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The Russia-Saudi oil-price war is a fabrication concocted by the media. There’s not a word of truth to any of it. Yes, there was a dust up at an OPEC meeting in early March that led to production increases and plunging prices. That part is true. But Saudi Arabia’s oil-dumping strategy wasn’t aimed at Russia, it was aimed at US shale oil producers. But not for the reasons you’ve read about in the media.

The Saudis aren’t trying to destroy the US shale oil business. That’s another fiction. They just want US producers to play by the rules and pitch in when prices need support. That might seem like a stretch, but it’s true.

You see, US oil producers are not what-you’d-call “team players”. They don’t cooperate with foreign producers, they’re not willing to share the costs of flagging demand, and they never lift a finger to support prices. US oil producers are the next-door-neighbor that parks his beat-up Plymouth on the front lawn and then surrounds it with rusty appliances. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.

What Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman want is for US producers to share the pain of oil production cuts in order to stabilize prices. It’s an entirely reasonable request. Here’s a clip from an article at oilprice.com that helps to explain what’s really going on:

“… there was a sliver of hope that oil prices may rebound after Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia, Russia and allied oil producers will agree to deep cuts to their crude output at talks this week but only if the United States and several others join in with curbs to help prop up prices that have been hammered by the coronavirus crisis. However, in an attempt to have its cake and eat it too, the U.S. DOE said on Tuesday that U.S. output is already falling without government action, in line with the White House’s insistence that it would not intervene in the private markets….

… OPEC+ will require the United States to make cuts in order to come to an agreement: The EIA report today demonstrates that there are already projected cuts of 2 (million bpd), without any intervention from the federal government,” the U.S. Energy Department said.

That is not enough for OPEC+ however, and certainly not Russia, which on Wednesday made clear that market-driven declines in oil production shouldn’t be considered as cuts intended to stabilize the market, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells reporters on conference call.

“These are completely different cuts. You are comparing the overall demand drop with cuts to stabilize global markets. It’s like comparing length and width,” Peskov said…..Moscow’s participation is highly contingent on the US, and is unlikely to agree to output cuts if the US does not join the effort.” (“Historic Oil Deal On The Verge Of Collapse As Russia Balks At U.S. ‘Cuts’”, oilprice.com)

Putin is being reasonable and fair. If everyone else is forced to cut supply, then US oil producers should have to cut supply too. But they don’t want to share the pain, so they’ve settled on a strategy for weaseling out of it. They want their reductions in output (from weak demand during the pandemic) to count as “production cuts”. They even have a name for this swindle, they call it “organic production cuts”, which means no cuts at all. This is the way hucksters do business not responsible adults.

What does Putin want from this deal?

Price stability. Yes, he’d like to see prices settle somewhere north of $45 per barrel but that’s not going to happen for a while. The combination of a weaker demand (due to the coronavirus) and oversupply (from the Saudis flooding the market) have ensured that prices will remain low for the foreseeable future. Even so, Putin understood what the Saudis were doing by flooding the market, and he knew it wasn’t directed at Russia. The Saudis were trying to persuade US oil producers to stop freeloading and cut production like everyone else. That’s the long and short of it. Check out this excerpt from an article by oil expert, Simon Watkins at oilprice.com:

“Saudi Arabia was continually peeved …(because) its efforts to keep oil prices up through various OPEC and OPEC+ agreements were allowing these very shale producers to make a lot more money than the Saudis, relatively speaking. The reason for this was that U.S. shale producers…. were not bound in to the OPEC/OPEC+ production quotas so could fill the output gaps created by OPEC producers.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, oilprice.com)

This is what the media fails to tell their readers, that US oil producers– who don’t participate in any collective effort to stabilize prices– have been exploiting OPEC production quotas in order to fatten the bottom line at the expense of others. US producers figured out how to game the system and make a bundle in the process. Is it any wonder why the Saudis were pissed?? Here’s more from the same article:

“This allowed the U.S. a rolling 3-4 million bpd advantage over Saudi in the oil exports game, meaning that it quickly became the world’s number one oil producer…. Hence, Saudi Arabia decided initially to unilaterally announce its intention for the last OPEC+ deal to be much bigger than that which it had pre-agreed with Russia, hoping to ambush the Russians into agreeing. Russia, however, turned around and told Saudi Arabia to figuratively go and reproduce with itself. MbS,… then decided to launch an all-out price war.” (oilprice.com)

So you can see that this really had nothing to do with Russian at all. The Crown Prince was simply frustrated at the way US oil producers were gaming the system, which is why he felt like he had to respond by flooding the market. The obvious target was the US shale oil industry that was taking advantage of the quotas, refusing to cooperate with fellow oil producers and generally freeloading off the existing quota system.

And what’s funny, is that as soon as the Saudis started putting the screws to the US fracking gang, they all scampered off to Washington en masse to beg for help from Papa Trump. Which is why Trump decided to make emergency calls to Moscow and Riyadh to see if he could hash out a deal.

It’s worth noting that domestic oil producers have been involved in other dodgy activities in the past. Check out this excerpt from an article in the Guardian in 2014, the last time oil prices crashed:

“After standing at well over $110 a barrel in the summer, the cost of crude has collapsed. Prices are down by a quarter in the past three months….

Think about how the Obama administration sees the state of the world. It wants Tehran to come to heel over its nuclear programme. It wants Vladimir Putin to back off in eastern Ukraine. But after recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has no desire to put American boots on the ground. Instead, with the help of its Saudi ally, Washington is trying to drive down the oil price by flooding an already weak market with crude. As the Russians and the Iranians are heavily dependent on oil exports, the assumption is that they will become easier to deal with…

The Saudis did something similar in the mid-1980s. Then, the geopolitical motivation for a move that sent the oil price to below $10 a barrel was to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime….

Washington’s willingness to play the oil card stems from the belief that domestic supplies of energy from fracking make it possible for the US to become the world’s biggest oil producer. In a speech last year, Tom Donilon, then Barack Obama’s national security adviser, said the US was now less vulnerable to global oil shocks. The cushion provided by shale oil and gas “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our national security goals”. (“Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia”, The Guardian)

This excerpt shows that Washington is more than willing to use the “oil card” if it helps to achieve its geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, good buddy, Saudi Arabia, has historically played a key role in helping to promote those goals. The current incident, however, is the exact opposite. The Saudis aren’t helping the US achieve its objectives, quite the contrary, they’re lashing out in frustration. They feel like they’re being squeezed by Washington (and US producers) and they want to prove that they have the means to fight back. Flooding the market was just MBS’s way of “letting off steam”.

Trump understands this, but he also understands who ultimately calls the shots, which is why he took the unusual step of explicitly warning the Saudis that they’d better shape up and step in line or there’d be hell to pay. Here’s a little background that will help to connect the dots:

“..the deal made in 1945 between the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi King at the time, Abdulaziz, that has defined the relationship between the two countries ever since… the deal that was struck between the two men on board the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy… was that the U.S. would receive all of the oil supplies it needed for as long as Saudi Arabia had oil in place, in return for which the U.S. would guarantee the security of the ruling House of Saud. The deal has altered slightly ever since the rise of the U.S. shale oil industry and Saudi Arabia’s attempt to destroy it from 2014 to 2016, in that the U.S. still guarantees the security of the House of Saud but it also expects Saudi Arabia not only to supply the U.S. with whatever oil it needs for as long as it can but also – and this is key to everything that has followed – it also allows the U.S. shale industry to continue to function and to grow.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, if t his means that the Saudis lose out to U.S. shale producers by keeping oil prices up but losing out on export opportunities to these U.S. firms then tough..

As U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear whenever he has sensed a lack of understanding on the part of Saudi Arabia for the huge benefit that the U.S. is doing the ruling family: “He [Saudi King Salman] would not last in power for two weeks without the backing of the U.S. military.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, Oil Price)

Trump felt like he had to remind the Saudis how the system actually works: Washington gives the orders and the Saudi’s obey. Simple, right? In fact, the Crown Prince has already slashed oil production dramatically and is fully complying with Trump’s directives, because he knows if he doesn’t, he’s going to wind up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.

Meanwhile, US shale oil producers won’t be required to make any cuts at all or, as the New York Times puts it: “It was not immediately clear if the Trump administration made a formal commitment to cut production in the United States.”

Got that? So everyone else cuts production, everyone else sees their revenues shrink, and everyone else pitches-in to put a floor under prices. Everyone except the “exceptional” American oil producers from the exceptional United States. They don’t have to do a damn thing.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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US Hospitals Getting Paid More to Label Cause of Death as ‘Coronavirus’

By Wayne Dupree, April 15, 2020

Senator Scott Jensen represents Minnesota. He’s also a doctor. He appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingram where he revealed a very disturbing piece of information.

Dr. Scott Jensen says the American Medical Association is now “encouraging” doctors to overcount coronavirus deaths across the country.

Video: The Discourse Surrounding Trump’s Handling of COVID-19: Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

By Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai and Christina Aguayo, April 14, 2020

“Unfortunately this guy Fauci has been in this environment for nearly 4 decades across multiple presidents and is essentially embedded in this scientific establishment which has created an unfortunate lie about the immune system and an unfortunate lie about the solution to this coronavirus or more importantly infectious disease without any real emphasis which is a real issue about the fact that it is an overactive dysfunctional weakened immune system that overreacts and that’s what causes damage to the body. And unfortunately Fauci has not talked about that because the truth of that leads to a solution which has nothing to do with mandating vaccines and shutting down the country.” –Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

America: A Nation Over-Obsessed by the Threat of COVID-19 Infection

By Stephen Lendman, April 13, 2020

At least eight coronavirus strains exist. Infection rates worldwide differ markedly, some countries more successful in containing outbreaks than others — the US notably unsuccessful, China very successful with four times the population.

Is its healthcare system more advanced than America’s or other Western countries?

Is it because of increasing US indifference toward public health, its infrastructure unprepared to deal with a widespread outbreak of any infectious disease — including healthcare professionals lacking personal protective equipment (PPE) when most needed?

Fitting Together the Pieces of the Coronavirus Puzzle

By Mark Taliano, April 12, 2020

The truth lies in the common threads that run through the Coronavirus story, which include Big Money, the billionaire foundations (1), and Big Pharma. These forces, allied with neoliberal ideologies of privatization, deregulation, and the emaciation of the public sphere, have formed toxic alliances that are destroying global economies, as well as the health and welfare of impacted populations.

Minnesota: Doctors Receiving Instructions “to Report Covid19 as a Cause of Death, even if Patient was never Tested”.

By OffGuardian, April 10, 2020

Minnesota State Senator Scott Jensen appeared on a local news show to report that doctors were receiving instructions from the Minnesota Department of Health to report Covid19 as a cause of death, even if the patient was never tested.

Senator Jensen, who is also a practising physician, said he had never before in his thirty-five-year career received specific instructions on how to fill out a death certificate

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 05, 2020

The unspoken truth is that the novel 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 and the “Right to Life”. Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.

We are Currently Not Measuring the Incidence of Coronavirus Diseases, but the Activity of the Specialists Searching for Them

By Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, April 02, 2020

We are currently not measuring the incidence of coronavirus diseases, but the activity of the specialists searching for them.

Wherever such the new tests are carried out – there about 9000 tests per week available in 38 laboratories throughout Europe on 13 February 2020 – there are at least single cases detected and every case becomes a self-sustaining media event. The fact alone that the discovery of a coronavirus infection is accompanied by a particularly intensive search in its vicinity explains many regional clustersi.

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A humble Boris Johnson addressed the nation last weekend after his release from hospital.  The British Prime Minister had been admitted the week before after succumbing to coronavirus. In his emotional address, he spoke of the ‘love’ which he had received from the care workers – several of whom he named – that had enabled him to recover from his period in intensive care. He described that two nurses were at his bedside night and day, monitoring him every minute in a situation which was very much touch and go.

This dramatic episode may have boosted Boris Johnson’s popularity, as the nation for a brief time stood shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister, but it hasn’t prevented growing criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic to date. Indeed the very fact that the Prime Minister and his team have not been adequately protected from the virus has caused widespread concern. And the situation at the top pretty much reflects that across society, as hospital staff, care workers and other front line public service workers have not been given the necessary Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to shield them from the virus. Like lambs to the slaughter, these essential workers have soldiered on, some tragically falling victim to Covid-19. Britain’s renowned Royal College of Nursing has said that staff may have to refuse to treat patients if they are not given adequate PPE. The pressure is mounting on the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, to deliver, and deliver fast.

The initial surge of patriotism and unity felt across Britain when lockdown began is starting to wane. People are getting tired of the restrictions, questioning more and more when it will end as the novelty of staying at home is beginning to wear off. Initially the restrictions were to be for a period of three weeks – that time is now up and no more has been said as to when it could end. With signs that the ‘curve’ of the epidemic in the UK is beginning to ‘flatten’, opposition leader Keir Starmer is demanding the publication of the government’s exit strategy i.e. how can we end the lockdown without triggering another rise in cases? It is expected that on Thursday Dominic Raab will announce a further three weeks of lockdown.

But more problematic for the government is, that as time goes on, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the country was completely unprepared for a pandemic and that when the first warning signs of such a public health crisis appeared, they were not heeded. Further still, some argue that there are matters that are still being mismanaged. Take the issue of care homes, for example. Patients moving from hospitals into care homes are still not being tested for coronavirus; an extraordinary situation when this is one of the main ways in which the disease enters the home. I myself know of a particular case where a patient was admitted to hospital from a care home, contracted the virus undetected, before returning to the home where she passed the virus on to a number of patients and staff. In England we do not in fact know the number of elderly who have died from coronavirus – it is not included in the daily death toll announcements. But Scotland has released its figures, showing that a quarter of its total deaths were elderly people in care homes – 237 to date. As a result, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced that every patient now returning from a hospital into a care home would be tested. This of course does not completely exclude the possibility of an individual carrying the virus from spreading it in the home, as the test only identifies Covid-19 if someone is exhibiting symptoms, but it is a start. The Health Secretary will now be under increased pressure to follow suit, despite confirming on Wednesday that patients would continue to be transferred from hospital to care home without testing. Charities and local authorities have said the policy is ‘madness’ and that it is effectively ‘importing death into care homes’ as one care home owner in Devon put it.

The issue of testing is one of the main points of contention in the coronavirus debate.  Early on the WHO issued advice to all countries to ‘test, test, test’ but the UK government initially took a different stance. According to Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet medical journal, the government ignored the basic public health interventions needed at the time – testing, isolation and quarantine – which were so effectively implemented by China.  Boris Johnson then downplayed the necessity of testing, arguing that Covid-19 could be spread by asymptomatic carriers and not all tests could be relied upon. Indeed, back in early March Boris Johnson himself had said that coronavirus was a ‘mild to moderate illness’ for the vast majority, whose spread could be prevented by simply washing your hands. He then prided himself in continuing to shake hands with people. One month later the Prime Minister was in intensive care, fighting for his life.

Now the UK is having to play catch-up by trying to obtain coronavirus tests at a time when they are most sought after. It is struggling to meet 25,000 tests a day for hospital staff and patients and far off the target of 100,000 tests a day previously announced by Boris Johnson. The curve may be beginning to flatten, but Britain is certainly not out of the woods yet.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

As the entire world grapples with the most devastating pandemic of the modern era, the United States is pouring kerosene on the fire in Iran and Venezuela. The U.S. government has maintained punishing sanctions against the people of Iran and Venezuela to engineer regime change. But instead of ending the sanctions to help Iranians and Venezuelans fight the coronavirus, the Trump administration has expanded them and exacerbated the danger they pose.

“The world is facing the risk of an unprecedented humanitarian disaster,” the International Association of Democratic Lawyers wrote in a statement calling on the U.S. government to immediately lift all sanctions against Iran and Venezuela.

Sanctions (unilateral coercive measures), collective punishment and forcible regime change are illegal under U.S. and international law. Donald Trump’s intensification of sanctions against Venezuela and Iran during the pandemic constitutes a crime against humanity.

U.S. Sanctions Against Iran Add to the Death Toll

Iran “has emerged as an epicenter of the virus globally and regionally,” 34 members of Congress wrote in a March 31 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging them to “substantially suspend” sanctions against Iran during this worldwide health emergency. The letter was endorsed by 13 groups.

As of April 13, Iran had suffered 73,303 cases of COVID-19 and 4,585 deaths. Trump’s sanctions are a primary cause of these extremely high casualties.

“There can also be no question that the sanctions have affected Iran’s ability to contain the outbreak, leading in turn to more infections, and possibly to the virus’ spread beyond Iran’s borders,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said in a statement.

Adding insult to injury by “keeping up its economic pressure campaign,” the U.S. government has imposed additional sanctions on Iran in the middle of the deadly pandemic, according to Reuters. The Trump administration is “literally weaponizing the coronavirus,” human rights lawyer Arjun Sethi said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the sanctions “economic terrorism.”

Congress members who signed the March 31 letter called Trump’s March 18 sanctions “callous and short-sighted,” warning that the virus is reportedly spreading from Iran to Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are stationed.

The United States had already maintained “an effective economic blockade” of Iran’s energy, banking and finance sectors, as well as its foreign investment and the targeting of basic foodstuffs and medicines, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi wrote in December 2019.

In 2018, after Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, which was working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he reimposed heavy economic sanctions. The U.S. government’s stated goal was to eliminate all Iranian oil exportation. It blacklisted 50 Iranian banks, individuals and ships, and Iran’s national airline and fleet of aircraft. Pompeo said the United States would “crush” Iran with new sanctions so severe they could lead to regime change.

As a result of the reimposition of sanctions, oil exports plummeted, Iran’s currency has been substantially devalued and the country is in a severe recession.

In October 2018, the International Court of Justice ordered the United States to lift its sanctions against Iran on food, medicine, humanitarian trade and civil aviation. The U.S. government refused to abide by the court’s decision.

An October 2019 Human Rights Watch report concluded that the U.S.’s “maximum pressure” campaign “drastically constrained the ability of Iranian entities to finance humanitarian imports, including vital medicines and medical equipment.”

Foreign Minister Zarif referred to the U.S. refusal to lift the sanctions during the pandemic as “medical terrorism.”

The United States has escalated the sanctions during the pandemic while blocking Iran’s request for a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund for its fight against the coronavirus.

In their March 31 letter, the congress members noted that “by targeting an entire economy that supports more than 80 million people, U.S. sanctions make it harder for ordinary Iranians to obtain basic necessities like food and hygienic supplies essential to stemming the pandemic and that are basic to survival.”

U.S. Sanctions Against Venezuela

As of January 22, the United States had leveled sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company, government and central bank and at least 144 Venezuelans or individuals connected to Venezuela.

U.S. sanctions against Venezuela caused 40,000 deaths in 2017 and 2018, CEPR reported. In April 2019, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Human Rights Watch issued a 71-page report detailing shortages of food and medicine and sharp increases in disease. They called the situation a humanitarian emergency.

In mid-February, the U.S. government imposed additional sanctions on Venezuela. The Trump administration continues to attack the Nicolas Maduro government, indicting him for a narco-terrorism conspiracy, with the Trump administration planning to deploy Navy destroyers to the Caribbean on the pretext of an anti-narcotics operation.

On April 6, dozens of legal organizations worldwide issued a letter to Pompeo and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging that U.S. intervention in Latin America be ended, especially in light of the escalation of U.S. threats against Venezuela.

The sanctions against Venezuela have contributed to “the largest economic collapse in a country outside of war since at least the 1970s,” The New York Times reported. In February, Venezuela filed a complaint against the United States in the International Criminal Court, calling the sanctions crimes against humanity.

Although Venezuelans are not yet contracting COVID-19 in large numbers, the pandemic could prove catastrophic to the country.

But when Venezuela asked the International Monetary Fund for a $5 billion loan to help it cope with the pandemic, the U.S.-controlled IMF denied its request.

Unilateral Coercive Measures Violate the UN and OAS Charters

By imposing unilateral coercive measures for collective punishment leading to forcible regime change, the United States has violated several ratified treaties.

When the United States ratifies a treaty, it becomes part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says treaties constitute “the supreme law of the land.”

The protection of health is a stated purpose of the United Nations Charter and all member countries are required to take actions that promote health. Yet the United States is doing just the opposite, magnifying the suffering of the Iranian and Venezuelan people in the midst of the pandemic.

Under the UN Charter, member countries must refrain from the threat or use of force against the political independence of any other country. Only the UN Security Council has the authority to order the use of sanctions. That means the United States cannot unilaterally impose sanctions against other countries without the approval of the Council.

