklisted News, the Activist Post, News With Views, The Saker, Rense News, David Icke News, Natural News, and the SGT Report. He is also the Director of Writing and Editing at Black Freighter Productions (BFP) Books. His website is schoolworldorder.info.

I 30 ministri degli Esteri della Nato (per l’Italia Luigi Di Maio), riunitisi il 2 aprile in videoconferenza, (1) hanno incaricato il generale  UsaTod Wolters, Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa, di «coordinare il necessario appoggio militare per combattere la crisi del coronavirus».

È lo stesso generale  che, al Senato degli Stati uniti il 25 febbraio, ha dichiarato che «le forze nucleari sostengono ogni operazione militare Usa in Europa» e che lui è «sostenitore di una flessibile politica del primo uso» delle armi nucleari, ossia dell’attacco nucleare di sorpresa. (2) («Alla nostra salute ci pensa il dottor Stranamore», il manifesto, 24 marzo). (3)

Il generale Wolters è comandante supremo della Nato in quanto capo del Comando Europeo degli Stati uniti. Fa quindi parte della catena di comando del Pentagono, che ha la priorità assoluta. Quali siano le sue rigide regole lo conferma un recente episodio: il capitano della portaerei Roosevelt, Brett Crozier, è stato rimosso dal comando perché, di fronte al diffondersi del coronavirus a bordo, ha violato il segreto militare sollecitando l’invio di aiuti.(4)

Per «combattere la crisi del coronavirus» il generale Wolters dispone di «corridoi preferenziali per voli militari attraverso lo spazio aereo europeo», dove sono quasi scomparsi i voli civili. Corridoi preferenziali vengono usati anche dai bombardieri Usa da attacco nucleare B2-Spirit: il 20 marzo, decollati da Fairford in Inghilterra, si sono spinti, insieme a caccia norvegesi F-16, fin sull’Artico verso il territorio russo(5). In tal modo – spiega il generale Basham delle Forze aeree Usa in Europa –  «possiamo rispondere con prontezza ed efficacia alle minacce nella regione, dimostrando la nostra risolutezza a portare ovunque nel mondo la nostra potenza di combattimento».(6)

Mentre la Nato è impegnata a «combattere il coronavirus» in Europa, due dei maggiori Alleati europei, Francia e Gran Bretagna, inviano loro navi da guerra nei Caraibi. La nave da assalto anfibio Dixmund è salpata il 3 aprile da Tolone verso la Guyana francese per quella che il presidente Macron definisce «una operazione militare senza precedenti». denominata «Resilienza»,  nel quadro della «guerra al coronavirus».(7)  La Dixmund può svolgere la funzione secondaria di nave ospedale con 69 letti, 7 dei quali per terapie intensive. Il ruolo primario di questa grande nave, lunga 200 m e con un ponte di volo di 5000 m², è quello dell’assalto anfibio: avvicinatasi alla costa nemica, attacca con decine di elicotteri e mezzi da sbarco che trasportano truppe e mezzi corazzati. Caratteristiche analoghe, anche se su scala minore, ha la nave britannica  RFA Argus, salpata il 2 aprile verso la Guyana britannica.(8)

Le due navi europee si posizioneranno nelle stesse acque caraibiche nei pressi del Venezuela dove sta arrivando la flotta  da guerra – con le più moderne navi da combattimento litorale (costruite anche dall’italiana Leonardo per la US Navy) e migliaia di marines – inviata dal presidente Trump ufficialmente per bloccare il narcotraffico. Egli accusa il presidente venezuelano Maduro di «approfittare della crisi del coronavirus per accrescere il traffico di droga con cui finanzia il suo narco-Stato».(9)

Scopo dell’operazione, appoggiata dalla Nato, è rafforzare la stretta dell’embargo per strangolare economicamente il Venezuela (paese con le maggiori riserve petrolifere del mondo), la cui situazione è aggravata dal coronavirus che ha iniziato a diffondersi. L’obiettivo è deporre il presidente Maduro regolarmente eletto (sulla cui testa gli Usa hanno posto una taglia di 15 milioni di dollari) e instaurare un governo che porti il paese nella sfera di dominio Usa. Non è escluso che possa essere provocato un incidente che serva da pretesto per l’invasione del Venezuela.

La crisi del coronavirus crea condizioni internazionali favorevoli a una operazione di questo tipo, magari presentata come «umanitaria».

 Manlio Dinucci

 

Notes

(1)http://www.rfi.fr/en/europe/20200402-nato-coronavirus-covid-19-defence-budget

(2)https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Wolters_02-25-20.pdf

(3)https://ilmanifesto.it/alla-nostra-salute-ci-pensa-il-dottor-stranamore/

(4)https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/captain-crozier-captain-crozier-videos-show-sailors-sending-off-ousted-uss-roosevelt-commander-with-cheers-1.624732

(5)https://www.businessinsider.com/b2-stealth-bomber-flight-over-iceland-with-f15s-norwegian-f35s-2020-3

(6)https://www.stripes.com/news/europe/us-allies-test-air-and-missile-defense-in-southern-europe-1.584823

(7)https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/depart-du-porte-helicopteres-dixmude-vers-la-zone-antilles-guyane-819320.html

(8)https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/rfa-argus-sails-for-the-caribbean-ready-to-provide-medical-support-if-needed/

(9)https://nypost.com/2020/04/02/us-to-deploy-navy-near-venezuela-to-stop-drug-trade/

In the midst of the most horrendous crisis to confront the entire human family in recent decades, the United States elite, it appears, is hell-bent on perpetuating massive sanctions against certain states and affecting regime change in some of them. Sanctions cause much pain and suffering and even death on a wide scale.  One would have thought that given what the global Coronavirus pandemic has wrought in the US, its elite would seek to lift sanctions it has imposed upon societies determined to protect their independence and sovereignty.

By looking at three well-known victims of US sanctions, we shall show how the coronavirus crisis has helped to bring to the fore some of the issues that challenge them. Iran has been under comprehensive sanctions which have become increasingly harsh since 1980. There is no need to emphasise that it is because Iran after the Islamic Revolution of February 1979 refused to yield to US dictates and chose to champion the Palestinian cause through deeds rather than words that it found itself the target of the superpower of the day. Iran has made it very clear that though it is going through great difficulties as a result of the Coronavirus it will not accept any assistance from the US unless the US lifts the sanctions. It has however applied for financial help from the IMF which according to some sources has been blocked by the US government that exercises considerable influence over that multilateral institution. China and other countries from the European Union have come to Iran’s aid.

It is significant that citizens’ organisations in Iran have extended a hand to the poorer segment of US society which is bearing the brunt of the pandemic that has now crippled the country. Cuba is yet another country under US sanctions for much longer — since 1961 — which has also reached out to the people of the US. The entire world as demonstrated year in, and year out, in the UN General Assembly   —- with the exception of the US and Israel — wants the sanctions against Cuba lifted. And yet the US government arrogantly perpetuates the blockade even in the midst of the Coronavirus that has killed more than 10,000 Americans. It is worth noting that Cuba with its limited resources has done more than most other countries in trying to assist other virus stricken countries in various parts of the world.

Venezuela is a third country under severe mainly US sanctions that has been forced to pay a huge price for its legitimate desire to protect its independence and sovereignty.  As with Iran and Cuba, it is not just sanctions that are employed to suffocate Venezuela. There was a coup in April 2002 against then Venezuelan president, the late Hugo Chavez in order to affect a regime change which failed because of people power. Now in 2020 the adversaries of the Venezuelan people have hatched a bizarre tale of current president Nicolo Maduro’s involvement in international drug trafficking with the aim of flooding the US market with cocaine. An utterly baseless and ludicrous charge if one knows anything at all about drug routes and production centres in the region, this is the latest attempt to oust the democratically elected president in Caracas in the midst of a health pandemic.

It is obvious that the US elite’s geopolitical machinations are as malicious as ever in spite of a crisis that has brought so much devastation and death to so many. It is because human suffering is so rife and rampant even in the US and the Western world that many of us are hoping the US elite will show some compassion and eliminate sanctions which have also caused so much pain and misery and loss of life to hundreds of thousands of human beings in almost every continent for decades. It is the same concern for human suffering that prompted some NGOs to call for a global ceasefire as the Coronavirus took its toll. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Gutteres has endorsed the plea. Many governments have also supported the call but they have not translated rhetoric into action.

The Coronavirus pandemic demands action. And many have acted to demonstrate global solidarity. In geopolitical terms, lifting sanctions and observing ceasefires in all the conflict zones would be convincing proof of our common humanity. They would reflect the truth of the wisdom embodied in the immortal lines of the 14^th century poet Sheikh Saidi:

The human race is a single being

Created from one jewel

If one member is struck

All must feel the blow

Only someone who cares for the pain of others

Can truly be called human.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia.

Featured image is from podur.org

Among the countries affected by the global pandemic, it is undeniable that there is a certain imbalance in media coverage, with some very affected countries being scarcely followed by the news, while in other locations the situation is overestimated. An example of what is being said here is the case of Ecuador, about which little or nothing has been said in the mainstream mass media around the world. The collapsed South American country began the biggest crisis in its recent history. The fragile Ecuadorian public health structure was not efficient to deal with even the first cases of COVID-19, causing the infection to spread quickly. The government’s slowness in taking action to control the crisis was also a key factor in building the current scenario: Ecuador, in a very short time, became the country with the highest number of deaths per capita due to the new coronavirus in Latin America.

In order to be aware of the exponential growth of the infection in the country, Ecuador reported its first positive of new coronavirus on February 29 and, today, already confirms almost 3,700 cases and more than 180 deaths. However, these figures are far from representing the reality of the country’s infection. With the rapid expansion of the disease, the huge number of people in hospitals caused the national health system to collapse in a few days, generating such a situation that many people become ill and even die without ever going to a hospital, making it impossible to identify the actual number of patients in the country.

“It is a sum of several factors, but the main thing is that in Ecuador we have not strictly followed all the measures that must be taken to face an emergency of this magnitude, nor have people paid attention to government alerts,” said Esteban Ortiz, an Ecuadorian epidemiologist from the University of the Americas, in an interview with the BBC Spanish edition. The same researcher relates the emergence of the disease in Ecuador to the close ties between the country and Spain – with a constant flow of people – in addition to the failure in closing the airports and adopting the mandatory quarantine.

“[Patient zero] came from Spain and spent several days at her family’s house, participating in social gatherings, where he infected other people, including his sister, who also died due to the coronavirus in a few weeks (…) And there was, at that time, no strict control after his arrival (…) It is true that this [the delay in closing airports and adopting quarantine] is a factor that influenced the number of infections – although not the only one – especially in Guayaquil and Quito, where are the international airports and where most cases occurred,” said Ortiz.

However, in order to better understand the Ecuadorian crisis, we have to analyze it deeply, studying mainly the political turmoil in the country. Current President Lenín Moreno has recently become the West’s best bet for Ecuador. Moreno had previously been Vice President of Rafael Correa. Having ruled the country for a decade, Correa created the moment of greatest social and political stability in Ecuador, starting the process he called the “Citizen Revolution”, reducing poverty and increasing the country’s middle class. Moreno was, for a long time, his ally, but things changed completely in 2017, when the current president was elected, supported by Correa and his constituency in a sphere of “continuity” that was broken immediately after Moreno took office.

Moreno immediately started an internal coup in the party, allying himself with the neoliberal right and initiating a policy of scrapping and dismantling the entire legacy of Rafael Correa, approving measures of “economic austerity”, liberalization, privatizations and reducing the country’s social indexes. On the international stage, Moreno’s capitulation to the liberal hegemonic forces is even clearer, considering that it was he who betrayed Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, handing him over to Interpol.

The result of Moreno’s neoliberal alignment has clear effects on the way the country deals with the pandemic. The arrival of the coronavirus in Ecuador was combined with a profound social factor: extreme mass poverty and scrapped public services. Within days, the failed Ecuadorian public health structure gave way to a massive demand for tests and treatments for the new coronavirus. With the immediate collapse, most of the Ecuadorian population is left to their own devices. Still, not even the funeral market is being effective in dealing with the demand for services, which, added to the impossibility of a good part of the poor population to pay the funeral costs, is generating a scenario of sanitary catastrophe, with bodies being abandoned or burned in the streets of the country’s popular neighborhoods.

With a good part of the population thrown into poverty and unable to pay for a test to discover if they are infected, how can we trust the official data? If the figures reported by the government are already alarming, in fact, the actual figures for COVID-19 in Ecuador must be even more catastrophic. All of this is the result of the liberalization and scrapping policies promoted by Moreno to encourage privatization and submission to the financial market. Now, who will help Ecuador? With practically the whole of South America facing serious problems of infection and the USA, Moreno’s main ally, being the country most affected by the disease in the world, Ecuador may be left alone with the catastrophe, paying the price of its own political, geopolitical and economic decisions.

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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

The United States Strategic National Stockpile of essential medical supplies maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seems unable to respond to the present COVID-19 crisis.  There is much discussion in today’s news about who is responsible for the shortcomings. Did Trump find the shelves empty or full when he took office after President Obama? Is the stockpile meant to support local governments in dealing with shortages in such a crisis, as the DHHS website said until last Friday, or is it specifically meant for use by the federal government, “our stockpile… not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use,” as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner insists, a view supported by the newly amended DHHS website?

The United States maintains other strategic stockpiles, more carefully and at a far greater expense. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a stockpile of oil and gasoline and in 2009, President Obama announced the “Stockpile Stewardship Program,” pledging more than a trillion dollars to ensure the “safety, security, and reliability” and the “life extension” of the deteriorating nuclear weapons stockpile. A common dictionary definition of the word “stewardship” is an ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources for the future, but in 2009, President Obama was not speaking of stewardship over the fragile environment, nor over the crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges and tunnels, nor hospitals or schools, nor even stewardship for our national parks and forests, but stewardship for a stockpile of nuclear weapons. The “life extension” he called for was not for the world’s elderly increasingly at risk, but for the aging arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threaten the obliteration of all life.

President Trump’s determination to purge his predecessor’s legacy does not apply to Obama’s Stockpile Stewardship Program. With unique bipartisan support, the life extension of nuclear weapons has been kept safe from Trump’s budget cuts that decimated the United States’ ability to respond to a pandemic.

On this day in 1967, one year before he was killed, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech at New York’s Riverside Church titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” that speaks to the present situation where weapons of mass destruction have priority over instruments of healing.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” Dr. King declared, “is approaching spiritual death.”

In this speech Dr. King labeled the “triple evils of militarism, racism, and materialism” and he lamented that “adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube” while human needs, especially those of the poor, went unmet.

Among the synonyms for the word “stockpile,” along with “cache,” “hoard,” “store” and “lay-away” is the word “treasure.” We stockpile what is valuable to us, the things that we treasure, what we want to keep for the future. Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Judging by our budget priorities, preserving the threat of nuclear destruction is closer to our collective heart than even our health and our lives and we have arrived at the spiritual death Dr. King warned of 52 years ago.

While there is life, there is hope, though, and we are at a critical moment. As horrible as the COVID-19 pandemic is, it will run its course and humanity will go on. The same cannot be said, however, of the imminent threats of nuclear destruction and climate collapse. We will not survive on this planet so long as stewardship over stockpiles of fossil fuels and nuclear weapons takes priority over ventilators and surgical masks. So long as what “life extension” means is keeping nuclear weaponry up to date and not healthcare, housing, education, the peace and wellbeing of all, there can be no hope.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values,” said Dr. King.

52 years later, our very existence as a species is at risk and the radical revolution of values that he preached is our best hope.

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Brian Terrell is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and is sheltering-in-place at a Catholic Worker Farm in Maloy, Iowa.

Featured image is from VCNV

In a letter issued on Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro warned the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump against making any unwise military decisions against the Bolivarian Republic. 

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza read a letter on Sunday that Venezuelan President Maduro sent to the people of the United States, following Washington’s recent threats toward the Bolivarian Republic.

In the letter, the head of state indicated that “in Venezuela we do not want an armed conflict in our nation, we cannot accept war threats,” and urged the American people not to believe in the reasons that Trump indicates for attacking Venezuela.

President Maduro urged the people in the United States to not believe Trump’s statements about “fighting drug trafficking”, calling these claims by the U.S. leader false and unfounded.

In the text, President Nicolás Maduro rejected the threats of the Trump administration against Venezuela that seek to lead the region to an expensive, bloody and indefinite armed conflict.

“We in Venezuela do not want an armed conflict in our region. We want fraternal relationships, cooperation, exchange and respect, “he said.

He stated that the country cannot accept war threats, or blockades, nor the intention to install an international guardianship that violates sovereignty and ignores the advances of the last year in the political dialogue between the government and a large part of the Venezuelan opposition.

After showing solidarity with the U.S. people that are suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, he called on the people of the country to hold their leaders accountable and compel them to focus their attention and resources on the necessary and urgent fight against the pandemic.

Furthermore, he requested the cessation of military threats, the end of illegal sanctions and the blockade that restricts access to humanitarian supplies, which are so necessary today in the country to combat this virus.

“I ask you, with your heart in your hands, not to allow your country to be drawn, once again, to another endless conflict, another Vietnam or another Iraq, but this time closer to home,” the letter highlights.

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Featured image: Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza reads the letter President Nicolas Maduro penned to the people of the United States. | Photo: MCPPI

Cash has been the target of the banking and financial elites for years. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is being used to frighten the masses into accepting a cashless society. That would mean the death of what’s left of our free society.

CBS News, CNN, and other mainstream outlets are fearmongering again. Alarmism is nothing new in the media world, but this time, it’s not about triggering panic buying or even pushing a political agenda.

The war on cash is about imposing a new meta-narrative. As economist Joseph Salerno explains, the cashless society forces all payments to be made through the financial system. It doesn’t end with monopoly control over transactions, though.

Being bound to computers for transactions kicks the door wide open to hardcore surveillance of personal activity and location data. Being eternally on the grid means relentless taxation and negative interest rates, which the Federal Reserve is already gearing up for.

None of this bothers the well-heeled boosters of a cashless society or their lackeys in the media. They want Americans reading about the threat of coronavirus cooties on their cash, which is absurd.

Germs, of course, can loiter all over credit and debit cards, smartphones, ATMs, and every other cash alternative device. Too bad implanted microchip technology isn’t further along, the banksters must be thinking.

In another CNN article, readers are practically shamed for withdrawing cash to save during a crisis. Every sentence, every word, every letter of the article is nuts.

It begins by reassuring the reader that their bank account is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). There’s no mention of moral hazard from CNN. The fact that the federal government guarantees every bank account up to $250,000 encourages reckless financial and banking behavior. Not worth mentioning, CNN?

Prior to the end of World War II, there were $500, $1,000, and $10,000 bills in wide circulation. This cash was dissolved by the Federal Reserve in the name of fighting organized crime. This same argument is now being made against $50 and $100 bills by Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff.

In the Wall Street Journal, Rogoff also wrote that a cashless society would offer such benefits as “greater flexibility for the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy when necessary.”

He wrote those words in 2017. And these too:

“The Federal Reserve should be able to implement negative nominal interest rates vastly more effectively in the absence of large bills, which could prove quite important as a stimulative tool in the next financial crisis.”

Prophetic. And indeed, negative interest rates would require the assistance of outlawing cash, so that banking customers don’t cheat by simply drawing out on their accounts.

Pardon the pun, but it’s absolutely sick how COVID-19 is being used now as a launching pad for this cashless agenda. There’s nothing to fear about using cash during this time of social distancing.

Wash your hands after handling cash, but don’t give up your moolah. Preserve your health, your privacy, and your liberty.

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It happened in the US before. It’s happening again in various ways at a time when perhaps harder than ever hard times may be just beginning.

First some background and related thoughts. 

The Great Depression of the 1930s in the US followed prosperity marred by excesses in the 20s. The October 1929 stock market crash changed everything, ordinary people hit hardest.

Earlier goods times left out America’s underclass. Prosperity in the 1920s didn’t include most Blacks, other people of color, a new immigrant generation, poor southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers, nor many others in the US nationwide.

Throughout its history, America, Land of Opportunity has always been overshadowed by inequality between the haves and have-nots.

Unemployed men standing in line outside a depression soup kitchen in Chicago 1931. (Public Domain)

In 1962, Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” exposed the nation’s dark dark side enough for Jack Kennedy to ask White House Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to do something about it.

Following JFK’s state sponsored assassination in November 1963, Lyndon Johnson (on January 8, 1964) “declare(d) unconditional war on poverty in America.”

It fell way short of addressing the extent of the problem nationwide. Today, Washington’s bipartisan criminal class is going the other way — marginalizing the rights and wealth of ordinary people so privileged ones can be richer and more powerful.

Almost 60 years ago, Harrington said the following:

“In morality and in justice, every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering.”

“But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.”

It didn’t happen in the 1960s. Today, things are on a slippery slope toward becoming a ruler/serf/totalitarian society that’s more intrusive, unsafe and unfit to live in than earlier — what only a grassroots national convulsion can have any chance to stop and shift things in a positive direction.

Change always comes bottom up, never top down. Privileged classes don’t change unless pushed hard.

In times like now, reality hits home hardest when many US workers above the poverty line are added to its underclass.

It happened during the Great Depression. It appears to be happening again now.

While growing mass unemployment won’t be a permanent state, what will follow when current crisis conditions end?

Will the US return to pre-COVID-19 conditions or is permanent transformation underway that will change the lives of ordinary Americans irreparably?

As explained in an earlier article, crises are times when ruling authorities convince people to sacrifice personal freedoms for greater security — not realizing that both will be lost.

Ruling authorities take advantage of times like now by instituting draconian policies they’re unable to introduce during normal times without risking mass rebellion.

The US is permanently at war abroad against invented enemies, what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

Most people are unaware that what’s happening abroad is ongoing at home by other means.

Post-9/11, human and civil rights were sharply curtailed. Enormous amounts of wealth were transferred from ordinary people to the nation’s privileged class.

A secretive military, industrial, national security state threatens everyone everywhere — a scheme for unchallenged global dominance by eliminating whatever stands in the way of achieving this diabolical objective.

Anyone challenging what’s going on risks being treated as a national security threat, including investigative journalists like Julian Assange and whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for exposing US wrongdoing.

Speech, press, and academic freedoms in the US are more greatly threatened than ever before, most people none the wiser.

The US needs enemies at home and abroad to advance its agenda so they’re invented to justify what’s unjustifiable.

The Global War on Terror is the greatest hoax in modern times – along with the no-peace/Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Big Brother is real watching everyone. The nation I grew up in no longer exists. One-party rule with two extremist right wings today threatens virtually everything just societies hold dear.

In my 9th decade, I may never be around enough to know how things turn out longer-term.

Will ordinary people be transformed into serfs to serve the interests of the rich and powerful?

Will America be consumed by its arrogance and hubris? Will it destroy planet earth and its life forms?

America was never beautiful when I was young. Today its ruling class may enslave the majority, eliminate nonbelievers, or kill us all by its rage to dominate unchallenged.

Image on the right: An impoverished American family living in a shanty, 1936 (Public Domain)

Pre-1930s poverty in the US became far greater after the 1929 stock market crash. Many in the middle class and some high-income families experienced it for the first time.

The American dream became a national nightmare for the great majority in the country.

Unemployment increased from 3% to 25%. Today it may go much higher.

In the 1930s, some US cities experienced up to 80% unemployment because of lost manufacturing and construction activity — dropping 54% and 78% respectively.

Around 80% of auto manufacturing halted. Suicides increased. Politicians and businessmen feared rebellion.

FDR’s New Deal was largely motivated by wanting to save capitalism at a time when echoes of 1917 revolution in czarist Russia were still audible.

Roosevelt reportedly said: “If I fail, I shall be the last one.” He took office when the US was in upheaval.

NGOs were overwhelmed with requests for help and needed it large-scale, the same true for states and local communities.

A national solution was needed then and again now. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt partly delivered.

There was New Deal leadership. Today there’s Donald Trump, and a dubious cast of characters surrounding him. They and most congressional members are largely indifferent to growing public needs.

It took buildup for war and WW II to end hard times in the 1930s because federal programs spent too little, why Great Depression years continued for a decade.

An alphabet soup of programs were initiated to revive the economy and help the unemployed.

Lots of jobs were created but not enough to end hard times. A small-scale food stamp program was established for needly federal workers, not all Americans in need.

Charitable organizations distributed free bread and soup to impoverished Americans in New York, Chicago and elsewhere.

Mobster Al Capone fed the hungry on the city’s south side under a banner that read:

“Free Soup Coffee & Doughnuts for the Unemployed.”

In December 1931, the Chicago Tribune headlined: “120 000 meals are served by Capone Free Soup Kitchen” — a PR triumph for Big Al at the time, who also was public enemy No. 1.

He showed up at times to shake hands and offer encouragement to the downtrodden.

Like other soup kitchens at the time, his served three meals a day. On a Thanksgiving Thursday, he served free beef stew for everyone. The site is now a parking lot.

The term breadline refers to poor, hungry people lining up for free food. During the Great Depression, some stretched for blocks daily.

Initially run largely by private organizations and churches, government got involved because of overwhelming public need.

They operated in cities and towns nationwide. They offered little nutritional sustenance but something was better than nothing.

During his 1928 presidential campaign, Herbert Hoover said the US was “nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.”

In their book titled “A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression,” Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe discussed feeding the hungry at the time.

Beginning in early 1930s, breadlines grew in number and size to feed the hungry without jobs.

In 1931, growing numbers of hungry Americans belied Hoover’s claim that “nobody is actually starving.”

Ziegelman and Coe documented grim subsistence diets nationwide in urban and rural areas.

Malnutrition caused large-scale outbreaks of pellagra, rickets and other diseases.

In the run-up to WW II, large numbers of draft-age US men failed their physicals because of the ravages of the 30s on human health.

In 1932, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company dismissively said “(a)s a people, we are given normally to overfeeding.”

(We should) not be surprised if, under the present conditions of enforced moderation, many have enjoyed better health than ever before.”

Cold hard reality was polar opposite. Hoover and FDR were similar and different at the same time.

Both figures had great reservations about people living on the dole. Hoover was largely unbending. Roosevelt adapted to the notion that desperate times call for desperate measures.

Eleanor Roosevelt was far more than first lady. She was a social welfare/human and civil rights champion and integral part of New Deal programs — publicly and behind the scenes.

Along with helping the poor, unemployed, and hungry during the Great Depression, she believed civil rights for all was the litmus test for society.

Last week, Bloomberg News headlined: “The Recession Bread Lines Are Forming in Mar-a-Lago’s Shadow,” saying:

“In Palm Beach, a diner races to feed laid off workers. Food banks and pantries (are) see(ing) surge in demand and long-term need.”

With growing millions of unemployed nationwide, breadlines are becoming the new normal, including near Trump’s Florida white house.

“(A) brutal new hunger crisis is emerging among laid-off workers that has begun to overwhelm the infrastructure that normally takes care of the needy,” Bloomberg reported.

Some hunger in America facts:

According to Feeding America before COVID-19 emerged, “1 in 7 people struggle(d) with hunger in the US.”

Millions of families with children are food insecure, not sure of obtaining enough food to get by.

Households with children are most vulnerable. The problem affects virtually “every community in the country” in urban and rural areas.

Many food insecure households don’t qualify for food stamps because of large-scale cuts to the program approved by Dems and Republicans.

Food banks and other hunger relief programs support them as much as possible.

Hunger affects young and old, including the underemployed, especially when teetering on possible unemployment.

Millions of US households struggle daily with tough choices — between feeding their families, paying rent or servicing mortgages, seeking medical help when ill, heating homes in winter, and finding a way to handle other essential needs.

Pre-Covid-19, Feeding America’s south Florida director said her operation fed over 700,000 people in four counties, including wealthy Palm Beach County.

Now “growth is exponential,” she stressed, a three-fold increase in funding needed to feed the hungry in south Florida alone.

Local food banks and pantries had no contact from the Trump Organization, the White House, or DJT’s Mar-a-Lago — despite multiple requests for help from Feeding America.

With hunger, unemployment and poverty growing exponentially in the US, how will ordinary people cope if harder than ever hard times are long-lasting?

Things are developing into a far greater crisis than during the Great Recession of 2008-09.

Feeding America and other food banks are hard-pressed by inadequate funding at a time of burgeoning need nationwide.

Many can’t keep pace with growing demand that’s likely to increase ahead.

US policymakers and major media scared most people to death over COVID-19. When lockdowns, shelter in place, and social distancing end, their lasting effects will remain.

When perfect storms erupt, their effects are long-lasting after calm returns.

This storm may have considerable upside before subsiding, including possible multiple waves of COVID-19 outbreaks.

Likely economic and financial pain will hit ordinary Americans hardest, along with likely further erosion of human and civil rights.

Once policies are in place, they’ll likely be hard to reverse short of national rebellion.

What’s unfolding today may be looked back on ahead as a time when the nation entered the abyss of lost rights and well-being for the majority of its people.

Perhaps things will never be the same for them in their lifetimes. An unacceptable new normal may become the new status quo.

With most Americans living from paycheck to paycheck, sharply rising unemployment may cause an unprecedented level of long-lasting deprivation in the country, and its harmful effect on human and emotional health.

None of what’s unfolding should have happened. If the nation was run by government of, by, and for everyone equitably, Americans would be in good hands to deal effectively with whatever situations arise.

Sadly, polar opposite is true. COVID-19 isn’t the great crisis of our time, not by a long shot.

It’s government of, by, and for the super-rich and their cronies, by scheming self-serving politicians.

US governance is composed largely of white men who operate extrajudicially — who lie, connive, misinterpret and pretty much do things ad libitum in discharging their duties as they see fit for themselves and deep-pocketed funders.

It’s a nation of men, now laws, equity or justice. As unacceptable as things have been pre-COVID-19, they’re likely to get much worse ahead.

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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.

The Boris Johnson government have clearly demonstrated they are not the people to run the country in a crisis. Their refusal to partake in an EU procurement programme for desperately needed life-saving medical equipment is a last-gasp expression of their tribalism in a situation which demanded so much more. It shone a light on exactly who they are and they failed us all in our time of need. The reality was that they made the wrong decisions and then lied about it. Now the cover-ups begin.

And whilst they engage in that, Britain is now facing not just a crisis but a catastrophe in the making.

In June 1976, the British pound reached a record low against the US dollar at 1.24 USD to 1 GBP – today’s exchange rate (as at 05/04/20) is 1.23USD to 1 GBP. It has just gone lower than that of a crisis which saw the PM ousted as Britain went with its begging bowl to the IMF for the biggest loan in its history. America wouldn’t agree to it unless Britain paid it back within six months and strangled its economy on the way. The loan was finally agreed on better terms but only if heavy cuts to public expenditure took place. On 15th December 1976 – the government announced a massive 20 per cent cut in public spending (source – national archives/ cabinet papers). What followed was a painful fight against inflation that eventually changed everything.