Meanwhile, the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) prohibits any country from directly or indirectly intervening in the internal or external affairs of another country. That includes any type of interference against its “political, economic and cultural elements.” No state can use coercive economic or political measures “to force the sovereign will of another State.” The United States’s imposition of sanctions against Venezuela violates the OAS Charter.

Collective Punishment Violates the Fourth Geneva Convention

U.S. sanctions against Iran constitute “the collective punishment of over 81 million Iranians through and by means of one of the most comprehensive and unrelenting sanctions regimes in modern history,” writes Sadeghi-Boroujerdi.

The Trump administration is also trying to coerce regime change in Venezuela by punishing the people with sanctions.

Collective punishment is a war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention says,

“No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. . . . Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”

The United States is punishing the people of Iran and Venezuela for the actions of their governments. This constitutes illegal collective punishment.

Forcible Regime Change Violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

After Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed harsh sanctions, Pompeo said, “Things are much worse for the Iranian people, and we’re convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime.”

That strategy hasn’t worked in Cuba. The U.S. blockade was imposed in 1960 pursuant to a secret State Department memorandum that advocated “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” But the Cuban people have not overthrown their government.

No country has the right to forcibly change the regime of another country. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes self-determination as a human right and guarantees all peoples the right to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of sanctions, stated,

“Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state.”

More than 200 legal professionals and organizations, including the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, wrote in a letter to Trump, Mnuchin and Pompeo,

“Your administration’s disapproval of the government of a foreign state provides no legal justification for policies and actions intended to deprive residents of the targeted state of necessaries as a means of forcing a change to a regime more to the liking of the United States.”

The letter’s signatories called on the U.S. government to cancel the sanctions against Venezuela and Iran “at the very least,” because they violate the International Executive Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The IEEPA empowers the president to impose sanctions only after he makes “a good faith declaration that the targeted country presents an ‘unusual and extraordinary’ threat to the U.S.” As the letter says, “Neither Venezuela nor Iran presents such a threat to the U.S.”

In fact, the Trump administration’s intensification of sanctions against Iran and Venezuela rises to the level of “a crime against humanity against the people of Iran and Venezuela,” the signatories wrote.

Congressional Oversight of Sanctions

Congress members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill in the House titled “Congressional Oversight of Sanctions Act.” H.R.5879 would require a report on why sanctions were chosen rather than another tool to address the emergency; whether the sanctions are unilateral and if so, why no other country has imposed them; and the requirements for lifting the sanctions.

Grassroots peace group CODEPINK is circulating a letter to Pompeo urging the lifting of sanctions on Iran, and a letter to Congress opposing military intervention in Venezuela and urging the lifting of sanctions against that country. Both letters have garnered thousands of signatures.

Meanwhile, constituents should pressure their congressional representatives to end the sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. Economic and medical warfare during the pandemic amounts to a crime against humanity perpetrated by the United States.

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

Featured image is from Podur.org

Ukraine recently announced that it will start building a military base in the Sea of ​​Azov, just 67 km away from the Russian coast. The news was confirmed on the last visit of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski to Berdiansk, where the naval base will be installed. According to official sources, it aims to protect commercial vessels transiting the region. The local commercial port will have its infrastructure transferred to the Ukrainian Navy later this year. In 2021 reforms will be carried out, with the arrival of new ships, the repair of administrative buildings and the construction of residential buildings for people involved in the activities of the base. It is estimated that the works will cost around 20 million dollars.

As an auxiliary project for the installation of the base, there is a plan to create a military teaching department at the State Pedagogical University of Berdiansk, which will be ready in a few years and will train the officers who will work at the new base. These are the words of President Volodimir Zelenski:

“It is very important to have ships in this place. After all, this way we will protect our ports, our trade. This is a direct aid to the economy”.

It has been reported that the resources of the Vostok naval base, currently located in Nikolaev, will be deployed at the Berdiansk base. This is, in fact, an old Ukrainian project, which integrates a wide range of aggressive policies on the part of Kiev in the Azov Sea region. Kiev showed interest in building a base in the region for the first time in 2017. In 2018, part of the Black Sea fleet was transferred to Azov. At the end of last year, Zelenski, continuing the policies of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, announced the creation of a ship division for the Azov, with a base to be installed between Berdiansk and Mariupol. Now, finally, Azov’s militarization projects seem to be materialized.

“The main objective of the base should be to guarantee the security of the city and the region. However, the military base will not interfere with the commercial port and will not reduce its capacity,” said the statement from the port administration. The Ukrainian reason for ratifying these projects is an alleged Russian threat to the country’s maritime trade route. However, it is public knowledge that these acts constitute nothing more than the simple continuation of the conflicts that started in 2014, as a result of the total alignment with Washington and the European Union by the new Ukrainian political elite, which rose with the Euromaidan.

The myth of Russia as an enemy of Ukraine has become increasingly widespread in the country, causing regrettable episodes such as the persecution of Russian and pro-Russian minorities within Ukrainian national territory. The greatest example of this is the civil war in the Donbass region, which has lasted for more than six years, having been interrupted indefinitely by the Minsk Protocol, which imposed an immediate ceasefire.

Ukraine has interrupted the ceasefire on several occasions, sometimes openly violating it through military attacks, sometimes sneakily sabotaging it through illegal arrests and terrorist attacks. In recent times, sneak attacks have become increasingly frequent. On April 9, a young 25 years-old woman was brutally murdered by Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitaries. Miroslava Voronkova died in a terrorist attack with bombs, where Mikhail A., 59 years-old, was also wounded.

The unfounded fear of a Russian threat in Azov becomes even less credible when we look at data such as this from the terrorist attacks perpetrated by pro-Kiev paramilitary groups. The existence of a Navy of the Donetsk People’s Republic is also supposedly one of the reasons why Ukraine is so afraid for the security of the region. But it is neither Moscow nor Donetsk who are committing crimes and attacks in Donbass. Kiev seems to be clear in its political and geopolitical praxis: it causes tensions with clandestine activities, from which it awaits answers (which often do not appear) to respond with the recrudescence of its defense policies under the pretext of having a certain “threat”.

Last year, Ukraine called on several countries to debate on the imposition of international sanctions against Russia due to its policy on the Sea of Azov. The reason for such Ukrainian indisposition in relation to Russian naval policy was the fact that Russia vetoed the entry of NATO ships into the Azov and seized Ukrainian ships that crossed the Russian maritime border. In fact, these acts only have to strengthen a policy of good neighborliness in the region, maintaining the dominance of the sea between the both States, under strict respect for territorial limits, and canceling out the interference of foreign nations. But, it seems Ukraine is not interested in maintaining good relations with Moscow and insists on further militarizing the region.

Certainly, Kiev will take advantage of the construction of the naval base to try again to deploy NATO vessels in the Sea of Azov, in clear affront to Russia. It will also take the opportunity to impose reprisals on the Donbass people’s republics. The commercial port protection speech is just a facade, a lie told as an official version. The most curious thing is that Kiev is so concerned with such policies of hostility against Russia at a time as what we are currently experiencing, where concerns about the new coronavirus are taking place over the world. Now, if NATO cancelled its biggest military exercises in 30 years (the Defender Europe 2020 project) due to the pandemic, would the Western military alliance be really interested in subsidizing a project as bold and unnecessary as the creation of a naval base in the Azov at a time like this? Kiev is betting on its ties to the West and appears to be making a big mistake.

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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.

The findings of a leaked, 860-page report compiled by the British Labour Party on its handling of antisemitism complaints is both deeply shocking and entirely predictable all at once.

For the first time, extensive internal correspondence between senior party officials has been revealed, proving a years-long plot to destroy Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader who recently stepped down.

The report confirms long-held suspicions that suspected cases of antisemitism were exploited by head office staff to try to undermine Corbyn. Anyone who was paying close attention to events in the party over the past five years already had a sense of that.

But the depth of hostility from party managers towards Corbyn – to the extent that they actively sought to engineer his defeat in the 2017 general election – comes as a bombshell even to most veteran Labour watchers.

Hankering for Blair

As the report reveals, party managers and a substantial section of the Labour parliamentary party barely hid their contempt for Corbyn after he won the leadership election in 2015. They claimed he was incapable of winning power.

These officials and MPs hankered for a return to a supposed golden era of Labour 20 years earlier, when Tony Blair had reinvented the party as New Labour – embracing Thatcherite economics, but presented with a more caring face. At the time, it proved a winning formula, earning Blair three terms in office.

Many of the officials and MPs most hostile to Corbyn had been selected or prospered under Blair. Because Corbyn sought to reverse the concessions made by New Labour to the political right, his democratic socialism was reviled by the Blairites.

In 2017, one of the architects of New Labour, Peter Mandelson, unabashedly declared:

“I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his [Corbyn’s] tenure in office. Something, however small it may be – an email, a phone call or a meeting I convene – every day I try to do something to save the Labour Party from his leadership.”

That sentiment, the report makes clear, was widely shared at the highest levels of the party bureaucracy. Senior officials actively sought to sabotage Corbyn as leader at every turn.

Bid to rig leadership contest

The Blairites found a plethora of self-serving reasons – aggressively shared by the media – for arguing that Corbyn was unfit for office. Those ranged from his unkempt appearance to his opposition to Britain’s recent wars of aggression, resource grabs repackaged as “humanitarian interventions” that had been a staple of the Blair years.

Corbyn was falsely presented as having a treasonous past as a Soviet spy, and of being at the very least indulgent of antisemitism.

While members of Corbyn’s inner circle were busy putting out these endless fires, the leaked report shows that Labour officials were dedicating their time and energy to unseating him. Within a year, they had foisted upon him a rerun leadership election.

Corbyn won again with the overwhelming backing of members, even after party officials tried to rig the contest, as the report notes, by expelling thousands of members they feared would vote for him.

Even this second victory failed to disarm the Blairites. They argued that what members found appealing in Corbyn would alienate the wider electorate. And so, the covert campaign against the Labour leader intensified from within, as the extensive correspondence between party officials cited in the report makes clear.

Blue Labour

In fact, senior officials frantically tried to engineer a third leadership challenge, in early 2017, on the back of what they expected to be a poor showing in two spring byelections. The plan was to install one of their own, Tom Watson (image on the right), Corbyn’s hostile deputy, as interim leader.

To their horror, Labour did well in the byelections. Soon afterwards, a general election was called. It is in the sections dealing with the June 2017 election that the report’s most shocking revelations emerge.

Again assuming Labour would perform badly, senior staff drew up plans to stage yet another leadership challenge immediately after the election. Hoping to improve their odds, they proposed that an electoral college replace the one-member, one-vote system to ensure no leftwing candidates could win.

These same staff had boasted of “political fixing” and interfering in constituency parties to ensure Blairites were selected as parliamentary candidates, rather than those sympathetic to Corbyn.

It was already well known that Labour was beset by factionalism at head office. At the time, some observers even referred to “Blue Labour” and “Red Labour” – with the implication that the “blue” faction were really closet Tories. Few probably understood how close to the truth such remarks were.

‘Sick’ over positive polls

The dossier reveals that the Blairites in charge of the party machine continued undermining Corbyn, even as it became clear they were wrong and that he could win the 2017 election.

According to the report, correspondence between senior staff – including Labour’s then-general secretary, Iain McNicol – show there was no let-up in efforts to subvert Corbyn’s campaign, even as the electoral tide turned in his favour.

Rather than celebrating the fact that the electorate appeared to be warming to Corbyn when he finally had a chance to get his message out – during the short period when the broadcast media were forced to provide more balance – Labour officials frantically sent messages to each other hoping he would still lose.

When a poll showed the party surging, one official commented to a colleague: “I actually felt quite sick when I saw that YouGov poll last night.” The colleague replied that “with a bit of luck” there would soon be “a clear polling decline”.

Excitedly, senior staff cited any outlier poll that suggested support for Corbyn was dropping. And they derided party figures, including shadow cabinet ministers such as Emily Thornberry, who offered anything more than formulaic support to Corbyn during the campaign.

‘Doing nothing’ during election

But this was not just sniping from the sidelines. Top staff actively worked to sabotage the campaign.

Party bosses set up a secret operation – the “key seats team” – in one of Labour’s offices, from which, according to the report, “a parallel general election campaign was run to support MPs associated with the right wing of the party”. A senior official pointed to the “need to throw cash” at the seat of Watson, Corbyn’s deputy and major opponent.

Corbyn’s inner team found they were refused key information they needed to direct the campaign effectively. They were denied contact details for candidates. And many staff in HQ boasted that they spent the campaign “doing nothing” or pretending to “tap tap busily” at their computers while they plotted against Corbyn online.

Writing this week, two left-wing Labour MPs, John Trickett and Ian Lavery, confirmed that efforts to undermine the 2017 election campaign were palpable at the time.

Party officials, they said, denied both of them information and feedback they needed from doorstep activists to decide where resources would be best allocated and what messaging to use. It was, they wrote, suggested “that we pour resources into seats with large Labour majorities which were never under threat”.

The report, and Trickett and Lavery’s own description, make clear that party managers wanted to ensure the party’s defeat, while also shoring up the majorities of Labour’s right-wing candidates to suggest that voters had preferred them.

The aim of party managers was to ensure a Blairite takeover of the party immediately after the election was lost.

‘Stunned and reeling’

It is therefore hardly surprising that, when Corbyn overturned the Conservative majority and came within a hair’s breadth of forming a government himself, there was an outpouring of anger and grief from senior staff.

The message from one official cited in the report called the election result the “opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years”. She added that she and her colleagues were “silent and grey-faced” and in “need of counselling”.

Others said that they were “stunned and reeling”, and that they needed “a safe space”. They lamented that they would have to pretend to smile in front of the cameras. One observed: “We will have to suck this up. The people have spoken. Bastards.”

Another tried to look on the bright side: “At least we have loads of money now” – a reference to the dues from hundreds of thousands of new members Corbyn had attracted to the party as leader.

Investigated for antisemitism

In short, Labour’s own party bosses not only secretly preferred a Conservative government, but actually worked hard to bring one about.

The efforts to destroy Corbyn from 2015 through 2018 are the context for understanding the evolution of a widely accepted narrative about Labour becoming “institutionally antisemitic” under Corbyn’s leadership.

The chief purpose of the report is to survey this period and its relation to the antisemitism claims. As far as is known, the report was an effort to assess allegations that Labour had an identifiable “antisemitism problem” under Corbyn, currently the subject of an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

In a highly unusual move, the commission launched an investigation of Labour last year. The only other political party ever to be investigated is the neo-Nazi British National Party a decade ago.

The Labour report shows that party officials who helped the Tories to victory in 2017 were also the same people making sure antisemitism became a dark stain on Corbyn for most of his leadership.

No antisemitic intent

Confusingly, the report’s authors hedge their bets on the antisemitism claims.

One the one hand, they argue that antisemitism complaints were handled no differently from other complaints in Labour, and could find no evidence that current or former staff were “motivated by antisemitic intent”.

But at the same time, the report accepts that Labour had an antisemitism problem beyond the presence of a few “bad apples”, despite the known statistical evidence refuting this.

A Home Affairs Select Committee – a forum that was entirely unsympathetic to Corbyn – found in late 2016 that there was “no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party”.

Even that assessment was unfair to Labour. Various surveys have suggested that Labour and the left have less of a problem with all forms of racism than the ruling Conservative Party.

For those reasons alone, it was highly improper for the equalities commission to agree to investigate Labour. It smacks of the organisation’s politicisation.

Nonetheless, the decision of the report’s authors to work within the parameters of the equalities watchdog’s investigation is perhaps understandable. One of the successes of Corbyn’s opponents has been to label any effort to challenge the claim that Labour has an antisemitism problem as “denialism” – and then cite this purported denialism as proof of antisemitism.

Such self-rationalising proofs are highly effective, and a technique familiar from witch-hunts and the McCarthy trials of the 1950s in the United States.

‘Litany of mistakes’

The report highlights correspondence between senior staff showing that, insofar as Labour had an “antisemitism problem”, it actually came from the Blairites in head office, not Corbyn or his team. It was party officials deeply hostile to Corbyn, after all, who were responsible for handling antisemitism complaints.

These officials, the report notes, oversaw “a litany of errors” and delays in the handling of complaints – not because they were antisemitic, but because they knew this was an effective way to further damage Corbyn.

They intentionally expanded the scope of antisemitism investigations to catch out not only real antisemites in the party, but also members, including Jews, who shared Corbyn’s support for Palestinian rights and were harshly critical of Israel.

Later, this approach would be formalised with the party’s adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), that shifted the focus from hatred of Jews to criticism of Israel.

The complaints system was quickly overwhelmed, and delays worsened as officials hostile to Corbyn cynically dragged their heels to avoid resolving outstanding cases. Or, as the report stiffly describes it, there was “abundant evidence of a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in Party HQ” against Corbyn that “affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints”.

The report accuses McNicol of intentionally misleading Corbyn about the number of cases so that “the scale of the problem was not appreciated” by his team – though the scale of the problem had, in fact, also been inflated by party officials.

The report concludes that Sam Matthews, who oversaw the complaints procedure under McNicol, “rarely replied or took any action, and the vast majority of times where action did occur, it was prompted by other Labour staff directly chasing this themselves”.

Amplified by the media

Both McNicol and Matthews have denied the claims to Sky News. McNicol called it a “petty attempt to divert attention away from the real issue”. Matthews said the report was “a highly selective, retrospective review of the party’s poor record” and that a “proper examination of the full evidence will show that as Head of Disputes and Acting Director, I did my level best to tackle the poison of anti-Jewish racism which was growing under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.”

But there is too much detail in the report to be so easily dismissed and there remain very serious questions to be answered. For example, once Matthews and McNicol had departed, Labour rapidly increased the resolution of antisemitism cases, dramatically stepping up the suspension and expulsion of accused party members.

The earlier delays appear to have had one purpose only: to embarrass Corbyn, creating an impression the party – and by implication, Corbyn himself – was not taking the issue of antisemitism seriously. Anyone who tried to point out what was really going on – such as, for example, MP Chris Williamson – was denounced as an antisemitism “denier” and suspended or expelled.

The media happily amplified whatever messages party officials disseminated against Corbyn. That included even the media’s liberal elements, such as the Guardian, whose political sympathies lay firmly with the Blairite faction.

That was all too evident during a special hour-length edition of Panorama, the BBC’s flagship news investigations programme, on Labour and antisemitism last year. It gave an uncritical platform to ex-staff turned supposed “whistleblowers” who claimed that Corbyn and his team had stymied efforts to root out antisemitism.

But as the report shows, it was actually these very “whistleblowers” who were the culpable ones.

‘Set up left, right and centre’

The media’s drumbeat against Corbyn progressively frightened wider sections of the Jewish community, who assumed there could be no smoke without fire.

It was a perfect, manufactured, moral panic. And once it was unleashed, it could survive the clear-out in 2018 of the Blairite ringleaders of the campaign against Corbyn.

Ever since, the antisemitism furore has continued to be regularly stoked into life by the media, by conservative Jewish organisations such as the Board of Deputies, and by Israel partisans inside the Labour Party.

“We were being sabotaged and set up left, right and centre by McNicol’s team, and we didn’t even know. It’s so important that the truth comes out,” one party source told Sky News.

Stench of cover-up

The question now for Labour’s new leader, Keir Starmer, is what is he going to do with these revelations? Will he use them to clean out Labour’s stables, or quietly sweep the ordure under the carpet?

The signs so far are not encouraging.

The intention of current party managers was to bury the revelations – until someone foiled them by leaking the report. Predictably, most of the media have so far shown very little interest in giving these explosive findings anything more than the most perfunctory coverage.

Unconvincingly, Starmer has claimed he knew nothing about the report until the leak, and that he now intends to conduct an “urgent independent investigation” into the findings of the earlier inquiry.

Such an investigation, he says, will re-examine “the contents and wider culture and practices referred to in the report”. That implies that Starmer refuses to accept the report’s findings. A reasonable concern is that he will seek to whitewash them with a second investigation.

He has also promised to investigate “the circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain”. That sounds ominously like an attempt to hound those who have tried to bring to light the party’s betrayal of its previous leader.

The stench of cover-up is already in the air.

Fear of reviving smears

More likely, Starmer is desperate to put the antisemitism episode behind him and the party. Recent history is his warning.

Just as Williamson found himself reviled as an antisemite for questioning whether Labour actually had an antisemitism problem, Starmer knows that any effort by the party to defend Corbyn’s record will simply revive the campaign of smears. And this time, he will be the target.