The IMF crisis reinforced a change in policy orientation away from full employment and social welfare towards the focus of controlling inflation and expenditure. Britain was partially shielded by increased oil prices and North Sea oil revenues at the time – something it no longer has (because A- it doesn’t have as much oil anymore and B- the price has collapsed now anyway).

The Labour Party began unravelling into camps of social democrats and left-wing supporters, which caused bitter rows inside the party.

Eighteen months later, as the country was feeling the grip of fierce new austerity measures it entered the coldest winter in nearly two decades and the ‘winter of discontent’ arrived. This was driven by a government who capped public sector pay to control inflation and also set an example to the private sector. Widespread strikes organised by the unions eventually led to the fall of the Labour leader James Callaghan and in 1979, that situation contributed significantly to Margaret Thatcher’s victory. She then ushered in a new form of economic policy called neoliberal capitalism (trickle-down economics), the end-game of which we are witnessing right now four decades later.

The reason for telling this widely known story is that Britain faces, in the near future, a worse situation even than that.

Debt defaults

In 1976, the national debt, as a percentage of GDP stood at around 45 per cent. Today it is 87 per cent. Just before the financial crisis in 2008, the national debt had fallen to 38 per cent after ten years of Tony Blair’s government. From there, the national debt skyrocketed by £1trillion. This is how much it has cost to save the banks. Half went to save them from their failed gambling operations – the other half was intravenously injected into the economy to save it from recession. The growth that was heralded by George Osborne at the time was to some reasonable extent false because it was funded from debt, not productivity.

The coronavirus crisis, when all said and done, will add at least another £300 billion (quite possibly double that), to the national debt which is already costing the taxpayer nearly a £1billion a week to service the interest charges alone.

Despite the government’s effort to cushion the blow to business, there is a wave of collapses on the horizon. Out of a total of 5.8 million small businesses, one million are already facing closure. An astonishing 62 per cent of British Chamber of Commerce members have confirmed they are just twelve weeks from collapse. One million people have already applied for Universal credit having lost their jobs. You can be really conservative here and double it over the next three months – but reality says it’ll probably be triple that if the lockdown continues for another month or so. Just that alone will cost the treasury over £2billion a week in job seekers allowance, let alone the other benefits to be claimed when keeping a roof going. In addition, there are 200,000 businessesthat started inside this tax year, who qualify for no government support at all.

The bank of England has reduced interest rates to a historic low. It is now back on its quantitative easing programme. The bond markets have backed off, the exchange rate is a disturbing dicator that investors are on the run.

Today, corporate and household debt is at an all-time high. Higher in fact, than it was just before the financial collapse. In 1976 neither was anything like this. In those days, house prices (and therefore mortgages) were pegged to average earnings, today they are not. In those days, investors raised money through a balance of shareholders and bank equity to acquire or build businesses with moderated debt ratios – today thousands of businesses have restructured debt models that depend entirely on growth and up to the teeth in multi-funded debt obligations. Today, we have a ‘pass-the-parcel’ model and you’re going down if it’s you when the recession hits. A wave of defaults is on the brink. Household credit card debt defaults suddenly shot up in 2019 and a crisis was already building in auto debt and unsecured loans.

The music just stopped

If the lockdown continues for another month, by the end of the year, we will be witnessing an economic downturn not seen in Britain before. Some economists have already been punching the numbers and said that in Britain what we’re facing is worse than 2008. The range of decline is lockdown dependent but either way, GDP will fall somewhere between 15 per cent and 25 per cent in Q2 alone.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research predicts a staggering 15 per cent crash in GDP in the second quarter. Forecasts already suggest that business investment has already dramatically declined as a result of Brexit and the Covid crisis and it will take more than a decade for business investment to catch up.

One of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs and business managers has predicted Britain is on the brink of a depression to match that of the 1930s. Luke Johnson said – “If you look at the misery and ill health that caused and the damage to society as a whole there is a serious debate to be had to see if we are relentlessly pursuing the right course of action.”

In 2008, Britain had the ability to hit the printers and create money. If it did the same today, the national debt would soar to 120 per cent of GDP. Some will tell you that because the Bank of England can do this as we have our own currency, it is no big deal. It is. However, in so doing the government could lose control of inflation, from there, another catastrophic domino effect on top of the one that went first would likely happen.

Following the government’s pledge to cover 80 per cent of a worker’s pay packet up to £2,500 a month, the BCC said a third of survey respondents planned to furlough between 75 per cent and 100 per cent of their workforce over the following week. But in little more than three months, two-thirds of them say they are facing financial ruin anyway.

Dark choice

There is a nonsense that prevails in Britain – that we are a stoic, take it on the chin, stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on lot. No, we are not. If people lose their incomes and food goes short in fridges – they will come out (lockdown or not) and take it. The police are already reporting a surge in business burglaries.

There’s a stark choice, one between really bad and utterly dreadful.

Luke Johnson continues –

“I think there is a terrible trade-off the country will have to make at some point in the very near future about the damage to our whole standard of living and whether we are willing to accept the suicides and all the collateral damage of the shutdown, as opposed to protecting the NHS so it can keep people with the virus alive.”

There’s a truth about this crisis. The government were warned about it. They tested the health service. They read the report of its findings and subsequent warnings – and ignored them all two years ago. They were given early warnings by the Chinese, by the WHO and by other countries over this Covid – and ignored them all. They were given offers of assistance from the EU and ministers turned the other way. The Coronavirus could kill tens of thousands of Britons, and we had only one chance to stop it. The government is not ahead of this crisis and now simply chasing headlines – because of its own actions.

Now, the country will have to make a choice – sacrifice people to save the economy or sacrifice the economy to save people. In both scenarios, people will die needlessly. It is the government who put the country into this position in the first place – because they knew better didn’t they? The trouble is – they didn’t. After this crisis, there will be unemployment crisis, company collapses, the debt crisis and all of its fallout.

Soon it will become clear in the mortality statistics against how other countries performed in this crisis that Britain executed its plan very badly and the worst of both worlds happened – that people died unnecessarily and damage to the economy was worse than it should have been.

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Featured image is from TP

Agora, que a maior parte de nós, em todo o mundo, fomos obrigados a estar naquilo que facilmente pode ser descrito como prisão domiciliária, de repente temos imenso tempo para ler livros, assistir a grandes filmes e ouvir música esplêndida.

Muitos de nós andam, há anos, a repetir tristemente o mesmo: “se eu tivesse tempo…”

Agora temos imenso – imenso tempo. O mundo parou. Está a acontecer algo horrível; algo que nunca quisemos que ocorresse. Sentimo-lo, estamos aterrorizados, mas não sabemos exactamente o que é. Não já, ainda não.

A ficção tornou-se realidade. Albert Camus e a sua “Peste”. José Saramago e o seu “Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira”.

Não sabíamos que algo do género podia acontecer; mesmo aqueles entre nós que não têm qualquer confiança na sabedoria da civilização ocidental.

Ainda hoje, mais uma vez, leio os mesmos argumentos que me fazem sentir arrepios na espinha sempre que os repetem. E repetem-nos, de modo frequente agora, pelo menos na Europa. Ali, nota-se que regressou o fascismo. Citando o Dr. Luboš Motl, físico teórico checo, professor assistente na Universidade de Harvard entre 2004 e 2007:

“E acreditam que as estruturas que lhes permitem sobreviver – os governos, os bancos e por aí fora – são ‘maléficas’. Alguns são só analfabetos financeiros. Mas outros estão cientes do que afirmam e regozijam-se a exigir que se sacrifiquem triliões para evitar numa proporção infinitésima a probabilidade de que alguém com mais de 90 anos não seja infectado e viva um pouco mais. Não aceitam de todo quão dependentes estão da sociedade e do sistema. Não percebem que os seus valores morais, os seus ‘direitos humanos’, só existem se forem pagos por sociedades prósperas.”

Um doutor… Deus meu! Uma “sociedade próspera” significa, como é óbvio, uma sociedade capitalista, ocidental. Imperialismo, neo-colonialismo! Para pessoas como ele, é claro, as vidas humanas não são todas iguais. O seu ‘valor’ depende da idade, e talvez da raça?

Sempre foi assim, no Ocidente, mas pelo menos era, de certa maneira, dissimulado. Agora está à vista. E tremo. Não de medo, mas de repulsa. Definitivamente não quero viver no “mundo de Motl”.

Mas regressemos ao tema central desta peça.

Agora finalmente temos o proverbial tempo para ler, para ver filmes e para ouvir música. Involuntariamente, mas tempo não nos falta, seja como for. Temos também imenso tempo para pensar, pensar e pensar.

O grande agora falecido escritor uruguaio, ícone da esquerda, Eduardo Galeano, disse-me uma vez, no seu adorado Café Brasileiro em Montevideu:

“Para podermos ser grandes escritores, primeiro temos que ser grandes ouvintes.”

E devo acrescentar: e sermos grandes leitores, observadores.

Só podemos produzir grandes livros, filmes e ensaios, depois de ouvirmos o que milhares de pessoas dizem; pessoas ricas e pobres, brilhantes e disparatadas. Depois de lermos centenas de livros, e termos visto centenas de excelentes filmes.

É impossível mudar o mundo para melhor, quando só se consumiu a pop e a pornografia mais baratas.

A minha mãe russa/chinesa, pintora e arquitecta, sempre me disse, desde muito novo:

“Mesmo que te tornes num pintor abstracto, não podes fugir ao mais básico: primeiro tens que aprender a desenhar um rosto, um corpo humano. Tens que conhecer os clássicos, filosofia… só então podes deixar-te levar pela fantasia.”

Agora, com a repulsiva era do COVID-19, estamos todos sitiados.

É altura de nos pormos a par do que andamos a negligenciar, no que diz respeito às absorções intelectuais.

Estamos sentados nos nossos sofás, abrimos os portáteis, prontos a sacar grandes filmes e música e… e… nada!

Vão à Netflix e tentem alugar algo muito básico, como os filmes do brilhante cinema japonês da Nova Vaga. Tentem assistir ao mais recente e incrível filme iraniano contemporâneo, ou a alguma maravilhosa peça mestra checa como “No Telhado” [“Na Strese”], ou “A Senhora Terrorista” (“Teroristka”, em checo).

Não conseguem.

Vão à Apple TV, e irão encontrar o mesmo resultado, “quase nada”.

Claro, ainda podemos ver alguns excelentes filmes internacionais se voarmos na Emirates, ou na Air France, mas recorde-se, estamos sitiados.

Em pânico, corremos para o YouTube, só para descobrir que caso falemos russo, checo, espanhol ou chinês, podemos ver os melhores filmes desses países, a maior parte de graça, mas só na sua língua original, sem legendas. Mas se quisermos partilhá-los com os nossos amigos e familiares, que só dependem do inglês, só conseguimos encontrar trailers e excertos curtos.

Quantas línguas dominam os meus leitores? Eu compreendo 8, quanto muito 9. Como tal, não posso ver filmes em vietnamita, chinês ou persa. Todas línguas com excelentes realizadores.

Países como a Rússia e a China estão a disponibilizar os seus filmes clássicos, e para todos, ali, online. Mas os EUA-RU censuram-nos e os distribuidores gananciosos asseguram-se de que nunca os conseguiremos ver de graça, ou até mesmo por um certo valor, em inglês ou com legendas em inglês.

É suposto vermos porcarias de Hollywood, e sitcoms desdentadas e sobrevalorizadas da BBC. Não gosta? Azar!

A determinada altura, começamos a procurar freneticamente outras formas de obter essas importantes formas de arte.

Muitos, depois de várias e fúteis tentativas, simplesmente desistem e começam a ver a merda que estiver disponível.

Há anos e décadas, como um castor, tenho vindo a acumular DVDs e CDs, de todo o mundo. Actualmente tenho cerca de 800 CDs, entre a Ásia e a América Latina, e centenas de DVDs, até VHS.

Há uma razão para tal – e sempre soube que haveria. Não confio no regime.

Nunca confiei nos formatos electrónicos para filmes e música, ou em arquivar as minhas coisas numa qualquer ‘nuvem’ e em pens, ou esperando que o que quero estivesse sempre disponível através da Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV e outros negócios brutais.

Neste preciso momento, as minhas previsões concretizaram-se: nem conseguimos ver “La Dolce Vita” de Fellini na Apple TV! Ou, esquecendo os melhores filmes feitos por Pasolini, os primeiros filmes (de realismo socialista) de Kurosawa, a Nova Vaga dos anos 30 de Xangai, ou quase todas as obras mestras de Tarkovsky.

Sim, amealhei uma tremenda cinemateca e discoteca, em todos os formatos.

Repito: pura e simplesmente não confio no regime ocidental.

Principalmente agora, quando tornar a população mundial cada vez mais burra, cada vez mais complacente, se tornou, parece-me, no principal objectivo dos apparatchiks ocidentais.

Lembram-se de quando criaram “zonas” para os DVDs? Foi só o princípio. O nosso planeta foi fragmentado, a bem dos negócios e dos direitos de autor. Mas, na realidade, a razão era completamente clara: não era suposto que as pessoas se compreendessem umas às outras. Não era suposto que compreendessem de modo directo o modo como os outros viam o mundo. Só os “hubs” de Londres, Nova Iorque ou Paris puderam decidir e pré-mastigar como a parte conquistada da humanidade podia interagir intelectual, cultural e ideologicamente.

Os livros; ó sim, os livros!

Não começaram a queimar livros, ainda, como no romance “Fahrenheit 451” de Ray Bradbury. Repito, ainda.

Mas o sistema assegurou-se de que os livros com as mais ínfimas refutações no que toca ao sistema sejam de difícil acesso ao público.

Escusado será dizer que me assegurei de que contava com duas imensas bibliotecas pessoais, tanto na Ásia como na América Latina.

Recordem, disseram-vos quão ‘anti-ecológica’ é a edição de livros em papel? Tem piada, nunca vos disseram quão tóxicos são os tablets, os computadores e os telemóveis. O que também  nunca vos disseram é que quando começamos a depender exclusivamente de livros electrónicos, essa torneira pode ser fechada, a qualquer altura, e que quando o fizerem ficará sem acesso à informação.

Na Ásia e na América do Sul, acumulei milhares de livros essenciais (e não tão essenciais). E sou co-editor de uma pequena, mas vigorosa, editora, a Badak Merah (‘Rinoceronte Vermelho’). E nunca concordei em publicar nenhum dos meus mais de 20 livros, em 35 línguas até à data, em formato digital antes de serem primeiro editados em papel.

Actualmente, por paradoxal que seja, a não ser que vivamos em Londres, Paris, Nova Iorque e também em Moscovo, Pequim ou Havana, são poucas as probabilidades de obtermos os nossos livros de eleição naquelas cadeias gigantescas de livrarias, pelo menos à primeira tentativa.

Seremos bombardeados desde o momento em que entramos na loja, com lixo, pop, e coisas de auto-ajuda, até que este nos distraia de todos os temas sérios e essenciais.

Aliás, já nem estou certo de que no Ocidente, hoje em dia, ainda seja possível construir uma grande biblioteca pessoal do nada.

Contudo, é quase impossível analisar “emergências” (tanto reais como ‘injectadas’) como o coronavírus, sem consultar filósofos e os romancistas acima mencionados, como Saramago, Camus e Bradbury.

Compreender os filósofos chineses e russos seria algo muito útil para compreender porque é que estes países obtiveram tanto sucesso a combater o vírus, e estão agora a auxiliar dezenas de nações em todo o mundo; até mesmo aquelas que há anos os atormentam. Ler os pensadores revolucionários e internacionalistas cubanos, também traria alguma luz à actual situação.

Mas a probabilidade é de que tal não lhe seja permitido.

Sim, as torneiras estão a fechar, e os ocidentais assemelham-se cada vez mais a zombies ou, mais precisamente, ao EIIL.

Em grande parte, não conseguem obter livros cruciais que os fariam pensar, analisar e compreender. Mas na maior parte do tempo, as pessoas já nem sequer têm qualquer vontade de ler, ver ou ouvir coisas que os ajudem a compreender o que está a acontecer à sua volta.

Em vez de darem ouvidos a seres humanos de todos os continentes, os indivíduos, principalmente aqueles que vivem no Ocidente, só ouvem predominantemente coisas acerca deles próprios. É uma espécie de interacção ao “estilo selfie” com o mundo.

Os indivíduos que vivem neste tipo de ambiente, aprendem a aceitar ordens simples, a reagir sem pensar demasiado e, acima de tudo, a obedecer.

Entretanto, aproxima-se o colapso intelectual; ou já terá até chegado.

Agora, pessoas como eu, apercebem-se de que já não lhes é permitido ler, assistir ou ouvir o que querem. Mas pelo menos já ouvimos muita coisa, antes. E temos uma grande munição de livros, filmes e música.

Ainda estamos a escrever sobre o que está a acontecer.

Mas em breve, talvez muito em breve, a vasta maioria dos indivíduos irá deixar sequer de se preocupar com estas questões. Irão meramente aceitar: calar-se e aceitar, e ler, ver e ouvir o que lhes empurrarem garganta abaixo. Ou, para utilizar uma nova terminologia – irão entrar numa auto-quarentena, intelectual.

Se tamanho cenário se concretizar, será irrelevante se o COVID-19 ou qualquer outra pandemia estiver a destruir a nossa raça humana. Pois já não seria a raça humana.

É por essa razão que, neste preciso momento, temos que defender todo e cada ser humano, cada vida, doente ou saudável, mesmo que a pessoa tenha 90 ou 100 anos. E temos que defender os grandes livros, obras e música, pois neles reside o nosso conhecimento, a nossa humanidade, bem como a chave para a nossa sobrevivência.

Andre Vltchek

 

 

Artigo em inglês:

COVID-19 and, We Are Not Allowed to Watch, Listen and Read What We Want, Anymore

Artigo publicado originalmente na New Eastern Outlook

Tradução: Flávio Gonçalves

 

Andre Vltchek é jornalista de investigação, filósofo, romancista e cineasta. Já cobriu guerras e conflitos em dezenas de países. Entre as suas obras encontramos estas quatro: China and Ecological Civilization com John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, o romance revolucionário “Aurora” o e best seller de não ficção política, “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. Pode consultar aqui as restantes obras. Veja Rwanda Gambit, o seu documentário inovador sobre o Ruanda e a República Democrática do Congo e o seu filme/diálogo com Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek reside actualmente no Oriente asiático e no Médio Oriente, continuando a trabalhar em todo o mundo. Pode ser contactado através do seu portal, do seu Twitter e do seu Patreon.

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The coronavirus pandemic is exposing the cruelty of US imperialism to the world as Washington’s crippling economic sanctions remain in full effect. The decades-old US embargo on Cuba blocked a coronavirus aid shipment from a Chinese entrepreneur last month, another example in a long list of US policies hampering the world’s efforts to combat the virus. On top of the blocked aid, the State Department is urging other countries not to accept help from Cuba’s state-run international medical program.

Jack Ma, the founder of the Chinese company Alibaba, included Cuba in a list of countries that his foundation was going to supply with coronavirus aid. Ma’s foundation was going to send Cuba 100,000 facemasks, 10 COVID-19 test kits, and other aid, including ventilators and gloves. The Colombia-based Avianca Airlines refused to carry the aid to Cuba since the company’s major shareholder is US-based and subject to the US trade embargo. As of Sunday, Cuba has over 300 confirmed coronavirus cases.

The Trump administration has been especially hawkish towards Cuba and reversed most of President Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with the island-nation. Most recently, the US added sanctions over Cuba’s support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Cuba and Venezuela are part of what former National Security Advisor John Bolton dubbed the “Troika of Tyranny,” Nicaragua being the third country. Bolton may be gone, but the Trump administration continues to ramp up economic warfare against the three left-wing governments.

In the first weeks of March, the Trump administration added sanctions on Nicaragua, and the House passed a bill that will add even more if signed into law. On March 26^th, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment on Maduro and other Venezuelan government officials, accusing them of “narco-terrorism.” The indictment put a $15 million bounty on Maduro, and the administration later announced it was deploying Navy ships off the coast of Venezuela – the largest US military buildup in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

The presence of Cuban doctors in Venezuela is something Washington likes to point to as evidence of Cuba’s efforts to keep Maduro in power. Cuba’s medical diplomacy is a key aspect of the country’s foreign policy, and there are currently around 37,000 Cuban medical workers deployed in 67 countries. Some of the medical professionals are part of free humanitarian aid missions, but most are part of missions paid for by the host government. Cuba brings in around $6 billion a year from exporting its medical services, a vital revenue stream the Trump administration is working to impede.

The Trump administration has been persuading countries to not hire Cuban doctors on the grounds of bad labor practices. When governments friendlier to Washington come into power in Latin America, Cuban doctors are one of the first things to go. After the US-backed coup in Bolivia last year, Cuban doctors were expelled, and some even arrested. Ecuador’s government of Lenin Moreno also cut ties with Havana’s medical program last year.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro terminated the country’s medical program with Cuba when he won the election in 2018. Bolsonaro’s decision was a huge blow to the program, and almost 9,000 doctors were expelled from Brazil. But in the face of a coronavirus, the Brazilian government requested for thousands of Cuban doctors to return. Dozens of other governments have asked for the help of Cuban doctors to help control the outbreak of coronavirus, including Italy, one of the countries hit hardest by the virus.

The pandemic has not stopped Washington from discouraging other countries from using Cuban medical professionals. “Cuba offers its international medical missions to those afflicted with #COVID–19 only to make up the money it lost when countries stopped participating in the abusive program. Host countries seeking Cuba’s help for #COVID–19 should scrutinize agreements and end labor abuses,” the State Department said on Twitter on March 24^th, just a few days after doctors started to arrive in Italy.

The allegation against Cuba is that the government only pays its doctors 25 percent of the money made on the overseas medical program, and they are forced to work long hours in unsafe conditions. But these accusations ring hollow while US policy blocks coronavirus aid and exacerbates outbreaks in countries like Iran. Regardless of questionable labor practices, right now, Cuba is sending the world doctors as the US is sending warships and missiles.

Barack Obama’s only decent foreign policy achievements were the steps to normalize relations with Cuba and the Iran nuclear deal. President Trump sabotaged these efforts and is now waging an economic war against both countries. History shows that the US embargo on Cuba will do nothing to change the country’s government and will only hurt its people. As the world faces this pandemic, now is the time to lift the embargo and end all economic sanctions or history will remember the US as the country that weaponized the outbreak.

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Yesterday marked 10 years since WikiLeaks published the Collateral Murder video, showing US soldiers in an Apache helicopter indiscriminately firing upon unarmed civilians and journalists in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The footage, filmed by the US military on July 12, 2007, shows the gunship circling above a group of 10 men, going about their business in the suburb of Al-Amin al-Thaniyah. In increasingly exasperated tones, those on board ask whether they have been given permission to open fire on the individuals, who pose no conceivable threat.

When the signal has been given, they let loose with 30 mm cannon fire. The viewer’s horror at the massacre is matched only by revulsion at the glee of the American soldiers.

As the 10 men lie catastrophically wounded or dead, a US soldier expresses his hope that one of them will pick up a non-existent weapon, so that the fusillade may be resumed. A van pulls up to give assistance to the wounded. It is fired upon, killing the driver and inflicting horrific wounds on his two young children.

At the end of the carnage, as many as 18 lie dead. They include Reuters journalists Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Congratulations and more blood lust are the response from within the Apache.

The video has had an indelible impact on the consciousness of millions of people around the world. Its 39 minutes of footage exposed the real character of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq as an illegal, neo-colonial operation involving the perpetration of war crimes and an assault on the social and democratic rights of an entire population, unprecedented since the horrors of the Nazi regime.

A decade on and none of those responsible for the 2007 massacre depicted in the video, or for the illegal invasion which resulted in the deaths of over a million people, has been brought to justice.

Some, such as former US President George Bush and then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, are enjoying a quiet retirement. Others, including former British PM Tony Blair, remain politically influential and powerful figures, while still more are at the helm of the US and allied militaries as they continue to perpetrate crimes in the Middle East, and plot new wars, including against China and Russia.

The only individuals who have suffered any repercussions as a result of Collateral Murder are Chelsea Manning, the courageous US army private who leaked the video, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published it.

Most recently, Manning was released from six months imprisonment last month, after refusing to give false testimony against Assange before a secret US Grand Jury. Behind bars without charge or conviction, she was again driven to attempt to take her own life.

Assange, after almost a decade of arbitrary detention, faces the prospect of extradition from Britain to the United States, where he would be hauled before a kangaroo court, convicted on espionage charges and sentenced to life in a supermax prison. Assange’s only “offence” is having exposed the war crimes, global diplomatic conspiracies and mass spying operations of the American and allied governments.

Even before he has been extradited, all of the WikiLeaks founder’s rights have been trampled upon by a corrupt British judiciary and political establishment. After years of abuse, his life is in imminent danger. The British government and the courts have refused to release him as the coronavirus pandemic hits British prisons, despite the fact that Assange is on remand and has been convicted of no crime.

The very individuals responsible for the crimes exposed in Collateral Murder are spearheading the attempt to destroy Assange. They include the US military and intelligence agencies, the American ruling elite’s political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, and their allies in the British Tory and Labour Parties and the Australian political establishment.

The video revealed, not only the crimes of individuals, but the systemic criminality of the entire occupation of Iraq, implicating the military commands, governments and a pliant corporate media.

On July 13, 2007, the US military issued a statement which declared that the Reuters employees Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen, had been “killed during a firefight with insurgents.” An August 2007 Freedom of Information request for the footage, lodged by Reuters, was denied by the US government and the military.

Perhaps most damningly, the publication of Collateral Murder exposed the corporate press as an adjunct of the military as it was wantonly committing war crimes. All of the major publications in the US, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, had promoted the lies about weapons of mass destruction used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Manning had contacted those outlets, and others, but never received a reply, prompting her to turn to WikiLeaks.

At least some corporate journalists, however, were already intimately familiar with the crimes that politically radicalised Manning. During the invasion of Iraq they were “the embedded ones,” integrating themselves into the military and filing breathless reports hailing the decimation of Iraq’s civilian and military infrastructure and the catastrophe that befell its population.

In a 2009 book, David Finkel, a Washington Post journalist, described a scene that bore striking similarities to the 2007 Apache attack in Baghdad. His book was titled, unironically, The Good Soldiers. Finkel’s follow-up work was headlined Thank You for Your Service.

According to some sources, Finkel and the Washington Post had had access to the video since at least 2009. There are even allegations that the reporter showed it to friends and colleagues at dinner parties held in his plush Washington DC home.

The response of WikiLeaks, a tiny organisation with extremely limited resources, was very different.

Assange and a group of colleagues spent months decrypting the video, studying its contents and investigating the events it depicted. This alone should put paid to the claims of the corrupt corporate stenographers of the intelligence agencies that Assange is “not a journalist.”

Current WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hraffnson risked his life to track down the victims of the attack, travelling to Iraq two years after a secret US military document had outlined a strategy to destroy WikiLeaks.

Hraffnson met the widow of Matasher Tomal, the man who was killed while attempting to help those wounded in the first barrage of artillery fire. He spoke to Tomal’s children Sayad, who was 10 at the time of the attack, and Doaha who was just 5-years-old. Both suffered wounds that will affect them for life.

In an interview at the time, Hraffnson commented on the experience of speaking to Sayad: “When I was watching his eyes [I felt] I was looking into the eyes of my own son. I think I have never been as touched by anything I’ve seen. The sorrow of a child who loses his father is so deep, so devastating. I really wanted to get that to the public.”

Asked by the interviewer if it had not been dangerous for him to travel to Iraq, Hraffnson commented: “Yes, but journalism should be dangerous. Journalists are becoming, and have been, a part of the military propaganda machinery—easily manipulated.”

For his part, Assange unveiled the footage at the US National Press Club, despite the clear danger that he would be targeted by the CIA and the US military.

All of those credited on the Collateral Murder video, including those who ended their collaboration with WikiLeaks many years ago, have been subjected to harassment and surveillance by the military intelligence complex, including having their personal details and correspondence subpoenaed from major internet conglomerates.

The Collateral Murder video will be remembered for decades as testimony to the barbarity of imperialist war. Its contents are more significant than ever, amid stepped-up inter-imperialist tensions and preparations for new and catastrophic military conflicts.

Workers, students and young people must do everything they can to fight for Assange’s freedom and for the safety and security of all those involved in this historic exposure of militarism and war.

Yesterday, WikiLeaks held an online meeting marking the anniversary of Collateral Murder, at which Hraffnson and others spoke. It can be viewed here.

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The “Corona crisis” is a transnational crisis fabricated on a bedrock of unreliable evidence.

People and institutions are making decisions in crisis based on unreliable data. People and institutions have been hoarding medical supplies, in panic, thus creating shortages elsewhere.

People were prematurely admitted to hospitals in crisis mode early in the crisis, which made some hospitals (especially in Italy) hotbeds for coronavirus, thus making the situation worse.

Tests do not differentiate deaths as being WITH Corona or BY Corona. Hence, they are all but meaningless. (1)

In the UK, a medical practitioner can legally declare Covid -19 as cause of death even when the test results have not been received. (2)

The statistics that form the basis of this fabricated crisis are unreliable. Everything is happening in crisis-mode and through panic — the opposite to what should be happening.

Who is “winning” and who is “losing”?

“Parliaments, courts, tribunal are suspended, government is by decree,” writes John Pilger, “The police determine whether our presence in a street, a park, is legitimate.  The media ensures a state of fear.  Surveillance is routine.  Protest, if any, is virtual.  How does history describe such a society?” (3)

Human rights are losing, and the police state is winning on domestic fronts.

Imperialists have always used fake humanitarian pretexts to advance their war crimes. The Corona crisis is serving imperialists well.  Britain is offering 100 million to al Qaeda-dominated Idlib, “to help with the Coronavirus threat” (4) even as the West and its allies strangle all of Syria with a criminal economic embargo.

Destroyed economies and destroyed livelihoods are certain to exact a horrible toll on all of us.  Vulnerable peoples and countries will suffer disproportionately.

The final tally of who will benefit and who will lose is yet to be fully determined, but there is one certainty.  If the Lie prevails, humanity will lose.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) John P.A. Ioannidis, “Video: Perspectives on the COV-19 Pandemic, A Fiasco in the Making.” Journeyman Pictures/ Global Research, 27 March 2020, Journeyman Pictures, 24 March 2020.

(https://www.marktaliano.net/video-perspectives-on-the-cov-19-pandemic-a-fiasco-in-the-making-dr-john-ioannidis-stanford-university-by-john-p-a-ioannidis-and-journeyman-pictures-global-research-march-27-2020-journeyman/) Accessed 6 April, 2020.

(2) Office for National Statistics/HM Passport Office. “Guidance for doctors completing Medical Certificates of Cause of Death in England and Wales FOR USE DURING THE EMERGENCY PERIOD ONLY.”

(https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877302/guidance-for-doctors-completing-medical-certificates-of-cause-of-death-covid-19.pdf) Accessed 6 April, 2020

(3) Twitter commentary, 3 April, 2020.

(4) Speech “Protecting Syrians amidst the COVID-19 outbreak/ Statement by Ambassador James Roscoe at the Security Council briefing on the humanitarian situation in Syria.” 30 March, 2020. (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/protecting-syrians-amidst-the-covid-19-outbreak) Accessed 6 April, 2020.

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The British Ministry of Justice has told the Australian Associated Press that Julian Assange is not eligible for early release from prison in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.

***

Imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is not eligible for an early Covid-19 release from prison with other inmates because he is not serving a criminal sentence, the Australian Associated Press has reported.

He made the remark during a press conference on Monday that was held online due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

To a question about the remarks by some American officials, including Donald Trump, about contacting Iran for suspension of sanctions, Mousavi said “there are too many inconsistencies in the remarks of American officials. But what matters is that all admit to the cruel and illegal nature of the sanctions. We have brought the issue to everyone’s attention, including the Americans. If the US refuses to lend a hand, it could at least refrain from causing further obstacles.”

“We are calling on all independent and civilized countries around the world to disregard the US unilateral and illegal sanctions,” he added.

“We have made repeated requests [for the removal of sanctions] through official and public channels; we have sent letters to presidents and foreign ministers of other countries, as well the Secretary General of the United Nations, but all of the requests have been rejected because of the US’ bullying temperament. We don’t have any faith in the US’ goodwill, but would appreciate it if they at least refrained from causing any more harm,” Mousavi said.

The spokesman stressed that Iran is under the most severe sanctions, and “contrary to the US’ claims, the routes for medicine delivery to Iran are blocked.”

“Because we have been under sanctions for years, we have learned how to overcome the threat through reliance on our domestic resources. But foreign aid would certainly facilitate our efforts to tackle issues,” he added.

Tehran says the US unilateral and illegal sanctions imposed under the guise of the maximum pressure campaign undermine Iran’s ability to effectively fight the coronavirus in the long run without international support.

Last Tuesday, more than 30 members of the US Congress — including Senators Bernie Sanders and Edward J. Markey as well as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, wrote a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, urging the suspension of US sanction on Iran as a humanitarian gesture to 80 million Iranian people at this crucial time.

Among the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19, Iran said 58,226 people contracted the disease, and 3,603 died as of Sunday.

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Henry Kissinger Calls for a New Post-Covid World Order

By Mike Whitney, April 06, 2020

Henry Kissinger thinks the Coronavirus is a threat to his precious New World Order, so he wants President Trump to do whatever he can to protect the system. In an opinion piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the former Secretary of State urged Trump to launch a grand project, like the Marshall Plan, to unify the allies and convince them that the Uncle Sam can still rally the troops in a time of crisis.

COVID-19 a Diabolical Totalitarian Plot?

By Stephen Lendman, April 06, 2020

Today indeed is the most perilous time in world history. COVID-19 is being used by US-led powerful forces to convince ordinary people in the West and elsewhere to sacrifice personal freedoms for greater security.

Their aim is all about eliminating both by getting unwitting populations to accept what harms their well-being and futures.

It’s also about consolidating greater wealth and power, the public none the wiser.

People, Profit and Planned Economy

By Massoud Nayeri, April 06, 2020

The concept of an economic system that puts Profit over People has been explained and discussed many times and in many ways. It just took a tiny virus (COVID-19) to display the contradiction between People and Profit as an urgent national question. In this equation, President Trump, as the voice of most powerful capitalist country on earth (the “GREAT AMERICA”) with his cheerleaders mostly at Fox News and in favor of PROFIT, suggests that “We have to get back to work” as soon as possible. Contrary to this idea, the scientists, medical community and people who are actually in the battlefield fighting this disease are representing the PEOPLE in this equation. Based on the ongoing and rapid escalation in the number of the infected and dead, they believe that the nation is not ready to go back to work.

A Globalized World Economy, COVID-19 and China’s “Health Silk Road”

By Sara Flounders, April 06, 2020

The global COVID-19 viral pandemic has exposed in the sharpest light the contradiction between a globalized world economy and a still existing but archaic capitalist system based on the private expropriation of wealth and resources.

The relentless drive to reap a profit from every type of human interaction now stands exposed as the greatest danger to the people of the whole planet.

Was the Federal Reserve Just Nationalized?

By Ellen Brown, April 06, 2020

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillionavailable to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

Fake Coronavirus Data, Fear Campaign. Spread of the COVID-19 Infection

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 05, 2020

Do not let yourself be misled by the fear campaign, pointing to a Worldwide coronavirus calamity with repeated “predictions” that hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.

COVID-19 Depression: Trump Needs a War

By Kurt Nimmo, April 05, 2020

Critical supply lines foolishly based on the globalist profit-maximizing concept of “just in time” are now breaking down. How long do you suppose unemployed service industry and gig-economy workers will tolerate a serious shortage of food and other essentials before looting stores like the poor and hungry of Palermo? How long before armed citizens begin taking what they need and the military is called in to restore order and confiscate weapons like they did during Katrina? All hell will break loose from Baltimore to Seattle and the government may impose martial law (it can be argued we are already under a soft form of martial-medical law, half of us confined to our homes, the equivalent of house arrest, scared to death of a virus they now say can spread by merely opening of one’s mouth and speaking and thus allowing viral-laden breath to drift in the air). 

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The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying the cruelty of US foreign policy. The economic collapse is showing the failure of neoliberalism and how the empire-economy is not working for the people of the world, including the United States.

The US is losing its global dominance as it demonstrates its own incompetence in response to the pandemic and its viciousness in the midst of this crisis. Other countries are showing leadership and solidarity while the US is escalating its attacks.

This is an opportunity to change direction. What seemed impossible in the recent past is now possible. We must seize the opportunity to create change that ensures the necessities of the people are met and the planet is protected. COVID-19 is one immediate crisis, but the climate crisis, nuclear war and economic insecurity all require solidarity between the people of the world.

End Venezuela Sanctions sign on the Venezuela Embassy, from Venezuela Embassy Protectors Collective.

The World Is Turning Against Washington For Undermining Solidarity During The Crisis

No country can fully recover from COVID-19 or the economic collapse unless these crises are resolved for the whole world. Both the economy and pandemic are global and interconnected as are the looming crises of climate chaos and nuclear war. Rather than showing solidarity with other nations in the midst of the crises, the US is escalating economic sanctions and threatening war while undermining a global response to climate and increasing the risks of nuclear war.

Black Alliance for Peace points out: “The brutality and criminality of the colonial/capitalist system of state violence is reflected most graphically by the illegal and immoral policy of sanctions imposed on 39 nations by the U.S. and its Western allies.” Venezuela, Iran and other nations are being denied the ability to import medicines and medical equipment to protect their populations from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 23, the UN General Secretary António Guterres called for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world” saying nations should “focus together on the true fight of our lives – the #COVID19 pandemic.” Fifty-three countries immediately agreed. Instead of heeding this call, the US has threatened Iran and Venezuela with military attacks and continued the war with Yemen while eliminating the majority of humanitarian assistance to Yemen. These actions were wrong before the pandemic, but in the midst of the pandemic, they are obscene.

China is sending medical supplies and assistance to 89 countries so far as part of its Health Silk Road. It is ignoring US sanctions by sending drugs, test kits, and supplies to Iran and Venezuela. Hard-hit Italy noted that the other EU nations ignored their desperate plea for medical equipment while China responded. China is building positive relationships by providing essential equipment and expertise while the US is trying and failing to get other nations to sign on to a statement blaming COVID-19 on China.

Cuba has sent brigades of doctors and nurses to Italy, as well as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Suriname, and Grenada. Russia has also sent medical supplies to hard-hit countries like Italy. Even Venezuela, suffering from a US economic blockade and threats of a military attack, is sending aid to its neighbors, including Ecuador and Colombia– even though Colombia has joined the US in threatening Venezuela. The US blocked a shipment of coronavirus aid for Cuba from China’s richest man, Jack Ma, including 100,000 facemasks and 10 COVID-19 diagnostic kits, along with other supplies.

Europe is starting to break with the United States. The EU finally sent aid to Iran ignoring US sanctions. France, Germany, and Britain have sent medical goods to Iran through INSTEX — a workaround to export goods to Iran that bypasses US sanctions. This development could have major implications for the ability of the US to unilaterally sanction nations as it provides a way for countries to trade without the US’ financial system. Europe, led by Germany, also backed out of war games against Russia, which would have included a practice nuclear attack, due to the COVID-19 virus.

President Rouhani of Iran sent an open letter to the people of the United States saying, “the war on this virus can only be successful if all nations can win this war together, and no affected nation is left behind.” He urged us to change the direction of the US government, writing, “Future generations will judge the American people based on the actions of their government.”

The zig-zagging incompetence of US policy is evident. During the three months when the Trump administration did not take the virus seriously, the Intercept reports the United States allowed exports of medical supplies and equipment. After examining vessel manifests, the Intercept found “medical equipment needed to treat the coronavirus [was] being shipped abroad as recently as March 17.” This has led to a “persistent lack of medical supplies” in the US.

Now, the US has angered allies by diverting medical supplies to the US. The Washington Post reports that “Berlin expressed outrage over what they said was the diversion to the United States of 200,000 masks that were en route from China, while officials in Brazil and France complained that the United States was outbidding them in the global marketplace for critical medical supplies.” They report the US is also stopping the export of masks to Canada and Latin America.

Even worse, Trump took time from his daily press conference on COVID-19 to escalate threats against Venezuela by sending US naval vessels near Venezuela’s borders. AP reports “The deployment is one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama … It involves assets like Navy warships, AWACS surveillance aircraft and on-ground special forces seldom seen before in the region.”

This followed a phony indictment of President Maduro and other Venezuelan leaders for alleged narcotrafficking that included a $15 million bounty on Maduro. President Maduro wrote an open letter to the people of the world that decried the indictment as illegal and part of a US coup attempt writing, “the U.S. government, instead of focusing on policies of global cooperation in health and prevention, has increased unilateral coercive measures, has rejected requests from the international community to lift or make flexible the illegal sanctions that prevent Venezuela from accessing medicines, medical equipment, and food.” The indictment was announced after Venezuela prevented weapons financed by the US from being sent into Venezuela from Colombia for another coup attempt.

Venezuelans in the US who want to fly back to Venezuela to escape the economic and health crises here are not being allowed to charter flights from Florida. The escalation against Venezuela also included the US-controlled IMF blocking a COVID-19 emergency loan to Venezuela. Venezuela has taken aggressive actions to stop the spread of the virus and has been more effective than the US.

The US also shows disregard for its own people, including those in the military, by firing a US Navy Capt. Brett Crozier after he sought help for sailors on the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier. Crozier wrote his superiors about hundreds of COVID-19 cases and when the letter was leaked, he was fired. As he left the ship, the crew cheered him for standing up for their health and risking his career.  The first government official fired over the virus was one trying to protect people from illness. The US has also directed that reports on COVID-19 in the military be kept secret.

The actions of the US are leading to the reshaping of global leadership.” Patrick Coburn describes COVID-19 as a “Chernobyl moment” and concludes “nobody is today looking to Washington for a solution to the crisis.”

National Security Redefined

The people of the United States have been sold a false definition of national security. The pandemic shows that mass military spending on bombs, weapons, bases, and troops does not provide security. The coronavirus is expected to kill between 100,000 to 240,000 people in the United States if our response goes well and could be more than one million if it is inadequate.  Deaths have already passed 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and could exceed the Vietnam War and World War 1.

We need to redefine national security. David Swanson calls for a real Department of Defense that would prioritize “the twin dangers of nuclear and climate apocalypse, and the accompanying spin-offs like coronavirus.” He points out it would be less expensive to provide financial security and top medical care to everyone on the globe than to fight wars.

Gareth Porter writes, “For decades, the military-industrial-congressional complex has force-fed the American public a warped conception of US national security-focused entirely around perpetuating warfare. The cynical conflation of national security with waging war on designated enemies around the globe effectively stifled public awareness of the clear and present danger posed to its survival by the global pandemic. As a result, Congress was simply not called upon to fund the vitally important equipment that doctors and nurses needed for the Covid-19 crisis.”

The Pentagon was well aware of the threat of a pandemic and anticipated the lack of ventilators, face masks, and hospital beds, according to a 2017 Pentagon plan. Intelligence agencies warned about the threat from influenza viruses for two decades at least and warned about coronaviruses for at least five years. Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council in May 2018  warned that a flu pandemic was the country’s number one health security threat and that the US was unprepared.

In January 2017, Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is “no doubt” Donald Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency. In 2019, HHS organized a month-long simulation involving multiple federal offices that demonstrated the US was seriously unprepared to cope with a pandemic. Despite all of this, the president claimed the virus “surprised the whole world,” and “nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.”

The White House created a National Security Council office on pandemics, but in 2018 that was disbanded by Trump. The Trump administration also ignored a pandemic playbook that would have ensured a more effective response. The Strategic National Stockpile has not been maintained for years, as it competes with the military budget, which shoveled $15 trillion into wars. The unreplenished stockpile is one reason the US does not have sufficient ventilators and other necessary equipment. The US is also weakened by the shortcomings of the for-profit health system including the closing of hospitals.

What would actually protect US national security?

First and foremost, the US must cease its drive to be the dominant power in the world and recognize we are part of a community of nations that must cooperate to take on the many crises that will define the 2020s. This means ending military aggression and regime change efforts by respecting the sovereignty and integrity of other countries, large and small. It means ending our occupation of other nations in the form of hundreds of military bases and outposts and ending our support for other occupiers such as Israel until it stops its colonization of Palestine. Instead of international war “games”, we could hold international exercises on disaster responses to save lives. And it means respecting and obeying international law and joining the International Criminal Court. The US must stop behaving with impunity.

Second, the US must scale down the military to what is required for protection, an actual defensive approach rather than being offensive. This means cutting the military budget by at least 50% and converting all production of military equipment, supplies, and weapons into public entities to remove the profit motive that drives conflict around the world. These resources can be used for social uplift instead of causing death in a peace economy.

Third, the US must move quickly to eliminate threats to human extinction. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to “midnight,” putting the world closer to destruction than at any point since the clock was created in 1947. As Alice Slater writes, we have a virus of nuclear proliferation as nuclear arms control agreements collapse. The US is spending more than a trillion dollars to upgrade nuclear weapons while placing ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons on submarines.

It’s not only superpowers that are engaged in a nuclear arms race, countries like North Korea, which is threatened by the US, and allies like Germany and Saudi Arabia believe they need their own nuclear weapons. The US must commit to the rapid disarmament of all nuclear weapons in cooperation with other nuclear nations and disband the Space Force, which violates the treaty that makes space a global commons.

While COVID-19 is almost certainly a zoonotic disease, David Swanson points out at least some diseases, such as Lyme Disease and Anthrax, have been spread by military labs. Germ warfare is a criminal enterprise and so labs disguised as being for our defense but that create bioweapons need to be closed.

Foreign policy includes trade, which has been designed for corporate profit since NAFTA. The coronavirus collapse shows corporate trade creates weak supply lines. It also hollowed out US manufacturing for cheap labor in Mexico, China, and other nations, creating economic insecurity and leaving us ill-prepared for a crisis. Trade must be remade into fair trade that serves the people and planet, supports industry at home, ends factory farming and creates a balance with nature that will help prevent future animal-based viruses.

A new foreign policy must also confront the climate crisis. This is a global challenge and nations of the world must work together to confront it. The US has been playing a counterproductive role by building fossil fuel infrastructure, becoming a leading oil and gas producer, and holding back global climate treaties. Next week, in our series on “The Decade of Transformation,” we will focus on the environment.

The Time Is Now to Remake US Foreign Policy

The global economic collapse and COVID-19 pandemic are causing widespread suffering and death but will result in change. What that change looks like, positive or negative, is up to us. We must create the new normal that provides for the necessities of the people and protection of the planet. The world must unite in solidarity to confront not only COVID-19 but other crises too.

We applaud countries that are beginning to stand up to US sanctions and work around the US financial system to help countries like Iran and Venezuela. These are positive steps to end US hegemony. We agree with President Rouhani of Iran, it is our responsibility to remake the government so it reflects the best of us.

An immediate step is to end US sanctions. Join us in the Sanctions Kill campaign where the coalition will be organizing webinars and other events to end illegal unilateral coercive measures. There will be an international week of action against imperialism and sanctions from May 25 to 31. We will need to be especially creative to build an effective campaign with tactics that work in this time of physical distancing.

We must also take action now to stop the war on Venezuela. Join the webinar with Carlos Ron, vice foreign minister of Venezuela on Monday night at 6:00 pm Eastern.  Click here for information. Sign onto this demand that the US drop its charges against President Maduro and other Venezuelan officials who have been falsely charged with narco-trafficking. We must be ready to mobilize quickly if the US moves to attack Venezuela, or Iran or any country for that matter while the government believes we are distracted by the pandemic.

We are living in a time of crisis and that can be unnerving. But we have the power to get through this if we mobilize together with a clear vision of the world we wish to create and show our solidarity with each other through our actions. We are one human community  and we need each other to get through the rough times ahead.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. 

All images in this article are from PR unless otherwise stated

On Halloween Eve in 1938, a flood of terror swept the United States. Some people, believing that the world was coming to an end, tried flight or suicide, or just cringed in their homes as “aliens” from Mars attacked New Jersey, then New York and the world.

But it was just a prank, tapping a deep national well of pre-war anxiety, and produced for radio by Orson Welles and his Mercury Players.

Times have changed so radically since then that, in the face of real disasters like the Three Mile Island “partial meltdown” in 1979, the explosion and fire at Chernobyl in 1986, the 2011 earthquake and Tsunami-sparked disaster in Japan or, the election of Donald Trump, or even a deadly virus, many people are deceptively calm. Some simply refuse to believe it.

Are we really so confident about our ability to cope and recover, or have we given in to an overarching pessimism about the future of the planet and fate of humanity?

According to a survey by the Encyclopedia Britannica, in 1980 nearly half of all US junior high school students believed that World War III would begin by the year 2000. If you consider the last decade, it looks like the youth of that period – in their 50s today – were only off by a few years.

Many futurologists, an academic specialty that emerged about 40 years ago, continue to warn that the environment is critically damaged. Yet this sounds positively cautious when compared to the diverse images of social calamity projected through films, books and the news media. Long before Covid 19, pandemics and outbreaks were at the center of dozens of novel and films. Of course, there have always been such predictions. But in the last few decades they have proliferated almost as rapidly as nuclear weapons during a Cold War. Some dramatize a “big bang” theory –global devastation caused by some extinction level event.

Fortunately, a few do chart a slightly hopeful future, one in which humanity either smartens up in time to save itself or manages to survive.

Rather than a desire to be scared out of our wits, the attraction to such stories and predictions may reflect a widespread interest in confronting the likely future. The mass media may, in fact, be producing training guides for the coming Dark Age — if we’re lucky.

Variations on a Theme

Sometimes humanity – or California – is saved in the nick of time by an individual sacrifice or collective action. Sometimes, as in the classics On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove or The Omega Man (remade as I am Legend), we are basically wiped out. Occasionally there are long-term possibilities for survival, but technology breaks down and the environment takes strange revenge. In some cases the future is so dismal that it is hardly worth going on, as in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

In a few cases the end of humanity is just a piece of cosmic black humor.

All of these are speculative visions, many adapted from ideas originally developed in pulp science fiction or from prophetic statements by figures like Edgar Cayce. The films usually offer a way out (audiences generally favor hopeful endings), while deep doom and gloom tend to gain more traction in print. But both scenarios share the assumption that the track we are on leads to a dangerous dead end.

We seem to keep asking the same basic questions: How do we get to catastrophe? And what happens afterward? One obvious way to get pretty close is to misuse technology, especially when the mistakes are made as a result of greed – for power, knowledge or cold cash.

The classic anti-nuclear film The China Syndrome presents a textbook example: greedy corporations ignoring public health and shoddy construction in pursuit of profit. It was a powerful statement in its day, especially given the Three Mile accident just weeks after the film’s release, yet predictable in a way and inconclusive on the prospects for health or quality survival in a nuclear-powered world. We are just beginning to have this discussion again.

An earlier “close call” film, The Andromeda Strain, had a more inventive story and placed the blame on a lust for knowledge (the old Frankenstein theme). But this early techno-triller provided no real solution to the problem of disease or disaster created by scientific discovery. In Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain the threat was a deadly organism brought back from outer space, the same kind of self-inflicted biological warfare that heavy doses of radioactive fallout can become. But in the book and film the blood of victims coagulated almost instantly, avoiding the prolonged agony of dying from a plague or the long-term effects of radiation.

Fear of nuclear power is by no means new. Radiation created many movie monsters in the 1950s, from the incredible 50-foot man and woman to giant mantises, crabs and spiders. But the threat was usually related to the testing or detonation of weapons, not the ongoing use of what was then called “the peaceful atom.” That mythical atom was going to be our good friend in a cheap, safe, long-term relationship.

Since then, and especially since the nuclear accidents of the 1970s and 80s, nuclear plants have provided a basis for various bleak scenarios. Not even Vermont has been spared, though it sometimes appears as a post-disaster oasis. In the 1970s novel The Orange R, however, Middlebury College teacher John Clagett extended nuclear terror into a future where the Green Mountains is inhabited by radioactive people called Roberts. They are dying off rapidly in a country where apartheid has become a device to keep the Roberts away from the Normals.

Using a pulp novel style Clagett lays out the overall situation about halfway through:

“For many years every nuclear plant built had been placed in Robert country, ever since, in fact, the dreadful month in which three plants had ruptured cooling systems, spreading radioactive vapor over much of Vermont, New Hampshire and West Massachusetts. After that no more plants had been built near populated areas; before long, the requirement that the plants should be located on running fresh water and in lightly populated country had brought about the present situation. Norm country was surviving and living high on the power generated in Robert country, where radiation grew worse, year by year.”

In The Orange R Normal people who live in radioactive areas wear airtight suits and laugh hysterically when anyone mentions solar power. All of Vermont’s major streams and bodies of water have heated up, and the deer have mutated into killer Wolverdeer. Still, the book offers a hopeful vision at the end: the Roberts rise up and take over Vermont’s nukes and successfully dismantle the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as a corporate state that is only vaguely described. Most Vermonters have terminal radiation sickness, but for humanity it turns out to be another close call.

Prophecies Go Mainstream

There are simply too many novels about the end of the current civilization, too many to list and perhaps too many for our psychological health. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Only a few decades ago people who accepted the prophecies of Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce were mocked by mainstream society and even some of their close friends. Cayce predicted that the western part of the US would be broken up, that most of Japan would be covered by water, and that New York would be destroyed in 1998 (perhaps he meant Mayor Giuliani’s remake of Times Square). Nearly 400 years earlier Nostradamus, whose benefactor was Henry II of France, said that western civilization would be under heavy attack from the East in 1999, with possible cataclysmic repercussions. Not far off, it turns out.

But what is “lunatic fringe” in one era can become mainstream, perhaps even commercially viable, in another.
The destruction of the West Coast has been featured in numerous books and movies. Hollywood has of course excelled in creating doomsday myths, from the antichrist’s continuing saga in countless unmemorable installments, to total destruction in the Planet of the Apesfranchise, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and many more.

Japanese filmmakers have been equally and famously preoccupied with mass destruction. Decades before the current disaster, they even turned Cayce’s prophecy about their country into a 1975 disaster movie called Tidal Wave. Starring Lorne Greene and Japanese cast, it was imported to the US by Roger Corman. Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) describes it this way:

“Racked by earthquakes and volcanoes, Japan is slowly sinking into the sea. A race against time and tide begins as Americans and Japanese work together to salvage some fraction of the disappearing Japan.” Close, but they missed the nuclear angle.

Predictions to the contrary, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove remains one of the most memorable doomsday movies. Its black humor and naturalistic performances by Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden combine with a devastating premise – that The End may come through a mixture of human error (a demented general) and flawed technology (an extinction level bomb that can’t be disarmed).

There haven’t been many stories based on Nostradamus’ Eastern siege prophecy, although there certainly could be. But a number of films have adapted Cayce’s visions of environmental upheaval. Oddly enough Charlton Heston appears in several, usually as Cassandra or savior. In Planet of the Apes he is an astronaut who returns to Earth only to find his civilization in ruins, apes in charge, and humans living below ground as scarred mutants who worship the bomb. In The Omega Man he is a disillusioned scientist who has survived bio-chemical war and spends his days exterminating book-burning mutants. He discovers an antidote to the plague, but only a handful of people are left to give humanity another chance. The same basic story is told in I am Legend, the book and Will Smith movie. In the latter, Bethel, Vermont serves at the end as a gated refuge from the Zombie apocalypse.

And then there is Soylent Green, a film that presents the slow road to environmental pollution and starvation. This time Heston is a policeman who eventually discovers that the masses have been hoodwinked into cannibalism. They are also so depressed that suicide parlors are big business.

Most of the Heston vehicles were big budget B-movies, exploiting popular anxiety but much less affecting than Dr. Strangelove or Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. On the other hand, they deftly tapped into growing doubts about the future with a Dirty Harry-style response.

After The End

Ecologist George Stewart wrote his novel Earth Abides in 1949, before the Atom bomb scare took hold or the environment seemed like something to worry about. But his story of civilization destroyed by an airborne disease took the idea of rebuilding afterward about as far as anyone. In this prescient book the breakdown of man-made systems is traced in convincing detail, in counterpoint with a story of survival without machines, mass production and, ultimately, most of what residents of developed countries take for granted.

Not many recent books or films are as optimistic about our prospects once humanity has gone through either its Big Bang or Long Wheeze end game. In Margaret Atwood’s multi -volume science fiction saga, for example, man-made environmental catastrophe and mass extinction in Oryx and Crake is followed, in The Year of the Flood, by marginal survival in a strange mutated world.

The optimism of Earth Abides about the ability of human beings to adapt may be a reason why it did not develop the cult following of more dystopian tales. The more dismal the forecast, it seems, the more enthusiastic the following. Apropos, one of the most popular science fiction books downloaded in recent years was The Passage, Justin Cronin’s compelling mixture of vampires run amuck, government conspiracy, and post-apocalypse survivalism.

What most of these stories and films have in common is a basic idea: the inevitability of radical, cataclysmic change. Should we manage to get beyond annihilation, apocalypse, Armageddon or whatever, they predict that we are very likely to enter a new Dark Age. Like most things, this too isn’t a new idea. At the end of his life J. B. Priestley, the British novelist who founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, contemplated such a future. Calling it a “slithering down” he forecast that industrial civilization would one day come to an end.

But even in a Dark Age there is some hope. The life of the planet will likely continue and equilibrium can be reestablished in time. At least many of us continue to hope so. If the devastation is not total, perhaps a new culture can emerge. The main question thus becomes not whether the Earth will survive but how human beings fit in.
Near the end of his life H. G. Wells, the master of science fiction who produced optimistic visions in The Shape of Things to Come and The Time Machine, turned pessimist and wrote Mind at the End of Its Tether. “There is no way out or round or through,” he concluded. Life on Earth may not be ending, Wells believed, but humans aren’t going anywhere. Well, for at least the next few months, for most of us that will literally be true.

Yet compared with the darkest forecasts, the prospect of a post-modern Dark Age starts to sound more hopeful. Maybe it will just be a long Time Out.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Greg Guma / Maverick Media.

Greg Guma is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Henry Kissinger thinks the Coronavirus is a threat to his precious New World Order, so he wants President Trump to do whatever he can to protect the system. In an opinion piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the former Secretary of State urged Trump to launch a grand project, like the Marshall Plan, to unify the allies and convince them that the Uncle Sam can still rally the troops in a time of crisis. Here’s Kissinger:

“Drawing lessons from the development of the Marshall Plan and the Manhattan Project, the U.S. is obliged to undertake a major effort in three domains. First, shore up global resilience to infectious disease…Second, strive to heal the wounds to the world economy….Third, safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.

While the assault on human health will—hopefully—be temporary, the political and economic upheaval it has unleashed could last for generations. No country, not even the U.S., can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. Addressing the necessities of the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program. If we cannot do both in tandem, we will face the worst of each.” (“The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”, Wall Street Journal)

Kissinger thinks Trump’s “America First” rhetoric has undermined foreign relations and weakened US hegemony. He thinks the administration’s isolationist policies have created a leadership vacuum that China has quickly filled. And he has a point, too, after all, while China sent medical teams and vital supplies to countries hard-hit by the virus, the United States was busy tightening sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, which prevented infected civilians from getting the medications they need to survive. Naturally, China’s humanitarian contributions have been widely applauded while Washington’s conduct has been denounced as petty, vicious and vindictive. There’s no doubt that the Trump administration has ceded the moral high-ground to its arch-enemy, China. Here’s Kissinger again:

“Now, in a divided country, efficient and farsighted government is necessary to overcome obstacles unprecedented in magnitude and global scope. Sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity, to the relation of societies with each other, and to international peace and stability.” WSJ

Of course, when Kissinger talks about “public trust” and “social solidarity” what he really means is that the government needs to settle on an effective public relations strategy that will dupe the sheeple into falling in line. In Kissinger’s lexicon, solidarity is narrowly defined as ‘public support for elitist projects’ like globalization, open borders and the free movement of capital. These are the principles that guide Kissinger’s recommendations not any affection for working people who he regards as stupid mules. Here’s more:

“Nations cohere and flourish on the belief that their institutions can foresee calamity, arrest its impact and restore stability. When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus. To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done.” WSJ

See? What really Kissinger really cares about is the post-coronavirus world order, which he believes will mark the beginning of an entirely new era, an era in which governments will have to respond to unexpected crises, bitter political polarization and the growing prospect of social unrest. Kissinger seems to grasp all of this, but instead of offering a new vision for the future, he clings to the battered remains of a failed system that has exacerbated the wealth gap, triggered one economy-crushing financial meltdown after the other, and widened the arc of instability from North Africa, through the Middle East and into Central Asia. This is the world order that Kissinger wants to preserve, an America-centric imperium ruled by establishment elites, brandy-drooling plutocrats and the Bank Mafia. Is it any wonder why the proles are demanding change? Here’s more:

“The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.” WSJ

“Enlightenment values”?? Is that what we saw in the photos from Abu Ghraib, or the footage from decimated Falluja, or the countless reports of black-sites where kidnapped victims were taken by US Intel Agents and beaten into submission? Do they practice enlightenment values at Gitmo, or at Bagram Air base or in Mosul which was reduced to rubble by heavy artillery and US bombers? Kissinger can blabber about enlightenment values all he wants, but he knows from first hand experience that those values are precariously propped atop a mountain of bloody corpses all sacrificed in the name of the liberal world order. Here’s more:

“Enlightenment thinkers (argued) that the purpose of the legitimate state is to provide for the fundamental needs of the people: security, order, economic well-being, and justice. Individuals cannot secure these things on their own. The pandemic has prompted an anachronism, a revival of the walled city in an age when prosperity depends on global trade and movement of people.” WSJ

There it is again, Kissinger’s favorite theme, ” global trade and movement of people”, the two crumbling pillars of a globalization project that is now on life-support waiting to be euthanized by the millions of unemployed Americans who saw their jobs, their factories and their hopes for the future all go up in smoke due to outsourcing, off-shoring and Kissinger’s glorious “liberal world order.” Even now, while the US economy grinds to a standstill and jobless American workers wait anxiously by their doors for their $1,200 pittance from Uncle Sam, Kissinger continues to bray about the wonderful NWO that has greatly enhanced “security, order, economic well-being, and justice”.