Starmer has hurriedly sought to placate Israel lobbyists within and without his own party, distancing himself as much as possible from Corbyn. That has included declaring himself a staunch Zionist and promising a purge of antisemites under the IHRA rules that include harsh critics of Israel.

Starmer has also made himself and his party hostage to the conservative Board of Deputies and Labour’s Israel partisans by signing up to their 10 pledges, a document that effectively takes meaningful criticism of Israel off the table.

There is very little reason to believe that Labour’s new leadership is ready to confront the antisemitism smears that did so much to damage the party under Corbyn and will continue harming it for the foreseeable future.

The biggest casualties will be truth and transparency. Labour needs to come clean and admit that its most senior officials defrauded hundreds of thousands of party members, and millions more supporters, who voted for a fairer, kinder Britain.

Jonathan Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

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This is the fourth newsletter in our series on the 2020s as a decade of transformation See Remaking International Relations, Remaking the Economy for the People, and Remaking Healthcare. In addition to COVID-19 and the economic collapse, multiple crises are reaching a peak and the world is changing as a result. How the world changes will be determined in some part by our actions. This week, we look at what can be done to bring our societies into balance with nature.

Biologist Elisabet Sahtouris describes an alternative theory of evolution to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” in her book, “Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution.” Sahtouris finds that evolution is cyclical, a spiral instead of linear. She describes how when a new species arises, it upsets the ecological equilibrium as it comes into competition with other species over habitat. The task of that species in the adolescent phase of its evolution is to find its niche in a way that is cooperative with other species. If it fails, it goes extinct.

The human species is in its adolescent phase, and now it is time to recognize our mistakes and change our behaviors. Sahtouris writes:

“Like any adolescent who is suddenly aware of having created a very real life crisis, our species faces a choice — the choice between pursuing our dangerous course to disaster or stopping and trying to find mature solutions to our crises. This choice point is the brink of maturity — the point at which we must decide whether to continue our suicidal course or turn from it to responsible maturity. Are we going to continue our disastrously competitive economics, our ravaging conversion of our natural supply base into things, our pollution of basic soils, waters and atmosphere in the process? Or will we change the way we see life — our worldview, our self-image, our goals, and our behavior — in accord with our new knowledge of living nature in evolution?”

We’re in for a rough patch

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred quickly. The first documented cases occurred in Wuhan, China in late December. The first reported case outside of China occurred two weeks later in Thailand. At that point, it was also discovered that human-to-human transmission of the virus could occur. One week later, the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the United States. Within a month, 18 countries besides China had infections. By early March, there were 500 cases in the United States impacting 30 states plus the District of Columbia. And within another month, the number of cases in the US grew one thousand-fold to 500,000, with 20,000 deaths. These are only the ones we know about. It is certain that the number of cases in the US is being undercounted, perhaps by a factor of ten, as are deaths.

Within a matter of months, the pandemic has had wide-ranging and devastating impacts. There are nearly two million cases in 210 countries. Over 100,000 people have died. Health care systems are being overwhelmed. The pandemic triggered a global recession, which the world was on course to experience at some point soon, and this was before the economy started shutting down.

Nearly 17 million people in the US became unemployed in the last three weeks. This is also likely an underestimate as unemployment offices are overwhelmed. And a majority of workers in the fields of construction, manufacturing, and transportation, and in the service sectors are unable to meet their basic needs. Millions are losing their health insurance when they need it most.

As abruptly as the pandemic and global economic collapse have changed our lives, scientists predict another rapid disruption in our lives is on the horizon. A new study published in Naturepredicts ecosystem collapse could start occurring within the next decade. Researchers found that many species are already living near the limits of the conditions they require to survive. As the planet heats up, many species will reach their limit simultaneously and there will be mass die-offs.

Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News explains: “As global warming heats their habitat to the point that it is intolerable, many species have no place to go. Some will go extinct, with a domino effect that affects scores of other species. If it gets too hot for bumblebees, for example, it affects the reproduction of plants. If it gets too warm for insects and reptiles, it affects food supplies for birds and mammals.”

When ecosystems start collapsing abruptly, we will face similar situations as we are facing today with the twin COVID-19 pandemic and global recession. We will be forced to adapt to a new reality, but this time it will be a reality that threatens the food supply in addition to increasing the risk of disease. Just as health professionals warned us for years that we were unprepared for an inevitable pandemic, climate scientists are warning us of ecosystem collapse. We can mitigate the crisis, but that is only going to happen if we take the initiative to make it happen.

Image on the right is from News Karnataka.

We’re all connected and it’s all connected

Before we start looking at solutions, we must understand the roots of the crises we face. It is by changing systems at the root level that we will bring about the transformation we need. Of course, this won’t be an in-depth examination. That is beyond the scope of a newsletter.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that we are a connected global community. Diseases, greenhouse gases, and capital are not restricted by borders. What we do in one place, impacts another. To stop the pandemic, we must control the infection everywhere or there will always be a repository perpetuating it and putting any of us at risk. International cooperation and solidarity are required to make the transition we need.

The same is true with the climate crisis and the globalized neoliberal economy. They are connected to each other and to our health. It is the globalized neoliberal financial system that has driven the race to the bottom. Capital moves freely about the world in search of the cheapest labor and resources. Many governments, especially those in the global south, compete with each other to loosen regulations that protect workers and the environment to attract capital to their countries. Corporate trade agreements make transnational corporate profits more important than protecting the planet. Humans have created multiple environmental crises from polluting the Earth, as Robert J. Burrowes writes, turning it into a junk planet.

Capitalism knows no limits when it comes to profits. People are being displaced from their land as corporations gobble it up for mining, energy production or industrial agriculture. This forces people deeper into wild habitats where they come in contact with wildlife and also pushes wildlife into human communities. It increases the chances of transmission of disease.

As Keishia Taylor explains, “…human activity disrupts ecosystems and damages biodiversity, shaking loose viruses, which then need a new host.” As the barriers between humans and wildlife break down, the greater the risk for zoonoses, diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans. COVID-19 “is the sixth major epidemic in the last 26 years that originated in bats, mediated by a range of farmed, domesticated or hunted animals.” Factory farming is a great culprit driving these epidemics. Large numbers of animals live in crowded and unnatural environments, which weaken their immune systems and make disease transmission more likely.

Biodiversity is key to healthy ecosystems, writes Eric Roston in TIME. He adds, “Almost half of the new diseases that jumped from animals to humans… after 1940 can be traced to changes in land use, agriculture, or wildlife hunting. …There may be 10,000 mammalian viruses potentially dangerous to people.” The climate crisis is another threat to biodiversity as described above, for which governments are not responding.

Capitalism drives the exploitation of people and resources for profit without regard for the consequences. The burning of cheap, dirty fossil fuels for transportation required to connect disparate parts of the global supply chain as well as the oil and gas industry’s history of pushing dirty forms of transit drives greenhouse gas emissions along with large polluting industries and factory farms. Destruction of the land, including our forests, has lowered the capacity for natural carbon sequestration. This has led to the high levels of carbon in the atmosphere that cause climate chaos; record high temperatures are heating the oceans and storms, fires and droughts are causing more damage.

Vijay Prashad describes the many ways neoliberal capitalism has also driven privatization of state institutions, such as healthcare, and has created precarious livelihoods in his newsletter “We Won’t Go Back to Normal, Because Normal Was the Problem.” And that is our task: to make sure that out of these crises come major changes, the maturation of our species to cooperate with the ecosystems in which we live.

Opportunities for change

Life has changed drastically for many people as we are suddenly required to stay in our homes. Education has moved online. People are doing more of their own food preparation. Conferences and other large gatherings have been canceled, and some have moved online. We’ve had to change our habits quickly to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 cases.

One positive side effect of our reduced activity is that greenhouse gas emissions have dropped significantly. Charles Komanoff and Christopher Ketcham of the Carbon Tax Institute estimate that the drop could be as much as 50% this year. They identify four positive lessons from the pandemic: greater reliance on science, the recognition that government action is required to confront crises, the knowledge that we can change our behavior quickly, and the necessity of social solidarity.

We can take rapid action to “flatten the curve” of greenhouse gas emissions just as we are for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here is a list of ten basic steps we can take to reduce greenhouse gases and support the health of all living beings and the planet:

1. Decentralize agriculture – End monopolized industrial agriculture and return to small and medium-sized farms owned by farmers who will manage the land in ways that support biodiversity, rebuild the soil and sequester carbon. This means organic farming methods and includes urban agriculture to produce food locally.
2. End land grabs – Stop the land grabs that drive people off their land and allow them to return. Smaller landowners tend to be better stewards of the land.
3. Sequester carbon naturally – Do this through regenerative farming methods, and by restoring wetlands which has the added benefit of buffering sea level rise, and protecting forests, especially mature forests.
4. Restore wildlife habitat – Protect wildlife areas and plan our communities in ways that do not encroach upon them. This includes rethinking tourism. There are some areas humans ought to avoid out of respect for wildlife habitat.
5. End fossil fuel and nuclear use – Move rapidly to a carbon-free and nuclear-free energy economy. To make this a just transition, areas that overuse energy will need to reduce consumption and areas that do not have enough energy to meet basic needs will need to increase energy use. This also means finding ways to reduce travel until we can reduce the carbon output. Many businesses and organizations are changing to online meetings and conferences instead of doing them in-person.
6. Decentralize energy production – Massive solar and wind farms can be disruptive through displacement of communities and the destruction of wildlife areas. Energy production can be integrated into the infrastructure, e.g. on rooftops, parking lots and community solar. Decentralized production ends energy monopolies and allows many people to benefit from the energy they produce.
7. Remake transportation – Reduce energy use significantly through investment in mass public transit and shared ownership of vehicles as cars are parked 95% of the time. Many cities already have fleets of cars for short-term rental. Fewer cars mean fewer resources being used. And we can increase bike and pedestrian areas to encourage less driving.
8. Rebuild the rail system – Electrify our railroads and increase their use for moving goods and people. Decentralized energy production can feed into the rail line to power it. This is a concept called Solutionary Rail.
9. Become zero waste communities – Rethink our consumption and reduce it to what is necessary and then find ways to meet our necessities through closed-loop production cycles, reuse of materials, sharing of items and more.
10. Cooperate more – In this pandemic, people around the world are organizing mutual aid to provide food and other basic needs. Let’s build on this spirit to look out for each other and connect human-to-human. We may find that building our communities will increase sharing and reduce our desire for so much stuff.

There are more steps we could add to this list that include socializing sectors of the economy so that human rights and protection of the planet supersede corporate profits, remaking trade along the same lines and strengthening localized, worker or community-owned enterprises.

We are truly at a crossroads. The pandemic has taught us to act in solidarity and that we can alter our lifestyles drastically when necessary. The climate crisis requires us to flatten the curve of our greenhouse gas emissions and toxic, polluting society. We can’t go back to normal because normal is killing us. The time is now to create a new world in balance with nature.

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

Featured image: Save Our Planet Save Our Future, Belgium, January 31, 2019. Photo: EuroNews/Twitter.

More than 40 companies and institutions in China have prepared donations of medical supplies to help Cuba strengthen its capacity to confront the Covid-19 pandemic, official sources reported today.

The ambassador of Havana in Beijing, Carlos Miguel Pereira, explained that some of these entities have already sent their contributions and others are waiting for the necessary spaces for air shipments.

He mentioned among the donors to the Chinese diplomatic mission in Cuba, various ministries, government and Communist Party agencies, the Henan Foreign Office, as well as the firms SKN, Xiamen Carisol, Geely, Beijing Rosa, BPL, Changheber, Shanghai Suncuba and Beya Time, among others.

He also highlighted the initiatives with a similar purpose of former Chinese fellows on the island, the community of Cuban residents here, the La Casa de David cultural project and the Returned Students from the West, the National Medicines and Friendship of Zhongshan associations.

On this day, Pereira symbolically received the contribution of the Hebei Province University of Foreign Studies, whose rector, Sun Jianzhong, reiterated the desire to deepen bilateral cooperation in educational and health matters, in the context of the celebrations for the 60 years of diplomatic relations.

The Consul General in Shanghai, Néstor Torres, also received this Wednesday the contribution of the Foreign Affairs offices of said municipality and the Minhang district for the provinces of Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

On the other hand, Pereira highlighted in a newspaper article that solidarity prevails and makes its way amid the hard and decisive battle against pneumonia, and despite the United States’ attempts to persecute and criminalize it.

He referred, among other issues, to the unease among many Chinese friends and those from other parts of the world over Washington’s efforts to tighten the economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba and hinder the arrival of medical aid, such as that of the electronic commerce giant. Alibaba.

After that incident, several local media outlets dedicate space to reflecting on the negative effects of the hostile policies of the White House, and even some such as the Global Times and China.org interviewed the diplomat on the subject and the Cuban reality.

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All images in this article are from Prensa Latina

Members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party have four times shelled positions of the Syrian Army in the provinces of Lattakia and Hama over the past 24 hours, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria reported. At the same time, according to the Russian side, Turkish-controlled armed groups did not violate the ceasefire regime.

Despite this, the situation on the contact line between government forces and militants remains tense. The M4 highway is still blocked by supporters and members of radical militant groups.

On April 14, the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces kicked off a security operation against ISIS in the countryside of the town of al-Sukhna on the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor road. The operation came as a response to recent ISIS attacks on army positions in the Homs desert, which resulted in several days of intense fighting between government troops and terrorists.

However, according to pro-government sources, it is unlikely that the efforts of the government forces will change the security situation in eastern Syria in any significant manner. To carry out attacks, ISIS is using small mobile groups that enjoy freedom of movement through the US-occupied area of al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border, where the US-led coalition and its proxies are fiercely opposing any anti-terrorism efforts by the Syrian Army. On several occasions in previous years, US-led coalition aircraft even struck Syrian convoys, which had allegedly moved too close to the US-controlled zone. ISIS terrorists moving through al-Tanf, however, do not seem to be causing such deep security concern to the US military and political leadership.

A day earlier, Iraqi government forces launched their own security operation against ISIS cells in the province of Anbar on the border with Syria. According to official statements, the operation is ongoing in the areas of Wadi al-Ghari, Wadi al-Awja and Wadi al-Malisi.

Another anti-ISIS operation is currently ongoing in the province of Diyala. It was launched on April 11 and involves the 20th, 23rd and 110th Brigades of the Popular Mobilization Forces as well as several units of the Iraqi Army. The main efforts are focused on the countryside of Sherk Zur.

According to ISIS’ newspaper al-Naba, the terrorist group killed 66 government fighters and civilians in Iraq in the first week of April alone. While this number could be overestimated, regular ISIS attacks on military and civilian targets in western Iraq are an open secret.

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Detroit is one of the epicenters for the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic where the city in southeast Michigan has the highest death rate from the infection in the United States. (See this)

This majority African American municipality (79 percent) has all of the risk factors for the spread of the virus and the concomitant health and social impacts.

Figures commonly referred to are the nearly 40 percent rate of poverty and the continuing crises related to the declining educational system and a lack of quality healthcare coverage among key sectors of the population. Since the 1970s, the corporate entities and financial institutions have drained the working class through insurance redlining, restructuring within the labor market, environmental degradation, predatory lending, utility and water shutoffs and property tax foreclosures.

Consequently, the rapid spread of illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 infections since the second week in March, has created economic problems which are monumental. Tens of thousands have been thrown out of work in the industrial, service, construction, hospitality and educational employment categories placing many households under a greater threat of eviction and hunger.

Under such a situation what is needed is a program for sustaining the people and reconstructing the economic and social life of the majority. However, the corporate-oriented Mayor Mike Duggan held a press conference on April 14 to unilaterally announce what is tantamount to an attack on the poor and working class people in Detroit.

Duggan raised the specter of layoffs, furlough days, service cuts and other draconian measures to ostensibly make up for the potential of a $348 million deficit by the next fiscal year. Such a course of action, which requires the approval of the City Council, will only further aggravate the plight of people who both live and work in Detroit.

Over the last decade there have been substantial cuts in the number of civil servants and educational employees. Although the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) system is governed through a separate entity from the City, the education sector has been subjected to emergency management, corporate orientation, the closing of buildings and the reduction in teachers and other employees.

In those areas where the municipality is in charge, there has been a dislodging of control by the City to quasi-governmental agencies which have far less oversight than other departments. The budget outlined by Duggan will inevitably continue this trajectory.

In an article published by the Detroit affiliate of ABC News (WXYZ)), it says that:

“[T]hey (the city) will have to lay off 200 part-time, temporary and seasonal employees. He (Duggan) says the city will file unemployment claims for them. That leaves $44 million and the 8,000 city employees will fall into 4 groups. 10% workers will work 10% of the time and will still receive their health care. 80% workers will work 80% of the time and will still receive their health care.

95% workers will work 100% of the time and take a 5% pay cut, while receiving their health care. 100% workers will work 100% of the time and will receive all of their pay. No one will get a scheduled pay raise as of July 1.” (See this)

Duggan suggested that the State of Michigan required the City of Detroit to balance its budget every year since the imposition of Emergency Management and Bankruptcy during 2013-2014. Yet this project engineered by the banks and corporations resulted in the seizure of $5.5 billion in municipal retiree pension funds and the further weakening of public ownership in Detroit.

The reality is that Duggan is a manifestation of the process of disenfranchisement and exploitation initiated by a series of state governments led and directed by the ruling financial and industrial interests still dominating the city. It will inevitably be up to the working class and oppressed to build a resistance movement to oppose the program being forced upon the workers and residents of the city.

Crisis in Healthcare System Leads to Lay-offs and Worsening Conditions

Hospitals in the Detroit metropolitan area have been overwhelmed with the large numbers of COVID-19 cases in the city. Statewide some 28,059 cases have been reported as of April 15 with 1,921 deaths.

In the city of Detroit, which is nearly 80% African American, over 58% of cases are among this group while 75% percent of the deaths occur in this demographic. In general, African Americans are 14% of the state population in the state of Michigan yet they represent 40% of the deaths reported.

Of course these figures could very well be undercounted considering the dearth of testing and access to doctors, nurses and hospital care. Many within the city do not have health insurance as a result of the failure of the existing medical system prevailing in the U.S.

Despite this critical situation, the largest hospitals and medical centers announced lay-offs during the week of April 13. The spokespersons for the corporations are saying that as a result of the cancellations of elective surgeries many of the nurses and other workers are not needed since the primary focus has been on treating COVID-19 patients.

The Detroit CBS Radio affiliate (WWJ 950 am) reported on April 15 saying:

“The DMC announced furloughs for some employees Wednesday morning (April 15). How is that possible at a time when Sinai Grace workers posted pictures of packed hospital corridors and a 1,000-bed field hospital was built just down the street to handle a projected overflow of patients? DMC explains: ‘With stay-at-home orders and government restrictions on elective procedures, some hospital units – which are not related to the COVID-19 crisis or other critical patient care needs – have been temporarily closed or ramped down. We have taken steps to divert additional resources to COVID-19 care and other urgent medical procedures that cannot be deferred. This includes reducing costs, and hours worked, and implementing furloughs of certain jobs, where needed. This furlough impacts approximately 480 workers.’” (See this)

Similar personnel decisions have been made at Beaumont Hospital which is providing drive through testing and treatments for COVID-19 patients. At a time when the social problems resulting from the absence of universal guaranteed healthcare have been exposed in the U.S. for the world to observe, the principal providers of treatment during the pandemic are downsizing their workforce in consideration of financial profitability.

Therefore, the advent of municipal furloughs, lay-offs and public service curtailments combined with downsizing in the healthcare sector provides a social context for a volatile situation in the city of Detroit and state of Michigan. Right-wing groups on April 15 engaged in a demonstration at the State Capitol in Lansing protesting the “shelter-in-place” order by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer saying it infringed upon their rights to engage in business activity and various associations.

Of course this action took place in the middle of a week where there appears to be a lessening of the growth of COVID-19 cases in the state. The closing down of what are deemed to be non-essential businesses and services along with the ending of the educational year for teachers and students, were declared by Whitmer during the conclusion of the second week in March.

A Response from the Workers and Community Required

Members of the Detroit City Council will take up the question of the austerity budget in the coming days. Community organizations, labor unions, religious organizations and progressive politicians have no other choice than to oppose the bank-engineered budget plans announced by Duggan.

Residents of the city have turned over billions of dollars to the largest corporations in Detroit over the last few years through tax abatements and revenue captures. Dan Gilbert, the Illitch family, the Fords, General Motors, the leading banks, among others, owe the people of the city for the resources expropriated at an even more vociferous rate since 2012 with the illegal imposition of a failed Financial Stability Agreement (FSA) which led to Emergency Management and Bankruptcy.

These corporate interests and their financiers such as Chase, Bank of America, Quicken Loans, etc., should be called upon to provide the $348 million and more needed to maintain the workforce within the municipal and healthcare sectors. Amid such a social and healthcare crisis, no workers should be laid-off or face salary and benefit cuts.

In fact there is a need for more civil servants, educational and healthcare workers. When the rate of illnesses and deaths begin to decline significantly, in its wake there will be enormous dislocation and instability. The role of the state structures in such a situation should be designed to provide the assistance much needed by the majority of the people in Detroit and the state of Michigan.

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition based in Detroit has in its programmatic response to the crisis called for the indefinite halt to all evictions, rent and mortgage payments, tax payments and the maintenance of full municipal services. The organization held a special meeting on April 13 to build a campaign aimed at securing Cuban medical assistance for the people of Detroit in light of the economic downturn taking place in Michigan and across the U.S.

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

Featured image: Detroit healthcare workers protest health and safety dangers amid COVID-19, Detroit News photo

Pushing workers back to work and attempting to “normalize” the economy was the growing consensus among the capitalist class, not just Trump.

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” (Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights — emphasis added) 

“We have to make the world see that the problem that we’re confronted with is a problem for humanity. It’s not a Negro problem; it’s not an American problem. You and I have to make it a world problem, make the world aware that there’ll be no peace on this earth as long as our human rights are being violated in America. (Malcolm X) 

With the overwhelming evidence that the capitalist system is fundamentally antithetical to the realization of human rights, including what should be an elementary right — access to healthcare — the presidency of Donald J. Trump has been a godsend for the capitalist rulers.

The obsessive focus on Trump the person, his style, his theatrics, the idea that he represents an aberration, an existential threat, allows for the ongoing structural violence embedded in the DNA of racialized capitalism to hide in plain sight.

But for the Black working class and poor it is suicidal to embrace this illusion. Maintaining a clear understanding of our situation, unimpeded by illusions and ideological mystifications, has always been a tool we used to ensure our survival before the ideological swing to the right over the last decade and a half.

White “America” pretends once again to be surprised by the emerging facts that African Americans are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the coronavirus assault. But why should anyone be surprised?  African Americans make up a disproportionate number of the 87 million people in the U.S. who are under-insured or lack health insurance, who occupy the lowest paid jobs, jobs today deemed “essential.” It is in our communities where the toxic waste dumps are located, the petroleum processing companies, the hog farms, garbage dumps, the buildings with lead paint and asbestos, and the highways pumping out millions of tons of pollution every day.

And it is in our communities that, before gentrification, over the last 40 years, governments under the pressure of neoliberal austerity cut budgets and services. It was in our communities, both urban and rural, where the hospitals and clinics were closed, the sewer and sanitation deteriorated and something as basic to life as water was commodified, contaminated and often cut off.

Trump didn’t create these conditions. The higher rates of hypertension, asthma, and diabetes that ravage the health of our people, and almost ensure a death sentence if Black people contract coronavirus, were not created by Trump over the last three years. These conditions are the result of the cold, hard logic of environmental racism fueled by the profit motive that creates disposable people and communities.

The denial of the human right to health to African Americans, particularly to African workers and the poor, has been a permanent feature of the gross human rights violations that our people have experienced over the decades and centuries in this white supremacist settler-colonial state.

The human right to health is not the right to be healthy or the right to health care, but a more complex and nuanced understanding of the right to health. The enjoyment of this human right is determinate on the availability of all of the other human rights and collective services necessary to create and protect the conditions in which people can lead a healthy life — the right to housing, education, food, a clean environment, paid sick leave, parental leave, leisure and water, to name a few.

Basic goods and rights are denied by capitalism.

It is, therefore, a reactionary, indeed counterrevolutionary position to engage in the politics of diversion by focusing on Donald Trump. When Trump floated the trial balloon of pushing workers back to work by Easter, leftists who should have known better reduced this decision to the heartless agenda of Trump when the fact was that pushing workers back to work and attempting to “normalize” the economic situation was the growing consensus among the capitalist class represented by opinions published in the Wall Street Journaland New York Times, and by positions taken by members of the banking industry.

Trump and capitalist rulers want to return to “normal,” but for the African working class and poor who have not even “recovered” from the collapse of economy in 2007-2008, normal is a one-sided race and class war that degrades, dehumanizes and destroys Black life.

The systemic conditions of poverty, unemployment and underemployment, mass incarceration, police killings, gentrification, infant and maternal mortality have always been comparable to those of nations in the global South, but now, the pre-mature death from coronavirus should reveal to all, except to the most dishonest, that the real enemy is this racist, capitalist/imperialist system. — what we refer to as the Pan-European colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchy.

If Black lives really matter, it is obvious that we are the ones that must make them matter. It must have been made clear by now that this system of racialized capitalist domination and imperialist aggression against non-European people, from the African continent to Venezuela, will not be defeated by online petitions, webinars and polite appeals to the neoliberal criminals who run the Democratic Party.

We are at war.

We did ask for this war. We want peace. We want our human rights. But we are not pathological. We know that the very way in which this system is organized, that is, its essence, is organized to ensure our spiritual, psychological and physical death. Therefore, we have no other choice but to fight for our human rights.

That realization and understanding tmust inform our strategies and the tactics we employ, from participating in the electoral system and strike actions in response to the coronavirus to building dual power structures that allow us to exercise community self-determination and power that is grounded in our class interests and independence.

The enemy will come to understand that we will not quietly die. We will not beg their system to recognize its unfairness, nor will we call for the enemy system to somehow “repair” us – its’ victims.

No, we must come to the painful, and for some scary, conclusion that the system that destroys us and the majority of humanity but be fought and defeated. This is what distinguishes the People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs)  tradition that emerges from the Black radical human rights tradition, from the system’s state-centered, legalistic, liberal counterpart.

PCHRs rejects the liberal colonial/capitalist conception of human rights. It asserts that oppressed peoples cannot afford the fiction of a non-political, objective concept of human rights, which, beneath the surface of universality, reaffirms individualism, and rationalizes market capitalism and white supremacist patriarchy. For the African working class and poor, the fight for human rights is a life-or-death struggle, with the future of our communities and peoples at stake.

We again turn to Malcolm and the radical Black human rights tradition. Malcolm counsels us that one must be ready to pay the price required to experience full dignity as a person and as members of a self-determining people.

And what is that price?

“The price to make others respect your human rights is death. You have to be ready to die.… It’s time for you and me now to let the world know how peaceful we are, how well-meaning we are, how law-abiding we wish to be. But at the same time, we have to let the same world know we’ll blow their world sky-high if we’re not respected and recognized and treated the same as other human beings are treated.”

There was never a social contract that involved Africans in the U.S. — only a racial contract among the white rulers to maintain white minority ruling class power. That commitment translated into the systematic, brutal violations of the human rights of Africans.

We are clear. Trump is a useful idiot for the neoliberal forces who are in power. Our job is to de-mystify the structure of the capitalist dictatorship so that are our targets are clear and we can aim true.

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This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.   

Featured image is from Morning Star

Preparing for a pandemic requires understanding that a change in the relationship between people is primary and the production of things is secondary and flows from social factors. Investors in profit-based medicine cannot comprehend this concept. Nothing could exemplify it more clearly than Cuba’s response to the corona virus (COVID-19).

The US dawdled for months before reacting. Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, over sixty years before the pandemic, Cuba laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad.

For twenty years before the 1959 revolution, Cuban doctors were divided between those who saw medicine as a way to make money and those who grasped the necessity of bringing medical care to the country’s poor, rural, and black populations. An understanding of the failings of disconnected social systems led the revolutionary government to build hospitals and clinics in under-served parts of the island at the same time it began addressing crises of literacy, racism, poverty, and housing.

By 1964, Cuba began creating policlínicos integrales, which were recreated as policlínicos comunitarios in 1974 to better link communities and patients. By 1984, Cuba had introduced the first doctor-nurse teams who lived in the neighborhoods they served. This continuing redesign of Cuban primary and preventive health has lasted through today as a model, allowing it to surpass the US in life expectancy and infant mortality.

It had an overarching concern with health care, even though it had never escaped from poverty. This resulted in Cuba’s eliminating polio in 1962, malaria in 1967, neonatal tetanus in 1972, diphtheria in 1979, congenital rubella syndrome in 1989, post-mumps meningitis in 1989, measles in 1993, rubella in 1995, and tuberculosis meningitis in 1997.

The Committees for Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) became a key part of mobilization for healthcare. Organized in 1960 to defend the country, block by block if necessary, from a possible US invasion, the CDRs took on more community care tasks as foreign intervention seemed less likely. They became prepared to move the elderly, disabled, sick, and mentally ill to higher ground if a hurricane approached. They currently help in removal of mosquito breeding places during episodes of dengue fever, participate in health education programs, ensure distribution of children’s vaccination cards, and help train auxiliary staff in oral vaccination campaigns.

AIDS in a time of disaster

Two whammies pounded Cuba in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The first victim of AIDS died in 1986, and Cuba isolated soldiers returning from war in Angola who tested positive for HIV. A hate campaign against Cuba claimed that the quarantine reflected prejudice against homosexuals. But the facts showed that (1) soldiers returning from Africa were overwhelmingly heterosexual (as were most African AIDS victims), (2) Cuba had quarantined dengue patients with no outcry, and (3) the US itself had a history of quarantining patients with tuberculosis, polio, and even AIDS.

The second blow landed quickly. In December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, ending its $5 billion annual subsidy, disrupting international commerce, and sending the Cuban economy into a free fall that exacerbated AIDS problems. A perfect storm for AIDS infection appeared to be brewing. The HIV infection rate for the Caribbean region was second only to southern Africa. The embargo simultaneously reduced the availability of drugs (including those for HIV/AIDS), as it made existing pharmaceuticals outrageously expensive and disrupted the financial infrastructures used for drug purchases. If these were not enough, Cuba opened the floodgate of tourism to cope with lack of funds. As predicted, tourism brought an increase in prostitution. There was a definite possibility that the island would succumb to a massive epidemic that would rival the effects of measles and smallpox which had arrived with European invaders to the New World.

The government response was immediate and strong. It drastically reduced services in all areas except two which had been enshrined as human rights: education and health care. Its medical research institutes developed Cuba’s own diagnostic test by 1987. Testing for HIV/AIDS went into high gear, with completion of over 12 million tests by 1993. Since the population was about 10.5 million, that meant that persons at high risk were tested multiple times.

Education about AIDS was massive for sick and healthy, for children as well as adults. By 1990, when homosexuals had become the island’s primary HIV victims, anti-gay prejudice was officially challenged as schools taught that homosexuality was a fact of life. Condoms were provided free at doctor’s offices. I witnessed the survival of the education program during a 2009 trip to Cuba; the first poster I saw on the wall when entering a doctor’s office had two men with the message to use condoms.

Despite high costs, Cuba provided antiretroviral (ART) drugs free to patients. One of the great ironies of the period was that those who screeched most noisily about Cuba’s “anti-homosexual” quarantines remained silent as the Torricelli Bill of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, designed to “wreak havoc” on the island, seriously hindered the government’s efforts to bring ART drugs to HIV victims.

Cuba’s united and well-planned effort to cope with HIV/AIDS paid off. At the same time Cuba had 200 AIDS, cases New York City (with about the same population) had 43,000 cases. NYC residents were far less likely to have recently visited sub-Saharan Africa, where a third of a million Cubans had just returned from fighting in the Angolan war. When the HIV infection rate in Cuba was 0.5 percent, it was 2.3 percent in the Caribbean region and 9.0 percent in southern Africa. During the period 1991–2006, Cuba had a total of 1,300 AIDS-related deaths. By contrast, the less populous Dominican Republic had 6,000 to 7,000 deaths annually. In 1997, Chandler Burr wrote in The Lancet that Cuba had “the most successful national AIDS programme in the world.” Despite having only a small fraction of wealth and resources of the United States, Cuba had implemented an AIDS program superior to that of the country seeking to destroy it.

Dengue and interferon alpha 2B

The mosquito-borne dengue fever hits Cuba every few years. Its doctors and medical students check for fever, joint pain, muscle pain, abdominal pain, headache behind the eye sockets, purple splotches, and bleeding gums. What is unique about Cuba is that its medical students leave school and go door-to-door making home evaluations.

Students from ELAM (Spanish acronym for the Latin American School of Medicine) come from over 100 countries and speak with a huge number of accents. They have no trouble walking through homes, looking for mosquito-attracting plants, and peering onto roofs to see if there is standing water.

During a 1981 outbreak of dengue, expanded surveillance techniques included inspections, vector control education, spraying, and “mobile field hospitals during the crisis with a liberal policy of admissions.” Cuba also increased testing for potential cases during a 1997 dengue outbreak. Increased testing of hospital patients was combined with surveillance data to produce predictions concerning secondary infections related to death rates. These campaigns, which combined citizen involvement with health care professionals and researchers, have resulted in reduced incidence of dengue and decreased mortality.

In 1981, Cuba’s research institutes created Interferon Alpha 2B to successfully treat dengue. The same drug became vitally important decades later as a potential cure for COVID-19. According to Helen Yaffe, “Interferons are ‘signaling’ proteins produced and released by cells in response to infections that alert nearby cells to heighten their anti-viral defenses.” Cuban biotech specialist Dr. Luis Herrera Martinez adds that, “its use prevents aggravation and complications in patients, reaching that stage that ultimately can result in death.”

Since 2003, Interferon Alpha 2B has been produced in China by the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture. “Cuba’s interferon has shown its efficacy and safety in the therapy of viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles, HIV-AIDS, and dengue.” Cuba has researched multiple drugs, “despite the U.S. blockade obstructing access to technologies, equipment, materials, finance, and even knowledge exchange.”

Ebola and international aid

AIDS and dengue were problems that affected the Cuban population; but Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was quite different. Viruses that cause EVD are mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area that Cubans had not frequented for several decades.

When the Ebola virus increased dramatically in fall 2014, much of the world panicked. Soon, over 20,000 people were infected, more than 8,000 had died, and worries mounted that the death toll could reach into hundreds of thousands. The United States provided military support; other countries promised money.

Cuba was the first nation to respond with what was most needed: it sent 103 nurse and 62 doctor volunteers to Sierra Leone. With 4,000 medical staff (including 2,400 doctors) already in Africa, Cuba was prepared for the crisis before it began.

Since many governments did not know how to respond to Ebola, Cuba trained volunteers from other nations at Havana’s Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine. In total, Cuba taught 13,000 Africans, 66,000 thousand Latin Americans, and 620 Caribbeans how to treat Ebola without themselves becoming infected.

This was hardly the first time that Cuba had responded to medical crises in poor countries. Only fifteen months after the revolution, in March 1960, Cuba sent doctors to Chile after an earthquake. Much better known is Cuba’s 1963 medical brigade to Algeria, which was fighting for independence from France.

In the very first days of the revolution, there were insufficient medical staff and facilities in rural parts of Cuba that were predominantly black. It was perfectly natural for those who learned of lack of treatment and disasters that plagued other parts of the world to go abroad to assist those in need.

Revolutionary solidarity was often a collective family choice. Dr. Sara Perelló had just graduated from medical school when her mother heard Fidel say that Algerians were even worse off than Cubans and called on doctors to join a brigade to assist them. Dr. Perelló wanted to volunteer but was worried that her elderly mother suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Her mother responded that Sara’s sister and husband would help her as would the government: “Now the thing to do is go forward and don’t worry about your mother, who will be well taken care of.”

Cuban solidarity missions show a genuine concern that often seems to be lacking in health care providers from other countries. Medical associations in Venezeula and Brazil could not find enough of their own doctors to go to dangerous communities or travel to rural areas by donkey or canoe as Cuba doctors do. When Cuban doctors went to Bolivia, they visited 101 communities that were so remote that they did not appear on a map.

A devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010. Cuba sent medical staff who lived among Haitians and stayed months or years after the earthquake was out of the news. US doctors did not sleep where Haitian victims huddled, returned to luxury hotels at night, and departed after a few weeks. The term “disaster tourism” describes the way that many rich countries respond to medical crises in poor countries.

The commitment that Cuban medical staff show internationally is a continuation of the effort that the country’s health care system made in spending three decades to find the best way to strengthen bonds between care-giving professionals and those they serve. Kirk and Erisman provide statistics demonstrating the breadth that Cuba’s international medical work had reached by 2008: it had sent over 120,000 health care professionals to 154 countries; Cuban doctors had cared for over 70 million people in the world; and, almost 2 million people owed their lives to Cuban medical services in their country.

There is a noteworthy disaster when a country refused an offer of Cuban aid. After the 2005 Katrina Hurricane, 1,586 Cuban health care professionals were prepared to go to New Orleans. President George W. Bush rejected the offer, acting as if it would be better for American citizens to die than to admit the quality of Cuban aid. This decision foreshadowed the 2020 behavior of Donald Trump, who searched for a treatment for COVID-19 while pretending that Interferon Alpha 2B does not exist.

Contrasts: Cuba and the United States

These bits of history are background for contrasts between Cuba and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those of us old enough to remember that in the 1960s, we could still have a relationship with a doctor without an insurance company interceding can appreciate that social bonds between physicians and patients were eroding in the United States at the same time they were being strengthened in Cuba.

Testing. Since Cuba brought both AIDS and dengue under control with massive increases and modifications of testing, it was well prepared to develop a national testing program for COVID-19. Similarly, China was able to quickly halt the epidemic, not simply from lockdowns, but also because it quickly tested suspected victims, took necessary steps for isolation and treatment of those found to be positive, and tested case contacts who were asymptomatic.

It is no accident that the United States is a global leader in neoliberal efforts to reduce or privatize public services, proved incapable of mounting an effective testing campaign, and, by the end of March 2020 was on the way to leading the world in COVID-19 cases. In mid-March, the United States had been able to test 5 per million people, though South Korea had tested more than 3,500 per million.

Symptomatic of governmental incompetence in the United States was Trump’s putting vice-president Pence in charge of COVID-19 control. It was Pence, who as Indiana governor, had drastically cut funds for HIV testing (urging people to pray), thereby contributing to an increase in infections.

Costs of care and medication. Medical care in Cuba is a human right with no costs for treatment and only very small charges for prescriptions. Pharmaceutical companies were some of the first industries nationalized after the revolution. US policies routinely hand over billions of tax dollars to Big Pharma, which routinely gets away with gouging citizens mercilessly.

There are no insurance companies in Cuba to add to medical expenses and dictate patient care decisions to doctors. Even if testing becomes free in the United States, people must still decide if they can afford treatment for COVID-19. Those who think that their insurance will cover their COVID-19 bills, “may receive a large out-of-network bill if the ER has been outsourced to a physician staffing firm that is not covered by the insurance.”

Protecting workers. When natural disasters halt work, Cuban workers receive their entire salaries for one month and 60 percent of salaries after that. Cuban citizens receive food allotments and education at no cost, and utilities are extremely low. Cuba was able to shift production in nationalized factories so quickly and was able to churn out so much personal protective equipment (PPE) that it could send it to accompany the medical staff going to Italy when it was the pandemic’s center.

In the United States, there were nearly 10 million unemployment compensation claims by the end of the first week in April, and the country is not well-known for helping the unemployed by increasing taxes on the rich or reducing the military budget. There could be over 56 million “informal workers” in the United States who are not entitled to unemployment benefits. Forcing many US citizens to go to work because they cannot afford to go without basic necessities threatens the entire population with further spread of the pandemic. US health care workers have been short of PPE, including masks, gowns, gloves and test kits. Yet, President Trump is allowed to hold ventilators as “rewards” for states whose governors write that they appreciate him.

Comprehensiveness of health care. The Cuban revolution immediately reorganized the country’s disconnected health services and today has an integrated system beginning with neighborhood doctor-nurse offices tied into community clinics linked to area hospitals, all of which are supported by research institutes. The health system is connected to citizens’ organizations that have decades of experience protecting the country. This “inter-sectoral cooperation” is a keystone of health care. In Cuba, it would be inconceivable to have fifty different state policies that may or may not be consistent with national policies and may allow counties and cities within them to have their own procedures.

Instead of integrating plans for an effective approach to combating disease, the United States dismantles and/or privatizes whenever it can. Trump disbanded the pandemic response team, tried to underfund the pandemic prevention work of the World Health Organization, and sought to weaken nursing home regulations, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

Lest anyone think that this is peculiar to Republicans, please remember that Democrats have long been in the forefront of neoliberalism and utilization of the “shock doctrine” approach that Naomi Klein described. Both parties have contributed to dismantling environmental rules so desperately needed.