Give me a break.

I agree with Kissinger that the post-Covid world order will be significantly different from the world that preceded it, but that’s as far as I’ll go. In truth, the US-dominated system is unraveling because the people of the world don’t want to ruled by force, because US leaders are incompetent bunglers who cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and because Washington’s arrogant go-it-alone policy-making has turned vast areas of the Middle East and Central Asia into uninhabitable wastelands.

Let’s face it, the United States had a chance to show the world it could be a reliable steward of global security, and they blew it. Nothing Kissinger says is going to change that.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

Seasonal flu most often getting scant attention is what a real pandemic is all about.

During the 2018-19 flu season in the US alone, running from October to May, there were more than 35.5 million flu illnesses, over 16.5 million medical visits, about 490,600 hospitalizations, and around 34,200 deaths — with no fear-mongering pandemic headlines.

One time long ago I experienced seasonal flu. It drained my energy, killed my appetite, and debilitated me for about three days at home, not hospitalized — after which I felt fine and resumed normal activities.

I needed no potentially toxic drugs to recover. I rested mostly in bed and let the symptoms run their course which they did.

The Mayo Clinic calls COVID-19 a coronavirus strain that can range from asymptomatic to mild to severe, most cases in the first two categories.

People most vulnerable to experience severe symptoms are older with weak immune systems and anyone with chronic conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and issues affecting the respiratory system.

Thailand Medical News (TMN) calls itself a leader in “breaking the latest credible research and developments with regards to the COVID-19 disease,” adding:

“(O)n every issue to date (about the disease), we have been proven correct while it has come to light that establishments like the WHO and the US CDC are the actual perpetrators of fake news and misinformation” that’s harmful to human health.

TMN warned that COVID-19 mutated into “eight distinct…strains…with different clinical manifestations (that are) mutating (further) on average every 15 days.”

Mutations “are fundamentally very similar to each other.” It’s unclear if mutations increase their virulence.

It’s known that COVID-19 is highly contagious, why protective measures are needed to contain its spread.

TMN believes COVID-19 is unlikely to peak or “end in the next few years.” Its archive has 1,173 articles on coronavirus over an extended period of time.

Perhaps like the 1918 -20 Spanish flu, the current outbreak may subside to be followed by one or more new strains that will infect unknown numbers of people.

It’s unknown how serious and long-lasting new strains will be to individuals in countries where they may appear — or what treatment protocols will be most effective.

TMN noted that Big Pharma and governments are taking advantage of COVID-19 to serve their financial and political interests respectively.

The website gets no government support, it said, adding:

It’s “based in a region where corruption, nepotism and ego” are rife. TMN should have explained that things are worse in the West.

The website relies on reader donations. It accepts no ads.

It claims hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are ineffective in treating COVID-19 and may only produce “a dangerous placebo” effect.

I yield to medical experts to judge the veracity of this judgment.

The former is an anti-malarial drug, the latter an antibiotic used to treat respiratory and other bacterial infections.

They’ve been no clinical trials to show if either or both of these drugs are effective in treating COVID-19.

For most individuals ill from the virus, it’s for them (with professional medical advice) to decide if they’re willing to be guinea pigs.

All drugs have side effects. The more potent the drug, the greater the risk of harm to patients by causing other potentially serious issues.

Older individuals with weak immune systems who are dealing with other health issues are most vulnerable to be adversely affected.

Michel Chossudovsky explained what’s vital for everyone to know. In a detailed article I strongly recommend reading carefully, he said the following:

“The unspoken truth is that the novel (COVID-19) coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.”

“This is the true picture of what is happening. ‘Planet Lockdown’ is an encroachment on civil liberties. Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.”

“This crisis is unprecedented in World history. It is destabilizing and destroying people’s lives Worldwide. It’s a ‘War against Humanity.’ ”

“While it is presented to World public opinion as a WHO global health emergency, what is really at stake are the mechanisms of  ‘economic warfare’ sustained by fear and intimidation, with devastating consequences.”

“The economic and social impacts far exceed those attributed to the coronavirus.”

Medical science can resolve health issues. It’s powerless against dark forces that use an issue like COVID-19 for greater wealth and power at the expense of public and personal health, human and civil rights, and societies safe and fit to live in.

Today indeed is the most perilous time in world history. COVID-19 is being used by US-led powerful forces to convince ordinary people in the West and elsewhere to sacrifice personal freedoms for greater security.

Their aim is all about eliminating both by getting unwitting populations to accept what harms their well-being and futures.

It’s also about consolidating greater wealth and power, the public none the wiser.

Global and national crises are manufactured to serve the interests of dark forces.

What’s ongoing now is the mother of them all. The world as we know it is highly unlikely to be the same as COVID-19 plays out and when it ends.

In cahoots with the Obama regime, the Wall Street 2008-09 financial crisis is likely to seen as minor by comparison to a growing tsunami of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, food insecurity, hunger, overall deprivation and human suffering in the West and elsewhere that’s unfolding in real time.

The human rubble will best be understood when the dust finally settles.

If dark forces behind what’s going on prevail, new world order tyranny in the US, West, and elsewhere will replace life as we know it — a grim prospect indeed without mass resistance to prevent loss of our welfare and personal freedom.

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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.

Featured image is from CODEPINK

The region suffered hugely from early 20th century power plays by dominant Western countries, aiming to carve out spheres of influence, notably post-WW I. 

America’s turn came later, following the second world war to end all wars, the region punished by its presence, along with Israel wanting to be its dominant player, partnered with Washington.

The imperial scheme assures endless wars of aggression, targeting all sovereign independent states for regime change, notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, others elsewhere, including Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China.

Iran is the main US/Israeli Middle East target, destabilizing the country with harsh sanctions, cyberattacks, saber rattling, war-mongering, sabotage, subversion, assassinations, and spurious accusations.

Oil is the region’s curse, causing it to boil, a modern-day great game ongoing. The previous one pit Britain against tzarist Russia. One powerful empire battled another for 100 years.

Resources became increasingly more important, notably today. World supplies are finite. Major powers scramble for as much as they can control.

Oil is especially valued. No one’s sure how much is left. America, China, Russia and other major nations want control over as much as possible. They’re going all out to get it.

Middle East countries have over half the world’s proved oil reserves. Saudi Arabia’s amount is second only to Venezuela’s.

In the 1940s, the State Department called access to Middle East oil (notably Saudi’s) a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

The Caspian basin is oil and gas rich. Resource wars are waged in both regions for control. America does it aggressively.

Bush/Cheney, Obama, and now Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) assert America’s sovereign right to wage preemptive wars against perceived threats, along with aiming to control global resources, notably oil.

It powers industry and America’s military machine. Candidates Obama and Trump promised peace in our time, their agendas polar opposite, prioritizing endless wars of aggression – pursuing unchallenged global dominance, no matter the human cost.

Post-9/11, US regimes ignored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty provisions, rescinded the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, violated Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention provisions.

Trump notably abandoned the landmark JCPOA and INF Treaty.

Peace is a convenient illusion. Multiple US-led wars rage for dominance and resource control. Demand keeps growing. Available supplies shrink.

Oil and gas exploration and drilling intensify. So does competition to control what’s left — war America’s favored option, the Middle East and Central Asia especially targeted.

Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for redrawing the Middle East map, replacing sovereign independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes.

The scheme involves balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran and other regional countries for easier control, looting their resources, exploiting their people.

The region already is cauldron of endless violence and chaos. War on Iran would embroil it in greater mass slaughter and destruction.

Washington and Israel prioritize militarism, conquest, occupation, colonization and exploitation.

In his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained how America operates today, saying:

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

Russia’s September 2015 intervention in Syria at the behest of its government represented Washington’s first serious regional post-Cold War challenge.

Its regime change agenda sustained a humiliating body blow. It’s down, not out, plotting its next moves, against Syria, Iran, and other countries elsewhere, partnered with Israel and other rogue states.

In 1982, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior advisor Oded Yinon published “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s,” still relevant today.

It was translated by noted activist, analyst and outspoken Israeli critic Professor Israel Shahak (1933 – 2001) – retitled “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.” Its premises included the following:

To survive, Israel must dominate the region and become a world power.

Achieving its objective requires dividing Arab nations into small states – balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites.

The idea was modeled after the Ottoman Empire’s Millet (or nation) system – under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel’s 1967 Golan seizure, along with its 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions followed the plan.

Yinon noted “far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967, (created by the) very stormy situation surround(ing) Israel,” resurrected whenever it wishes by preemptive belligerence against Palestinians and regional states, wanting them weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

Yinon’s geopolitical scheme was similar to Nazi Germany’s imperial agenda – conquering, occupying and controlling European countries by brute force.

He believed “(t)he existence, prosperity and steadfastness of (Israel) depend(s) upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs,” based on securing its material needs through winnable resource wars and Arab world divisions.

“All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflicts even more than those of the Maghreb” (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara), he said.

All Gulf states are “built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil.” Jordan in reality is Palestine, Amman the same as Nablus.

Other Muslim states are similar, he claimed, notably Arab ones, saying Israel must either dominate them or “we shall cease to exist within any borders.”

In 1985, Israeli President/Labor party leader Chaim Herzog sounded like Netanyahu, saying:

“We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years.”

“There can be no partner with the Jews of this land,” his view like revisionist hardliner Ze’ve Jabotinsky, in a 1939 letter saying:

“There is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. It was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples. It is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.”

Ethnic cleansing and slow-motion genocide have been Israeli policies since its 1947-48 aggression, massacring and expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their historic homeland.

Washington and Israel partner to control the Middle East, wars of aggression their favorite strategy – no end of them in sight.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

The emergency OPEC+ talks that are scheduled for 9 April are the next step in the “New Detente” between the US and Russia even though America won’t formally be represented at that meeting seeing as how Moscow is making moves that show its interest in stabilizing the global energy markets so as to surprisingly save its rival’s sinking shale industry, which could in effect amount to yet another goodwill gesture after its urgent dispatch of counter-COVID aid last week in pursuit of the long-awaited series of “pragmatic compromises” across the world between these two Great Powers.

Corona virus with its mysterious origin is the perfect cover up for the financial crash and the fall of Dollar as the world reserve currency. At the core of it, it is about United States’ last kick to stay as the world top power.

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In the next few days and even months you will start hearing from mainstream corporate news, pseudo-experts (pseudo-economist, analyst, consultant), politicians, governments, world organisations and world leaders that the Corona virus or Covid-19 pandemic has caused recession and massive unemployment.

This is not an entirely false statement, because the lockdown imposed by governments has caused business and companies to shut down for unknown period which mean lost business and it is bad for the economy. But half truth is a lie. Before the occurrence of the Corona virus whose first outbreak was in November 2019 in Wuhan, China, our economic and financial systems are already heading for a crash.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva predicts a global downturn at least as bad as the 2008 financial crisis because of Corona virus. She also suggests more easing in monetary policy (QE) and that poor and developing countries to borrow more predatory loan from the IMF?

Since the financial crisis 2008 which is also known as the Great Recession we haven’t really addressed the issue and instead worsening the situation by giving bailouts to banks and corporations. The Federal Reserve and other countries’ central banks have since implemented an endless QE (Quantitative Easing). The problem with QE is that it is simply printing money out of thin air, it is not money that is backed by value such as gold, making it a FIAT or paper money.

First in the chart below, we see how the Fed has been increasing its assets (aka printing money) especially since 2009 but stopped growing its balance sheet in 2014:

When the Fed stopped its printing in 2014, we can see from the chart below that the ECB stepped right in and carried things on until last year. Apparently not only war that has the term “proxy war”, there is also “proxy printing” between Central Banks.

A Little History of Our Monetary System

US Dollar as Global Reserve Currency is not backed by gold since 1971 when President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system. The Bretton Woods Agreement in July 1944 set up a new global monetary standard replacing the gold standard with USD as the global currency and 1 USD is pegged to 1/35 of an ounce of gold. Other countries’ currencies are pegged to the US dollar. This Bretton Woods agreement gives USA the global dominance in world economy and gave birth to the World Bank and IMF,  both are U.S.-backed organisations that would monitor the new system.

When some countries began to doubt that there were more than 35 USD per ounce of gold, the world rejected US dollar, as a result later on in 1973 USD was tied to oil commodity, which led to the birth of Petrodollar.

Not only that USD is not backed by gold, with the oil industry decline and oil price down to the lowest level in four years, the world reserve currency is in threat of collapsing as the global currency. As long as US dollar remains the world’s most demanded currency, USA can continue printing its FIAT money to fund its network of global military bases, Wall Street bailouts and other bailouts (corporations, the riches), its military industrial complex (read its weapon and arm industry) and tax cuts for the rich.

Then there is also the fractional reserve in banking that only creates more bubble as bank is required to only have 1/10 of the total money it lends. For example, if bank A has a million dollar, it can lend 10 millions to bank B, which can lend 100 millions to a country, since bank B owns 10 millions. This is the fraudulent practice of our monetary system. Not only the bank will get all its money back, bank also charges interest on this ‘fake money’ loan.

The ‘Everything Bubble’ Market

The Fed’s Quantitative Easing Monetary Policy cause an excess amount of money circulating in the market that is used to speculate in the financial market from speculation in the derivative financial instruments and share/stock buybacks.

This graph below shows that there is a linear correlation between the increase in the Fed’s Balance Sheet and the increase in S&P 500 index. Thus supporting the argument above.

For x % growth in stock market, The Fed Balance Sheet also grows x %. This means that the rise in stock market doesn’t reflect its fundamental values, but just a hype because of too much money flowing in the market because of the Fed’s QE (Quantitative Easing).

To summarize, the stock market is ‘inflated’ and the US economy has been stagnant at 2% growth annually since 2000 but at the contrary US’ debt has increased significantly as shown by the graph below.

The other bubble in financial market is the Fed’s bailouts from money printing to the repo market, the banks, the hedge funds, etc. As the Fed’s Balance Sheet and total US’ Debt increase enormously from its projected path hadn’t it suffered the 2008 financial crisis, USA is at risk of default or bankruptcy as the US’ debt now sits at 23 Trillion dollars. The huge burden of debt and its interest payment caused by the ‘economic financial bubble’ created by the Fed by its ‘printing money’ policy to bailout the elites led to a serious potential decline of USA as the top economic power and putting the US dollar as world reserve currency at risk.

How Covid-19 Pandemic Fits Into All of This : ‘Kill Two Birds with One Stone’

As the financial collapse is inevitable as the Federal Reserve can’t keep printing money and creates more bubbles that at some point definitely will pop, the Covid-19 pandemic provides the global elites with the perfect scapegoat where it will be blamed (and it already started) for all the economic and financial crisis, for the massif layoffs, and the economic depression. The timing could not be more perfect, the ‘Black Swan’ event needed to cover up all the fraudulent schemes in how our world operates. In the meantime it also provides the distraction needed to blind the masses so they can’t realise and understand what is going on and what has been done to them all this time, of the fraud and plundering done by the banks, corporations and our global elites as the people are busy handling the pandemic and are afraid for their lives.

Corona virus pandemic will also be used to further the global elites’ agenda while plundering of the middle and poor class and more massif amount of transfer of wealth is ongoing. Because for the global elites it is “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.

Not only that the virus pandemic provides the right excuse, scapegoat and cover up for the economic and financial crash which is going to be worse than the 2008 “Great Recession”, it also attacked severely China and Iran, two countries USA perceives as enemies. It also caused huge number of deaths in Italy, the only and the first country in EU to sign China’s Belt and Road Initiative. With the mysterious origin of the corona virus is Covid-19 pandemic “Killing Several Birds with One Stone” strategy?

It seems the Cold War is not over yet. From the no winner of the US-China Trade War, it seems to step up to a Biological War if the corona virus is deliberately unleashed to attack a country or certain countries. But like any other bio warfare, it can spread and resulted in collateral damage as the virus is now spread to almost all over the world and more than half the world population is now under confinement.

While most of the world is figthing the virus pandemic, the battle for world hegemony continues as the global superpower will do everything it can to stay at the top and attack any country it considers as threat or enemy. At the core of it all, it is about United States maintaining its hegemony as the world top power and maintaining its currency as the world reserve currency.

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This article was originally published on Indonesia Merdeka.

Sianny Rooney is an essayist, inquisitive world citizen and an entrepreneur.

Featured image is from Health.mil

One of the most famous paradoxes of this blessed experience called Life, is known as ‘the law of unintended consequences‘; and we are at this very moment of time, in the midst of a manifestation of cosmic Lila which exactly fits this paradox. 

Under the unprecedented blanket regulatory lock-down imposed by governments all over the planet, a highly unlikely opportunity has arisen to fundamentally redress our life circumstances. An opportunity which will positively equip those who need to become aware, to face the uncertainties that lie ahead with courage and fortitude.

The number one opportunity which being stuck in one’s home for most of the working day presents, is to do some long overdue thinking; the kind that taps into that region of ourselves which has been/is particularly starved due to being heavily preoccupied by the daily chores of the standard working week. That part of ourselves which gives genuine direction to our lives, and brings us face to face with the plethora of superficial activities that preoccupy us, most of which we have, up until recently, taken as gospel.

We are being supported in this vital pursuit by changes underway in the natural environment which surrounds us. Changes for the better that result from a sudden flux of a high percentage of the frenetic hustle and bustle which forms the basic daily pattern of our materialistically centred life, and which brings with it a heavy load of pollution, noise and stress, choking both our planet’s natural environment and our own health and welfare.

Pause to consider, how remarkable it is that the impositions imposed by mostly clueless  governments, would have the unintended consequence of enabling much of nature to finally take some decent deep breaths! Enable her sinews to be at least temporarily cleansed from the antithetical materialistic pursuits of the modern world. Pursuits so misguidedly hailed as ‘progress’ and so crassly utilised for achieving the bloated ambitions of corporate giants.

Nature can breathe because motorways are largely free of the noise and pollution caused by rushing cars and trucks, and the air largely free from the constant passage of disruptive commercial jet airlines. The sky is blessedly blue and the sweeter that usual air is full of the sound of Spring inspired birds. It is generally calm – even peaceful. I remember a state like this from my childhood.

Something is happening. Something unusual. And it is coming about due to the ‘law of unintended consequences’ which is actually a cosmic/universal law and not unintended at all, but a direct reflection of Divine Lila. It has provided us with this opportunity- right in the midst of an unprecedented deep-state engendered global crisis – to join in this natural healing process so as to recharge our spiritual batteries and shed our worn-out life styles in favour of a more integrated and conscious sense of purpose.

It’s an opportunity we should not ignore.

Listen carefully: the circumstances facing all of us in the immediate two to three years ahead are going to present a quite unique challenge. Not least because they are being conducted by people either ludicrously unfit for the tasks they find themselves responsible for – or who wish to deceive and exploit us so as to acquire powers to control events which they have no legal right to control.

This means that the first call on our meditations about our immediate futures will be to raise and appraise some very practical considerations; the first of which involves taking a big step towards a much more robust and self sufficient life style. Bear in mind that a return to typical easy access to the ‘daily conveniences’ many have become accustomed to, is no longer a secure bet. Even if governments might make it appear that ‘everything is under control’ and/or ‘things will soon return to normal’. Clearly it is not – and they will not, as by now we are surely well aware – and wishful thinking will not change this situation.

As I mentioned above, we must use this brief open window to shift ourselves towards a much more self sufficient and simple life style. A largely self sufficient life style involves knowing how to cultivate the ground so as to grow our own basic food requirements. And/or if not doing this directly, making sure to be closely associated with supporting colleagues who do – and who are willing to share the harvests that result.

This is not going to be possible within an urban environment at this point in time, given not only that there is insufficient cultivatable land available, but that urban environments are largely unconducive to mental, spiritual and physical health. They do not enhance one’s immune system and ability to build the inner and outer strength vital to staying strong throughout the challenges in store for us.

So to make best use of this period solitary confinement, plot the course that will provide a practical way of taking control of your – and your family’s – destiny. Recognising, of course, that under the imposition of a quasi dictatorship there is only ‘x’ amount of room in which to move.

In this article I am taking a deliberately positive line concerning making maximum use of our largely untapped potentials as creative beings. So let’s recognise this as exactly the moment to tap these blessed creative powers – since many have been far too preoccupied with selfish pursuits instead of dealing with necessities. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ so use this one in a million opportunity to meditate on exactly what your key necessities are and how to best manage them.

This should not be an anxiety based exercise. On the contrary, we are in a time of great energetic cosmic support due to the Earth now being in a particularly powerful alignment with the centre of our galaxy, resulting in the rapid growth of heart based empathetic instincts throughout humanity. It is because dark directed forces know about this, that such an intense effort is being made to block the rising-up which is already well underway in us.

Draw upon this gift we are being sent. It is to strengthen the heart beat of mother Earth and human kind.

If you are not already doing so, start each day with Yoga. Hatha yoga exercises, for example, that have been honed over millennia to bring nourishment to every part of the body and mind. This practice, by co-ordinating breathing and movement, revitalises the chi (energy) of one’s whole being and provides a clearer insight into what is the best and most true action to take each day. A Theseus thread to guide one through the chaos which has been deliberately invoked on this planet.

Couple such practice with a diet rich in immunosupportive foods, preferably direct from the farm.

Yes, the farmers you have linked-up with and offered your support. Hands in the soil and the company of (farm) animals is immensely curative. For millions, it is the life-line to earthed, reawakened health. The forces intent upon pulling us down cannot do so once our spiritual and physical energies are awakened and maintained.  Truly vital right now.

This means, for example, we can devote our new found ‘freedom’ into actions specifically targetted at stopping the roll-out of the microwave radiation 5G weapon. A brutal technology of human paralysis and planetary ecocide, increasingly implicated in playing a covert role in the current ‘Corona Virus’ scam.

The family of man is ONE family. Our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of all others, as theirs is with ours. Selfishness is a disease far more deadly than any Corona Virus. Make use of your period of isolation to rid yourself of narcissistic tendencies, as the ‘Real I’ in each one of us is not the one that seeks self-satisfaction or indulgence in vanities. It is the one that liberates us into recognising our oneness with all life and all peoples, regardless of colour, race or creed.

Treat the domestic imprisonment being forced upon us – as an opportunity – not as cause for fear. In fact see it as a hurdle being placed in front of you so as to make you reach deeper into yourself for the solution! Because that’s what it actually is: a wake-up call without which you might never have the opportunity to discover your divine eternal flame of greatness, of Godliness.

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Julian Rose is a writer, organic farmer, international activist and holistic practitioner/teacher. Two of Julian’s books ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’ and ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ are particularly prescient reading for this time. See www.julianrose.info for more information.

What a post-COVID-19 world will look like will best be known in hindsight. Some clues:

The manufactured 2008-09 financial crisis enabled powerful interests to consolidate to greater size and influence.

It facilitated an enormous transfer of wealth from ordinary people in the US and other Western nations to privileged interests.

Force-fed austerity followed in these countries at a time when economic stimulus and putting money in the pockets of ordinary people were needed.

Was the decade-ago financial crisis a prelude for what’s now unfolding?

Was it relatively minor in harm to ordinary people compared to today’s dual public health/economic crisis and what lies ahead that won’t likely abate easily or soon?

Will it change the Western or entire world ahead? Henry Kissinger, aged-96, thinks so.

He headlined a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order,” saying:

“The US must protect its citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch.”

As national security advisor and secretary of state during the Nixon/Ford years, Kissinger’s criminality was and remains breathtaking.

Like other past and current members of the US imperial state, he remains unaccountable for a lengthy laundry list of high crimes too grievous to ignore.

Slowed at age-96, he’s still influential, advising Republicans Dems alike on geopolitical issues with new world order unfairness in mind.

He earlier and likely still advocates culling the world population of useless eaters, once saying:

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.”

He called for making involuntary mass sterilizations and birth control a prerequisite for US aid to these countries, wanting hundreds of millions of people eliminated — including by withholding food aid to nations that don’t control their population growth.

In 1974, his classified National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 called for a global  depopulation “plan of action” to prevent unwanted people from using raw materials and other resources wanted for profit-making so get rid of them.

His scheme was similar to Nazi Germany’s aim to eliminate “inferior” people to preserve the “Aryan master race.”

The scheme is defined in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Along with aggression, it’s the highest of high crimes.

Without public action to stop it, the type post-COVID-19 world Kissinger envisions will be more unsafe and unfit to live in than existing conditions today.

He defied reality saying the Trump regime “has done a solid job in avoiding immediate catastrophe” — ignoring its failure to prepare for a known danger to society that could happen anytime and did this year.

Nor has his regime provided health-related and financial aid to states, local communities, and the US public nationwide in amounts needed — largely leaving them on their own to cope at a time of unprecedented national crisis.

Like earlier public health crises, this one will pass. Of greatest concern is likely “political and economic upheaval” to be left in the wake of what’s now ongoing.

Governments and monied interests are self-serving at the expense of the general welfare.

There’s great risk ahead that ordinary people in the West will lose fundamental human, civil, and social rights on the phony pretext of protecting and preserving national security — along with stiffer neoliberalism to continue transferring enormous amounts of wealth to privileged interests.

Kissinger’s “liberal world order” is the problem to be overcome, not the solution to what’s going on.

“The world’s democracies (and) their enlightenment values” he cites don’t exist.

The world order he envisions ahead should terrify everyone everywhere.

He favors ruler/serf societies with US-dominated NATO enforcing things, endless wars, controlling the public mind, silencing dissent, and eliminating nonbelievers.

His ideal world for privileged interests is dystopian hell for the vast majority of ordinary people everywhere.

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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.

The concept of an economic system that puts Profit over People has been explained and discussed many times and in many ways. It just took a tiny virus (COVID-19) to display the contradiction between People and Profit as an urgent national question. In this equation, President Trump, as the voice of most powerful capitalist country on earth (the “GREAT AMERICA”) with his cheerleaders mostly at Fox News and in favor of PROFIT, suggests that “We have to get back to work” as soon as possible. Contrary to this idea, the scientists, medical community and people who are actually in the battlefield fighting this disease are representing the PEOPLE in this equation. Based on the ongoing and rapid escalation in the number of the infected and dead, they believe that the nation is not ready to go back to work.

Of course, those who serve the nation with their skill and hard work and genuine sincerity want to do their share and be productive members of society in these challenging times. Many small businesses in creative ways are helping their communities not for their own profit but as fellow human beings. From farmworkers to workers in food, transportation, social service industries and of course our professionals have been tirelessly working since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. However, the majority of these workers are not supported by their employers; such as sanitation workers whose basic demand to be equipped with the necessary protective gear has not been brought forward. In fact, the commercial media in these crucial times are censoring the news regarding Amazon and Whole Foods workers, who have been on strike, demanding a safe and protected work environment. These workers are risking their lives every day and just like medical staff without Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can become contaminated as well.

The question is not simply “get back to work”. The question is during this public health catastrophe, what type of work is needed and how do we implement measures that guarantee the safety of all workers. We need to adjust and convert the lines of production in order to fulfill the vital needs of the people. During this deadly pandemic, do workers need to “get back to work” and build luxury vehicles or with innovating engineering start producing lifesaving types of equipment such as ventilators? Of course, the answer is clear in reality. The “Great America” is suffering from a chaotic organizational syndrome. Not only was the government not quick to convert a section of its workforce to build ventilators; but it also produced an atmosphere whereby States need to compete against each other over ventilators. The insanity is in the DNA of the capitalist economic system. In a press conference, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (image on the right) shook the nation by informing us that “the price of ventilators had skyrocketed from $25,000 each to $45,000, as 50 states and the federal government all bid against each other for the vital oxygen device.” He truthfully admits that “We’re literally bidding up the prices ourselves”!

It is imperative to understand that the lack of decisiveness to resolve any problem at hand without delay is not because of the pathetic personality of some officials. The slow response, negligence, and sloppiness are not Democratic or Republican deficiencies; it is the nature of a government that functions only by the principles of market and profit and not the essential needs of people. The current system is not prepared to deal with extreme natural disasters and their ramifications. By tossing paper towels to the crowd during his visit to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, President Trump not only showed his inability to empathize with the distressed people, but he also illustrated the incompetency of the U.S. government in the time of crisis. Today, the slow response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic by the Federal government follows the same pattern of “leadership” that we have already witnessed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Although we are in a new and unprecedented situation, the conduct of the politicians to this crisis is the same. From the president down they easily justify the death of people in millions for their failed policies. The military intervention in Iraq which was based on the WMD hoax had killed thousands of young Americans overseas along millions of Iraqis who died in their own homeland. The unfortunate response of Secretary Madeleine Albright (a Democrat) to the indelible fact that because of the U.S. sanction, a half-million Iraqi children have died which is more than the children who died in Hiroshima; she calmly said, “We think the price is worth it.” Now we are in a different situation, this time the Americans are dying in their own homeland. President Trump at the end of March with the help of his Army Colonel Dr. Deborah Birx, is selling the projected death toll of 100,000 to 200,000 in the United States as “a good job” and the best-case scenario to the American people!

Indeed this is a global catastrophe and would resolve with transparent and unvarying cooperation between all nations on a global level.  As we hear the news about the tragic situations in Italy, Spain and Iran and now in the U.S.; we also hear encouraging news that this outbreak with the right plan can be relatively managed and contained as in China and South Korea. Cuba’s Interferon Alfa-2B drug* which is effective against coronavirus is hopeful news for the people around the world. It is reasonable to be optimistic in believing that the COVID-19 virus pandemic will be controlled, unfortunately, with a high number of fatalities than we would like to envision, we will defiantly have a post coronavirus era. Considering all of these, what will this new social, political and economical reality look like?

American people have already experienced Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump’s leadership for many years. Both, in many ways, have shown their allegiance to Wall Street and the market economy. It is impossible to envision that either of these detached politicians would introduce any progressive economic plan for the post coronavirus epoch. They have no solution on how to reverse a high unemployment rate which is predicted to surpassed the 24.9% unemployment in 1933, following the Great Depression. The broken Healthcare and outmoded education system will even deteriorate faster after COVID-19 virus is contained. The post COVID-19 virus epoch will create the best opportunity for the gigantic corporations to break apart their rivals in a fierce and merciless competition both nationally and globally. That means the maximum exploitation of both human (workforce) and vital natural resources. It is the powerless majority who suffer the most post crises. The capitalists will ask the masses who are fearful, broke and penniless to sacrifice more so the Free Market can prosper, after all, “We’re all in this together”! However, capitalists in any country are well aware of the possibility of social uprisings which have been the political ramification of post major crisis periods in history, such as the First and Second World Wars. Therefore capitalist states have a tendency to govern with the iron fist to prevent uprisings and revolutions.