Rebecca Beitsch reported on March 26 that “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak.” Not wanting to be left out, “the oil and gas industry began asking the federal government to loosen enforcement of federal regulations on public lands in response to the coronavirus pandemic.” They sought an extension of two-year permits and the ability to hold onto unused leases. If pandemics such as COVID-19 recur in the future, will added pollution and climate-related diseases weaken human immune systems, making them more vulnerable to infections?

If so, universal medical coverage would be essential to protection for tens of millions of Americans. A recipient of huge donations from medical and pharmaceutical companies, Joe Biden has supported efforts to undermine social security and “suggested he would veto any Medicare for All bill that the House of Representatives passed.”

The reality of preparing to deal with medical crises. Pascual Serrano noted that Cuba had already instituted the Novel Coronavirus Plan for Prevention and Control by March 2, 2020. Four days later it updated the Plan by adding “epidemiological observation,” which included specific measures like temperature taking and potential isolation, to infected incoming travelers. These occurred before Cuba’s first confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis on March 11. By March 12, after three Italian tourists were identified as having symptoms, the government announced that 3,100 beds at military hospitals would be available. Vulnerable groups such as seniors receive special attention. Cuba put a cohesive plan into motion that provides citizens with straightforward information, mobilizes workers to protect themselves and the country, and shifts production to necessary supplies.

At the same time, Donald Trump precautioned Americans to be wary of “fake news” about the virus. Then he said, “It will go away.” On February 26, he falsely said the number of U.S. COVID-19 cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” He claimed, “It’s going to disappear thanks to what I did… ” Then he told everyone they should go to church on Easter Sunday and that Americans should go to work even if they had the virus. Unquestionably, Trump’s behavior contributed to the spreading of the disease. His statements were consistent with the desires of industry to resume business as usual.

While the United States produces a surplus of unnecessary junk, Cuba produces a surplus of health care professionals. Consequently, Cuba has 8.2 doctors per 1,000 people while the United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000. While I was on a 2019 trip there, a recently graduated Cuban doctor told me that he only works about 20-25 hours per week. But during medical disasters, it could easily be 80-100 hours per week.

Education. Cuba has used mass education to effectively change behavior during epidemics. In 2003, Dr. Byron Barksdale pointed out how Cuba’s six-week program for AIDS patients was “certainly a longer time than is given to people in the United States who receive such a diagnosis. They may get about five minutes of education.” During dengue outbreaks, medical professionals who go to homes explain in detail why water must be drained or covered and what plants augment mosquito breeding.

The United States confronts health crises with “campaigns” that are grossly inadequate. TV ads run for a few weeks or months, and physicians may receive brochures to give to patients. There is nothing even approaching visits to every home to inspect how families can be contributing to their own illness and how to adopt behaviors to counter the disease.

Donald Trump’s inconsistent rantings about COVID-19 are the epitome of miseducation campaigns. Climate denial has served as a dress rehearsal for COVID-19 denial. The Trump reign has been a practice session in stupefying millions into believing anything a Great Leader says no matter how ridiculous it is. His tweets have a pathological similarity to the intensely anti-intellectual perspective that is dismissive of education, philosophy, art, and literature and insists that scientific investigation should never be trusted.

The day before yesterday, they insisted that the world was flat. Yesterday, they believed that evolution was a theory from Satan. This morning, they insisted that heating of the globe is a fantasy designed to choke corporate expansion. How close must it get to midnight before those drunk with Trump’s Kool-Aid are willing to see the facts of COVID-19 growth unfolding before their eyes?

International solidarity. Cuba made international headlines the third week in March 2020 when it allowed the British cruise ship MS Braemar to dock with COVID-19 patients aboard. It had been turned away by several other Caribbean countries, including Barbados and the Bahamas, which are both part of the British Commonwealth. There were over 1,000 passengers on board, mainly British, who had been stranded for over a week. Braemar crew members displayed a banner reading “I love you Cuba!” Undoubtedly, Cuban officials felt okay letting the ship dock because its doctors had gained so much experience being exposed to deadly viruses like Ebola while knowing how to protect themselves.

The same week in March, a medical brigade of 53 Cubans left to Lombardy, one of the worst hit areas of Italy, the European country most affected by COVID-19. Soon they were joined by 300 Chinese doctors. A smaller and poorer Caribbean nation was one of the few aiding a major European power. Cuba had also sent medical staff to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Suriname, Grenada, and Jamaica.

Meanwhile, the US administration was refusing to lift sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, sanctions that interfered with these countries receiving PPE, medical equipment, and drugs. Yet, it continued sending thousands of personnel to Europe for military maneuvers. It manufactured a smear campaign against President Maduro of Venezuela, portraying him as a drug trafficker. Trump disgraced America by pandering to his most racist supporters by referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”

As Cuba shared anti-virus technologies with other countries, reports surfaced that the Trump administration offered the German company CureVac $1 billion if it could find a remedy for COVID-19 and hand over exclusive rights “only for the USA.” This meant endangering the lives of Americans in two ways. By trying to monopolize a drug that had not yet been developed, Trump was trying to distract attention from the existing Interferon Alpha 2B which China was already including among thirty treatment drugs for the disease. By continuing the sixty-year-old blockade, Trump hampered Cuba from receiving supplies for the development of new anti-COVID-19 medications.

What do researchers look for? When Cuban labs created Interferon Alpha 2B to treat dengue, it was just one of many drugs researched to investigate treatments, especially those that would help people in poor countries. Its use of Heberprot B to treat diabetes has reduced amputations by 80 percent.

Cuba is the only country to create an effective vaccine against type-B bacterial meningitis. It developed the first synthetic vaccine for Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib), as well as the vaccine Racotumomab against advanced lung cancer. Cuba’s second focus has been to manufacture drugs cheaply enough for poor counties to be able to afford them. Third, Cuba has sought to work cooperatively, with countries such as China, Venezuela, and Brazil, in drug development. Collaboration with Brazil resulted in meningitis vaccines at a cost of 95¢ rather than $15 to $20 per dose. Finally, Cuba teaches other countries to produce medications themselves, so they do not have to rely on purchasing them from rich countries.

In virtually every way, corporate research has been the opposite of that in Cuba. Big Pharma spends millions investigating male pattern baldness, restless legs, and erectile dysfunction because these could reap billions in profits. The COVID-19 pandemic promises to bring in super-profits, and governments are acting to make sure that happens. At the same time Trump was making promises to the German CureVac company, his administration was looking into giving exclusive status to Gilead Sciences for developing its drug remdesivir as a potential treatment for COVID-19. US taxpayers would dole out millions to create a medication that could be too expensive for them to buy.

Though Donald Trump is the nadir of national chauvinism countering global cooperation, it is important to remember that it is the market system that pushes research into investigations that yield the greatest profit instead of where it will do the most good.

Future pandemics. Cuba’s dengue epidemic in early 2012 seemed odd because outbreaks usually happen in the fall and are over by December. It is rare for them to last into January and February. Climate change is making local conditions more suitable for the mosquitoes that are vectors for dengue. During the last half-century, Cuban health officials have calculated a thirty-fold increase of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main vector.

Corporate media regularly tells us that COVID-19 is “unprecedented,” as if nothing like it will happen when it subsides because, after all, nothing like it has happened before. Not really. Claiming that COVID-19 is the “worst pandemic” to ever hit this continent is either saying that smallpox had no effect on Native Americans or that Native American deaths are irrelevant to medical history.

Many Americans may be receiving a one-time “stimulus check,” which will not recur every time bills need to be paid and will be infinitesimally smaller than sums bestowed upon corporations. But people don’t need a “stimulus” to pay $100-$1,000 for a test. They don’t need a one-time cash payment to cover $200-$2,000 for vaccination. They don’t need $1,200 for partial reimbursement of a $30,000 COVID-19 bill. They don’t need dribbling financial “aid” to pay for bills that go on without end. People need medical testing, treatment, and vaccination for all as a collective human right.

Though creating tests, treatments, and vaccines are essential parts of fighting disease, they will not be sufficient in a society suffering from a pandemic of profit-gouging. The restructuring of social relationships is critical not only to unleash the creative power to invent new things such as necessary medicines, but also to ensure those things benefit all who need them.

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Don Fitz is on the editorial board of Green Social Thought, where this article was originally copublished with MR Online. His book, Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution, is forthcoming by Monthly Review Press in June, 2020. He can be contacted at [email protected]

According to financial watchdog Truth in Accounting’s 2020 Financial State of the Cities report, numerous American cities are in dire fiscal straits. Out of the 75 most populated cities observed in the report, 63 do not have the means to pay their bills. The total municipal debt for these cities is at $323 billion.

The rankings used in the report detailed the cities’ taxpayer burden or surplus. In other words, this is the amount each taxpayer would have to cough up for “municipal debt with nothing, such as benefits and services, in exchange.” For example, New York City only had $62.7 billion in order to pay for $249.4 billion in expenses. In turn, it has a $186.7 billion shortfall, which totals to a burden of $63,100 per taxpayer.

In Chicago, which is in second place as far as tax burden is concerned, each taxpayer would have to pay $37,100 in future taxes without receiving any service in return. Similarly, Honolulu found itself in third place at $26,400. On the other hand, some cities like Irvine, California, and Washington, D.C., were much better at keeping their finances straight. The former netted a surplus of $4,100 per taxpayer while D.C. has a surplus of $3,500.

From the looks of it, America is starting to become cash-strapped at all levels. Just look at the federal government. It finished 2019 with a $984 billion deficit and $23 trillion in debt. The fiscal profligacy that D.C. has immersed itself in is being emulated by many states and cities across the nation. Americans are already getting themselves into record levels of personal debt as well. What we’re witnessing is a generalized trend that is indicative of a culture that has lost financial restraint. Obviously, there needs to be policy solutions, but most of these changes start at home.

Cities ultimately have the choice to pursue policies as they please. I have long argued that most federal programs should be devolved to the state and local level. That’s where America can find federalist solutions to many of its problems. However, cities must take ownership of the problems they have generated through their fiscal recklessness. Public education has played a significant role in putting cities and states on the brink of fiscal collapse. Teacher union interest groups have become parasitically attached to public education, accumulating much wealth at the taxpayer’s expense. Now, these cities will have to confront the economic reality of bankruptcy thanks to these interest groups holding them hostage.

Reformers will have to dispense with sacred cows such as public education and consider cuts and privatization schemes for public services corrupted by graft and rent-seeking. If America is serious about fiscal discipline, it must be willing to get its finances straightened out at the local level. From there, it can build enough momentum to make fiscal prudence a reality at the state and federal level.

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The Al-Monitor portal has left many extremely surprised with news that was not expected in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. With over 600,000 cases and 25,000 deaths in the U.S., President Donald Trump has made a bold geopolitical move and instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to determine whether Cyprus should have its arms embargo against it lifted, according to Al-Monitor’s congressional correspondent, Bryant Harris.

“Trump tasked Pompeo with the decision [yesterday] via a presidential memorandum after signing two separate bills to lift the embargo in December — legislation that Turkey had unsuccessfully sought to forestall,” explained Harris.

In 1987, the U.S. embargoed arms sales to Cyprus under the pretext of preventing an arms build-up on the island. However, this was not a problem for Cyprus as Russia became one of the biggest weapon suppliers instead. If the U.S. were trying to have balance on Cyprus, it certainly did not achieve this as the country only became closer with Russia and to this day still have close ties.

In 1974, Turkey invaded the northern parts of the island to prevent Cyprus from uniting with Greece and to this day continues an illegal occupation. The occupation is to maintain the quasi “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” that is recognized by no other state in the world bar Turkey and is recognized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 541 and UN Security Council Resolution 550 as illegal.

The U.S. has never taken an interest in protecting Cypriot interests despite the illegalities of the occupied northern Cyprus – up until recent times. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan going rogue against U.S. and NATO interests by strengthening relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including the sale of the S-400 missile defense system that are not compatible with NATO doctrine.

The irony is that Turkey bought the S-400 system despite the fact that in 1997 Cyprus bought the S-300 air defense missiles from Russia, but had to trade it with Greece for other weapons under a Turkish threat of blockade and/or war. The S-300 is now located on the Greek island of Crete. As Greece in recent years has been a loyal subject to NATO without much independent foreign policy, Washington is now willing to give the country more concessions. In previous years, Washington would only appease Turkey as it controlled the Bosporus Straits that connects Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to the rest of the world.

However, these concessions and attempts to strengthen relations between Cyprus and the U.S. come at a price. Harris explains that the U.S. Congress laid out specific criteria that Cyprus needs to fulfill before it is allowed to procure arms from the U.S., if it ever choose to.

“Specifically, the law requires Cyprus to deny Russian military vessels to its ports despite a 2015 agreement with Moscow to do so. It also requires Cyprus — a financial heaven for wealthy Russians to evade US sanctions — to comply with anti-money laundering regulations,” he said.

It is very unlikely that Cyprus will meet these demands made as it is not a NATO member, nor does it have the incentive to abandon a partner that supplied it weapons when the U.S. turned its back. Knowing this fact, Harris explained that “even if Cyprus fails to comply with these conditions, the law gives Pompeo the freedom to lift the embargo anyway via a national security waiver.”

This therefore means that the true target of this arms embargo lift is not necessarily Russia, but rather Turkey. It is effectively in Cypriot hands on whether they want to take on these U.S. conditions. Cyprus is being ‘rewarded’ by Washington as in recent years it has formed a strategic partnership with Israel in the economic, energy and military sector. Because of this, pro-Israel groups in the U.S. lobbied to lift the arms embargo last year, especially as Erdoğan frequently antagonizes Tel Aviv.

Although it is in Pompeo’s hands to decide whether to lift the embargo or not, it is more likely he will choose to do this even if Cyprus decides not to conform to the anti-Russian measures demanded. Not only is Trump and Pompeo receiving pressure from the Israeli lobby, but they are also receiving pressure from the extremely influential think-tanks.

In an article from June 2019, titled “Lift the Arms Embargo on Cyprus,” that was first published by The Center for the National Interest, and then republished by the CATO Institute, the author explains “The current arms embargo on Cyprus is unbalanced and unfair. Favoring Turkey never was likely to help keep the peace. Today, given the Erdogan’s transformation into a frenemy of America at best, and confrontational policy toward Cyprus and Greece, the embargo rewards an essentially rogue government. The United States should see Turkey plain and stop tolerating the latter’s unfriendly conduct.”

However, there is no guarantee that just because Cyprus is now being noticed and recognized by Washington that it will quickly abandon Russia, especially because of decades of limited relations and the important role the U.S. played in supporting the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus. Rather, the lifting of the arms embargo is just one small gesture that Washington might make to antagonize a rogue Erdoğan, and if this is the aim, it will certainly work as the Turkish president believes the island to be a part of his domain.

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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 Iakovos Hatzistavrou / AFP

“I am searching for medicine for my mother; I’ve no money to repair my car; I have my sister asking me to help her son; I have come to the end of our food ration for this week.”

A reply Americans, Italians, Indians, Brazilians, or Iranians—everyone across the globe– might offer a curious (or naïve) journalist covering the crisis. (Not to exclude testimonies from exhausted healthcare and other service workers.)

However, the respondent I quote here lived his uncertainty in a different era:—a quarter of a century ago, in Iraq. He’s Ali Al-Amiri, erstwhile poultry inspector for Nineveh’s provincial department of agriculture. We met in 2001, in Mosul, at the height of an epidemic there, namely the 13-year embargo imposed on his nation.

I’d been covering the devastation created by that global blockade since 1990. So my question was indelicate, if not guileless.

I knew conditions there well.

During a decade of assignments to that besieged, forlorn place, I’d witnessed deaths resulting from a scarcity of medicines and stress-related diseases; I’d been recording burn victims scarred by fires from makeshift stoves, rising cancer infections, low-birth-weight newborns, unchecked spread of infectious diseases, the collapse of industry and the flight of desperate young people. (All well documented for anyone caring to investigate (including my account from Iraq  joined early field reports from the International Action Center and a belated Harvard Study based on secondary sources.)

Yes, my question to this and other besieged Iraqis may have been misplaced. Nevertheless Al-Amiri’s reply was instructive to those with a limited perception of war. It pointed to a frightfully blank tomorrow.

If Americans (and others who complied with Washington’s policy to force Iraq to its knees) did not grasp the concept then, today we know it: “What are your plans for the weekend? Your graduation prom? Your annual colonoscopy? Your son’s wedding? Grandfather’s 80^th birthday?” They’re all on hold; we’re just trying to keep the children entertained, get through another day with a testy partner, stock up on non-perishables, learn to connect by Zoom, gather papers for an insurance claim or patch a cracked windshield.

This blank calendar is as intimate for us as it was for Iraqis. Of course it’s not the same; Iraq was completely cut off through a media blackout, a ban on flights, and by diplomatic and economic blockades. By contrast, in the midst of COVID-19, we have teleconferences and phone networking apps; we have sympathizers around the country and across the world; we can learn from others’ experiences; we can share resources and expertise.

My point here is not to assign blame or compare sufferings. It’s to question the war model invoked by media commentators and politicians to interpret our dilemma; this hinders our understanding of what we’re experiencing. That embargo on Iraq was a fierce assault but it wasn’t interpreted by outsiders as war; embargo-deaths were largely unseen and uncounted by western historians. Just as 20 years of sanctions imposed on Vietnam after the U.S. defeat there, just as decades of embargo against Cuba, Iran and Syriacontinue, just as the crippling of Venezuela intensifies. Those sieges, like the current pandemic raise deeper moral questions.

It would help to drop our concept of war in this crisis where media commentators and politicians invoke ‘911’ and the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks. The military model (including the commander-in-chief criterion for president) is the U.S. default solution to a problem, whether drugs or a pandemic or a perceived threat to national interests. ‘Smash it to bits. Hit them with all we have.’

Let’s see if Americans can emerge from today’s dilemma with a newly defined compassionate model of responsibility and leadership?

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Anthropologist and journalist BNimri Aziz covered Iraq during the 13-year sanction period. The author of Swimming up The Tigris, 2007, U. Press Florida, she also hosted a radio program on Pacifica- WBAI, NYC. See www.RadioTahrir.org

Featured image was produced by Oli Agrama

Trump is the latest in a long line of US leaders and other key officials who time and again blame others for their own harmful actions and failings.

On Tuesday, Trump directed his blame game at the World Health Organization (WHO), saying the following:

“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”

“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion.”

“The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”

The WHO states that its main objective is ensuring “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”

Its guidelines state that commercial enterprises that work with the organization must adhere to its policies — including the ethical promotion of medicinal drugs, adding:

“In establishing such relationships, it should be borne in mind that WHO’s activities affect the commercial sector in broader ways, through for example, its public health guidance, its recommendations on regulatory standards, or other work that might influence product costs, market demand, or profitability of specific goods and services.”

Does the relationship between the WHO and Big Pharma operate this way?

Time and again, various drug companies violated stated WHO guidelines, regarding the promotion and safety of their products in deference to their bottom line priorities.

Big Pharma companies contribute financially to the WHO, compromising the organization’s guidelines that state:

“Funds may not be sought or accepted from enterprises that have a direct commercial interest in the outcome of the project toward which they would be contributing, unless approved in conformity with the provisions on clinical trials or product development…”

By accepting Big Pharma financial contributions, the WHO compromised its professed independence.

It’s funded by the UN that, in turn, is funded by its member states. Its experts have ties to profit-making organizations and nation-states.

Initially the WHO only was supposed to receive public funding. It now gets it from public and private sources.

Do its operations mainly serve its donors’ interests over its stated mission? Is its credibility unacceptably compromised?

The Lancet medical journal denounced what it called “the open secret of…corruption in global health” — equating it to a disease.

Its forms include “high-level national, or…multinational bribery, extortion, theft, embezzlement, nepotism, and undue influence” between the public and private sectors.

Healthcare is public and/or private business like operations involving other products and services.

According to Research and Markets.com, the 2018 dollar volume of global healthcare was around $8.5 trillion.

Since 2014, the market has been growing at a 7.3% compound annual rate.

Going forward, it’s projected to increase at 8.9% annually to a near-$12 trillion global market by 2022.

In 2019, US national healthcare expenditures comprised about 18% of GDP — the highest percentage for developed countries, the figure expected to be 20% by 2027 (around $6 trillion).

In 2000, US spending on healthcare was 13.3% of GDP, in 1990 12.1%, in 1980 8.9%, in 1970 6.9%, in 1960 5%.

Increased percentages are attributed to higher healthcare inflation than in other segments of the US economy, as well as advanced technologies costing more, including high-cost drugs.

Another key factor is lack of universal healthcare. The US is the only developed country without it in some form. Government purchasing power constrains rising costs

Economist Uwe Reinhardt once explained why healthcare costs in the US are the world’s highest, saying: “It’s the prices, stupid.”

Healthcare costs in the US are double or more their amount in other developed countries. The industry in cahoots with government wants things kept this way at the expense of affordability and state-sponsored universal coverage.

On Tuesday, Trump blamed the WHO for his own dismissiveness toward COVID-19 outbreaks for weeks and his regime’s lack of preparedness to deal with them — despite foreknowledge of the threat at least since early 2017, discussed in an earlier article.

First and foremost, accountability lies with him, hardliners surrounding him, and their congressional counterparts.

He falsely calls COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus,” despite no evidence linking its origin to China.

Most likely it originated in the US last year, unreported at the time. Claims about outbreaks possibly reaching a peak in US cities may be way overblown.

According to Chinese coronavirus expert Dr. Zhang Wenhong and other scientific experts in the country, a second more widespread wave of outbreaks may follow the initial one.

Zhang believes it’s gradually emerging, adding:

“Although China has made some achievements in the earlier stages, there is an urgent  need to remain prudent and determined to fight the pandemic for an extended time.”

He’s head of infectious diseases at Shanghai’s Huashan Hospital. He accused the US and Europe of failing to institute effective controls, the situation much worse in less developed or undeveloped countries with limited resources for public health.

Zhang believes COVID-19 outbreaks won’t end this year, saying they’ll continue until or into next year.

Once initial outbreaks are largely contained in a few months, a second international wave will follow, he said.

In early April, Chinese health authorities said controlling outbreaks is complicated. They’re braced for a longer-term struggle.

Zhang added the following warning:

Once US and other Western outbreaks are largely “under initial control, it is expected that global aviation will be gradually opened up again.”

“But the spread has already begun in India, Africa and South America, where the rise of new cases has been the fastest, posing great risks to the world” — compounded by a second wave he sees coming in China.

Its challenge is to begin reopening the economy with great care not to let further outbreaks spin out of control.

Asymptomatic domestic and imported cases are a big problem, and not just in China. These infected individuals can spread contagion to others unwittingly.

Dem Senators Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal, along with Dem Rep. Anna Eshoo accused the Trump regime of lacking transparency and compromising privacy protections in its handling of COVID-19 outbreaks.

On Tuesday, GOP senators began probing the origins and global response to COVID-19 outbreaks in what appears to be an attempt to shift blame for initial Trump regime inaction and denial, along with its current failures, onto others — mainly China, typical of how the US operates.

China denied Trump regime accusations of a cover-up. GOP Senators Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, and others accused the WHO of “fail(ing) and delay(ing) (its) response to the coronavirus.”

On Tuesday, Trump again blamed China for what’s going on, threatening “consequences.”

According to US Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley, claims that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab are “inconclusive,” adding:

“We’ve had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that,” nothing “certain” determined.

Delay, failure, lack of preparedness, and inaction begins at home.

A US self-examination should be conducted to lay blame where it largely belongs.

With advance knowledge of the threat that’s now reality, the Trump regime slept — blaming others for its own failings.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On April 13, the Turkish Army and its proxies from the so-called Free Syrian Police clashed with supporters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical Idlib groups east of the town of Nayrab on the M4 highway.

According to sources loyal to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham a few hundred members of the Free Syrian Police and a few dozen Turkish troops were involved in the operation. After a series of clashes with radicals, they removed an improvised protest camp set up east of Nayrab. At some moment, Turkish forces even appeared to be engaged in a firefight with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants, but the situation quickly de-escalated and the protest camp blocking the highway re-appeared a few km to the west of its previous location.

Pro-Turkish media immediately branded the April 13 developments as a heroic attempt to de-block the M4 highway and finally launch joint Russian-Turkish patrols along the entire pre-agreed to M4 security zone. This explanation is far from reality. The de-escalation deal remains far from any kind of real implementation. The area of the supposed security zone is still in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked militants.

Ankara had no opportunity to ignore the radicals’ nest east of Nayrab because it could put an end to even the current ‘limited’ format of the joint Russian-Turkish patrols. All 3 previous joint patrols took place in the limited area between Saraqib and Nayrab because of security reasons. If the camp east of Nayrab was not removed, even such patrols would be no longer possible.

However, even this limited move caused a new wave of tensions between Turkish-controlled armed groups and their more independent allies. A firefight erupted between members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Turkish proxies from Faylaq Sham near the village of Msibin on the M4 highway.

Earlier, tensions between members of Turkey’s Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led forces were reported north of Daraat Izzah in western Aleppo.

Any Turkish attempts to de-block the M4 highway west of Nayrab will likely lead to a larger escalation in the area and may lead to more attacks on Turkish forces in Greater Idlib. The previous two IED attacks happened just after joint Turkish-Russian patrols west of Saraqib. The situation in Greater Idlib is in stalemate.

On the one hand, Ankara cannot continue ignoring attempts of groups that it funds to undermine its own attempts to implement the de-escalation deal with Russia at least formally. On the other hand, it does not want to use force to neutralize radicals in southern Idlib because the very same militants are the core of its influence in this part of Syria.

An explosion erupted on a natural gas pipeline in the area of al-Shadadi in the province of al-Hasakah. The incident happened just near the al-Jisba oil field controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US-led coalition. According to Kurdish sources, it remains unclear what group was behind the attack. Nonetheless, it is no secret that ISIS cells have recently increased their activities within the SDF-held area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

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Ron Paul, in a Monday interview with host Dan Dicks at Press for Truth, warns that people “should be leery about” coronavirus vaccines that may come out. Further, says Paul, a doctor and former United States House of Representatives member, “right now I wouldn’t think there is any indication for anybody to take them,” noting that “scare tactics” are being used to pressure people into thinking they should take such potential vaccines to protect against coronavirus.

Paul supports this conclusion by stressing in the interview the potential danger of a vaccine as well as the overstated threat from coronavirus.

Regarding the potential danger from a coronavirus vaccine, Paul discusses at the beginning of the interview how, in 1976 in his first week as a House member, Paul was one of only two members, both doctors, who voted against legislation that helped rush through a vaccine in response to swine flu. Paul describes the results of the push for people to take the swine flu vaccine as follows:

They rushed the vaccine through. The vaccine was not properly made. It had nothing to do with the virus that was out there, so it saved nobody’s life from it. It caused a lot of harm. More people ended up dying from the inoculation than died from the flu that year. And that sort of was a lesson, like that’s a little bit too extreme. But, that’s about what happens when governments get involved and you do things for political reasons.

There was also, because a lot of people ended up getting the vaccine, I think there were like 50 people or more who got Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is temporary total paralysis and you can die from it but most of them did get better. But, it was a very, very serious complication of a viral injection, you know, a vaccine.

Paul also discusses in the interview the overstated danger from coronavirus that is being used to scare people to take actions including to potentially take a coronavirus vaccine.

Paul notes that many of the people whose deaths have been blamed on coronavirus are elderly people, including people living in nursing homes, who have multiple other diseases. Further, explains Paul, doctors have “been instructed by [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and other politicians that, when the doctors sign the death certificate, if [patients] have four different things but they happen to have a positive test for the virus that is to be put down as the major cause of death.” “The numbers mean nothing,” concludes Paul regarding the daily tabulation of coronavirus deaths.

In addition, Paul explains that many more people than officially recorded have contracted coronavirus. Some of these individuals never became sick. Others got better without any treatment, says Paul, pointing to his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as an example. While Rand Paul was given a test that confirmed he had coronavirus, most people who have had coronavirus and suffered no to minor medical problems have not been tested. With “probably millions of people” having contracted coronavirus, Paul concludes that the percentage of people who have contracted coronavirus and have died as a result “is probably very, very small.”

While Paul says he would choose not to take a vaccine for the coronavirus should one appear next week even if people claim it is 99 percent effective, he says that the decision to take or not take a vaccine is one that should be made by each individual, who can discuss the vaccine alternative with a doctor. Absolutely, Paul concludes, that decision should not be made by government.

Watch here Paul’s complete interview, in which he also discusses how government actions taken in the name of fighting coronavirus are harming the economy and his support for people speaking out for ending coronavirus-justified encroachments on freedom:

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Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

Like others, I have thought from the first day of the Covid-19 pandemic that it was forcing us to awake from exponential life-system destruction by ‘business as usual’ to our common life-ground.

In the words of the formerly neo-liberal Governor Cuomo of New York,

“It is a test of our humanity over the economy – – – Health must come first. There is no other option.”   

Yet what has been invading organic, social and ecological life organization for decades at every level remains unseen – the ultimate pandemic of the carcinomic Wall-Street money system whose countless global victims are continually sacrificed to grow it further.

The multi-trillion dollar state financing of Wall Street and company with no public notice or oversight now continues with the Covid-19 crisis into another spike of public wealth into its math-manipulating mechanisms to multiply its life-blind global demand, debt and futures control further: see this and this.

What is ‘the System’?

The Mamos [spiritual leaders] of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia may inspire us here. They “see a message, a guardian, a teacher, a counselor, who offer us the opportunity to – – – dialogue with – – Mother Nature and with Mother Earth. – – Today, one single tiny entity is producing a huge disturbance forcing all of us to make a stop on our sacred pathway of life.”

But, the Mamos continue, “very few have acted with a consciousness of transformation wanting to change the system”. See this.

‘The system’ is, as usual, not defined. But the Mamos are right that few think of transforming it. The Covid-19 crisis has drawn all public attention to stopping its spread, but the conditions giving rise to its epicenter outbreak in the US itself are kept out of the discussion. These conditions feature the absence of a working public health system in a privatized-for-profit disorder in which 80 million citizens are inadequately insured or not at all, at twice the expense of a public one-payer system, to deliver the lowest life expectancy in the developed world.

Yet the Democrat establishment as well as the Trump Republicans still repudiate a universal public system which spectacularly outperforms the for-profit black holes of the US corporate HMO’s which help finance US show elections. Trump goes further. His office silently abolished the Pandemic Disease Office of the White House before Covid-19 struck, and cut the funding of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) by 25%.

All this was to help pay for the “huge tax cut, I mean huge” that President Trump won the Republican Party with: “You are all going to be a lot richer”, he smiled to a smirking gaggle of high-end politicos as he signed the bill for an over trillion-dollar expropriation of public wealth to them.

The system is clearly rotten to the core. Yet in the weeks of world-wide lock-down to protect the lives of all from disease, suffocation and death by the uncontrolled Covid-19 virus growth, only this new and narrow invader of life is recognised. The sequences of the private money-multiplying system that pollutes and pillages all that supports life on the planet remains unseen.

Back to Business as Usual as Fast as Possible

US rulers seek only to restore the free feeding cycle of ‘business as usual’ as fast as Trump can get away with it. He is demonized, but he represents all the corporate rich who loot the world for ever more multiplying billions in obscene private take. He also ensures that his own multi-billion luxury enterprises are publicly subsidized during the lock-down with no Congressional oversight as cities and states are left to manage on their own, “we are not a delivery service”, he retorts to their pleas. It is “in the constitution”.

Meanwhile within the Covid-19 crisis itself, the president’s billionaire cronies in the fossil-fuel and resource-extraction businesses are deregulated further by his office while ever more US public lands and parks are laid open to their looting, again as fast as they can all get away with. This is disaster capitalism that feeds on the catastrophes it causes – the death spiral of the system.

While Trump leads the greatest expropriation in history of environmental protections, public wealth, and national resources for the plundering rich, he calls this ruling disorder “the greatest country that has ever existed” while it serves a fraction of one percent of the people. In the living world, it is an increasing hell. The majority are insecure beyond their last paycheque, most are malnourished, and their children have no future or vocation to serve.

The American Dream goes to US Nightmare led by psychopath self-worship and militant ignorance. But the objections by the legacy press and the opposition leaders to Trump dwell only on ad hominem issues. They remain silent on the deep-system disorder that Trump merely exemplifies on stage.

Trump is America come round to meet itself – a life-blind bully greed of armed-force money and propaganda in control of the ‘free world’ where any dared alternative is attacked to death.

You Can’t Change What You Can’t See

Humanity and the living earth itself, say the first-people spiritual leaders, “are being destroyed, violated, by what is called development, civilization, modernity and which we, the Mamos, call UNCONSCIOUSNESS”.

Yes, but concepts need to be more exact. “What is called development, civilization”, is in fact neither. It is the polar opposite of each – a self-multiplying private money system which depredates life development and civil organization wherever it invades. But since no public record is kept of its life-destructive effects, they remain unconscious. Daily published records are only kept of private money-values like stock-markets and trades. No funded research goes to ongoing curves of morbidities, deaths and deprivations of life means. They do not exist to the ruling market modellers. Only money-values do.

The a-priori life-blind system thus remains unconscious. But it can be defined. It is an omnivorous life dispossession system engineered to multiply the private money-demand control of the richest with no upper or limit, and no life-coordinates of ‘goods’ and ‘growth’. 

This system disorder is most deadly, as a virus is, when it is not sequenced in its exponential self-multiplication through its life hosts. Everywhere liquidating, dismantling and polluting for private profit the life carrying capacities of organic, social and ecological life, its morbidity trends and deaths are not connected, tracked or responded to by any public knowledge base or academic research funding. The system has destroyed their witness too in its feeding cycles.

The tidal money-sequence drivers multiply market money and demand to the top as the ruling  constant of the system. No lives or life conditions lost are connected in graphs or reports. The upward curves of life capacity loss and destruction cannot be flattened because they are not seen.

The Unconsciousness of the System Disorder is Built into its Modelling

Unconnected by any science and unregulated by public life standards, cumulative global destabilization, degeneration and collapse of natural and civil life support systems become overwhelming. Dominant private money sequencing in ever more assaultive and derivative forms is so deregulated, de-taxed and subsidized out of any control that there is no collective life carrying capacity in society or on the planet now not at risk.

Yet even now the common cause, the system disease itself, is taboo to name – the guarantee of system omnicide spiking ever higher. From biodiversity and species in spasm extinction, to global climate and hydrological cycles in growing chaos, to oceans poisoned and coral reefs bleaching, to the forests and life resources of the world looted without stop, the common causeremains unseen.

The social immune systems of societies’ long-evolved public and independent research sectors have been cumulatively hollowed out. Systemic defunding and corporate privatization of public goods and life-support systems have increasingly stripped civil commons across the world before Covid-19 emerged (perhaps from US bio-warfare labs). Yet the system disease remains unthinkable to its victims as well as its drivers, and spiritual intuition provides no resolution beyond personal states of mind.

Unconsciousness is at the roots of the world disorder plaguing us, as the first peoples know. And the rising global chorus and scientific finding today is that “protecting people’s lives is worth the lockdown”. Yet this life principle of public authority and life-coherent government has yet to awake us to the wider system disorder predating the common life-ground at every level.

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John McMurtry is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

The G20 met in virtual session on April 10, ostensibly to address the crippling one-two punch brought on by the economic impact of coronavirus and the simultaneous collapse of the price of oil resulting from Russia and Saudi Arabia flooding an already depressed market.

In the end, the world’s leading oil producers finalized an agreement on sweeping oil production cuts, building on a previous agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to stop their price war. The United States is taking credit for this breakthrough, however, citing the role it played in helping bring Mexico to closure.

But the U.S. contribution was, and is, illusory—President Trump is in no position to promise cuts in U.S. oil production, and as such remains unable to meaningfully contribute to the global oil production reduction scheme. Void of any substantive final agreement, global energy markets will continue to suffer as production far outstrips demand. For U.S. oil producers, who have already seen a 2.5-3 million barrel per day decrease in production, the results will be catastrophic, driving many into bankruptcy and helping push the U.S. economy into a tailspin that will lead to a depression potentially worse than that of the 1930’s.

Trump’s only recourse may be to turn to Russia for help in offsetting needed U.S. oil production quotas, which appears to have been the Russian plan all along.

On Monday March 30, President Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The suppressed price of oil, and Russia’s role in facilitating that vis-à-vis its refusal to cut its oil production, thereby triggering a price war with Saudi Arabia, was the dominant topic. A Kremlin read-out of the call noted that “opinions on the current state of global oil markets were exchanged. It was agreed there would be Russo-American consultations about this through the ministers of energy.”

During the call, Trump mentioned America’s need for life-saving medical supplies, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. Putin asked if Russia could be of assistance, and Trump said yes.

The decision to allow Russian aid (purchased by the U.S.) into the country, however, directly contradicted guidance that had been issued by the U.S. State Department a full week before Trump’s phone call with Putin. On March 22, the State Department sent out an internal email to all U.S. Embassies with guidance on how to proceed with seeking out critical support. “Depending on critical needs, the United States could seek to purchase many of these items in the hundreds of millions with purchases of higher end equipment such as ventilators in the hundreds of thousands,” the email stated. The email noted that the request applies to all countries “minus Moscow,” indicating the United States would not ask Russia for support.

While the two leaders, according to the White House, “agreed to work closely together through the G20 to drive the international campaign to defeat the virus and reinvigorate the global economy,” the March 30 phone call apparently did not directly touch upon U.S. sanctions on Russia. In fact, Trump told  Fox News prior to the leaders’ exchangethat he fully expected Putin to bring it up. He did not say how he might respond if Putin did.

Trump’s confidence in a Putin sanction request most likely stemmed from a statement made by the Russian President to a virtual meeting of G20 leaders on March 22, where he noted that “ideally we should introduce a…joint moratorium on restrictions on essential goods as well as on financial transactions for their purchase.” Putin’s comments were more pointed toward the lifting of sanctions for humanitarian purposes on nations like Iran and Venezuela, but his conclusion hinted at a larger purpose: “These matters should be freed of any politics.”

Russia has been operating under U.S. and European sanctions following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its role in the Ukraine crisis. But the sanctions that have angered Russia the most—and which have contributed to Russia’s price war with Saudi Arabia targeting U.S. oil producers—were those levied against NordStream 2, the Russian pipeline intended to supply Germany, and Europe, with natural gas. Trump signed a bill authorizing these sanctions in December 2019. Russia immediately condemned this action.

Instead of asking Trump outright to lift sanctions, Putin got Trump to help underscore Russia’s position that sanctions were an unnecessary impediment to relations between the U.S. and Russia during the coronavirus pandemic. In agreeing to allow the Russian AN-124 aircraft to deliver medical supplies to the U.S., Trump unwittingly played into a carefully laid bit of Russian propaganda.

Among the aid Russia delivered were boxes of Aventa-M ventilators, produced by the Ural Instrument Engineering Plant (UPZ). UPZ is a subsidiary of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET) which, along with its parent holding company ROSTEC, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2014. According to the State Department, which payed for 50 percent of the equipment on the flight, the sanctions do not apply to the purchase of medical equipment. But by purchasing critical medical equipment from sanctioned companies, the State Department simultaneously violated its own guidance against buying Russian equipment while underscoring Putin’s point—sanctions should be waived for humanitarian purposes.

But Putin’s trap had one more twist. According to the Russians, half of the aid shipment was paid for by the U.S. State Department, and the other half by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a Russian sovereign wealth fund which, like ROSTEC, was placed on the U.S. lending blacklist in 2014 following Russia’s intervention in Crimea. The arrival of an airplane full of critical medical equipment ostensibly paid in part by a sanctioned Russian sovereign wealth fund provided a window of opportunity for Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of RDIF, to gain access to the U.S. mainstream media to push the Russian line.

On April 5, Dmitriev published an OpEd on the CNBC web page titled “The US and Russia should work together to defeat the coronavirus.” Dmitriev likened the current global struggle against the coronavirus pandemic to the fight against Nazi Germany. “During World War II, American and Russian soldiers fought side by side against a common enemy,” he wrote. “We achieved victory together. Just as our grandfathers stood shoulder to shoulder to defend our values and secure peace for future generations, now our countries must show unity and leadership to win the war against the coronavirus.”

But Dmitriev’s true target was oil, and by extension, sanctions. “In times like this,” he noted, “new approaches to explore close collaboration between the U.S., Russia and other countries are needed to stabilize energy and other markets, to coordinate policy responses and to revitalize economic activity. For example, Russia proposed to jointly undertake significant oil output cuts with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other countries to stabilize markets and secure employment in the oil industry.”

Getting the U.S. to lift sanctions was a big ask, something Dmitriev acknowledged. “To change the views on Russia in an election year may be an insurmountable challenge. But so it also seemed in 1941, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union put behind the differences of the past to fight the common enemy.”