In the time COVID-19 virus crisis, the President of the United States and the Ladies and Gentlemen of Congress like a generous caretaker unanimously decided to give a small portion of people’s tax money back to them. Of course, a large portion of this financial aid has been allocated to bail out their own friends in corporations! This crisis especially gives Democrats an opportunity to play their pretentious “solidarity show” with the workers of America with empty promises! Already House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to move quickly to the Phase Four of coronavirus relief plan; while those who are struggling to feed their families are still looking for Phase one to arrive! Of course among the Democrats, the “Socialist” Presidential candidate, Mr. Sanders has introduced his own “Coronavirus Emergency Plan”. Instead of exposing the ominous nature of the capitalist system which is on national display, Mr. Sanders proudly promotes himself as the true savior of the system and encourages the American workers to “Stand Up” and REFORM this outmoded system! However, the coronavirus crisis has ended any illusion that a system that strives for the highest stage in the centralization of capital is not reformable – never has been and never will be.

The ambiguity and application of “stimulus package” for the workers look more like a trap to pacify the workforce. A worker in the U.S. is giving false hope and perspective that a check of $1000 or more will be sufficient enough until they come back to work! However, those workers who have been furloughed or laid off know very well that the weakened economy and high rate of unemployment of a post coronavirus period will make finding a job extremely difficult.

So what is the alternative solution to this insane capitalistic behavior in a time the nation is desperately gasping for oxygen to fight against COVID-19 virus? The answer is a PLANNED ECONOMY.

PLANNED ECONOMY? That is “SOCIALISM” cries the Free Market economist. Certainly, President Trump and his administration would not even entertain the idea and it would be blasphemy in the minds of the Christian Evangelists. However a PLANNED ECONOMY simply means a common sense economy – an economy that puts People above Profit. This perspective makes the system of production that is based on competition -the main characteristics of the “free market”- irrational and obsolete. Today the authorities in the government under the pressure of dire social and economical circumstances are forced to practice a version of a planned economy in disarray. They say the “essential” workforce must operate.  But even the “essential” workforce is not defined as the current “leadership” is scattered, disconnected and above all is antagonistic.

The “Defense Production Act” is a federal law that gives the President the authority to direct private companies to meet the needs of the country. This capitalist plan, however, was meant to be for military equipment for the war against a “visible” enemy! Hence, President Trump, the self-proclaimed “wartime president” who is fighting the COVID-19 virus, the “invisible” enemy is reluctant to direct the companies to produce much-needed ventilators and Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), which are life-saving necessities for all medical staff and their patients confined to the battlefields of any given hospitals during this deadly pandemic. He surrounds himself at his daily Press Conference, with a handful of CEOs of essential and non- essential firms (like the “My Pillow” man) to come up to the podium, one by one and praise his “leadership” without any meaningful commitment. Mr. Trump grossly exaggerated the number of existing ventilators and PPE and quickly accuses the hospital staff of “back door” operation as a reason for the shortages.  Now that he is pleased with his “leadership” in the fight against coronavirus, he brings his military men to announce that his Administration is deploying more U.S. Navy warships to prevent “corrupt actors” (Venezuela) to smuggle narcotics and at the same time warns Iran, do not exploit the crisis coronavirus pandemic. More and more, the Trump administration finds a military solution as a real outlook to fight this disaster and impending social crisis; which historically has been the option for the capitalist countries facing a profound and deep crisis.

In Germany, Hitler introduced a new plan for the economy that simply was a program for the centralization of the economy in Germany. In reality, this capitalist program needed police supervision to be enforced! Hence Hitler appointed Hermann Göring – the founder of Gestapo (secret police of Nazi Germany) – to oversee this novel “centralized economy”!

Is the United States of America moving toward a controlled capitalist mode of production? Certainly, with any great crisis, the social and political contradictions that have been accumulated and suppressed for decades suddenly come to the forefront with great intensity. The coronavirus crisis has exposed the weakness of the United States as an incompetent government to manage peoples’ problems in a rational and effective manner in a time of disaster, while remains as the most powerful and dangerous military force with the huge nuclear and lethal arsenals in the world.

The working people in the U.S. with their international heritage and also their own struggles have sufficient knowledge to organize and offer practical solutions pertaining to a particular crisis. For example, today the GM workers with the help of their engineers and experts are able to produce ventilators as well as masks in a relatively short time while keeping their workplace protected against coronavirus. That simple conversion in production is applicable to all other factories around the country.  Workers who become the main decision-makers in their workplace and are in charge of production, in coordination with the other branches of industries, can easily convert the production lines to respond and fulfill the vital needs of the nation. In other words, the production will be logically planned according to the need of the majority of people and not for the purpose of making profits for a few wealthy people. When the decisions are made in the boardrooms of the gigantic manufacturers and corporations such as General Motors, the production lines must follow the demand of the irrational competitive market even if it results in overproduction. However, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances like today’s coronavirus crisis, it is possible for the executive officers of a large company like GM to compromise and produce items that are vital and in-demand like mask and ventilators; but certainly, that would be a temporary and limited effort mainly to leave a good corporate image as a marketing objective.

The profit-driven economy, limits the potential of production. On the contrary, since the purpose of production in a planned economy is to guarantee a decent living for all, naturally is unconstrained hence more efficient in utilizing the new useful and safe technology, faster and better with the least expenditure.

Certainly, the planned economy is not flawless. There will be errors during each cycle, but through a democratic process, corrections and improvements will be made. Capitalist economists by referring to the Soviet Union and Venezuela as a failed socialized economy reject the idea of the planned economy; but the disastrous Stalinist command economy and the current capitalist economy in Venezuela have nothing to do with the idea of a democratic, transparent and cooperative planned economy. In fact, the astonishing achievements of the Russian workers in a backward capitalist country, who survived the first global capitalist crisis and also the vicious attack by all major military powers right after the 1917 Russian Revolution and before the consolidation of the Stalinist bureaucracy, is a great source of information and aspiration for the American workers today which must be discussed. In the case of Venezuela, the resilience of the Venezuelan people as a sovereign nation is the main source of the U.S. government’s hatred toward the country, not their economic system.

Here in the United States, for any honest person who is suffering to a different degree because of coronavirus crisis, the idea of nationalization of the health care system, pharmaceutical, and all other vital service industries sounds logical and necessary. What is a private hospital good for if their business administrators only think of making more profit from each bed during this crisis? At this crucial time, common sense suggests that all hospitals should be rescued from the insane profit-driven market to serve the infected patients with the best available doctors, nurses and medical equipment, free of charge! It is time to stop the profiteers from turning our hospitals into fancy mortuaries.

The American working people have already shown that their patience is wearing thin. Slowly their voices and demands are reaching the main media. There is no doubt that capitalists in the U.S. and around the world are failing to combat the COVID-19 effectively. In order to end this miserable and chaotic situation in short order, working people collectively have to introduce their own economic plan – that is a planned economy. The coronavirus crisis has forced the workers around the world to either take the lead or let the insane “leaders” destroy humanity and nature like barbarians in fancy clothes. The actual producers and creators must form their own independent revolutionary party and organization at their workplace and in unity with the workers and professionals around the world end the destructive capitalist system which has nothing to offer except deadly diseases, extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness, environmental disasters, creating hell on earth for the millions upon millions of immigrants and refugees and their children and never-ending destructive wars. Time is ripe for a radical change!

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The global COVID-19 viral pandemic has exposed in the sharpest light the contradiction between a globalized world economy and a still existing but archaic capitalist system based on the private expropriation of wealth and resources.

The relentless drive to reap a profit from every type of human interaction now stands exposed as the greatest danger to the people of the whole planet.

At the same time, China is sending enormous amounts of assistance to countries desperate for medical and personal protective equipment. These massive solidarity shipments demonstrate the superiority of China’s basic socialist planning.

China is sending by air, rail and sea needed medical equipment to 89 countries around the world. This includes test kits, facemasks, protective clothing, goggles, forehead thermometers and ventilators.

Chinese medical workers and planeloads of essential supplies have already been sent to 28 countries in Asia, 26 in Africa, 16 in Europe, 10 in the South Pacific and nine in the Americas. This assistance is China’s most intensive and wide-ranging emergency humanitarian operation since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. (China Daily, March 26)

22 airlifts of medical supplies from China

By contrast the United States, still the largest and richest economy in the world, is overwhelmed by a complete lack of planning and even the capacity to mobilize the population for their own survival. Reported COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now exceed those in China, even though China has almost four times the population and was the first country hit with this new disease. (worldometers.info/coronavirus, April 2)

U.S. for-profit health corporations and government agencies at every level are now turning to China to order essential supplies. This follows two months of racist ridicule, political attacks and rejecting offers of assistance from both China and the World Health Organization.

Totally frustrated with the inability of any arm of the U.S. government to solve these essential supply problems, governors, mayors, charitable organizations, nonprofit and sister-city groups, and major health complexes have each started making their own trade deals with Chinese corporations to get emergency shipments of supplies.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped in and ordered 22 airlifts of supplies from China — but set up their distribution through profit-taking private sector networks. On March 29, a commercial aircraft carrying 80 tons of medical supplies arrived in New York from China. It delivered 130,000 N95 masks, 1.8 million facemasks and gowns, 10 million gloves and thousands of thermometers for distribution in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Similar flights to Chicago and Cleveland were planned for the next two days. (New York Times, March 29)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the state, which is now the epicenter for the coronavirus, is in urgent need of 40,000 ventilators. Unfortunately, ventilators were unavailable. European corporations had already bought up the entire inventory of the largest Chinese ventilator producer.

European Union also overwhelmed

The coronavirus has overwhelmed not only the United States, the center of international finance capital. Other highly developed imperialist countries, including Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Britain, are staggering under its impact.

They were also unable to respond effectively. In order to revive their capitalist corporations and banks after the 2008 global capitalist crash, the European Union had imposed years of austerity and cutbacks in social programs on member countries. after the 2008 global capitalist crash. Now the EU is refusing to share assistance, even with its member countries. with its countries.

None of these imperialist countries is offering anything to the rest of the world as this extreme medical crisis spreads to over 190 countries.

Less than an hour of Pentagon spending

With great fanfare, the U.S. government pledged $62 million from the Agency for International Development to address the pandemic. This is less than what the Pentagon spends in an hour. The enormous $746 billion Pentagon budget — much of which is a subsidy to oil and military corporations — consumes roughly $2 billion a day or $80 million an hour.

While offering no real assistance to any country, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted China and the countries that accept China’s aid, claiming: “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus clearly has demonstrated.” (Los Angeles Times, March 29) The Trump administration has also used the hardships of this global crisis to tighten sanctions and increase threats on Iran and Venezuela.

China’s ‘Health Silk Road’

The coronavirus is arriving in many countries that have already suffered humanitarian crises caused by U.S. wars and sanctions, as well as natural disasters and climate change. So China is setting up what it calls a Health Silk Road. Skilled Chinese medical teams have begun arriving in a growing number of countries, including Iran, Iraq, Italy, Serbia, Venezuela, Pakistan and Cambodia.

On March 11, as the COVID-19 virus abated in China, immediate assistance was also promised to countries in Africa. Equipment alone cannot overcome the health crises in countries lacking a national health care system. However, the 20,000 test kits, 100,000 masks, 1,000 protective suits to be delivered to each African country will have a big impact.

On March 22, a Chinese medical team arrived in Serbia with its first shipment of 16 tons. The European Union had denied any assistance to Serbia, citing U.S.-imposed sanctions.

On March 27, 130 tons of protective gear from China bound for Italy were unloaded in Vienna.

The China-Europe Express, a train line opened more than a decade ago, links 48 Chinese cities with Europe. On March 28 the first freight train to leave China after two months of lockdown departed from Wuhan. Its 19 cars were loaded with locally manufactured medical supplies.

Wuhan had been China’s hardest-hit city by the COVID-19 virus. Now it has a great deal of expertise and newly manufactured medical equipment to offer the world. Reuters reports that a shipment of a million masks and gloves from China arrived in France on March 22.

China develops diagnostic and treatment plans

China’s National Health Commission has compiled an invaluable set of diagnostic and treatment plans. It is sharing them, as well as other technical documents, with 180 countries and more than 10 international and regional organizations.

The commission has also conducted in-depth exchanges with the international community, holding about 30 video conferences on technical issues regarding the coronavirus with more than 100 countries and regions.

One such video conference with the World Health Organization, held on March 12, shared China’s experiences with representatives from 77 countries and seven international organizations. It was viewed online by more than 100,000 people.

Profit system creates disaster

In this global economy, why have offers of essential testing equipment and medical supplies from China, and even from the World Health Organization, been rejected by the Trump administration?

It’s not only because of growing U.S. hostility to China’s stunning level of development. Nor is it driven only by right-wing ideologues.

Medical care exists for profit. Free or inexpensive test kits and medical supplies threaten the capitalist drive to profit out of every human transaction. Pharmaceutical, medical and insurance companies are the most profitable corporations in the U.S. today. Along with oil and so-called defense corporations, they dominate finance capital.

During the crucial two months when these vital supplies could have been quickly ordered or manufactured and stockpiled, there was not yet a strong enough profit incentive to produce them. Medical facilities in the U.S. operate on a lean ship-to-order basis.

The unplanned and competitive nature of capitalist production distorts all social interaction. Wild speculation and bubbles of quick profit are the norm.

As the crisis became obvious to millions, anything assumed to be in possible short supply was immediately hoarded for speculation. This has led to life-threatening shortages of hand sanitizers, facemasks, essential foods and even toilet paper.

Who will pay and who will profit is the fundamental question in all capitalist relations. What is most needed — to fulfill people’s needs — is not part of the calculation.

As early as January, the Trump administration’s own medical experts identified a probable shortage of ventilators as a critical problem. Yet “both the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to define what was needed, who would pay for it and how to solve the problem of supply chains.” (“Alliance with industry does Trump no good in quest for ventilators,” New York Times, March 20)

Knowing that nothing was actually happening to solve any of these problems, Trump continued to make assurances: “We are going to have plenty.”

Many media reports have confirmed that the lack of testing kits arose from the manufacturers’ insistence on exclusive contracts with guaranteed profits. Follow-through and distribution plans were also totally lacking. Even how to keep a count of test results was not worked out in advance.

No planning for the population’s needs, along with chaotic planning for what is profitable, has created a crisis in every hospital in the U.S. Private and public hospitals, competing city, state and federal agencies, local and national charities are now in bidding wars for existing supplies.

Socialist planning is the answer

How was China able to control the virus? How is it now able to begin providing massive assistance to other countries on a global scale?

Clearly, socialist planning and large-scale collective ownership of major industries, including the medical industry, have been decisive.

Even in small developing countries, socialist planning frees up the economy to meet domestic need and even make major contributions to other countries trapped by U.S. economic domination and archaic social relations.

Look at Cuba. A country of only 11 million people, it sends more doctors to developing countries than does the World Health Organization. Cuba has also developed and freely shared with the world a medication that aids in treating those who test positive for COVID-19: Interferon Alfa-2B.

Up to now the U.S. government has not only barred the use of medications from Cuba, it has actually threatened countries that accept them. But as the death toll mounts in the U.S., demands for treatments and medical equipment may force changes in seemingly set-in-stone policies.

China has struggled to overcome past underdevelopment by balancing different forms of central planning, local collective ownership, capitalist incentives and shared ownership with Western corporations and banks. At the same time, the Communist Party has maintained broad political and economic control. It has guided national development plans and controlled what imperialist corporations can and cannot do in China.

China is still a developing country emerging from 200 years of colonial looting and underdevelopment. But it has maintained steady development since its 1949 Communist revolution overturned archaic property relations and imperialist domination. That revolution 70 years ago has made all the difference in this global pandemic.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Featured image: 130 tons of protected gear donated by China, unloaded in Austria, bound for Italy.

In a set of stable circumstances, funding higher education should be a matter of automatic persuasion.  If you want an educated populace, the tax payer should muck in. In some countries, however, this venture is uneven.  In the United Kingdom, the system remains divided, an echo of class stratification.  In Australia, which took so many of its behavioural and policy cues from ancestral Britain, investment in public education as a measure of Gross Domestic Product does not stack up well, in real terms, with other countries of the OECD.  Its school system is also something of a mild perversion – wealthy private schools receive millions as a windfall; state schools, short of equipment and facilities, starve and moulder.  

This state of affairs is highly unsatisfactory, but it is one made worse by the governance of tertiary institutions that remains, at heart, anti-democratic and oligarchical.  More to the point, they have lost their way, becoming beasts of private endeavour without enterprise; business driven without being entrepreneurial.  Poor, even disastrous investment decisions have been made, most notably the foray into the international student market.  This has often been done without a care about financial reserves or insurance that might cushion any precipitous fall in revenue.  Notwithstanding this, university politburos are putting out feelers for bailouts and financial assistance.  The begging bowl is doing the rounds.

In the United States, colleges have received a small slice – some $14bn of the multitrillion-dollar stimulus measure – to soften the blow caused by COVID-19. And some blow it has been, with LIU Post and Quinnipiac University laying off staff and the distinguished San Francisco Art Institute closing after a stint of 150 years.  Of that, $6bn is in the form of student aid; $7.5bn goes to the institutions.  The American Council on Education is none too pleased, claiming that the institutional portion is less than $8bn colleges and universities have spent in refunds and board charges.  Sector-wide losses are predicted to come in at $50bn.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is an exception, having taken steps to insure itself against a sharp drop in Chinese student revenue.  Moves were made in 2018 by the institution’s colleges of business and engineering to sign a three-year contract with an insurance broker to the value of $424,000, which would cover potential falls of revenue up to $60 million.  As Jeff Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business explained at the time, the insurance would be “triggered” by a fall of 20 per cent in Chinese student revenue in a single year.  “These triggers could be things like a visa restriction, a pandemic, a trade war – something like that that was outside our control.”    

The picture before those seeking relief is not a good one.  Combined with the characteristically shabby, ill-informed corporatism of the modern university, students in the higher education sector are receiving the attentions of an overworked and anxious teaching staff, many on sessional contracts, even as student fees feed the burgeoning managerial complex.  And international student fees, varying from twice to three times the domestic rate, have proven irresistible, leading to a seemingly endless number of appointments in management, marketing and public relations.  A logos-before-learning sentiment prevails.

In the United Kingdom, the question posed by the Financial Times over the weekend was whether universities are “too big to fail”.  Student numbers have galloped away, with University College London finding itself with twice as many it had a decade ago (38,000) and Manchester University still mighty with 39,000.  But this has not stopped the higher education sector’s call for a £7bn bailout.  This has come with the rich assumption that universities, as a matter of course, will receive such assistance, assumed as given by such international ratings agencies as Moody’s.  “It is not axiomatic,” retorts Baroness Cavendish, an adviser to the UK Department of Health and Social Care, “that UK taxpayers should now take on the financial risks of bridging what will be a shortlived hit to revenue – or without a quid pro quo.”

In 2018, the seasoned education specialist Sir Michael Barber, as head of the Office for Students, warned universities that they could not assume an automatic line of credit in the case of a financial crisis.  “The OfS will not bail out providers in a financial difficulty,” reasoned Barber during the Wonkfest higher education festival in London.  “This kind of thinking – not unlike the ‘too big to fail’ idea among the banks – will lead to poor-decision making and a lack of financial discipline, is inconsistent with the principle of university autonomy and is not in the students’ longer term interests.”  In two words: too late.

This makes calls for more funding, or a bailout package, as sharp as a double-edged sword.  Universities should receive generous funding from the public purse but there is also an expectation that such money be spent to advance the cause of education and the welfare of students, neither of which has featured much in the last decade.  The Australian Labor Party, in traditional fashion, has fallen for the magic of higher education in its ideal, rarefied form rather than actual, grounded practice.  That practice, which entails giving tax payer insurance to cover the outcomes of shoddy decision making, is ignored. 

For its part, the position of the Morrison government is best put by Senator James Paterson.  Admittedly, it supplies an incomplete picture, and a disingenuous one at that.  Nonetheless, it carries some weight.  Despite being warned about the China risk, universities, claimed Paterson, “rode the cycle up”.  It was time for them to ride it down.  

Inadvertently, the talk of protecting universities has started to resemble that of holding up financially imprudent banks.  Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek, for instance, has warned of “serious concerns that without federal government action some leading institutions could collapse.”  She proposes “low or no-cost loans to provide stability in coming months.”  She misses a beat on the issue of financial folly. “For years, universities have used income from international education to help fund their world-leading research.”  Such an equation is, if not false, then only a small part of it, ignoring the multi-million dollar amounts expended on non-research and teaching related operations, notably the spread-sheet devotees of management.

With such circumstances in mind, it would surely be fitting for the university in general to start a process of considered self-examination or, as novelist Arundhati Roy suggests with sharp clarity, take advantage of the coronavirus to “break with the past and reimagine their world anew.”  But what we find in certain marked instances is a hearty cri de coeur, a demand for financial padding that will tie things over.  Worst of all, it is a call for generous insurance without a promise of change and without condition.  Woe to the students, the sessional staff and the frontline academics. 

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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]

According to internal documents, Monsanto and Germany’s BASF knew their products would destroy farms in the United States. The firms disregarded the risks even while they planned on how to profit off farmers who would buy Monsanto’s new seeds just to avoid the damages caused by their products.

The documents (some of them date back more than a decade) have been uncovered during a recent successful $265 million lawsuit brought against both firms by a Missouri farmer. The internal documents were seen and released by the Guardian. They also revealed how Monsanto opposed some third-party product testing, in order to curtail the generation of data that might have worried regulators. In some of the internal BASF emails, employees were even joking about sharing “voodoo science“ and hoping to stay “out of jail.”

“The documents are the worst that I’ve ever seen for any case that I’ve worked on,” said lawyer Angie Splittgerber, a former tobacco industry defense attorney who works with farmers who are suing Monsanto and BASF. “So many of them put things in writing that were just horrifying.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Monsanto has been caught trying to hide the damages that are done with their products.

Records showed that at private meetings dating back to 2009, agricultural experts warned that the plan to develop a dicamba-tolerant system could have catastrophic consequences. Dicamba herbicide would normally kill crops such as soybean or cotton, but Monsanto altered the genes in these crops to create genetically modified varieties that are resistant to the herbicide. This meant that farmers can spray the weedkiller directly on those soybean or cotton plants to destroy weeds but leave the crops unharmed.

The experts told Monsanto that farmers were likely to spray old volatile versions of dicamba on the new dicamba-tolerant crops. They have warned that even new versions were still likely to be volatile enough to move away from the special cotton and soybean fields on to crops growing on other farms.

What is more important, under the system designed by Monsanto and BASF, only farmers buying Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean seeds would be protected from dicamba drift damage. –RT

According to a report prepared for Monsanto back in 2009 as part of industry consultation, such an “off-target movement“ was expected. The company also expected things such as massive “crop loss”, “lawsuits” and “negative press around pesticides.” Monsanto’s own projections estimated that dicamba damage claims from farmers would total more than 10,000 cases, including 1,305 in 2016, 2,765 in 2017 and 3,259 in 2018.

Both Monsanto and BASF defended their products, claiming dicamba is safe “when used correctly,” and marketed it as an important tool for farmers. Industry estimates suggest that several million acres of crops have now been reported damaged by dicamba. More than 100 US farmers are engaged in litigation in federal court alleging Monsanto and BASF collaboration created a “defective” crop system that has damaged orchards, gardens and organic and non-organic farm fields in multiple states.

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A novelist living in quarantine in Florence looks back at Italy’s cultural history and then forward, considering whether something positive might rise from the ruins that the virus will leave in its wake.

Last week I ventured out of my flat in Florence, armed with my auto-certificazione, the document you must possess in order to justify leaving your residence at any time in locked down Italy. As I cycled, trying to snatch a few minutes of permitted daily exercise, I veered for the Piazza del Duomo. I glanced around nervously, on the lookout for any abnormalities, policemen, anxious to avoid any official entanglements or questions. My exodus was marked by the electric flutter of adrenaline. As I gingerly reached the geometrically intricate miracle of Brunelleschi’s dome, I realized that I shared the square only with a military vehicle and some soldiers; no other civilian could be seen. It was disquieting. Did I mention the silence? It was cosmically still, as if I had just alighted on an alien planet that housed a carbon copy of Florence, but utterly bereft of sound and people. Just now the real Florentine sun is starting to ripen and ferment, settling into its springtime incarnation, and as it touched the upper levels of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral and the gargantuan dome that sits atop it, a dazzling, magical clarity resulted. But there was no one to share the moment with. I was alone.

Solitude. This is the inalienable fact of the Italian lockdown. We are all alone suddenly. Ordinary men and women alone in their homes, critically ill patients alone in hospitals (for those who are battling the Covid-19 virus are strictly isolated because of the risk of infection; not even relatives or parents are allowed to remain with them), and those shoppers who must remain at a meter’s distance from one another when they go out for essentials like food and medicine. The only places that remain open in Italy are pharmacies, supermarkets, bakeries, tobacconists, and newspaper kiosks. One of the cruelest privations in terms of everyday social interaction for the Italians—and for me, for that matter—is the loss of the ritual of the espresso, taken at the bar. The very few souls one sees outside are more often than not masked, wary, jittery. I was chastised by one man for walking too close to someone else the other day on a street that was otherwise deserted, like every other street in Florence. At a bakery, a member of staff insisted that I step back from the counter. When I did as she asked she insisted I step back further. To have stepped back any further would have required the demolition of the wall.

For Italians, who are so gregarious, so physically demonstrative, so loquacious, able to throw a party anywhere, even on a street corner, it is a cruel, surreal plight that they suddenly find themselves in. And the city’s ethereal beauty now feels almost sterile without the complementary babble of human emotions and voices that it ordinarily generates. Florence has become like a colossal movie set, after having been abandoned when the production money didn’t come through, an open-air theater for no one. While it is true that its almost metaphysical beauty and purity can now perhaps be apprehended the more clearly, the absence of humanity is elegiac. Perhaps we realize that beauty is inevitably diminished when it is glimpsed in isolation from others.

It is difficult now to imagine that only two weeks ago the city was so different, filled with tourists, all galleries and cinemas and bars and restaurants open, sounds of traffic, street life, singing filling the air. But it’s not just Florence, it’s the whole of Italy. At first it was only the northern region of Lombardy that was placed under quarantine, and in Tuscany we felt some pangs of guilt about that region’s restricted life. Then on March 9 the prime minster, Giuseppe Conte, ordered that the whole of Italy be placed under a lockdown after thousands of Italians fled from the north to Puglia and Calabria. They wanted to reunite with their families, stirred to panic-filled action after there was a leak about the projected quarantine in Lombardy from the League, the opposition party. Conte’s decision was the only real option available to him, for people had now grasped that the most serious thing about the coronavirus is its terrifying level of contagiousness. The next day, Conte ordered the lockdown to go into a higher gear—restaurants and bars that were allowed to stay open until 6pm the previous day were now ordered to shutter completely. Tourists were ordered to leave, hotels and Airbnb’s emptied instantly.

By then the Italian government had already been accused of having messed up, shutting the door after the horse had bolted. It is true that a national alarm had been sounded in January when the virus was first detected to have traveled from Wuhan to Italy. Perhaps a quarantine could have been instigated earlier. In his defense, Conte has displayed exemplary transparency in terms of the communication of his intentions, not electing to disappear whenever the going got too tough. He has proved to be more of an old-fashioned statesman than his counterparts in Europe and America: the UK, for example, is a hothouse of rumors and ambiguity, as Downing Street invites selective journalists to relay its incoherent messages. Similarly, the Italian medical sector—one of the finest in the world, and free to all—has been admirably professional and composed, despite the staggeringly difficult circumstances in which it is now having to function. Bergamo’s deaths are happening now so quickly that the cemeteries and crematoria simply can’t keep up, and the military has been called in to intervene and help.

The post office always used to be a bit of a gossip center where people stopped and chatted, and business was conducted at a leisurely pace.

On the whole, by all accounts, the Italians’ sense of civic duty has been good. Italians were never a populace fueled by a strong sense of social awareness; they were noted for their defiance, their contempt for authority and rules, but now they seem to be united by a common respect for one another and a gentle persistence and determination to do the right thing, to be considerate of others. I went to my local post office a few days ago, which is still functional but now ruled by a new protocol: one must wait outside in an orderly fashion, observing the one-meter social-distancing rule, and then only go inside when another customer comes out. The post office always used to be a bit of a gossip center where people stopped and chatted, and business was conducted at a leisurely pace: now everything has become Calvinistic and severe. But it’s an admirable method; to be overtly emotional now would be disastrous.

Similarly, the staff at supermarkets, the pharmacists, the medical personnel that I have spoken to: they all give off an air of stoicism and resilience. When I took the time to sincerely thank one of the exhausted supermarket staff for his unfailing efforts to meet the needs of his customers, he just brushed off my gratitude modestly. And no one has been panic-buying, at least not in Florence: once Italians were reassured that the supply of food would be constant, they could relax. I spoke to a freelancer in film production based in Rome, and he told me that the Romans have been obeying the rules and keeping their distance. He didn’t think that there was a risk of eventual anarchy breaking out, since Italians are serene by nature, unlike the more volatile Anglo-Saxons. Others I spoke to, such as a language teacher and translator, based in Lucca, found herself missing terribly the screams of her students, camaraderie with colleagues, and the colorful mess of school life.

An interesting quasi-paradox about pre-lockdown Italy is that while bureaucracy was always labyrinthine, glacial, and elaborate—when paying in cash to an Italian bank account, for example, you had to produce your medical card with your tax code and your identity card—everyday life was structured around the concept of improvisation and the idea of making it up as you go along. Now, in lockdown, Italy improvisation’s spark has been snuffed out. But a sense of social responsibility has hesitantly slipped into the space improvisation once occupied.

by Pierpaolo Florio

And yet Italians are extremely resilient people; they are fighters and are famously inventive. Italian painting and literature is glorious. Italy gave the world—arguably—its single greatest feat of architecture (Brunelleschi’s dome), a cosmically equilibrated vision of the afterlife (Dante’s Commedia), exquisite opera (Puccini, Verdi, Rossini), lofty novelists (Lampedusa, Pavese, Calvino), ahead-of-their-time intellectuals (Pasolini), genius filmmakers (Fellini, Visconti), and modernist creators of conundrums (Pirandello). They discovered that the earth was not at the center of the universe (Galileo). They created art so grand that it rivals the splendors of nature (Michelangelo). Contemporary doctors and dentists are among the finest in the world; today Carlo Rovelli is one of the world’s most preeminent physicists. Their artisans and electricians, their plumbers and engineers, their architects and chefs are creative in a way that is instinctive: Italians locate problems and devise solutions to them. They are resilient, and they have history’s wisdom and survival code stamped into their DNA, so I sometimes allow myself to feel tentatively optimistic about Italy’s future and its contortionistic ability to prevail and surmount obstacles and rise above them. Boccaccio’s The Decameron, an absurdly fertile feat of perpetual storytelling, was the product of defiance—defying the plague by telling stories that took place within or outside its orbit. Manzoni’s The Betrothed is another celebrated work that touches on the idea of contagion and disease, evoking Milan’s plague of 1630.