While the “common enemy” referred to by Dmitriev was clearly the coronavirus pandemic, he could also have been speaking about Senator Ted Cruz, and others of his ilk, who led the charge to sanction NordStream 2. The current oil crisis has hit Texas particularly hard. In an indication of things to come, Whiting Petroleum, a major player in the shale oil industry,filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Whiting specialized in North Dakota fracking, which required oil prices of $60 per barrel to be economically viable. The current price of sub-$25 doomed the company. Texas fracking is slightly cheaper, with a profitability margin of around $49. With oil prices depressed, Texas companies are feeling the pinch, and are on the verge of collapse.

Trump agreed to participate in the G20 meeting because of the promise of a Russian-Saudi production cut; on this, Putin delivered. But the Russians made any final agreement contingent upon Trump agreeing to significant reduction in U.S. oil production. This was never a possibility—whereas both Russia and Saudi Arabia have national oil companies whose operations are a matter of national policy, the U.S. oil industry is privately owned in its entirety, and dependent on supply and demand equations derived from a free market to determine profitability.

While the G20 meeting resulted in collective cuts of close to 10 million barrels a day, the drop in demand for oil brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has created a glut in which the world produces some 27.4 million barrels per day in excess of global needs. The bottom line is the G20 cuts won’t solve the problem of too much oil, and without additional cuts, the bottom will continue to fall out of the oil market, dooming U.S. producers.

Trump cannot turn on or off the U.S. oil-producing spigot, a fact Russia knows only too well. When Trump attempted to gain credit for a 2.5-million-barrel reduction in production brought on by bankruptcy, Russia refused to allow it. Likewise, when Trump promised cuts in oil production to help Mexico meet G20 targets, it was a promise the American president is unable to deliver on. In getting the U.S. to agree to attend a G20 summit on oil production, the Russians lured the U.S. into a policy trap from which there is no escape.

Void of any final agreement, the U.S. oil industry will inevitably collapse. Trump claims that the G20 virtual summit came up with cuts totaling up to 20 million barrels per day, without explaining how he came up with this number. This number is fictional; the U.S. production crisis is not. Trump’s only hope is for a further softening of the Russian position on production. But this will not come without a price, and that price will be the lifting of energy-sector sanctions targeting Russia.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, including his forthcoming, Scorpion King: America’s Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).

Featured image: President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

The coronavirus pandemic is one of the biggest and unprecedented seismic shifts in the global economy that we’ve ever seen in modern history, and it’s just getting started.    

Already, economies around the world are shutting down. The federal reserve has pumped trillions into the United States economy in just a matter of days. Global supply chains have collapsed as entire Chinese industries went dark. And this is just the first stage. We’re heading into a year’s long recession that will have far-reaching consequences, some of which we can predict with near certainty, and some of which will be entirely unpredictable.

Of course, the global economic system has seen major shakeups before. The timespan known as modern history, in official terms, begins with the onset of the industrial revolution. The globalized market economy that we live in today is all thanks to the revolution that started in Great Britain in the late 18th century, which mechanized manufacturing and made mass production possible. Likewise, in only slightly lesser terms, our current political economy wouldn’t be what it is now without World Wars I and II, the Green Revolution, and the invention of the internet.

So no, market shocks and economic recalibration are nothing new. But with each passing year, the world’s economy becomes increasingly intertwined and interdependent. Globalization grows stronger and more widespread all the time, meaning that every economic shakeup anywhere on earth will only have more and more far-reaching consequences as we move forward. The evidence is overwhelming.

For those of us that have grown up against the backdrop of the 2008 recession, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, to name just a few economic shakeups, crises, and movements, not to mention the looming omnipresent dread of the existential hyperobject that is climate change, it seems that, in many ways, the neoliberal economic trajectory that we are on has reached its limits and dropped us off at the doorway to Armageddon.

Hyperbole? Maybe. But spend five minutes on the internet and you’ll see that it’s a common sentiment.

In October of last year, protests, riots, and uprisings were fomenting and blooming like so many fireworks across the globe. “In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an aging president and decades of military rule,” the Guardian wrote at the time. “The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.” And now? Well, a global pandemic certainly isn’t improving the mood. And there’s likely more to come in the not so distant future.

Scientific American reports that we can expect a lot more pandemics in our future, as urbanization, suburban sprawl, deforestation, and overpopulation have worn down the spatial barriers between humans and wild animals.

“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and plants—and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, wrote in the New York Times back in January.

“I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak,” disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, associate professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, told Scientific American. “The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.”

“We made the coronavirus pandemic,” reads a New York Times headline from January. “It may have started with a bat in a cave, but human activity set it loose.” When logging, mining, drilling, shopping malls, and apartment buildings have set us up for not just one apocalypse but an accelerating series of worsening apocalypses, it’s time for a change. And a new generation of investors, innovators, scientists, and scholars, are ready for it.

The coronavirus crisis has paved the way for one of the biggest shifts in capital reallocation that the world has ever seen. This new generation of investors is working with an urgency never felt before, because they believe that they’re the last line of defense to save the world.

Hyperbole? Probably not.

Look no further than the starry-eyed, revolutionary ideas of Elon Musk and the geniuses of Silicon Valley, and then consider that these are the old guys. Going forward, green energy, decarbonization, social justice, appropriate governance, sustainability, resilience, climate-smart investment, and equal rights won’t just be buzzwords, they will actually be on the corporate agenda. Continuing to pour money into Big Oil and Big Pharma will no longer be marketable.

Investors are already using their money as a voice for change. The ESG or Environment, Sustainability, and Governance investment niche already has over $30 trillion in assets under management. It’s now more than a trend. It’s the future.

And a small Canadian company with big ambitions knows this all too well. Facedrive is looking to take on some of the biggest names in transportation with a simple, but important philosophy: “take something as simple as hailing a ride and turn it into a collective force for change.” The company is actively taking control of its place in this movement and helping shape a better world. More importantly, it’s marketable. A key feature that has been missing from the adoption of greener alternatives.

Facedrive is a local company bringing its values to the main stage. Its message has traction. It’s already partnering with major international names and capturing investor attention in a way that other companies dream they could.

This is not about politics. It’s about logic and a healthy dose of realism. And that’s exactly what makes Facedrive so genuine and accessible. Sure, business, as usual has made a lot of money for a lot of people and has driven incredible innovation and some of the best quality of life in human history. Yes, an oil-powered industrial complex has paved the way for modern medicine that have saved untold millions if not billions of lives, food systems that have staved off widespread famine, and we now live with the comforts of electricity, heat and air-conditioning, air travel, and thousands of other nearly objective improvements to our daily lives. (In the first world, that is.) But now we must reckon with the unintended externalities of all of this economic growth. Our soil is degraded, our oceans are polluted and acidifying, we’re losing biodiversity at breakneck speed, and the earth is getting warmer. Investors, if they are smart, will start investing in the future, not in the cash cows of the past.

Few can attempt to deny that this is the direction that the global political economy is heading. Consumers are savvier, the stakes are higher, and business simply can’t go on as usual. It’s just a matter of time before a fossil-fuel based economy peters out, whether we reach peak oil by exploiting the global reserves or whether demand simply fades away as renewable energies become more efficient and more cost-effective. Solar and wind power are already cheaper than coal in most of the world, and they’re getting cheaper all the time.

Much of the developed world, with Canada, in particular, leading the charge, are already taking major strides towards decarbonizing their energy industries. Even cleaning up transportation with efforts like Toronto’s electric bus initiative, or even local companies like Facedrive making waves with greener solutions to some of our biggest challenges. And let’s not discount the researchers around the world racing to improve green energies and find a solution to unlock the solution to the green energy holy grail that is nuclear fusion. These efforts are all finally starting to be taken seriously, getting the attention, and maybe more importantly, the investments they need to push their visions further by the day.

Heck, even Saudi Aramco had to admit that peak oil is due by midcentury in documents shared as part of their initial public offering last year. Yes, to be sure, their IPO was the biggest in history, and fossil fuels continue to make big money for their investors–but for how much longer? And what of all those in the middle and lower classes that are not only not reaping any significant economic benefits from the current investment agenda, but are often actively suffering from it, either directly by market squeezes and a widening wealth gap, or indirectly by environmental and health externalities that the global poor routinely bear the burden of.

Last year’s protesters in Chile, Hong Kong, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon may not have known exactly what kind of change they wanted, but there are people that do. And a good number of those people are the new class of investors who give a damn.

Clean energy and climate-friendly technologies have long been bottlenecked at the research and development level because there simply wasn’t enough investment money. But that’s changing, and it’s changing rapidly. Some of the deepest pockets in the world are diving into renewable energies in a way that would have sounded like a fairy tale even five to ten years ago. The big four of Silicon Valley and the tech industry as a whole have been pouring money into the renewables sector.

Take Google (GOOGL), for example. Despite being one of the largest companies on the planet, in many ways it has lived up to its original “Don’t Be Evil” slogan. Not only is Google powering its data centers with renewable energy, it is also on the cutting edge of innovation in the industry, investing in new technology and green solutions to build a more sustainable tomorrow. It’s bid to reduce its carbon footprint has been well received by both younger and older investors. And as the need to slow down climate change becomes increasingly dire, it’s easy to see why.

Social media giant Facebook (FB) is doing its part, as well. Not only have they made dramatic progress towards their goal to run on 100% renewable energy by the end of 2020, they’re working to build more water-efficient data centers. In fact, their data centers use 80 percent less water than typical data centers.

Not to be outdone, Apple (AAPL) has made significant moves towards renewables, as well. All of Apple’s operations run on 100% renewable energy. “We proved that 100 percent renewable is 100 percent doable. All our facilities worldwide—including Apple offices, retail stores, and data centers—are now powered entirely by clean energy. But this is just the beginning of how we’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. We’re continuing to go further than most companies in measuring our carbon footprint, including manufacturing and product use. And we’re making great progress in those areas too,” CEO Tim Cook explained.

Amazon (AMZN), for its part, is not carbon neutral quiet yet, but it is making massive moves to clean up its act. It pledges to be fully carbon neutral by 2040, and it is buying up 100,000 electric delivery vehicles to get there. Not only that, but it has also built a 253 MW wind farm in Scurry County, Texas, generating over one million megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

Even Big Oil supermajors have been dipping their toes into the sector to diversify their portfolios and hedge their bets in the rapidly changing cultural and economic zeitgeist. Total (TOT) maintains a ‘big picture’ outlook across all of its endeavors. It is not only aware of the needs that are not being met by a significant portion of the world’s growing population, it is also hyper-aware of the looming climate crisis if changes are not made. In its push to create a better world for all, it has committed to contributing to each of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. From workplace safety and diversity to societal progression and reducing its carbon footprint, Total is checking all of the boxes that the next generation of investors hold close to their hearts.

A greener future is not a political statement. Improving dirty business practices is not bipartisan. No matter who you are and what you believe in, it only makes sense to invest in the future. And there is no future without a serious reallocation of capital. Don’t bother trying to fight it. The investment revolution is now.

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Michael Kern is a newswriter and editor at Safehaven.com, Oilprice.com, and a writer at Macro-Investing.com. 

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

A leaked 850-page report provides a wealth of information about how senior officials undermined Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. Titled ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019’, it particularly documents systematic sabotage by the party apparatus between Corbyn’s election in September 2015 and Jennie Formby taking over as general secretary in April 2018.

The report was compiled by party staff in the context of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigation into how Corbyn-led Labour handled complaints of antisemitism. The EHRC findings are expected soon. Party lawyers have, for reasons that are not yet entirely clear, decided not to submit the report to the EHRC.

Exposing the truth

The report blows apart the myth that Corbyn’s LOTO – Leader of the Opposition’s Office – was responsible for undermining efforts to deal effectively with antisemitism in the party. It instead shows that Blairite officials, motivated by hostility to Corbyn’s left-wing politics, made a concerted effort to scupper the handling of complaints.

The report exonerates Corbyn personally, and those close to him in LOTO, of failing to take antisemitism seriously. It instead demonstrates that hostile senior officials operated in a highly factional manner to turn the issue into a crisis for the party. The media normally amplify any story to do with Labour and antisemitism, yet they have so far remained mostly silent on this report.

The focus of the report is largely on the behaviour of senior staff in Labour Party headquarters – led by Iain McNicol, the right winger who was general secretary until being replaced by Formby in 2018 – and the Governance and Legal Unit (GLU), responsible for disciplinary matters, in particular. The report finds that ‘in this period, before Jennie Formby became General Secretary in spring 2018, GLU failed to act on the vast majority of complaints received, including the vast majority of complaints regarding anti-Semitic conduct’.

This allowed a massive backlog to develop. It was used, entirely without justification, to suggest that Corbyn and the left were responsible for failures to investigate and deal with complaints about antisemitic conduct.

The main evidence base is a mass of communications between senior staff, especially message exchanges on two WhatsApp groups used by senior managers. One group was for six top officials including McNicol and Emilie Oldknow, who was then a highly influential party official and is now assistant general secretary of Unison. The other group included the same six key officials, but also other senior managers at party HQ.

I have divided this overview into three sections, followed by a concluding section suggesting some lessons to take from the investigation. The first part is concerned with the material on how antisemitism claims were dealt with.

The second section is about the devastating revelations of how officials undermined the Labour Party’s electoral chances, above all in the historic general election of June 2017. Officials were appalled by the better-than-expected results for the party, following a campaign during which they frequently expressed contempt for their own party and its prospects.

The third section is about the culture of routine abusive language about party colleagues, especially those on the left, which existed at Labour Party HQ. The unremitting hostility was often expressed in sexist, unpleasant and highly personalised terms.

Antisemitism claims

The central conclusion of the report is that the old Blairite apparatus systematically failed to investigate complaints about antisemitism for factional and political reasons. It dismantles the claim, popularised by a Panorama programme last year and amplified by the press, that the Leader’s Office was responsible for these failures.

There was no proper logging of complaints, many of which were simply treated as ‘spam’ for months. The report states: “By the time a new general secretary took over Party HQ in April 2018 there was a backlog of cases that had been ongoing, often for years, with little to no progress.” There is an example from October 2017 of a member who had shared Holocaust denial material online, but was not suspended.

Examples are cited of officials at HQ giving the Leader’s Office inaccurate information or outright lying about the progress being made with investigations or the handling of complaints. The recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report were routinely ignored. Indeed there is even an exchange where officials discuss not posting the report on the party’s website, with Oldknow expressing the “strong view” that it shouldn’t appear on the site.

The report does a thorough job of putting the record straight on who was responsible for failures to deal adequately with antisemitism complaints. However, the narrow focus and underlying assumptions in relation to the antisemitism issue led to some difficulties too. The narrow focus on how complaints were dealt with obviously precludes any discussion of the politics of what’s often been referred to as ‘Labour’s antisemitism crisis’.

There is no acknowledgement that antisemitism has been cynically weaponised to attack the left, still less any discussion of what might have motivated that or the wider political context in which it took place. Instead the report introduces the concept of “denialism”, a word used 17 times in the report – mostly in the context of ‘a culture of denialism’ or ‘denialism narratives’.

It is valid to criticise someone for suggesting that antisemitism is never a problem in the Labour Party – and indeed to label that a kind of denial. But this concept is deployed more broadly to delegitimise any discussion of the weaponising of antisemitism. In fact it is clear from the report that a high proportion of complaints were spurious, often relating to people who were not even party members.

The media obsession with this alleged crisis has been totally out of proportion to the extent to which antisemitism has been a real problem among Labour members. Questioning the dominant framing of ‘Labour’s antisemitism crisis’ is entirely proper, not ‘denialism’. Labour made things far harder for itself than was necessary precisely because it failed to challenge this framing. Its adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, including examples that risk conflating antisemitism with criticisms of Israel, was especially damaging.

Hoping for defeat at the polls

Senior party officials were plunged into gloom by the exit poll at 10pm on Thursday 8 June 2017, which showed Labour set to do considerably better than expected. An extraordinary WhatsApp exchange followed. There are references to being ‘in need of counselling’, to being ‘stunned and reeling’ and an ‘awful’ atmosphere in response to the news that Labour were set to actually gain seats.

One official refers to a room where people, including Leader’s Office staff, are celebrating as the ‘room of death’. Iain McNicol complains that ‘it is going to be a long night’. Another senior figure contrasts Corbyn allies (‘They are cheering’) to HQ workers (‘we are silent and grey faced’), adding ‘Opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years’.

What a revealing comment that is. This is someone employed full-time to work for the Labour Party. She responds to the party achieving very good election results by declaring it the opposite to what she had been trying to achieve for the last two years. The desire to end the Corbyn project, to regain control of the Labour Party for the Blairites, ran so deep that these party officials were rooting for electoral failure.

The previous pages in the report outline plenty of evidence that these election night reactions were part of a pattern. During the campaign any positive polling is greeted with mockery or horror, while Corbyn’s speeches are derided and ridiculed. There are also examples of conspiring to secretly funnel money into seats where MPs on the hard right of the party were standing. Ludicrously, this even included Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, who went on to win his seat with a massive majority.

There is a moment when Nia Griffith, shadow defence secretary, is lauded among the group for making comments that undermined Corbyn on foreign policy. One official calls her ‘a bloody hero’ and writes: ‘shes just stabbed corbyn and thornberry’. Corbyn’s anti-war speech after the Manchester Arena bombing prompted special venom. Pro-Corbyn members are referred to as ‘vile, opportunistic morons’, but it is hoped that the electorate will turn against Labour following Corbyn’s speech as ordinary voters ‘do not blame foreign intervention they blame immigration’.

They then discuss how the election will be a serious rout for Labour and that this will ‘shock a lot of them… including JC’. The Right should capitalise on that shock to drive Corbyn out – ‘it has to be clean and brutal’, writes one. The only obstacle will be the membership who are ‘communists and green supporters’. Elsewhere there are examples of the officials plotting how to destabilise and ultimately remove the leadership.

Abusive language, sexism and paranoia

Many people have reacted to the report by observing that they already knew how vicious and hostile some elements of the party apparatus had been, but it is still shocking to discover exactly what they said among themselves.

There are literally scores of references to ‘Trots’ among the quoted evidence in the report. It is evidently an obsession to the point of paranoia: anyone even slightly to the left of Ed Miliband is characterised this way. At one point there is even the audacious characterisation of ‘most of the PLP’ as ‘Trots’. It is revealing, too, that even such moderate figures as Miliband, Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan are on the receiving end of derogatory comments, so fanatical is their centrism.

Seumas Milne, director of communications, is referred to as a “nutter” (not the only time that word is used) and a “total mentalist”. Emily Oldknow is among those who mock black MP Dawn Butler for raising the issue of racism in the party.  There is discussion of ‘hanging and burning’ Corbyn, while those MPs who nominated him should be ‘taken out and shot’. And, apparently, ‘death by fire is too kind for LOTO’.

In February 2017 there is an exchange about Diane Abbott, Labour’s best-known black female politician. One claims that Abbott has ‘been found crying in the loos’ and another suggests they tip off Michael Crick, the Channel 4 journalist, about Abbott’s whereabouts. On another occasion Abbott is described as ‘a very angry woman’ with another official adding that she is ‘truly repulsive’.

Left-wing women are particularly likely to have deeply unpleasant language used about them. A discussion about Katy Clark, Corbyn’s political secretary, includes Oldknow writing ‘Fuck off pube head’. On another occasion, Oldknow calls Clark a ‘smelly cow’ and seems aggrieved that she had ‘the exact same clothes on yesterday’.

Oldknow’s preoccupation with judging women negatively on their appearance is a recurring theme. Of Laura Murray, a young party worker, she wrote: ‘You’d think with all that money she could afford to buy a jacket and a bra’. She also castigates Karie Murphy from LOTO as ‘fat’. Murphy is the subject of another exchange, involving several people, during which she is referred to as ‘a fuckwit’, ‘Crazy woman’, ‘crazy snake head lady’, ‘Bitch face cow’, ‘a good dartboard’ and ‘Medusa Monster’.

Lessons from the report

Three key things stand out.

Firstly, the report offers an enormously powerful rebuttal to the dominant narrative about ‘Labour antisemitism’. Despite the report’s limitations on this matter, it demonstrates – with tremendous detail – that failures to address antisemitism in the Labour Party were the responsibility of Blairite officials hostile to the left-wing leadership, not the responsibility of the left.

The report ought to be the starting point for kicking back against the remorseless attacks on Corbyn and Labour over the antisemitism issue. There should be more forthright opposition to the EHRC over its tendentious investigation, especially if it produces unjustifiably harsh findings. More widely, it is time to confront the cynical weaponising of antisemitism that has simultaneously tarnished the left, stigmatised the cause of Palestine solidarity and undermined the struggle against racism.