Beyond the obvious claustrophobic nature of the quarantine and its curtailment of social contact, another kind of apprehension or fear sometimes comes spasmodically into focus. It is a fear about society’s fabric falling apart: a sense that, as Yeats puts it, the center cannot hold. It must also be this fear that is uppermost in the minds of people who do not live in the exquisite countryside of Tuscany or close by Florence’s centro storico’s ethereal grace. In Florence’s drab suburbs—Scandicci, Sesto Fiorentino, Campi Bisenzio—a lot of buildings that were constructed in the 1970s resemble dour Soviet tower blocks; the flats inside are often terribly cramped and have no balconies and only run to about fifty square meters. In such suffocating conditions, people’s nerves must be close to frayed. On March 10 the government unveiled a plan for deferred utility bills, wage subsidies, and suspended mortgage repayments for people during the quarantine. These subsidies have yet to materialize, however. Ironically, Italy has received more aid from China than from the EU, despite the latter’s publicly trumpeted promises to do what it takes to keep the country afloat. And on March 22 a medical team of doctors and nurses from Cuba was flown in to help the magnificent Italian nurses and doctors. It seems that Italy’s more immediate neighbors are less concerned about its plight than those from farther climes.

Maybe in some ways Florence has reverted to a kind of medieval severity, has slipped back into a version of what it might have actually once been, stripped as it now is of pleasure and tourism, commerce and lightness. It was here that the rediscovery of Greek texts led to the birth of a new humanism, which in turn ushered in the Renaissance, as facilitated by the wealth and patronage of the Medici family, and the Middle Ages came to an end. In some ways maybe the universal privation of the lockdown might serve to remind us that the little things count, that life shouldn’t always be about immediate gratification, a perpetual searching for pleasure and purchases. At the risk of sounding preachy, could our collective enforced monasticism offer people a chance to recalibrate, to become less shallow and image-obsessed as we seem to be, or at least as shallow as the cell phone culture at large seems to promote and encourage?

Some people I have spoken to—friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic—feel that the Coronavirus pandemic may trigger some kind of existential and ethical change for the better. It is certainly true that it has forced us all to slow down, to spend time alone, to take stock and evaluate our lives, ourselves, our values, not just in Italy but, more and more, increasingly, all over the world. Those who are more naturally disposed toward meditation, introspection, spending time in their own company may be faring better than those who need to be constantly on the go, whose lives are caffeine whirls and frenetic power days. But maybe we should seize upon this pause button willingly, wake up, and connect with reality again on a more essential level. Could that pause button lead to a reboot? One hopes.

Clearly, things were and are getting out of hand on all levels—environmentally, politically, ethically. The fact that nature has already demonstrated spectacular powers of reinvention and auto-healing (I am thinking of the recent purified satellite images of Wuhan and Italy) is something that should leave us faintly awestruck, humbled, grateful. Last night I saw the stars in the night sky from my flat for the first time in my fifteen-odd years of living here. The canal waters of Venice are now transparent, and swans and dolphins have been sighted in the ports of Trieste and Cagliari after this period of radically decreased travel, economic activity, and human emissions. Is the planet trying to tell us something? Is this a chance to reclaim our humanity? It’s tempting to feel that something positive might rise from the ruins that the virus will leave in its wake.

I don’t wish to understate the enormity of the human tragedy that the virus has precipitated and the economic and social devastation it will wreak in society at large. And yet perhaps we can take solace in the fact that the planet has now, by an unforeseen and complex twist of fate—the gradual locking down of the world—been given a temporary reprieve from the toxicity we have been feeding it for time immemorial. Maybe that thought could help provide the light which sustains us in the darkness to come. In the meantime, Italy’s own flame remains diminished but not extinguished.

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Featured image is from Pierpaolo Florio

The world’s richest country USA is the only developed one without some form of universal healthcare.

Americans get marketplace medicine instead, an inequitable system for a fundamental human right. 

It prioritizes profits over human health, leaving growing millions in the US uninsured, most others way underinsured because of high cost — making healthcare in the US the way it should be for everyone unaffordable.

Should corporate insurers with bottom line priorities over all else decide what medical care they will or won’t pay for and how much?

Should millions of poor and low-income households be deprived of vital healthcare when most needed because it’s unaffordable?

Medical treatment decisions should be made by doctors and other qualified health professionals, not politicians, bureaucrats, or business.

High healthcare costs in the US, double the amount of other developed countries, is the leading cause of consumer bankruptcies.

According to the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) in March 2019, around two-thirds of household bankruptcies were  because of unaffordable healthcare or unpaid time away from work.

Because of high-cost/sharply rising premiums, deductibles and co-pays, healthcare insurance or enough of it for full coverage is unaffordable for most Americans.

The AJPH noted that Obamacare “did not change the proportion of bankruptcies with medical causes.”

Three years after its enactment, medical bankruptcies were slightly higher than earlier. Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) co-founder Dr. David Himmelstein explained why, saying:

“Unless you’re Jeff Bezos, people don’t have very good alternatives, because the insurance that is available and affordable to people, or that most people’s employers provide them, is not adequate protection if you’re sick.”

Most US households live from paycheck to paycheck with scant savings or none at all.

According to the Bankrate personal finance website in January 2019, only 40% of US households have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.

Most Americans are woefully unprepared for the ongoing health and economic crisis that may be the severest in US history before ending at an unknown future time.

The American Public Health Association explained that bankruptcy filers for medical reasons are in worse health and more likely to skip needed treatments and medications, greatly endangering them.

Spreading COVID-19, mass layoffs and unemployment in the US show why Medicare for all is an idea whose time has come with great urgency to enact into law now.

PNHP called for improved universal healthcare for all Americans — everyone in, no one left out, prioritizing public and personal health over profit-making by insurers, Big Pharma, and large hospital chains.

Its website states that “the only permanent solution is to enact a single-payer national health program that would:

• Cover all US residents for all medically necessary care;
• Totally eliminate out-of-pocket spending;
• Guarantee appropriate health resources in all communities based on medical need;
• Increase public health spending and invest in research to improve population health; and
• Maintain the capacity to respond to nationwide crises in a unified manner” like what’s occurring in real time now, adding:

“COVID-19 is just one dramatic example of our failure to care for vulnerable patients and marginalized populations.”

Hand-washing, social distancing, sheltering in place, and more draconian lockdowns to contain and eliminate COVID-19 outbreaks ignore core healthcare inequality and inadequacy of our time and earlier in the US — lack of healthcare for everyone in the country, a vital human right not addressed.

Food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare when needed are the most fundamental human rights of all.

In the US, they’re based on the ability to pay, why millions of people in the country live on the edge.

Millions are food insecure. Hundreds of thousands are homeless, and most Americans have no healthcare coverage or not enough.

PNHP co-founder Dr. Steffie Woolhander expressed frustration, saying “(t)he lack of Medicare for all is forcing (doctors and other healthcare professionals) to fight this (battle) with one hand tied behind our back.”

The medical community and society overall “have to conquer coronavirus altogether. That’s the whole idea behind Medicare for all.”

If not now at a time of a growing national emergency, when?

If the medical community and millions of ordinary Americans don’t demand it now, who will?

If that doesn’t express a sense of urgency for a vitally needed human right when most needed, what will?

A Final Comment

According to Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office estimates, administrative/bureaucratic savings would free up enough funds to provide world-class healthcare for all Americans – without increasing total spending.

In January, PNHP explained that Medicare for all can save about $600 billion annually in the US by eliminating middlemen bureaucracy and paperwork that costs over one-third of what’s spent on healthcare — fivefold what Canada spends.

Dr. Himmelstein explained that “(t)he difference (in administrative costs) between Canada and the US  is enough to not only cover all the uninsured but also to eliminate all the copayments and deductibles, and to amp up home care for the elderly and disabled,” adding:

“And frankly…money (will) be left over.”

According to Public Citizen, the US healthcare industry “wants you to think universal healthcare is too expensive.”

“In reality, it’s our current system that’s a wasteful, unsustainable disaster.”

At a time when the vast majority of Americans are hunkered down at home and scared to death about COVID-19, Medicare for all is the only acceptable way to assure healthcare is provided for all Americans when needed.

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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.

Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillionavailable to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

It is also the Federal Reserve that will be picking up the tab for this bonanza, at least to start. The US central bank has opened the sluice gates to unlimited quantitative easing, buying Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functions.” Last month, the Fed bought $650 billion worth of federal securities. At that rate, notes Wall Street on Parade, it will own the entire Treasury market in about 22 months. As Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged on 60 Minutes, “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve.”

In theory, quantitative easing is just a temporary measure, reversible by selling bonds back into the market when the economy gets back on its feet. But in practice, we have seen that QE is a one-way street. When central banks have tried to reverse it with “quantitative tightening,” economies have shrunk and stock markets have plunged. So the Fed is likely to just keep rolling over the bonds, which is what normally happens anyway with the federal debt. The debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year. Only the interest must be paid, to the tune of $575 billion in 2019. The benefit of having the Fed rather than private bondholders hold the bonds is that the Fed rebates its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, making the loans virtually interest-free. Interest-free loans rolled over indefinitely are in effect free money. The Fed is “monetizing” the debt.

What will individuals, families, communities and state and local governments be getting out of this massive bailout? Not much. Qualifying individuals will get a very modest one-time payment of $1,200, and unemployment benefits have been extended for the next four months. For local governments, $150 billion has been allocated for crisis relief, and one of the Fed’s newly expanded Special Purpose Vehicles will buy municipal bonds. But there is no provision for reducing the interest rate on the bonds, which typically runs at 3 or 4 percent plus hefty bond dealer fees and foregone taxes on tax-free issues. Unlike the federal government, municipal governments will not be getting a rebate on the interest on their bonds.

The taxpayers have obviously been shortchanged in this deal. David Dayen calls it “a robbery in progress.” But there have been some promising developments that could be harnessed for the benefit of the people. The Fed has evidently abandoned its vaunted “independence” and is now working in partnership with the Treasury. In some sense, it has been nationalized. A true partnership, however, would make the printing press available for more than just buying toxic corporate assets. A central bank that was run as a public utility could fund programs designed to kickstart the economy, stimulate productivity and generally serve the public.

Harnessing the Central Bank

The reason the Fed is now working with the Treasury is that it needs the Treasury to help it bail out a financial industry burdened with an avalanche of dodgy assets that are fast losing value. The problem for the Fed is that it is only allowed to purchase or lend against securities with government guarantees, including Treasury securities, agency mortgage-backed securities, debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and (arguably) municipal securities. To get around that wrinkle, as Wolf Richter explains:

[T]he Treasury will create (or resuscitate) a series of special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) to buy all manner of financial assets, backed by $425 billion in collateral conveniently supplied by the US taxpayer via the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The Fed will lend to SPVs against this collateral which, when leveraged, could fund $4-5 trillion in asset purchases.

That includes municipal bonds, non-agency mortgages, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and every variety of asset-backed security. The only things the government can’t (transparently, yet) buy are publicly-traded stocks and high-yield bonds.

Unlike in QE, in which the Fed moves assets onto its own balance sheet, the Treasury will now be buying assets and backstopping loans through SPVs that the Treasury will own and control. SPVs are a form of shadow bank, which like all banks create moneyby “monetizing” debt or turning it into something that can be spent in the marketplace. The SPV decides what assets to buy and borrows from the central bank to do it. The central bank then passively creates the funds, which are used to purchase the assets backing the loan. As Jim Bianco wrote on Bloomberg:

In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades. This scheme essentially merges the Fed and Treasury into one organization. …

In effect, the Fed is giving the Treasury access to its printing press. This means that, in the extreme, the administration would be free to use its control, not the Fed’s control, of these SPVs to instruct the Fed to print more money so it could buy securities and hand out loans in an effort to ramp financial markets higher going into the election.

Of the designated SPVs, none currently serves a public purpose beyond buoying the markets; but they could be designed for such purposes. The taxpayers are on the hook for replenishing the $425 billion in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and they should be entitled to share in the benefits. Congress could designate a Special Purpose Vehicle to fund its infrastructure projects, and to fund those much-needed public services including Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief, and similar programs. It could also purchase a controlling interest in insolvent or profligate banks, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and other offenders and regulate them in a way that serves the public interest.

Another possibility would be for Congress to fund these programs in the usual way by issuing government bonds, but to enter into a partnership agreement first by which the central bank would buy the bonds, roll them over indefinitely, and rebate the interest to the Treasury. That is how Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has funded his stimulus programs, with none of the predicted inflationary effects on consumer prices. In fact the Japanese consumer price index is hovering at a very low 0.4%, well below even the central bank’s 2 percent target, although the Bank of Japan has monetized nearly half of the government’s debt. Half of the US debt would be over $11 trillion. Assuming $6 trillion for the current corporate bailouts, that means another $5 trillion could safely be monetized for programs benefiting individuals, families and local governments. (How to do this without driving up consumer prices will be the subject of another article.)

Relief for State and Local Governments

State and local governments, which are on the front lines for delivering emergency services, have for the most part been left out of the bailout bonanza. While we are waiting for action from Congress, the Fed could make cheap loans available to local governments using its existing powers under Federal Reserve Act Sec. 14(2)(b), which authorizes the Fed to purchase the bills, bonds, and notes of state and local governments having maturities of six months or less. Since local governments must balance their budgets, these loans would have to be repaid, but the loans could be extended by rolling them over for a reasonable period, as is done with repo loans and the federal debt; and the loans could be made at the same near-zero interest rate banks can borrow at now. State and local governments are at least as creditworthy as banks – they have a taxpayer base and massive assets. In fact the private banking industry would have been insolvent long ago if it were not for the deep pocket of the central bank and the bailouts of the federal government, including the FDIC insurance scheme that rescued the banks from bankruptcy in the Great Depression.

There is a way state and local governments can take advantage of the near-zero interest rates available to banks even without federal action. They can set up their own publicly-owned banks. Besides giving them the ability to borrow much more cheaply, having their own banks would allow them to leverage their loan funds. A $100 million revolving fund issuing loans at 3% would gross the state $3 million per year. If that same $100 million were used to capitalize a bank, it could issue ten times that sum in loans, grossing $30 million per year. Costs would need to be deducted from those earnings, including the cost of funds; but the cost of funds is quite low for banks today. They can borrow to meet their liquidity needs from their own deposit pool, or at 0.25% in the fed funds market, or at about the same rate in the repo market, which is now backstopped by the central bank.

The blatant disparities in the congressional response to the current crisis have shone a bright light on how our financial system is rigged against the people in favor of a wealthy elite. Crisis is when change happens; this is the time for advocates to unite in demanding change on behalf of the people. As Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis admonished in a recent post:

[T]his new phase of the crisis is, at the very least, making it clear to us that anything goes – that everything is now possible.… Whether the epidemic helps deliver the good or the most evil society will depend … on whether progressives manage to band together. For if we do not, just like in 2008 we did not, the bankers, the spivs [petty criminals], the oligarchs and the neofascists will prove, again, that they are the ones who know how not to let a good crisis go to waste.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Web of Debt Blog.

Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books,including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

The Afrin Liberation Forces carried out a series of attacks on Turkish-backed militants in northern Aleppo. According to the group, its fighters stormed positions of Turkish proxies near Omra killing three of them on March 26. On April 1, the group’s members blew up a vehicle of a field commander, Abu Khalid. The commander and his three bodyguards were killed, while the fourth one was injured. On the same day, Kurdish rebels detonated an IED at a headquarters of Turkish-backed forces in the al-Mahmudiyah neighborhood of Afrin city. The attack resulted in material losses only.

The Afrin Liberation Forces is a brand used by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to distance themselves from regular attacks on the Turkish Army and Turkish-backed groups in northern Syria. They launch their attacks from the YPG-controlled area near the city of Aleppo and have a network of cells within the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin.

Turkish convoys with building blocks and engineering equipment were entering Syria through the Kafr Lusin border crossing on April 1 and April 2. Later, the equipment and building blocks then were delivered to the militant-held part of the M4 highway in southern Idlib. The Turkish military is reportedly planning to use them to set up a group of fortified checkpoints along the highway in order to solidify its presence there. In March, Turkish forces in the area became a target of two IED attacks by radical militants, and Ankara reasonably expects that such attacks could continue in April.

On April 2, two Syrian soldiers were killed and five others were injured in a Turkish artillery strike on a Syrian Army checkpoint near the town of Tell Tamr in the province of al-Hasakah. In 2019, the army established a number of positions in northeastern Syria following a breakthrough agreement with local Kurdish militias. Then, joint Syrian-Russian efforts allowed to limit the Turkish military operation against Kurdish forces and prevent a larger escalation. Nonetheless, sporadic firefights and artillery duels regularly erupt on the contact line between the Turkish Army and its proxies on the one hand and the  Syrian Army and Kurdish militias on the other hand.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition reinforced its military base in the oil-rich area of Rmelan. The US base is located near one of the country’s largest oil fields. It can produce up to 90,000 barrels a day. Earlier, the US military deployed additional equipment and troops to its positions in the area of al-Shaddadi in southern al-Hasakah.

According to the Pentagon, about 500 US troops remain deployed in the oil-rich areas in the provinces of Deir Ezzor and al-Haskah. However, the scale of military activity in the region indicate that the real number of personnel involved is likely higher.

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It is seriously astounding how fast the economy is crumbling. No infusion of funny money will save the American people from the historically severe depression now evolving.

State and federal governments are becoming more authoritarian in response to serious influenza (critical data on the transmission of the disease is absent, muddled, contradictory, and the corporate media feeds a frenzy of fear and paranoia based on conflicting, revised, and often speculative numbers). 

Critical supply lines foolishly based on the globalist profit-maximizing concept of “just in time” are now breaking down. How long do you suppose unemployed service industry and gig-economy workers will tolerate a serious shortage of food and other essentials before looting stores like the poor and hungry of Palermo? How long before armed citizens begin taking what they need and the military is called in to restore order and confiscate weapons like they did during Katrina? All hell will break loose from Baltimore to Seattle and the government may impose martial law (it can be argued we are already under a soft form of martial-medical law, half of us confined to our homes, the equivalent of house arrest, scared to death of a virus they now say can spread by merely opening of one’s mouth and speaking and thus allowing viral-laden breath to drift in the air). 

I don’t believe the state will be able to meet the needs of a third or more of an unemployed workforce—angry, desperate, and eventually violent as a dystopian nightmare spreads across the land. Congress and Trump’s onetime $1,200 check will certainly not satisfy the unemployed for long—in many cases, that’s not even a month’s rent. Millions of Americans stood by and watched as the Federal Reserve dished out a trillion and a half bucks to the banks and the financial elite. 

Mark Twain said something about history rhyming. It looks like a big fat sonnet is about to unfold and knock us flat. Historians argue whether FDR did or did not secretly agree with Churchill to get the US involved in the war in Europe and thus put an end to a stubborn depression. It did—and the military-industrial machine returned prosperity to depression and war-weary Americans while building a sprawling national security structure behind the scenes to face an exaggerated enemy, a critically flawed Soviet Union and the virus of Lenin’s version of communism. 

While we are obsessed with life, death, and the coronavirus, the Trump administration is moving to re-ignite the war in Iraq, a war that has as its final objective the destruction of Iran. 

From the corporate propaganda media:

President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that Iran was planning a “sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq” and later cited unspecified intelligence he said indicated potential plots by local Tehran-aligned forces there.

“Don’t do it,” the president warned at a press briefing that evening, threatening that his “response will be bigger” this time after U.S. airstrikes last month targeted Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah positions but also reportedly killed Iraqi troops, police officers and a civilian.

It was soon reported Trump ordered “Patriot surface-to-air missiles and a variant of the Navy’s SeaRAM and CIWS, or close-in weapon system, which fires 3,000 rounds a minute” be sent to Iraq to protect US bases. 

Lost in the latest reportage is the fact the rockets fired at US soldiers were a direct response to Trump’s Mafia hit on Iran’s Qassem Soleimani.

A second establishment propaganda mill reported: 

It was not immediately clear what intelligence Trump had obtained to prompt him to issue his tweet on Wednesday… [during a] subsequent press conference he indicated the US’s likely target would be Kata’ib Hezbollah, saying the US had “very good information on the group planning the attack”. He added: “It was led by Iran, not necessarily Iran, but by groups supported by Iran, but that to me is Iran.”

President Trump now has the distraction of a virus and the unfolding of a government-engineered depression to cover what the neocons plan to do in Iraq and Iran. 

Considering Trump had zero reluctance to murder Soleimani in high-tech mob boss fashion, it is entirely possible he will go after Iran’s expeditionary Quds force commander Esmail Ghaani. He is scheduled for a meeting in Baghdad this week. “Ghaani is hoping to unite the Shia factions, and the visit is seen as a test of whether he can match the famed influence of Suleimani.”

Then again, taking into account Trump’s recent vacillations on Iran, he may decline to start another war in the Middle East. He believes the impending depression is “V-shaped” and America will bounce back after increasingly authoritarian COVID-19 measures are put into place and never rescinded. 

If he believes there will be a bounce to prosperity, he is surely deluded. Before the middle of June, it is likely the US will be in a full-blown depression with hyperinflation, food shortages, mass protests, political violence, and the possibility of military rule as laid out in the state’s continuity of government plans for “national emergencies.” 

Oliver North, now handsomely compensated as a patriot-celebrity, in the early 1980s under a compromised Reagan helped put into motion a plan to round-up and intern millions of “troublemakers,” most listed on the Main Core database established by FEMA under National Security Directive (NSD) 69 and National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 55. Main Core is now held by the NSA, FBI, CIA and more than likely the national security state’s corporate public-private partners (a classic example of Mussolini fascism-corporatism). 

The severity of the depression and the reaction by the state will result in the final and complete destruction of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This will be of little concern to folks facing poverty, eviction, homelessness, and the disease, mental illness, alcohol, and drug addiction, and early death that invariably accompanies the fall of managed economies and the failure of government. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

It has become a source of pride.  Highly salaried executives – often, it should be said, receiving pay very much disconnected from the value of their work – making voluntary pay cuts and telling everybody else about it.  In sport, celebrated figures such as Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo have chosen to reduce their enormous pay packages for the sake of the game.  Both play for football leagues in Spain and Italy, countries ravaged by COVID-19, and both earn amounts reputedly coming in at $100 million a year.  Such sums are scandalous to begin with, but it enables a sort of virtue to be practised, the sort that leaves few scares.  Clubs such as Barcelona and Juventus host an army of non-playing employees, and such armies risk being culled. 

This point is being demonstrated with some force in the United Kingdom, where handsomely paid players in the English Premier League have resisted calls to be virtuous in parting with their own cash in covering the fees of club staff.  One figure keen to shout the message to do more is health secretary Matt Hancock. “Given the sacrifices many people are making, the first thing PL footballers can do is make a contribution.” 

Julian Knight, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee, also had a bone to pick with the Premier League, writing a scolding note to its chief executive Richard Masters about potentially misusing the job retention scheme.

“The purpose of the coronavirus job retention scheme is not to support the economics of Premier League clubs.”   

The targets of economic pain have, inevitably, been the staff and personnel who do not find themselves kicking a ball on the pitch.  Clubs such as Tottenham have furloughed non-playing employees.  Newcastle was first out of the box, reducing the salaries of non-playing staff by 20 per cent. This sent a rather ugly message: If you are not a performer on the field, you will be targets of convenience for the financial razor gangs.

Scratching the surface, and we find dissatisfied players such as Andros Townsend, a member of the English football team, none too keen to be either noble or a target of virtue. 

“Football,” he pleaded on talkSPORT, “is trying to do a lot of good.”  He found it surprising that footballers were “being painted as villains”.  (Tool Townsend might be; sharp, he is not.) 

Reductions in his own salary, and those of his peers, was something he preferred to avoid in the discussion.  The focus was on charitable good works, helping the homeless or donating to charities.  “I am involved in a campaign, Football United, raising money for the emergency trust.” A toast, then, to his achievements. 

The pattern is repeated among other football players who prefer to raise money from the public to support what are, already, publically funded facilities.  Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, for instance, is engaged in establishing a coronavirus fund with the purpose of raising millions of pounds for the National Health Service.  The public can pay for something they already pay for, a truly innovative form of charity.

Across industries, the principle of superfluousness is coming to the fore.  The mightily salaried are making claims of reduction to gain a seat in some heavenly kingdom.  In doing so, they hope that no one will notice a cardinal fact: that the cuts are only to the base salary rather than the whole remuneration package.  This has been particularly so in the airline industry, where executives are kitting themselves out in the vestments of a newly found morality.  British Airways CEO Willie Walsh is accepting a 20 per cent pay cut for the remainder of his contract with International Airlines Group.  Australian airline Qantas has also stormed up the ranks of virtue, with Alan Joyce taking no salary for the rest of the financial year ending in June 2020, while the executive management team accept a 30 per cent pay cut.  Before shedding joyful tears for such consideration, Joyce’s rich rewards from the company should not be forgotten.  According to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, his pay for 2018 was $23.88 million.

Few, in other words, should rush to join the self-congratulatory party.  Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s base salary is $891,667, which he accordingly intends to cut “by 100 per cent through the next six months.”  That constitutes a trifling 6 per cent of his mammoth $14.9 million compensation package.  As Ethan Wolff-Mann of Yahoo Finance notes, that rich package consists of “stock awards, option awards, and other types of compensation that aren’t connected to the company’s stock price.”  Shares, rather than salary, make the difference.

The picture looks equally seedy in the world of education, where the management heavies continue to bleed university budgets.  In Australia, La Trobe University executives, self-termed “leaders”, have embarked on a process of trimming their bloated salaries.  Senior executives who form a 12-strong group have been asked to cede 20 per cent of their pay packets “in the interest of minimising the economic impact of the crisis”.  Vice-chancellor John Dewar explains the reasoning:

“While the impacts at La Trobe may not be as severe as some other Australian universities, we will soon be facing a simple choice: ‘share the pain’ across the organisation’s staff or implement a significant cost cutting exercise.” 

Given how executive leadership imperilled the Australian tertiary system by overly investing in the foreign student market, they might do a little more than.

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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]

With the world’s attention directed towards the coronavirus it may be worth changing focus, and analysing another international incident, the Cuban Missile Crisis. This hugely significant event occurred almost 60 years ago, officially from the 16th to the 28th of October 1962.

While humanity will eventually recover from the coronavirus outbreak, the missile crisis confrontation between America and the USSR came close to destroying our planet. The factors culminating in it were, overwhelmingly, due to American aggression and terror pursued by the John F. Kennedy administration against revolutionary Cuba. Perhaps most serious of all, as the missile crisis was peaking on 26 October 1962, president Kennedy was handed a vital letter in the early evening, written by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

More than 100 US-built missiles having the capability to strike Moscow with nuclear warheads were deployed in Italy and Turkey in 1961. (Public Domain)

In Khrushchev’s lengthy correspondence to JFK, among other things he offered to end the missile crisis with a simultaneous public withdrawal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba, along with the removal of US Jupiter missiles placed in Italy and Turkey, the latter country close to Soviet borders. The Kremlin, we can note, posed no threat of invasion to NATO state Turkey, nor was Moscow directing a major terrorist campaign against Turkey either.

President Kennedy was aware that if he refused Khrushchev’s offer, it would lead to an estimated 33% to 50% increased chance of nuclear war erupting between America and the Soviet Union. Yet Kennedy rejected Khrushchev’s proposal.

The highly regarded author and analyst, Noam Chomsky, wrote of JFK’s act that, “It is hard to think of a more horrendous decision in history – and for this, he is still highly praised for his cool courage and statesmanship” (1). Kennedy’s legacy has been crafted and romanticised to a somewhat surreal extent. When queried on JFK’s record by comparison to then incumbent Barack Obama, Chomsky said, “JFK was far worse, which is not a compliment to Obama”. (2)

Reflecting on the missile crisis Chomsky noted,

“The confrontation finally came down to two basic issues: [1] Would Kennedy pledge that the US would not invade Cuba? And [2] would he make a public announcement that the US would withdraw its Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey, on the border of Russia and aimed at its heartland? On both issues, Kennedy ultimately refused. He agreed only to a secret commitment to withdraw the missiles, which had in any case already been scheduled to be replaced by Polaris nuclear submarines. He refused to make any formal commitment not to invade Cuba”. (3)

It was important that Moscow be seen to capitulate before the eyes of the world, with a public withdrawal of their missiles from Cuba. JFK’s belligerence, it must be stressed again, knowingly made it much more likely that a nuclear conflict would ensue, killing hundreds of millions. The Holocaust, widely recognised as the worst crime in history, resulted in the deaths of around six million people.

With Kennedy rejecting Khrushchev’s proposal, this enhanced risk of nuclear war added to the many other risks – already in place – that occurs when tensions are ratcheted up between the world’s two nuclear and military superpowers. In a direct struggle, America was always the stronger and more dominant of the two rivals, holding incomparable advantages.

By 26 October 1962, the overall chance of a nuclear war starting was now undoubtedly approaching a 90% likelihood – and even surpassing that figure in the hours ahead. Hair-raising incidents, as we will see, bear proof of this.

On October 26th Kennedy was “leaning towards military action to eliminate the missiles” in Cuba, according to Sheldon Stern, the well-informed American author. This would almost certainly have resulted in a nuclear conflict.

JFK had moreover rejected Khrushchev’s offer, primarily because he did not want the obsolete US Jupiter missiles with nuclear warheads removed publicly from Turkey. It was feared that the US-led NATO alliance might crack, should such an agreement be carried out under apparent pressure from the Soviets.

Washington wished to preserve their right to place nuclear-armed weapons, and other advanced technology, wherever it wished. The Russians were afforded no such luxury, as Khrushchev would discover. While he was dispatching his missiles to Cuba by stealth, the Americans had openly encircled Russia with offensive instruments of war.

Kennedy’s disregard of the Khrushchev letter was undertaken in order to preserve US prestige, credibility and strategic superiority over Moscow. There is little doubt that these imperialist ambitions were deemed more important to Kennedy, and his advisors, than reducing the possibility of a sprint to the precipice.

In the event of nuclear war, America would be destroyed along with her NATO allies in western Europe, like Britain and France, as would many other countries, including of course the Soviet Union. However, Kennedy and his colleagues did not seek out their western European friends for counsel during the missile crisis, treating them with aloof disdain. Kennedy previously informed his Secretary of State Dean Rusk that Washington’s allies “must come along or stay behind”. (4)

JFK’s closest ally, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, told his cabinet members that Kennedy’s policies were “escalating into war” but that he felt unable “to stop it”. What Macmillan learnt came almost exclusively from British intelligence.

The day after Khrushchev’s letter arrived, 27 October 1962, a terminal nuclear war nearly broke out. The planet was saved that day only by the action of Vasily Arkhipov, a 36-year-old Soviet submarine officer. (5)

With Kennedy having refused to de-escalate the crisis, a dozen US warships zoned in on a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine located near Cuban shores. The submarine was operating legally in international waters, but it was tracked down by US vessels attempting to force a quarantine. Depth charges were then dropped.

A US Navy P-2H Neptune of VP-18 flying over a Soviet cargo ship with crated Il-28s on deck during the Cuban Crisis. (Public Domain)

The Soviet crew became agitated, and were working in increasingly difficult circumstances. Air conditioning in the submarine had failed, with the heat almost too unbearable to endure. Some Soviet crew members fainted because of rising temperatures and the spread of noxious gases on board.

The submarine’s captain, Valentin Savitsky, wanted to fire their nuclear torpedo at the US destroyers, which consisted of a 15 kiloton weapon, equivalent in power to the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Captain Savitsky said,

“We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all; we will not become the shame of the fleet”. (6)

Losing contact with Moscow many days before, the Soviet crew were left in the dark, and did not know if war was taking place above the surface. Orders to fire the nuclear missile were subsequently blocked by Arkhipov, a man well respected and noted for his bravery in the past. In doing so, Arkhipov “saved the world” as Thomas Blanton commented, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. (7)

Had the Soviet nuclear torpedo been launched, Washington’s response in such a scenario was a large-scale nuclear attack on Russia; including very likely further assaults at the same time on China, Russia’s communist neighbour. The experienced military expert, Daniel Ellsberg, wrote that US plans called for nuclear strikes in any war on Russia and China together. The Chinese did not develop nuclear weapons until October 1964.

Ellsberg recalled that maps in US headquarters “did not demarcate at all between China and Russia. The Sino-Soviet bloc appeared as one giant landmass, with arrows and pins indicating the various targets” (8). Strategies to hit Russia and China with nuclear bombs were, in fact, firmly embedded in the highest echelons of US political and military circles, as noted by Ellsberg, who enjoyed top level clearance.

That the globe’s preservation came down to last minute interventions, reveals much of the shocking standard of leadership provided by Kennedy downwards; to a lesser extent too, Khrushchev and the Kremlin hierarchy. Khrushchev’s decision to station nuclear missiles on Cuban soil was terribly rash, particularly when faced with an aggressive and inexperienced opponent like Kennedy.

Such chilling close calls were not limited to October 27th. In the air, scores of B-52 American bombers were armed with thermonuclear bombs and ready to go. The US pilot, Major Don Clawson, was ever-present in the skies during these high risk manoeuvres. Clawson believes that the most dangerous day of the missile crisis was actually October 26th, and he remarked on that date,

“We were damned lucky we didn’t blow up the world – and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country”.

Clawson reminisces on a list of bungling errors and confusion among the American leadership on October 26th, and more broadly during the missile crisis. Clawson wrote of his air commanders that they “did not possess the capability to prevent a rogue crew or crew member from arming and releasing their thermonuclear weapons” once airborne.

Clawson revealed it was impossible to call the pilots back, once they were sent on a mission. There was no inhibitor in the aircraft systems, so as to prevent an insubordinate pilot from initiating a nuclear attack on Russia. Clawson writes of their nuclear arsenals,

“it would have been possible to arm and drop them all with no further input from the ground”. (9)

The US Strategic Air Command (SAC), officially in charge, had little real control and no idea as to what was taking place. Combining all of these risks, one must conclude that we were highly fortunate to have survived this event. The threat of nuclear war was surely at over 90% in the final days.

A pivotal factor resulting in the missile crisis was indeed due to Washington’s malevolence towards Cuba. The attacks started from the winter of 1959-1960, under president Dwight D. Eisenhower, with CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary air raids on Cuba emanating from nearby Miami, and carried out by Cuban exiles.

The terrorist assaults continued under Kennedy – with speedboat machine gun fire on a Cuban seaside resort near Havana, killing a score of Cubans and Russians, contamination of Cuban sugar shipments, attacks on cargo vessels, and so on.

JFK stepped up the terror operations from August 1962 and, alarmingly, they continued right up to and even through the missile crisis. These blows were designed to soften Cuba up, which the White House expected would lead to “open revolt” on the island, before “final success” which “will require decisive US military intervention” in Cuba. The invasion was scheduled for October 1962, the same month as the missile crisis.

Image on the right: President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara in an EXCOMM meeting. (Public Domain)

On 22 October 1962, Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara told his cabinet associates that “the president ordered us to prepare an invasion of Cuba months ago” (10). The plans were so far advanced that an attack could have been launched within seven days. The Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, and Khrushchev were quite likely expecting a US invasion of Cuba in October 1962. As can be seen, there were mitigating circumstances in Khrushchev’s decision to ship his weaponry to Cuba.

Khrushchev dispatched the missiles as a deterrent to US hostility, and certainly not for the prime purpose of attacking America. He was in addition trying to address the global military imbalance, which was greatly in favour of Washington, with US missiles dotted across Europe with Moscow in mind. Khrushchev wanted to give the Americans “a little of their own medicine”, as he assured colleagues. (11)

Another reason that the missiles in Cuba rankled with Washington, was that it acted as a possible impediment to a US invasion of oil rich Venezuela (12). The US government was then pondering an attack on Venezuela, as deliberated upon in private discussions between JFK and his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General.

Robert Kennedy, as requested by his older brother, was heavily involved in executing the terrorist campaign on Cuba. The younger Kennedy informed the CIA in early 1962 that overthrowing Castro is “the top priority in the United States government”.

These actions occurred on top of a failed invasion of Cuba in April 1961, at the Bay of Pigs (Playa de Giron). Plans for this illegal attack were extensively formulated by March 1960, in the final year of Eisenhower’s tenure. It was Kennedy who pushed ahead with the invasion once Eisenhower departed in January 1961.

Castro, a formidable adversary of the Americans from almost the beginning, had prepared for and anticipated this US attack at the Bay of Pigs; just as he would nip in the bud a number of terrorist acts. The Bay of Pigs invasion degenerated into a fiasco and personal humiliation for Kennedy, while Castro’s image was strengthened. The atmosphere in Washington after the failed attack was “almost savage”, as remembered by US diplomat Chester Bowles following his attendance at a cabinet meeting.

Kennedy swiftly enacted an even harsher embargo on Cuba, in order to punish the islanders for having the gall to repel a US-run invasion. The embargo was a separate consequential factor that led to the missile crisis 18 months later. Chomsky highlighted of the missile crisis’s conclusion that,

“war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands. But we can hardly count on such sanity forever”. (13)

Western politicians and mass media, spinning fanciful tales, applauded Kennedy’s handling of the crisis while portraying it as a humbling defeat for Khrushchev. In reality the latter’s decision to remove the missiles eased, though did not entirely eliminate, the potentially catastrophic situation drummed up by Kennedy and his government.

Washington quickly resumed its rampages against Cuba. Less than two weeks after the missile crisis had supposedly ended, on 8 November 1962 an exile team dispatched from America blew up a Cuban industrial facility, killing large numbers of workers. This atrocity enraged Castro and presumably drew reactions of dismay in the Kremlin.

Six months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, in April 1962 Kennedy had deployed nuclear missiles to the Japanese island of Okinawa – which were virtually identical to those later sent to Cuba by Khrushchev (14). American missiles on Okinawa were in all probability pointed towards China, and comfortably within striking range of Beijing.

Kennedy stationed missiles in Okinawa at a period of growing regional tension, as antagonism simmered between China and US-backed India over a border dispute along the Himalayas. JFK was a popular and revered figure in India. (15)

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Noam Chomsky, “How Many Minutes To Midnight?” Guernica, 6 August 2014

2 Daniel Falcone, “Chomsky weighs in on Kennedy Assassination Anniversary: ‘It Would Impress Kim Il-Sung‘”, Truthout, 22 November 2013

3 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Penguin, 1 January 2004), p. 75

4 W. R. Smyser, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall: A Hell of a Lot Better Than a War (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 28 Aug. 2009), p. 167

5 Nicola Davis, “Soviet submarine officer who averted nuclear war honoured with prize“, The Guardian, 27 October 2017, 

6 Rodric Braithwaite, Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation, (Profile Books; Main Edition, 21 Sept. 2017)

7 Callum Hoare, World War 3: How one submarine officer single-handedly saved world from nuclear war, Daily Express, 24 June 2019

8 Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine, (Bloomsbury Publishing; UK ed. edition, 7 Dec. 2017)

9 Noam Chomsky, Who Rules The World? (Metropolitan Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Hamish Hamilton, 5 May 2016), pp. 102-103

10 Gus Russo, Stephen Molton, Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; 1 edition, 28 Oct. 2008), p. 201

11 Raymond Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Revised to Include New Revelations from Soviet & Cuban Sources (Brookings Institute Press; Rev Ed edition, 2 Jun. 1989), p. 10

12 Chomsky, Who Rules The World?, p. 113

13 Chomsky, Who Rules The World?, p. 114

14 Jesse Johnson, “In first, U.S. admits nuclear weapons were stored in Okinawa during Cold War“, Japan Times, 20 February 2016

15 Colonel Anil Athale, “The Untold Story: How Kennedy came to India’s aid in 1962“, Rediff.com, 4 December 2012

Featured image: CIA reference photograph of Soviet medium-range ballistic missile (SS-4 in U.S. documents, R-12 in Soviet documents) in Red Square, Moscow. (Public Domain)

As the number of COVID-19 cases climbed toward a million worldwide on April 2, over 100 human rights groups issued a joint statement warning that governments’ response to the coronavirus pandemic “must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.”

The groups acknowledge that the public health crisis “requires a coordinated and large-scale response” but urge governments “to show leadership in tackling the pandemic in a way that ensures that the use of digital technologies to track and monitor individuals and populations is carried out strictly in line with human rights.”

“An increase in state digital surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association, in ways that could violate rights and degrade trust in public authorities—undermining the effectiveness of any public health response,” says the statement (pdf). “Such measures also pose a risk of discrimination and may disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.”

“These are extraordinary times, but human rights law still applies,” the statement continues. “Now more than ever, governments must rigorously ensure that any restrictions to these rights is in line with long-established human rights safeguards.”

The Coronavirus response “must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive surveillance.”

We joined 100+ civil society orgs around the world to send a clear message to Governments. We’re watching the watchers 🕵️‍♀️ https://t.co/e7997GdyFA

— Big Brother Watch (@BigBrotherWatch) April 2, 2020

Groups behind the statement are from across the globe and include Amnesty International, Access Now, Big Brother Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Human Rights Watch, Privacy International, Public Citizen, WITNESS, and the World Wide Web Foundation.

Even before the coronavirus outbreak began in China late last year, the country was widely known and criticized for its mass surveillance, including facial recognition technology. In recent months, the Guardian reported in March, “Chinese citizens have had to adjust to a new level of government intrusion” that critics worry will persist even after the pandemic ends.

While the ability to track the virus with digital technology has been pivotal to understanding the outbreak’s development, concerns about how governments and the private sector are using surveillance technology—such as data collection from smartphones—to track people during the pandemic have also emerged elsewhere, such as Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

“There will be an aftermath to the COVID-19 outbreak. We must ensure that the measures governments are taking right now do not transform this health crisis into a global human rights crisis,” @EstelMP https://t.co/YA9HzGad3K

— Access Now (@accessnow) April 2, 2020

“Governments risk compounding the harms of this outbreak by running roughshod over our privacy and dignity, and ignoring protections that arose in direct response to overreach during past global crises,” Access Now general counsel Peter Micek warned in a statement. “By selling tools of surveillance as public health solutions, authorities and all-too-willing companies could rewrite the rules of the digital ecosystem in corona-colored ink—which we fear is permanent.”

Amnesty Tech deputy director Rasha Abdul Rahim said Thursday that

“technology can play an important role in the global effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic; however, this does not give governments carte blanche to expand digital surveillance. The recent past has shown governments are reluctant to relinquish temporary surveillance powers. We must not sleepwalk into a permanent expanded surveillance state now.”

“Increased digital surveillance to tackle this public health emergency can only be used if certain strict conditions are met,” added Abdul Rahim. “Authorities cannot simply disregard the right to privacy and must ensure any new measures have robust human rights safeguards. Wherever governments use the power of technology as part of their strategy to beat COVID-19, they must do so in a way that respects human rights.”

🧵THREAD: Today @amnesty joins with +100 civil society orgs around the world, incl @accessnow, @privacyint & @hrw, to send a clear message 📢📢📢: Governments using surveillance technologies to respond to #COVID19 must not sign away our privacy.

https://t.co/2LJ84ovDJB pic.twitter.com/hNr2Nm4zwa

— Rasha Abdul-Rahim (@Rasha_Abdul) April 2, 2020

The groups’ statement details eight conditions they believe must be met to justify increased digital surveillance as part of coronavirus containment efforts. The conditions include demands for transparency, time limits, restrictions on how data can be used, privacy protections, measures to prevent discrimination, and participation from relevant stakeholders.

“This crisis offers an opportunity to demonstrate our shared humanity,” the statement says. “We can make extraordinary efforts to fight this pandemic that are consistent with human rights standards and the rule of law. The decisions that governments make now to confront the pandemic will shape what the world looks like in the future.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Following the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy, more than 120,000 Albanians residing in Italy returned to their country. Albania, with a population under 3,000,000, has, as of this writing, 243 cases of coronavirus. That is 84 cases per 1,000,000 people. The death toll thus far of 13 represents a rate of 5 per, 1,000,000 people. These numbers are expected to skyrocket due to the lack of basic health services and service infrastructure to manage the crisis. Additionally, with so many Albanians returning from Italy, which has 1,683 cases per 1,000,000 people, and 192 deaths per million, the risk of further spread of the virus is very high.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has issues strict instructions to combat the spread of the virus. Only one person per household will be authorized to leave their house for one hour a day to shop for groceries or other necessary items, and this only after applying for authorization. Consequences for violating this restriction include denial of unemployment benefits and student scholarships for at least one year. Enforcement of this and related restrictions will be done by police and special security forces who will use force against violators. The Prime Minister has even said that retirees, who among the people highest at risk to die from coronavirus, who do not comply with regulations can be considered traitors. Although extreme, this shows the seriousness with which the Prime Minister takes the threat of the disease.

This situation is worsened with the knowledge that there are more than three thousand members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in Tirana. Most of these MEK members are all considered to be administrative retirees, but are confined to work in the MEK’s terrorist camp. Many elderly men and women are spending their senior years behind computer systems in the MEK camp, using media accounts on social networks, to engage in media warfare to oppose the legitimate government of Iran, one that the people chose during the Revolution of 1979. Those people in the MEK’s terrorist camp are at high risk of contracting the disease and dying from it.

This is due to two main factors:  First, the sectarian and colonial way of life of the MEK, which has gathered more than 3,000 people in a crowded military camp, will cause widespread and rapid spread of the virus, should even one member of the camp contract it. With a small national population, and over 100,000 people returning to the country from Italy, which has been very heavily hit by the virus, it is highly likely that someone in the camp will get it.

Secondly, since most members of the cult are older, they are at risk. Around the world, people who have compromised immune systems, respiratory problems or who are over the age of 60 are being particularly cautioned to avoid any activities which might expose them to coronavirus. Many MEK members are over 60, because the organization wanted total dedication to the cause, which its leaders expected to be quickly successful, and therefore discouraged them from marrying and having children, which would have distracted them from their illegal and immoral goals. This has made the Mojahedin camp like an isolated nursing home, and in many countries it is nursing homes where the virus has hit the hardest. Also, their long years of living in a fairly isolated area has prevented their exposure to many minor illnesses, which has left them with lowered immunity.

Because of this, the coronavirus is not only a threat to the survival of this cult, but also to the Albanian people. If cult members become ill with the virus and leave the camp (if allowed to do so) to obtain medical treatment or even to live with relatives, they will expose everyone they contact to the disease. With so many Albanians returning from Italy, which has the second highest number of coronavirus cases, and the third number of recorded coronavirus deaths, in the world, the additional risk posed by the elderly MEK members only worsens the situation for the nation.

There have been some news reports indicating that the outbreak and growth of the coronavirus in Albania can be traced to the MEK camp. Yet that initial reporting has had no follow-up, and it appears that powerful influences may have silenced these reports.

Regardless of the source of the disease in Albania, it is apparent that the MEK, always a terrorist organization, is now unwittingly increasing the risk to the health of the people of Albania. MEK terrorists are incapable of working toward any common good; their terrorist activities now include the possible spreading of coronavirus in a nation ill-equipped to handle it.

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The coronavirus crisis will not end anytime soon. Day after day, news about the catastrophe becomes increasingly frightening and alarming. The numbers do not indicate any sign of a truce and we cannot see improvements in the world scenario in the near future. The crisis will affect all sectors of society, damaging politics, economy, education and all branches of civilized life. However, what is most noteworthy is the impact that the pandemic will have on the most basic item of human life: food.

There will undoubtedly be a global food production and supply crisis. This fact was already expected by all analysts. But everything indicates that the crisis will be even more profound: there is an imminent risk of “food shortages” on the world market due to Covid-19 disruptions in international trade and supply chains, warned the leaders of two UN agencies and WTO. This scarcity will be generated by the growing wave of restrictions on exports, which, in the context of contemporary global society, will invariably cause a drastic decrease in the world circulation of food.

In an unusual statement, Chinese Qu Dongyu, who heads the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), and Brazilian Roberto Azevêdo, director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) published a text warning about the coming crisis and saying that it is important for all nations to maintain their international business, “in particular to avoid food shortages”. In addition, these three international organizations have issued important warnings about the slowdown in the movement of workers in the agricultural industry, which blocks several Western farmers, and with “border delays for containers of goods”, generating “a waste of perishable products”.

The alert issued jointly by the FAO, WHO and the WTO also affirms the need to protect workers in the food sector in order to “minimize the spread of the virus in the sector and maintain the food supply chains”. Finally, concludes:

“By protecting the health and well-being of citizens, countries must ensure that the set of trade measures does not disturb the food supply network (…) In periods like this, international cooperation is essential (…) We must ensure that our response to the covid-19 pandemic does not involuntarily create an unjustified shortage of essential products and exacerbates hunger and malnutrition”.

If, on one hand, the alert is of paramount importance in the current global context, on the other, there does not seem to be any alternative between the pandemic and the scarcity. In order to minimize the effects of the new coronavirus in their territories, States are adhering to more restrictive and protectionist measures, overlapping the security of their population to the global need for the circulation of people and resources. In other words, the coronavirus is changing the history of globalization, increasing the role of the States and revealing flaws and deep deficiencies in international organizations and in the global system of interdependence.

As an immediate reaction to the resurgence of the State as the main international agent, international organizations are beginning to respond with even more globalist speeches, imploring the maintenance of the free movement of products in the context of the pandemic. Maximo Torero, Chief Economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told The Guardian:

“The worst that can happen is that governments restrict the flow of food (…) All measures against free trade will be counterproductive. Now is not the time for restrictions or putting in place trade barriers. Now is the time to protect the flow of food around the world (…) Trade barriers will create extreme volatility, (…) [They] will make the situation worse. That’s what we observe in food crises.”

In practice, how can we expect governments reacting in any other way than what they are currently doing? How can we expect all nations to keep their trade relations intact while their populations die infected by a devastating disease? Perhaps dreaming of free international trade in the present circumstances is the most utopian globalist wish. In fact, the agents of these international organizations are so ideologically committed to the globalist agenda that they are unable to analyze the case concretely and see the simplest: the whole structure of globalization is flawed and in a context of crisis its effects will be devastating anyway. Perhaps trade will continue and the pandemic will kill even more; perhaps trade is restricted and many die of hunger.

The biggest lesson to be learned from the current crisis is that globalization based on financial capitalism and neoliberalism was a very serious mistake. The foundations of the contemporary world are breaking and the discourses on solutions to the problems presented by the pandemic are beginning to increase everywhere. International organizations harden their globalist discourse and warn on the need to protect international trade, while States are stepping up security measures and downplaying the importance of the circulation of products and capital. Finally, what will be the winning speech? Will we see a return to state leadership or the birth of a new globalization? The only certainty so far is that the post-pandemic world will be very different from the previous one. Perhaps, the best thing to do is thinking about a world with greater food sovereignty and less inequality between nations.

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

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On March 31 the US Secretary of State issued a press statement proposing a “pathway” by which all Venezuelans would live happily ever after. At least that is what Mike Pompeo seems to wish. He “call[s] on all Venezuelans, whether military or civilian, young or old, of all ideological tendencies and party affiliations, to consider this framework carefully and seriously.” The 13-point document was posted on the US State Department website with the title “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela”. Let’s take a serious look at it.

General observations

An initial major observation can be made even before reading the 13 paragraphs. If this is a proposal meant as a recommendation to resolve an impasse between parties, it will not accomplish its goal because no “serious” proposal can be made unilaterally and much less by a non-friendly government. In the recent past, attempts of international mediation have been flatly dismissed by Washington suggesting US preference for unilateral political and other interests vis-à-vis Venezuela.

A second related general observation – that shouldn’t even need to be explained – must be made about the fact that Venezuela is a sovereign country. All other governments should stay out unless the legitimate government of the country makes a specific request. More than 120 governments recognise the Maduro government as legitimate including the United Nations.

The title is also controversial. Unless by “transition” is meant bringing peace from a conflictive situation, which is what the Maduro government has been asking to the extreme rightwing opposition for years, there is no other transition to be considered. As for “democratic”, the notion used by Washington has lost its real meaning over time, especially when it comes to regime change aspirations.

Those three observations alone would have been enough to suggest that this plan was a foolish decision to make. In fact, it is a non-starter. But for the sake of completion let’s take a look at some of the 13 points.

After a review we noticed that there are seven mentions of lifting “sanctions” at each of seven steps if they are followed according to the “framework”. The author has already referred to the inappropriate use of the word “sanctions” in general. Its use in this context confirms that they are intended to be “a penalty for disobedience”. The preferred denomination is unilateral coercive measures.

What is Venezuela supposed to do in order for the US administration to remove the “penalty for disobedience”? In short, Venezuela is asked to break its 1999 constitution while it is trampled upon during the “transition”, accept the Monroe Doctrine, and open its doors to neoliberal policies and give up its self-determination.

The “democratic transition” breaks the constitutional order

For instance, the first point in part asks for, “Full return of the National Assembly (AN)…National Constituent Assembly (ANC) is dissolved.” This is basically asking a) to legitimise an AN that was in contempt for forcing illegal membership; b) to reinstate Juan Guaidó as the speaker disregarding the election that took place last January when he refused to participate; and c) break the constitution dissolving the constitutionally elected ANC.

Point number 5 requires the AN to approve a “Council of State” Law, “which creates a Council of State that becomes the executive branch”. But this is already being done. In fact, last March 31 president Nicolas Maduro attended the constitutional Council of State in order to deal with “a new imperial onslaught in the middle of the combat with the Covid-19” and to provide advice to the national government according to Articles 251 and 252 of the Venezuelan constitution.

Point number 6 gives another example where the constitutional order must be broken during the “transition”. It states, “All of the powers assigned to the President by the Constitution will be vested exclusively in the Council of State.” Article 251 establishes, “The Council of State is the highest consulting body of the Government and the National Public Administration.” It does not take on the powers of the president.

The “democratic transition” enforces the Monroe Doctrine

This is made clear in a very short paragraph as the third point of the pan. “All foreign security forces depart immediately unless authorized by 3/4 vote of the AN.” US president James Monroe of the 19th Century “Monroe Doctrine” fame must have applauded from his tomb together with all other US presidents that followed who have made similar requests to all Latin American countries at one time or another. This is a reference to the presence of Cuban security advisors and health professionals. But also likely to the close Moscow-Caracas relationship since Hugo Chavez was president to this day with president Maduro. Russian military personnel have been engaged in training of Venezuelan Armed Forces in the use and maintenance of weapons, as well as joint military exercises.

 The “democratic transition” opens the door to neoliberal policies

Here we quote point 9 in full: “The international community provides humanitarian, electoral, governance, development, security, and economic support, with special initial focus on medical care system, water and electricity supply. Existing social welfare programs, now to be supplemented with international support, must become equally accessible to all Venezuelan citizens. Negotiations begin with World Bank, IMF, and Inter-American Development Bank for major programs of support.” This does not require any further explanation except to emphasise that Venezuela’s self-determination will be lost.

The happy ending according to Washington’s script of this political play or farce to be performed in Caracas is that “presidential and AN elections are held” in 6-12 months. But this is a play that is not produced in Venezuela. In fact, Venezuelans will not be participants and protagonists in this play, as it is their constitutional right now. They will be reduced to perform minor roles in a corner of the US “backyard” of Latin America.

The Venezuelan government has predictably rejected the US plan. Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza stated publicly to Mike Pompeo, “decisions in Venezuela are made in Caracas.” The US must have been ready for that reaction because the day after making the “democratic transition” plan public it deployed warships off the coast of Venezuela supposedly to “protect American people” from the scourge of illegal drugs coming from Venezuela. Never mind that the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime reports that 84% of cocaine arrives to the US via Guatemala by the Eastern Pacific and not by the Caribbean.

Here is an idea how the US can help for a real democratic transition framework in Venezuela: end all “sanctions” unconditionally, return to Venezuela all properties seized so Venezuelans can get on with their productive lives to restart the economy, and call on the radical Venezuelan opposition to peacefully and democratically participate in the political life of the country.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Overreaction and big-pharma profiteering from Covid-19 is a repeat of the 2009 H1N1 “Swine Flu” scandal. Why has the corporate media that would eventually expose the 2009 scandal failed to inform readers today that the same corrupt interests are leading the Covid-19 response?  

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Amid Covid-19 hysteria – “real journalists” across the Western corporate media are shamelessly and eagerly fanning the flames of hysteria, panicking the public and ensuring both the government and corporate special interests that influence their policy remain firmly in control.

This includes the stockpiling at the taxpayers’ expense of drugs produced by big-pharma to allegedly fight Covid-19.

This story may sound familiar to some readers because the exact same scenario – albeit on a smaller scale – unfolded 10 years ago during the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” outbreak.

In hindsight, the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) of a “pandemic” was revealed to be the work of financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and WHO “experts” whose advice paved the way for the “pandemic” designation and the hysteria-justified policies that followed.

Among the big-pharma corporations involved was Roche – who not only provided H1N1 test kits, but also its “Tamiflu” drug to government stockpiles.

Ten years ago – “real journalists” at media platforms like Reuters would even report that Tamiflu was later found to be ineffective and that the stockpiles where a waste of money. A 2009 Reuters article written by Kate Kelland titled, “Stockpiles of Roche Tamiflu drug are waste of money, review finds,” would note:

Researchers who have fought for years to get full data on Roche’s flu medicine Tamiflu said on Thursday that governments who stockpile it are wasting billions of dollars on a drug whose effectiveness is in doubt.

The article also notes:

Tamiflu sales hit almost $3 billion in 2009 – mostly due to its use in the H1N1 flu pandemic – but they have since declined. 

Reuters writer Kate Kelland falls short of mentioning Roche’s financial ties to WHO experts who designated the appearance of H1N1 as a “pandemic” helping pave the way for both public hysteria as well as Roche’s profits from it selling what was essentially a useless drug to government stockpiles.

The BBC – however – in their article, “WHO swine flu experts ‘linked’ with drug companies,” would report:

Key scientists behind World Health Organization advice on stockpiling of pandemic flu drugs had financial ties with companies which stood to profit, an investigation has found. 

Roche was mentioned by name by the BBC (emphasis added):

The advice prompted many countries around the world into buying up large stocks of Tamiflu, made by Roche, and Relenza manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.

 A New Decade – A New Scandal  

Today, the same WHO and the same Roche are poised to once again both fuel and leverage public hysteria and once again fill government warehouses and acquisition orders with Roche products ranging from testing kits to vaccines and anti-viral medication.

So where is Kate Kelland of Reuters’ article reminding readers of what she reported on 10 years ago about useless Roche medications that somehow found their way in large quantities to government warehouses? Where is her article about medications that were never used and all done at the expense of Western taxpayers?

Nowhere.

Instead, Kelland’s recent articles have focused on reinforcing the official narrative surrounding Covid-19 and justifying increasingly drastic measures taken to panic the public and implement emergency spending that will undoubtedly benefit pharmaceutical corporations like Roche all over again.

Did Kate Kelland of Reuters forget what she wrote 10 years ago? Or are we seeing a pattern where a complicit media covers up these facts to ratchet up hysteria, and reports on abuse, corruption, and scandals only after those involved have filled their coffers and removed themselves far from any prospect of accountability?

Either way – a much easier question to answer is – should we trust media platforms like Reuters – platforms that concurrently promote criminal wars and other forms of corporate abuse – to inform us in times like this – or should we assume that responsibility ourselves – researching first and foremost the conflict of interest and motivation that drive corporations, the media, and governments to fuel public panic and benefit from it?

We must look into the science and statistics ourselves – apply critical thinking and draw our own conclusions. Then – invest in individuals, organizations, and institutions whose activities are in line with what is really happening rather than what corporations want us to think is happening and what aligns best with their profits rather than our individual and collective public health.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.

But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science – fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

Initial reported figures from China and Italy suggested a death rate of 5 per cent to 15 per cent, similar to Spanish flu. Given that cases were increasing exponentially, this raised the prospect of death rates that no healthcare system in the world would be able to cope with. The need to avoid this scenario is the justification for measures being implemented: the Spanish flu is believed to have infected about one in four of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920, or roughly 500 million people with 50 million deaths. We developed pandemic emergency plans, ready to snap into action in case this happened again.

At the time of writing, the UK’s 422 deaths and 8,077 known cases give an apparent death rate of 5 per cent. This is often cited as a cause for concern, contrasted with the mortality rate of seasonal flu, which is estimated at about 0.1 per cent. But we ought to look very carefully at the data. Are these figures really comparable?

Most of the UK testing has been in hospitals, where there is a high concentration of patients susceptible to the effects of any infection. As anyone who has worked with sick people will know, any testing regime that is based only in hospitals will over-estimate the virulence of an infection. Also, we’re only dealing with those Covid-19 cases that have made people sick enough or worried enough to get tested. There will be many more unaware that they have the virus, with either no symptoms, or mild ones.

The Working Group for the Chapter 35 of the Serbian National Convention on the European Union (EU) has called for the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo to create a cooperation to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We witness the coronavirus pandemic (COVID19) representing a great danger everywhere in the world and the health systems increasingly burdened with the number of infected patients. The pandemic has shown that the spread of the disease goes beyond borders, national and ethnic origin or religion of the affected, and can only be combatted through joint action, cooperation and solidarity. Cooperation is necessary primarily for the sake of humanity and responsibility for human lives in these difficult times,” the press release reads.

In times of crisis, the EU proclaims that Kosovo is in fact Serbia’s responsibility. This unprincipled nature of the EU is solely guided by the interests of its major members and aims to palm off the medical responsibility of the illegal breakaway province of Kosovo back to Serbia. The EU did nothing to suppress Albanian separatism. In fact, the EU supports the illegality of Kosovo’s independence by deploying over 1,000 police officers under the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo mandate and all member states with the exception of Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia, recognizing Kosovo’s independence.

The EU Task Force on Chapter 35 calls for communication channels between medical staff in Serbia and Kosovo to be open as it would allow the exchange of information on the pandemic to be crossed over on a daily basis. This could also perhaps even contribute significantly to the reconciliation of the two entities. Even though Serbia is under EU pressure to help Kosovo, Belgrade should not give in to any concessions offered by Brussels on the Kosovo issue. The promise of EU membership will certainly be mentioned.

The EU is trying to force Serbia to expend their resources to send aid to Kosovo without expecting any acts of good will from the Albanian side. This is a policy that requires Serbia to treat Kosovo as its own territory while the EU still attempts to make Belgrade accept that Kosovo is an independent state. A

similar appeal was sent to Serbia from the EU at the time of the migrant crisis when the EU also isolated itself of the problems in Kosovo and asked Belgrade to cooperate with Pristina in controlling migrant flows and make records of illegal immigrants traveling via Kosovo in 2015 and 2016.

While Serbia is expected to help Kosovo, despite the EU’s insistence that it is independent, Serbia is not able to assist the Republika Srpska in Bosnia. As part of Bosnia’s independence deal, two entities were formed, the Serbian-majority Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Hezegovina, where the majority of Muslims and Croatians in Bosnia live. Sarajevo’s political leaders are vetoing the decision of the Republika Srpska National Assembly to introduce a state of emergency in its territory to stop the spread of the coronavirus. For political reasons, Muslim Bosnians are stopping life-saving security measures, which are supported by the international community, and while Serbia is expected to help Kosovo, it cannot help the Republika Srpska.

Bosnia blocked the Republika Srpska so that the borders between the two entities could not be closed as the Serbian entity wanted to do. However, if we look internationally to places like Australia, states in the same country have closed their own borders to those who do not live in a particular state. According to the laws of Bosnia, Republika Srpska cannot close their border without approval from Sarajevo.

Therefore, Sarajevo’s moves are about antagonism and political contradiction at a time when coronavirus can engulf both entities of the country. The Bosnian Muslims have no argument for denying measures to protect people from coronavirus and are using this situation to stir up ethnic tensions rather than seeing this as a medical issue. As already showed earlier, it is not a contradiction to close the borders of the entities as many states and regions around the world have closed their borders despite being the same country.

The Republika Srpska are trying to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously and its National Assembly even voted in a majority to declare a state of emergency. Even EU High Representative to Bosnia, Valentin Incko, welcomed the decision and the commitment of Republika Srpska President Željka Cvijanović to use extraordinary powers in the interest of public health. Incko also pointed out that stopping the spread of the coronavirus and saving the lives of citizens must be priorities for all Bosnian authorities. However, his recommendations did not go into the realm of pressuring Bosnian authorities, and so long as the borders remain open, the people of Republika Srpska remain susceptible to higher rates of infection.

While Serbia is expected to assist Kosovo on the behalf of the EU, despite not being an EU member and the EU insisting on Kosovo’s independence, Belgrade also cannot assist Republika Srpska without being accused of interfering in Bosnian affairs. It is little wonder then that Belgrade has lost interest in appeasing Brussels and no longer responds to promises of EU membership, and rather it continues to build its relations with traditional ally Russia as well as emerging superpower China.

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Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

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The world pays constant attention to the coronavirus, occupying the news agencies with a high coverage of the pandemic. Meanwhile, on the global periphery, geopolitics continues at full throttle, with several conflicts occurring unnoticed by most people outside the affected regions. The case of Yemen is a clear example of what we are talking about here. Recently, the conflict in the country completed five years of uninterrupted fighting, reaching the regrettable marks of more than 10,000 killed in the confrontation, in addition to almost 100,000 killed by the social ills caused by the war, such as hunger, mainly among children. The poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula has become a strategic area in strong dispute and a real geopolitical thermometer for Middle East tensions, especially between the two regional powers most involved in the conflict, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are increasing their rivalry day after day.

The most noteworthy attitude is that of Saudi Arabia, which, aligned with the western axis, has been taking increasingly aggressive stances in the country, causing unnecessary suffering to the local population and prolonging the terror and fear in the region. Human Rights Watch data show that Saudi Arabia has been behind fundamental rights abuses against the Yemeni population, especially in the al-Mahrah region, since at least June last year, when such crimes began to be investigated. HRW Middle East Director Michael Page stated in an interview with PressTV:

“Saudi forces and their Yemeni allies’ serious abuses against local-Mahrah residents is another horror to add to the list of the Saudi-led coalition’s unlawful conduct in Yemen (…) Saudi Arabia is severely harming its reputation with Yemenis when it carries out these abusive practices and holds no one accountable for them”.

Among the abuses reported by HRW, we highlight illegal arrests, torture, kidnappings and compulsory transfer of detainees to Saudi Arabia. In addition, other international crimes had previously been reported by the organization as being committed by the American coalition against Houthi resistance in the region, including bombing homes, businesses and hospitals. In February, at least 30 Yemeni civilians died from airstrikes conducted by Saudi military in the north of the country, in the district of Jawf al-Maslub. The attack was said to have been conducted in response to the downing of a Saudi aircraft by the Houthi forces. In the words of Houthi movement spokesman Yahya Saree:

“As usual, when the most brutal US-Saudi aggression receives painful strikes in the military confrontation fields, it replies with great folly by targeting civilians.”

In March, a fleet of 450 American soldiers landed in Yemen, in addition to an uncertain number of troops from the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. According to information from al-Mashhad, this was the first stage of a project to send 3,000 American and British troops to Yemen, which will land in the regions of Aden, Lahai, Saqtari, Shabweh and al-Mohreh, thus completing a true siege of the country in all geographical directions. In addition, two American warships docked at Balhaf, Yemen’s main natural gas export port. American movements would be motivated in the region to supposedly “fight terrorism”, but several military analysts have already made it clear that the United States intends to intervene in the Yemeni government and install fixed bases in the region, “stabilizing” the situation in the country.

The crisis in Yemen is a real humanitarian catastrophe, with dimensions similar to those of the Civil War in Syria. However, the attention given to the poorest country in the Middle East is minimal, especially in times of the pandemic. Once again, COVID-19 is being used as a “smokescreen” to distract worldwide attention while illegal and aggressive movements are taking place in specific regions of the planet, as has recently become clear with the Israeli advance in the West Bank and the arrival of thousands of American troops to Yemen.

Yet, another factor that is absolutely ignored, being even more serious than military aggression, is the public health crisis and food insecurity generated by Saudi aggression. Yemeni Health Minister Saif al-Haidri recently warned of the neglect with which international society has dealt with the situation, which he called a “disastrous in the shadow of war”. These are his words:

“approximately five and a half million children under the age of five are suffering from malnutrition (…) One child dies every ten minutes in Yemen (…) 80 percent of children in Yemen live in a state of stunting and anemia due to malnutrition (…) Two hundred thousand women of childbearing age or some of they are pregnant or have given birth to malnourished children, which threatens the lives of children”.

Indeed, while the world is distracted by the coronavirus, crimes against humanity are committed with impunity and millions of people starve to death without any humanitarian assistance. Yemen has yet to record any cases of COVID-19, but what can we expect for the near future when Western troops arrive in the country at all times, since the US and Europe are the regions most affected by the pandemic? What will be the future of the Yemeni crisis? Will the West bring peace or the pandemic to the poorest country in the Middle East?

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image: Rubble aftermath of a Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni neighborhood in 2015. Almigdad Mojalli/Voice of America

We have a natural impulse to extend protection to the very young and to the old first; we offer sympathy and succor to traumatized refugees too.

That’s reasonable. Our seniors and our children require attention as the most vulnerable; immigrants need support in unfamiliar surroundings.

Professors speaking about historical precedents for the COVID-19 emergency invoke the Great Depression and chaotic hospital scenes from World War II. But, hey: we know about that, and more, first-hand!

Yes. So, why not consider us elders, along with our immigrant citizens as assets at this time of crisis and fear–untapped resources? We have abundant practical advice for people fearful and under duress, counsel based on our past experience.

We may not operate computers as nimbly as the young, but priorities are changing. As the COVID-19 crisis makes apparent, some skills become redundant; you’re unmoored from your once brawny anchors. When you’re really scared and grope for alternatives, turn not to apocalyptic movie scenarios but to what seniors have seen and done before you were born, what immigrants were shy to share. Our histories may offer guidance and solace in today’s disaster. We can tell you about our strategies and you can discover how we managed to cope. We’re here as a result, aren’t we?

If elders didn’t suffer a pandemic, we endured other plagues, and we survived because of habits we devised, here not only because America offered sanctuary and opportunity, but also because we rebuilt our lives resourcefully. Heard of ‘rationing’? –A great, simple strategy. Improvisation too. Both painless habits.

We’re grateful to our energetic daughters and grandsons who happily set up our phone apps and install our Netflix. You’ll Google anything—even if we don’t really need it– from potato peelers to airline bookings, and hearing aids– all delivered to our distant home. (Yes, we succumbed to that pampering.)

Surely now’s the time we can reciprocate with tips we learned from our less indulgent, less fast-paced and frugal past.

We can tell you how to recycle cardboard and plastics, invigorate a stew for a second meal, review the merits of baking soda, trim your hair, repair a car or bicycle tire, forage for wild edible plants, disinfect fresh vegetables, substitute one spice for another, preserve surplus food, stitch a face mask.

To survive we adjusted our social skills too, learned dexterity needed to endure wars’ deprivations.

Separated from loved ones, prayer became more routine; we rationed essentials, prioritized limited resources, reused clothes. We hunkered in underground shelters during a bombing blitz, slept on cold floors, coupled with our husband even with mother-in-law and children just meters away. We used water instead of toilet paper—it works great, left hand only (you can learn). We recycled bath water for cleaning, rewashed cotton diapers and sanitary cloths.

These are a few elders’ memories and tips. We’d welcome a chance to share them, granted you’ll doubtless improve on them too.

Then, we are millions of immigrants, refugees from wars (often of U.S. making) who’ve witnessed waves of attacks. Day-after-day we lost a loved one, often unable to perform the last rites for our dearest ones. We turned to caring for our wounded, dared to shelter underground resistance fighters. We rushed from one place to another, seeking somewhere to hide. We left behind a child, an aged parent, a sick friend. We also devised ways to avoid nagging mothers or garrulous brothers. Families became closer, and humor emerged from shared traumas. We endured more than bombardments; sometimes we were hunted down by government commandos, attacked by desperate citizens or rebel militias.

A more threatening curse imposed on us by outside enemies was embargo. Our Iraqi, Venezuelan, Iranian, Vietnamese, Palestinian and Syrians citizens can tell you about embargo-created deprivations, death and isolation– a battering more deadly and invasive than any physical assault. These are contemporary U.S.-perfected and murderous applications of economic and cultural embargoes, sieges sanctioned and extended by the lofty, noble United Nations. (Iraq’s embargo was endorsed in 1990 by the U.N. Security Council/General Assembly, and adhered to worldwide for 13 years! The Vietnam embargo, imposed by the U.S. after its defeat, extended for two decades.)

Documentation of the sanctions-war on Iraq (imposed in 1990 ended only in 2003!) augmented by US-led military bombardment, is hardy remembered today. (My accounts from Iraq during that period published by U. Press Florida, joined those of the International Action Center and published in the 1990s were reports from the field. Later came a Harvard study based on secondary sources.)

Three warning notes from personal experience in Iraq suffice to suggest the trauma Americans, their European and Australian supporters of that war will themselves confront in their neighborhoods very soon.

The first from my friend, sculptor Mohammed Ghani, on my initial visit to Iraq in 1989. Foremost among the memories he felt compelled to share rose from the just ended Iran-Iraq war. “Every day, passed cars with coffins strapped on top, holding the bodies of our sons (back from the battlefield of Al-Faw). Every day, every day; they drove by: one, two, then another, another”, he moaned.

Hardly a year later came the invasion of Kuwait and the first U.S. Gulf War. Among those I interviewed soon after was journalist Kthaiyer Mirey. Among institutions smashed by American bombings in 1991 was Shamaiya Hospital for psychological diseases. Hospitalized for alcoholism, Mirey managed to escape from the bombed smoldering ruins. Many staff were killed; feckless survivors along with some patients escaped. “The dead and wounded”, Mirey told me, “were abandoned; then the dogs entered the debris to clean up.”

Third, was my own witness of an eternal line of martyrs,  their portraits imprinted on banners –Iraqi soldiers who’d fought ISIS (under U.S. occupation during the past decade).

Images of overwhelmed morgues and columns of unaccompanied hearses have reached us from Italyand Spain this week. That will become part of the American landscape.

Young Americans are not yet ready for this; perhaps resourceful elder veterans and refugee victims from U.S. wars abroad can help sustain us. (Then there’s the comfort of our voice.)

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Author-anthropologist BN Aziz has published widely on Nepal and returned from an extended stay there last December. Her journalism articles on Nepal are posted at www.RadioTahrir.org.

The old adage should say: Nothing is certain but death and taxes… and Karma. Karma is as real as it gets. The various holy books made sure to state that ‘What ye sow so shall ye reap’ AKA ‘What goes around comes around.’ Karma has many flavors, but the end result is always the same: What one does will eventually come back to revisit in some form or manner. 

In 1914 the whole of Europe and parts extended were in a world war. This war was not what was advertised as ‘Good vs. Evil’. No, it was a war between major imperialist, colonialist nations for increased power and control.

The propaganda was such that the USA got itself involved to back up our British ally, or should I say our British ‘Big brother’ at the time. The negative energy generated by this ghastly war saw millions of young men (and women) dead, with devastating physical destruction throughout the region. As it is with major weather changes, energy, which can be positive or negative, does influence our atmosphere… for good or for bad. Well, the Spanish Flu from 1918-20 saw 500 million people infected, as the war had already reached its devastating peak. Coincidence, or an expression of Bad Karma? That war was not at all what many historians like to classify as ‘Just War’. It was simply a power grab war initiated by one group of super rich against another. Period!

My nation has had such Bad Karma going back to what we did to the Native Americans and then to the Mexicans, as we gobbled up their lands. Think about this: Who now owns and operates (with help from the super rich corporations) most of the gambling casinos nationwide? The Indians! All those problems with the undocumented (AKA ‘Illegal Aliens’) center around areas that were part of our imperialist ‘Manifest Destiny’. These actions were in lands that were once Mexican: Lower California, New Mexico, Arizona and of course, the home of the Alamo, Texas. Karma dictates that we took their lands by force and now we have to deal with those people, like it or not! We dropped two A-Bombs on Japan, unnecessarily, occupied that country, and then THEY outcompeted us as economic adversaries for years to come. Which of the two countries made the better cars being driven in the USA during the 60s, 70s and right into the present time: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler… or Honda, Toyota and Nissan?

If one wants to speak about Bad Karma, just look back to 2002- 2003 and our most disgraceful, illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Our nation’s economy and moral compass are still reverberating from those heinous deeds, which still eat up over HALF of our federal taxes  going for military spending.That was the start of the Bad Karma created by ourselves and our NATO partners in crime. Then, factor in the horrendous carpet bombing of Libya and our excursion into Syria, and you have the present day refugee crisis that is affecting Europe and the Middle East. One additional outgrowth of this has been the rise of  tremendous Neo Nazi right wing movements throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and even the Southern Hemisphere. Who has been the greatest ‘kick starter’ for this Bad Karma? As Sinclair Lewis put it so succinctly: “Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag”. Others later on added “…. and carrying a cross.” The bottom line is that this incessant American exceptionalism has been the rallying point for the Super Rich who run things to hammer home to their minions. Thus, WE are the mess that We created with Bad Karma.

The new pandemic that the entire world is suffering from slowly reached our shores. Another example of Bad Karma is how this current administration manhandled things from the get go. Instead of preparing to better protect its citizens, especially the front line medical and hospital community, our (so called) leaders called it a HOAX for weeks on end… while the Chinese and Russians practiced due diligence.

Imagine if Amerika had stocked up on protective masks, ventilators, hand washing solutions and of course medicines that the Chinese found to be helpful. Imagine if, at the very beginning of this Pandemic USA, our Congress and administration would have instituted what the Universal Basic Income advocates were trumpeting for years? Then, by today April 2nd 2020 the FED would have created checks of $ 1000 per citizen per month, in addition to extended unemployment insurance and loans to small business. Funny how, when the Sub Prime bubble burst in 2008, despite the right wing wolves’ threats about our terrible deficit, the FED  electronically created the money to bail out the banks. Once again, they have electronically  created the money for this stimulus. Yet, when Bernie Sanders and millions of others have been calling for Medicare for All… they yell ‘ We can’t afford it!!’

So, as our citizens are dying for lack of proper care, and ditto our economy, the Bad Karma keeps on rolling along. Time for the mega millions of us to start taking control of the conversation and create some Good Karma.

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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, World News Trust 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 300 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].

The events of the last century as well as today reveal that not only the “simple” people fail in the resistance against totalitarianism and fascism. Intellectuals, too, fail to live up to their responsibility despite an academic education and the opportunity to gain insight into political, economic and socio-psychological contexts. The current worldwide exceptional situation, the deliberately created panic, the disproportionate restriction of civil liberties, the selection of elderly and sick fellow citizens and the economic crash landing, which will drive millions of people into unemployment and hopelessness, hunger and finally to death, requires of us all most urgently to be wise, to distinguish between truth and lie and to act accordingly.

“Have the courage to use your own intellect!”

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Age of Enlightenment, people began to free themselves from medieval thinking. From then on, human affairs were to be guided primarily by human reason. The individual was to free himself from narrow-mindedness, credulity and arbitrary authority, and personal freedom of action (emancipation) was to be extended.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant defined “Enlightenment” in the year 1784 as follows: “Enlightenment is man’s exit from his self-inflicted immaturity. Immaturity is the inability of his mind without the direction of another.” According to Kant, the immaturity of man is then self-inflicted when it is not a lack of understanding that is the reason, but the fear of using one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Kant coined the motto of the Enlightenment: “Sapere aude!”, which means “Dare to know”, or as Kant explained it: “Have the courage to use your own intellect!” Enlightenment is therefore the maxim to think for oneself at all times.

But why do people often remain underage throughout their lives – and this also even though they have long since grown up and would be able to think for themselves? Kant said the reason is laziness and cowardice. Being underage is comfortable and independent thinking is a “grumpy business”. So it would be easy for others, Kant said, to become “guardians” of these underage people. These guardians would also do everything to make sure that the underage people do not only find the step to maturity arduous but also dangerous.

Underage behavior today

Have we today, in the 21st century, already shed this underage behavior? What about our courage to think for ourselves in the present uncertain situation? Is it not more comfortable for a spoiled and lazy person to make use of the guidance of an authority or a leader, to be in harmony with a supposedly powerful person and his mass media and to belong to the circle of his court vestments? He is then always on the “right” side. Doubts and moral scruples do not then oppress him, since he can always refer to the supposedly infallible power.

It is difficult to think for oneself and to be responsible for the consequences of such mature behavior. Doubts overtake the seeker of truth, the nightly sleep becomes restless. If a self-thinking person then also comes to unpleasant truths that are in conflict with the powerful and with political correctness, previous companions quickly turn away from him. The result of this courage can be loneliness. Loneliness, however, not in the sense of being alone, but in the sense of refusing dialogue.

The German-Jewish professor and writer Hannah Arendt experienced such a refusal in connection with a journalistic slander campaign following the publication of her report on the Eichmann trial in 1961: “Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report of the banality of evil”. For her this experienced refusal of dialogue was “the extreme form of human misery”(p. 34).

Do what? Think for yourself at all times!

Every individual has to contribute to the solution of the urgent problems of our time. And of course we are able to do so when we are aware that it depends on each and every one of us. Why not have the courage to make use of your own intellect, have the courage not to suppress the monstrousness of today, but to really and to stand up against it – intellectually,  emotionally, politically. In the face of all odds, have the determination to find the truth and thus to preserve the dignity as a human being. Overcoming the inertia of the heart and acting.

According to Albert Camus, every person has a more or less large sphere of influence. The Swiss writer Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) put it this way: “No government and no battalions (…) are able to protect law and freedom where the citizen is not able to come to the front door himself and see what is there”. (Zürich short stories)

The upbringing of the adolescent at home and at school is very important for development of such responsible behavior in the adult age of elementary importance. The basis is an education of conscience and a sustainable education in values and virtues from early childhood on. What every society urgently needs in order to be able to cope with the future well and to shape it in a self-determined way are responsible fellow citizens who take responsibility for the general welfare of the people.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a qualified psychologist and educationalist.

The European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), an association of post-Soviet states, effectively serve a similar function to each other as an economic bloc. Unlike the 27-member EU, the EEU has only 5-members as many post-Soviet states allege it is nothing but an attempt to revive the Soviet Union, which the countries of the West do not want to promote. The West’s resistance has brought no economic benefit to it and this geopolitical duel was reflected in the limited success of sanctions against Russia. However, the credibility of the EU and the liberal orders continues to diminish as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic actually creates a unique opportunity for the EU and EEU to integrate into a single system, or at least move closer together.

Russia’s dominance of the EEU is both a positive and a negative for Eurasian integration. Russia’s large market forms the basis of the integration potential of the EEU, however, limited economic growth, sanctions and its participation in global geopolitics create risks for the Eurasian integration process. However, Eurasian integration would be in the interest of EU as it will connect European states to new markets in Central and East Asia far more efficiently and quickly then by other means. The EU claims that it works towards common markets and efficiency but does not seriously consider connecting Lisbon on the Atlantic Ocean to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

The EU is losing its position as a top trading partner of the EEU, and it’s not just because of China’s growing importance. As a trading partner of the EEU, China has already surpassed most of Europe. The role of the EU as a trading partner of the whole EEU is due to the important role of the EU for Russia. However, Russia has been slowly turning eastward from the EU for years now as the future leading economies of the world will shift from the West to Asia.

Coronavirus is certainly accelerating this reality as the entirety of the Anglosphere and Western Europe head towards a severe recession unable to handle the economic pressures of the pandemic. This pandemic and economic downturn effectively means that only China and Russia will compete for investments in the extremely resource rich Central Asia. As EU economies begin to recover in the aftermath of the coronavirus and their energy demands are not being met access to Central Asia may become a priority. Ironically, Russia is the only means for the EU to enter the markets of the post-Soviet countries outside of Eastern Europe. Therefore, with the liberal order severely damaged in the face of coronavirus, it will have to be acknowledged in the West that the EEU project as a whole is a force for good and the EU will have to admit it made a mistake by not initially recognizing the EEU.

With this in mind, the EU must show independent foreign policy and resolve its disputes with Russia, even if Washington insists on enacting hostiles relations with Moscow. As the EU originally began as an economic union without much of a political nature, by returning to their roots will mean naturally a change in foreign policy. If the economy is the concentrated expression of politics, then mutual economic interests should be the foundation of reconciliation between Brussels and Moscow.

French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the leading voices in normalizing relations with Russia, despite his harsh rhetoric against Moscow time to time. Let’s consider Macron’s Facebook post from last year where he said

“progress on many political and economic issues is evident, for we’re trying to develop Franco-Russian relations. I’m convinced that, in this multilateral restructuring, we must develop a security and trust architecture between the European Union and Russia.”

With Macron stressing that Russia is part of Europe, he expanded on General de Gaulle’s famous phrase that Europe stretches “from Lisbon to the Urals,” to say that Europe extended to Vladivostok, close to the North Korean border. Macron is one of the most powerful voices in Europe and strongly endorses a weakening of U.S. influence in Europe through various means, including criticism of NATO and suggestion to have it replaced with a European military.

The EEU’s vision of Lisbon to Vladivostok as a common space is the best way to avoid a crisis on the Eurasian landmass. For countries like Ukraine who are stuck between both East and West, the integration of the EU and EEU would actually serve as a stabilizing factor. Therefore, as the coronavirus has exposed weaknesses in the liberal globalized order, an opportunity has actually emerged where the EU and EEU can more closely align and integrate.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Critical Shortage of Ventilators and Protective Gear Persists

By Stephen Lendman, April 03, 2020

Governor of hard-hit NY state Anthony Cuomo stressed that if a patient “needs a ventilator” and they’re all in use because of an insufficient supply, “the person dies” from suffocation.

That’s the disturbing reality of a critical national shortage at a time when they’re vitally needed.

As daily COVID-19 infections increase exponentially in the US, numbers on Friday will way exceed 250,000 by day’s end.

Can We Trust the WHO?

By F. William Engdahl, April 03, 2020

The most influential organization in the world with nominal responsibility for global health and epidemic issues is the United Nations’ World Health Organization, WHO, based in Geneva. What few know is the actual mechanisms of its political control, the shocking conflicts of interest, corruption and lack of transparency that permeate the agency that is supposed to be the impartial guide for getting through the current COVID-19 pandemic. The following is only part of what has come to public light.

COVID-19: Cover for Military Attack on Iran and Iraq?

By Kurt Nimmo, April 03, 2020

Now that the American people are consumed with fear and loathing of an overblown virus “pandemic,” the neocons around Trump see a chance to finally and decisively deal with Iran—not simply by blocking humanitarian aid but also piling on more sanctions and, possibly within a matter of days or weeks, attacking Shi’a militias in Iraq and possibly launching a long-promised direct military attack on Iran proper. 

The Bigger Picture Is Hiding Behind a Virus

By Jonathan Cook, April 03, 2020

Under cover of the public’s fear, and of justified concerns about the state of the economy and future employment, countries like the US are transferring huge sums of public money to the biggest corporations. Politicians controlled by big business and media owned by big business are pushing through this corporate robbery without scrutiny – and for reasons that should be self-explanatory. They know our attention is too overwhelmed by the virus for us to assess intentionally mystifying arguments about the supposed economic benefits, about yet more illusory trickle-down.

Why Did Russia Just Halt Domestic Gold Purchases?

By Zero Hedge, April 03, 2020

In recent years, as Kitco notes, the Russian central bank has dominated the gold market, consistently increasing its gold reserves every month for the last three years. According to data from the World Gold Council, the Russian central bank bought 158.1 tons last year. The WGC data shows that the central bank bought 8.1 tons of gold in January.

New York Fed December 2019 Plans to Throw $2.93 Trillion at Wall Street’s Trading Houses

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, April 03, 2020

The New York Fed’s repo (repurchase agreement) loan program began on September 17 when repo loan rates spiked from approximately 2 percent to 10 percent – meaning either liquid funds were not available to loan or the mega banks on Wall Street were backing away from lending to certain counterparties. Repo loans are typically between banks, hedge funds and money market funds on an overnight basis and are made against good-quality collateral. Since that time, the New York Fed has been making these loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars weekly.

10 Signs the U.S. Is Heading for a Depression

By Mike Whitney, April 03, 2020

Thursday’s jobless claims leave no doubt that the country is in the grips of another severe recession. More than 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the last week. That number exceeds the gloomiest prediction of more than 40 economists and pushes the two-week total to an eye-watering 10 million claims.

China Rolls Out the Health Silk Road

By Pepe Escobar, April 03, 2020

When President Xi Jinping was on a phone call in mid-March with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, before the arrival of a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Milan full of medical help, the key takeaway was the Chinese pledge to develop a Health Silk Road (Jiankang Sichou Zhilu).

That was in fact already inbuilt in the Belt and Road Initiative playbook since at least 2017, under the framework of enhanced, pan-Eurasian health connectivity. The pandemic only accelerated the timeline. The Health Silk Road will run in parallel to the multiple overland Silk Road corridors and the Maritime Silk Road.

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Syrian Army positions in the town of Saraqib came under joint shelling from the Turkish Army and Turkish-backed armed groups late on April 1. Strikes were carried out from the area of Almastumah, where Turkish military positions are located. The April 1 incident became the second attack on Syrian Army troops in the area in the last 3 days.

At the same time, Turkish forces continue their military buildup in the Idlib de-escalation zone. Two more convoys with armoured vehicles and artillery pieces crossed the border into Syria. Before the start of Ankara’s Operation Spring Shield in February 2020, the number of Turkish troops in Idlib was estimated at 5,000. Syrian sources say that by April 2020 this number reached 7,000.

And there are no indications that Turkey is going to use this force to put an end to the presence of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in the region. Rather, it sees these groups as important allies and the pillar of its policy aimed at strengthening its control over northwestern Syria and turning it into a quasi-state under a Turkish protectorate.

Just recently, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, one of the groups that Turkish forces protect from the Syrian Army, executed a civilian accusing him of spying for Syrian government forces. 68-year Rifaat Mahmoud al-Daqqah, a former member of the Syrian Parliament, was detained by militants in May 2019. Terrorists claimed that he was providing the Syrian military with information on terrorists’ positions in the southwestern part of Greater Idlib, mainly around the town of Kabani.

Al-Daqqah, originally from the town of al-Janoudiyah, abandoned his position in the Syrian Parliament in 2011, in the early days of the crisis. Back then, militants pressured many officials and service members to defect by threatening their lives, families and businesses.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other Idlib groups regularly arrest and execute civilians, accusing them of spying for Syria, Russia or Iran. In most cases, they do not bother to support these claims with any evidence, rather they use such claims as a pretext to terrorize and subjugate the local population.

These atrocities happen right under the nose of Turkish observation posts, which have supposedly been set up by the Turkish military to restore security in the region. Nonetheless, it seems that Ankara has no problem with the execution of civilians, training of suicide bombers, arming of al-Qaeda-affiliated  groups or public calls to cleanse a majority of the population living in the government-controlled part of Syria as long as organizations doing this serve its foreign policy interests.

On April 1, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, paid an unofficial visit to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. He reportedly met with several influential Iraqi commanders and politicians, discussing with them the current security and political situation in Iraq. In March Brig. Gen. Ghaani visited Syria, where he inspected the frontlines in the northern province of Aleppo.

Ghaani succeeded former Quds Force commander Brig. Gen. Qassam Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US strike on Baghdad Airport in January 2020. His visit to Iraq comes amid the ongoing US effort to regroup its forces in Iraq and reinforce them with Patriot air defense systems. Two Patriot batteries are already there.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump announced that the US has “information” and “belief” that “Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq.” Top US officials often make such claims before conducting strikes on targets affiliated with Iran and/or before announcing a new round of sanctions.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.