Secondly, it shows how unwaveringly hostile the Labour Party right wing is to the left and what extremes it will go to in seeking to defeat the left. The Blairite senior managers who sabotaged disciplinary processes, electoral campaigning and the party’s work more generally went as far as wishing for electoral defeat because it would weaken the left. They should be dealt with firmly.

For example, Unison members should be demanding the removal of Oldknow from her role as the union’s assistant general secretary. Diane Abbott has already tweeted that it’s unthinkable for Oldknow to be considered as the party’s next general secretary. Dave Ward, CWU general secretary, has called for the former party employees exposed by the report to have their party membership suspended.

This isn’t merely a matter of dealing with Blairite rogue elements either. They have been defended by politicians across the Labour spectrum. At a leadership hustings in February all four of the candidates then involved in the contest – Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Emily Thornberry and Lisa Nandy – spoke up in favour of the former staff featured in the new report, characterising them as hard-working, loyal and politically neutral party workers who had been treated badly and were owed an apology. Starmer’s front bench appointments signal a sharp shift to the right and include figures from the same right-wing factions as the disgraced former senior managers.

Thirdly, this tells us a great deal about the limits of the Labour Party as a vehicle for socialist advance. The left around Corbyn was reluctant to confront McNicol and his colleagues because they feared the Right splitting the party. The striving for ‘party unity’ overrode everything. But, as Ken Loach once put it in relation to the constant attacks on Corbyn, ‘a broad church doesn’t work when the choir is trying to stab the vicar in the back’.

These revelations indicate that the problems go way beyond individual or even group behaviour, obnoxious as that has been. It is a deep structural and institutional problem to do with the nature of the Labour Party itself.

Labour’s right wing is ultimately more loyal to the establishment and the state than it is to the labour movement and, through that, the interests of the working class. The Labour Right will wreck the Left even if it means profoundly damaging the aspirations of the party as a whole, as seen most vividly in the sabotage ahead of the June 2017 election.

The left’s severe reluctance to firmly deal with the problem stemmed from conviction that the Right would split the party. This could not be countenanced because of the commitment to maintaining the existing ‘broad church’. The Right, however, has never shown similar tolerance or forgiveness. It is prepared to be ruthless and will enforce the left’s subordination to its dominance.

We must therefore resist any pressure to not make a fuss, to keep quiet and carry on regardless, in the name of a spurious ‘unity’. That only emboldens the Right, demobilises the Left and consequently weakens the opposition to a Tory government that is failing terribly over its handling of the coronavirus crisis. A fighting unity, which presupposes independent left-wing politics, is required.

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Alex Snowdon is a Counterfire activist in Newcastle. He is active in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and the National Education Union.​

Featured image: Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson at Labour Party Conference in 2016. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. military flew their new F-35 stealth jet over Syria’s skies this past week, as they display their strength in front of the Russian Armed Forces who are only a few kilometers away from the American troops in the eastern Euphrates region.

In a tweet on Monday, the Special Ops Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) in Syria and Iraq released three photos showing the F-35 above Syria, likely in the Al-Hasakah or Deir Ezzor governorates.

“A USAF F-35A Lightning II fighter jet flies near the $ATG in Syria, April 10, 2020. Coalition and partner forces continue to strike at extremist organizations in Syria despite COVID-19, reflecting the world-wide unity to see an enduring defeat delivered against Daesh,” the U.S. military account posted. 

The three photos would show up close and far away shots of the F-35A as it flew over the skies of eastern Syria.

A USAF F-35A Lightning II fighter jet flies near the #ATG in Syria, April 10, 2020. Coalition and partner forces continue to strike at extremist organizations in Syria despite COVID-19, reflecting the world-wide unity to see an enduring defeat delivered against Daesh #DefeatDaesh pic.twitter.com/z474lPHpuB

— Special Ops Joint Task Force-OIR (Iraq/Syria) (@SOJTFOIR) April 13, 2020

While the U.S. conducted this flight, the Russian military was likely watching from afar, as they have headquartered their forces in eastern Syria at the Qamishli Airport in the northern region of the Al-Hasakah Governorate.

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According to data compiled through April 11, Venezuela had carried out 181,335 COVID-19 tests, which allowed this South American country to detect patients in time and become the Latin American nation with the lowest infection rate.

“President Nicolas Maduro’s measures place Venezuela as the country that has best fought the COVID-19 pandemic so far,” Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez said.

“The recovery rate is the highest in the region with 53 percent, above Colombia that only reaches seven percent and Brazil with 0.8 percent,” he added.

Additionally, while Brazil has an average of 104 infected persons per million, Venezuela has only 6 infected patients per million inhabitants, a successful result that would not be possible if the Bolivarian government had not performed COVID-19 tests free of charge.

As of Tuesday morning, Venezuela, a country with over 28 million inhabitants, had reported 189 COVID-19 cases and 9 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins data base.

TWICE duly elected, in a system MORE secure than the US, @NicolasMaduro IS president of Venezuela, recognized as LEGITIMATE by 140 nations#HandsOffVenezuela #FightCovidNotVenezuela#NoWarOnVenezuela
(P.S. elements in DC support cocaine producing government & cartels of Columbia) pic.twitter.com/n3tzqyCIBu

— #FreeJulianAssangeNOW #EndWastefulWars (@aerwaves_) April 12, 2020

To control the return of some 15,000 Venezuelans from Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, the Bolivarian government established sanitary barriers at its country’s land borders through which each person entering the national territory will be examined.

Health authorities also installed a mobile bioanalysis lab in the state of Tachira, on the border with Colombia. By doing so, the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests results can be got at the border instead of waiting for them to arrive about 4 hours from Caracas city.

The state of Zulia also announced the installation of a field hospital in the municipality of Mara with the capacity to care for 4,000 people returning from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

In the state of Carabobo, one of the four Venezuelan regions that did not register COVID-19 cases, 18 returnees were isolated in the Olympic Village of Naguanagua, which was adapted as a field hospital with the capacity to serve 400 people.

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Featured image: Red Cross delivers 46 tons of medical supplies in Caracas, Venezuela, April 13, 2020. | Photo: EFE

The Palestinians of Gaza know all about lockdowns. For the past 13 years, some two million of them have endured a closure by Israel more extreme than anything experienced by almost any other society – including even now, as the world hunkers down to try to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.

Israel has been carrying out an unprecedented experiment in Gaza, using the latest military hardware and surveillance technology to blockade this tiny coastal enclave by land, air and sea.

Nothing moves in or out without Israel’s say-so – until three weeks ago, when the virus smuggled itself into Gaza inside two Palestinians returning from Pakistan. It is known to have spread to more than a dozen people so far, though doctors have no idea of the true extent. Testing equipment ran out days ago.

Unless Gaza enjoys a miraculous escape, an epidemic is only a matter of time. The consequences hardly bear contemplating.

Countries around the world are wondering what to do with their prison populations, aware that, once it takes hold, Covid-19 is certain to spread rapidly in crowded, enclosed spaces, leaving havoc in its wake.

Gaza is often compared to an open-air prison. But even this analogy is not quite right. This is a prison that the United Nations has warned is on the brink of being “uninhabitable”.

In the prison of Gaza, many inmates are undernourished, and physically and emotionally scarred by a decade of military assaults. They lack essentials such as clean water and electricity after repeated Israeli attacks on basic infrastructure. And the 13-year blockade means there is only rudimentary medical care if they get sick.

Social distancing is impossible in one of the most crowded places on earth. In Jabaliya, one of eight refugee camps in the enclave, there are 115,000 people packed together in little more than a square kilometre. Comparable population density nearby in Israel is typically measured in the hundreds.

There are few clinics and hospitals to cope. According to human rights groups, Gaza has approximately 60 ventilators – most of them already in use. Israel has 15 times as many ventilators per head of population.

There is little in the way of protective gear. And medicines are already in short supply or unavailable, even before the virus hits. Gaza’s infant mortality – an important measure of medical and social conditions – is more than seven times higher than Israel’s. Life expectancy is 10 years lower.

Unlike a normal prison, Gaza’s warden – Israel – denies responsibility for the inmates’ welfare. Since it carried out a so-called “disengagement” 15 years ago, dismantling illegal settlements there, Israel has argued – against all evidence – that it is no longer the occupying power.

That should have been proved an obvious lie when Palestinians, choking on their isolation and deprivation, began rallying in protest two years ago at the perimeter fence that acts as a cage locking them in. Demonstrators were greeted with live fire from Israeli snipers.

Around 200 people were killed, and many thousands left with horrific injuries, mostly to their legs. Medical services are still overwhelmed by the need for long-term surgery, amputations and rehabilitation for the disabled protesters.

What is already a crisis barely needs a nudge from the coronavirus to be tipped into a health disaster.

And with most of the population already below the poverty line, after Israel’s blockade destroyed Gaza’s textile, construction and agricultural industries, the economy is no shape to withstand an epidemic either.

Most governments, including Israel’s, maintain a degree of control even in the face of this most unexpected emergency. They could prepare for it, even if many were slow to do so. They can marshall factories to produce ventilators and protective equipment. And they have the resources to rebuild their health services and economies afterwards.

If they fail in these tasks, it will be their failure.

But Gaza is entirely dependent on Israel and an international community preoccupied with its own troubles. Even if health authorities can secure ventilators and protective equipment in the current, highly competitive global market, Israel will decide whether to let them in. Equally, it could choose to seize them for its own use, in order to placate growing domestic criticism that it is short of vital equipment.

The blame for Gaza’s plight – now and in the future – lands squarely at Israel’s door.

Israel should be helping Gaza, but it is doing the precise opposite. Last week, Israeli planes sprayed herbicide to destroy the crops of Gaza’s farmers – part of a policy to keep clear sight-lines for Israeli military forces.

Moreover, in this time of crisis, Gaza’s food insecurity is only set to deepen. For the past year, Israel has been starving both Gaza and the rival Palestinian Authority in the West Bank of the taxes and duties it collects on their behalf and that rightfully belong to the Palestinian people. Many families have no money for food.

The US has aggravated this financial crisis by cutting funds to the United Nations refugee agency, UNRWA, which cares for many of Gaza’s families expelled by Israel from their homes decades ago and forcibly crowded into the enclave.

The little influence retained by Hamas relates to the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held illegally in Israel. Hamas wants them out, especially the most vulnerable, aware of the danger the virus poses to them in Israel, where the contagion is more advanced.

It is reported to be trying to negotiate a release of prisoners, offering to return the corpses of two soldiers it seized during Israel’s infamous attack on Gaza in 2014 that killed more than 500 Palestinian children.

If Israel refuses to trade, as seems likely, or denies entry to much-needed medical supplies, Gaza’s only other practical leverage will be to fire missiles into Israel, as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has threatened. That is the one time western states can be expected to notice Gaza and voice their condemnation – though not of Israel.

But if plague does overwhelm Gaza, the truth about who is really responsible will be hard to conceal.

Modelling the horrifying conditions in Gaza, Israeli experts warned last year of an epidemic like cholera sweeping the enclave. They predicted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians storming the fence to escape contagion and death.

It is the Israeli army’s nightmare scenario. It admits it has no response other than – as with the fence protests – to gun down those pleading for help.

For decades Israel has pursued a policy of treating Palestinians as less than human. It has minutely controlled their lives while denying any meaningful responsibility for their welfare. That deeply unethical and inhumane stance could soon face the ultimate test.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

While reporting from Israel/Palestine has focused on Israel’s difficulties in forming a new government and on measures being taken by Israelis to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic, the story behind the story is the role anti-Arab racism has played in these developments. Anti-Arab racism, which defined Israel’s founding and shaped its seven decades of existence, is now presenting the country with a challenge that will determine its future.

Racism is the reason why the Blue and White bloc led by Benny Gantz was ultimately unable to form a government, thereby giving Benjamin Netanyahu yet another term as Prime Minister. While the Gantz-led anti-Netanyahu forces won a majority of seats in the Knesset, 15 of those 61 seats were held by the Arab-led Joint List. After Gantz was given the nod to form a government, Netanyahu intensified his campaign of anti-Arab incitement against Gantz, claiming that partnering with the Arabs was akin to making an alliance with “terrorist supporters.” In doing this, he was taking a page from the playbook he and the late Ariel Sharon used in the mid-1990s to incite against then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They called Rabin’s government an illegitimate “minority government” because he relied on Arab Knesset Members to reach a majority. They also called Rabin a terrorist supporter and denounced the peace accords he reached with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

It soon became clear that Gantz did not have the votes he would need to form a government since 10 of the Jewish members of his putative coalition refused to consider forming a government that relied on Arab support. Seven of this group were from the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which has called for “transferring” Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens to the West Bank, while the other objectors were from Gantz’ own party.

After still more twists and turns, Gantz surrendered to Netanyahu, agreeing to form a coalition government with Netanyahu as Prime Minister. While all the terms of the coalition have not yet been nailed down, one early concession made by Gantz has been to accept Netanyahu’s demand for Israel to formally annex the Palestinian territories’ Jordan Valley and the settlement blocs that Israel has built on occupied Palestinian lands.

There are two new arguments being made by pro-annexation Israelis. The first is that because Donald Trump may not be reelected in November, Israel must act by summer’s end to insure US support for the move. The second is that with coronavirus wreaking havoc across the Middle East, fortifying the West Bank’s Jordan Valley is important to protect Israel from disease and chaos.

This latter argument is both explicitly and implicitly racist, in that it makes the case that to ward off complications that come from next door, Israel must annex the West Bank thereby consolidating its repressive Apartheid-like hold over a Palestinian Arab population that is roughly equal in numbers to Israel’s Jewish population.

To understand the future being envisioned by Israel’s right-wingers, one need only look at the recent policies being pursued by Netanyahu’s interim government toward Israel’s Arab citizens, who are 20 per cent of its population, and the more than 4.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

At the end of March, Israel opened drive-through coronavirus testing stations throughout the country. None, however, were initially placed in Arab communities. When Israel finally established lock-downs to control the spread of the virus, the lock-downs did not include Arab population centres. So while Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens are on the front lines fighting the pandemic, about one-fifth of all Israeli doctors and one-quarter of all nurses are Arab, their communities are horribly underserved. Experts, therefore, dismiss reports indicating low infection rates among the Arab population since these most likely are the result of a lack of testing. According to an Israeli press account, as of early April, only 6,500 Arab citizens of Israel had been tested as opposed to over 80,000 Israeli Jews.

The situation confronting Palestinians in occupied territories is, of course, significantly worse owing to the persistence of the occupation. The Israeli military continues violent nightly raids on Palestinian towns and villages, more than 200 in the last month alone. These raids are accompanied by beatings, shootings and arrests of scores of Palestinians. Added to this are the unchecked incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. These have also accelerated in recent weeks, with 20 especially violent attacks occurring last month. There are also reports from Israeli human rights groups of Israeli troops confiscating medical supplies and materials that were intended to build a needed field hospital in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority, which is already reeling from economic shortages, will now face the additional hardship of the tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers who have been forced to give up their jobs in Israel and return to their West Bank homes. The conditions to which they were subjected while in Israel had become deplorable as a result of the coronavirus lockdowns. They were denied wages, food, and medical care. And, as they have returned to the West Bank, the number of cases of individuals infected by the virus has risen in the territories.

All of this has placed an unbearable burden on cash-strapped Palestinian medical services. Early on, when Israel imported 100,000 Coronavirus testing kits, the Israeli press reported that they sent a few thousand to the West Bank and only a few hundred to Gaza! The result, of course, is that while the virus will spread, and probably already has in the occupied lands, the reported numbers will be low because of a lack of testing. And then there is the problem of capacity. The entire West Bank has about 200 ventilators and Gaza has around 80 ICU beds, 72 per cent of which are already in use.

The Trump Administration has only added insult to this injury. This week, they rejected an appeal from Congress to send emergency medical support to the Palestinian Authority, while at the same time they found the funds to purchase one million surgical masks and other supplies for the Israel military.

In the end, the confluence of anti-Arab racism and the coronavirus pandemic will have consequences. The pandemic knows no boundaries. While the Israeli right-wing imagines that annexing and fortifying the Jordan Valley will seal off Israel from disease and chaos, in reality they are sealing their own fate. They are serving to hasten Israel’s march to becoming a full-fledged apartheid state and because coronavirus does not discriminate, Israel’s callous disregard for Arab human life will only ensure that the disease will continue to spread and take and ever-increasing toll on both Arabs and Jews alike.

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The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

Featured image is from IMEMC

Background

The International Monetary Fund projects that the global economy will fall by three percent in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The IMF chief economist branded the widespread restrictions around the world as the Great Lockdown. Gita Gopinath said the projected cut in the global economy will be the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s. She said the eurozone economy would crash by a staggering 7-point-5 percent this year. Gopinath noted that some of the coronavirus economic damage in the US will spill over into second half 2020 and 2021. The IMF called for a coordinated stimulus to help the global economy rebound. It called on the official creditors to provide debt relief to poor countries.

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PressTV: What is your view on this prediction?

Peter Koenig: It looks to me rather like the IMF missed a zero in its projections – 30% rather than 3% seems more like reality. What planet are they on? – Making the world believe it’s nothing special, just a little deeper dip than in other recessions – and with a hefty infusion of IMF balance of payment and budget support loans -mind you maybe at low interest, but with the usual strings attached of privatization and natural resources exploitation concessions for multinationals – all will be getting back to normal.

Yes, the IMF’s call for debt relief is certainly a good thing. But it’s precisely the IMF and the World Bank, who have to start forgiving debt in poor countries, instead of waiting for others to go first. Well, we are seeing that not even in Greece the IMF is capable of writing off the -literally – deadly debt.

Simply back to normal is this time not the case. And its maybe a good thing. All the misery that this – and let me emphasize – this planned destruction of the global economy – will bring to particularly the poorer nations and their people, is barely the tip of the iceberg. – This literal collapse of the global economy is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to break loose from the predatory and fraudulent dollar-economy  – deglobalize and get out from the fangs of the IMF, World Bank and alike.

Let’s face it – this pandemic which by most serious medical doctors, including Dr. Fauci (Director NIAID / NIH), when he talks with his academic colleagues and mentions COVID19 as a stronger form of flu, and other micro-biologists, and virologists, did in no way justify a total planet lockdown. This COVID19 pandemic, declared as such by the coopted WHO- created – and still creates so much socioeconomic desolation and human misery, as did nothing else in the last 100 years, actually in modern history.

The FED, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg — and more, have predicted next quarter unemployment in the US alone may reach 32% to 40%; bankruptcies are spiraling out of control – triggering a domino of further lay-offs. And the picture is similar in Europe. Let’s not even mention the Global South, where the informal sector already today accounts for at least 30% of the economy – it’s gone. With a crisis, informality will increase. Most so-called development countries have none or only flimsy safety nets to help these people who have lost everything, their jobs, pensions, can’t pay their rent any more, nor buy food, nor pay medical bills….

Suicides may become rampant, as they have been in Greece after the 2008 – also man-made- crisis – and suicides are still one of the highest causes of death in Greece.

And yet, the IMF is talking about worldwide contraction of a mere 3% ? -Whom are they trying to fool?

The countries of the Global South also have little reserves and much debt. And the corona crisis- and I have to repeat -man-made corona crisis – is making the situation for the Third World countries and their people much worse than for the global industrialized north. Poverty will skyrocket. – And more so, if the IMF comes in with their privatization programs.

PressTV: So, what do you think countries have to do to restart their economies under new parameters?

PK: By now it is clear to most people and most governments, Globalization has helped only a few national and international oligarchs and international and globalized private banks and corporations. The big losers were the people at large.

I think now is the time for countries to regroup. To abandon globalized structures, like the European Union, and especially the euro that deprives member countries  of their financial sovereignty – detach themselves from IMF, WB, WTO and Regional Development Banks and similar globalized structures that increase their dependence and debt burden.

They may consider going back to their roots, economically, financially and culturally and start rebuilding their economy foremost with their own production for their own consumption with their own currency and their own publicly owned central bank, plus a public banking system that works for the needs of the local economy.

International trading and dealings may be best started only with neighboring or culturally and ideologically alike nations.

China is a prime example. China has worked towards and practically achieved self-sufficiency until about the 1980s, when they started opening up their borders for international trade and investments. And look where China is today – the second economic world power, and by many accounts already the first.

There is a need for rethinking the entire economic paradigm – not to get back into the same fraudulent debt trap of before corona.

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

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The coronavirus pandemic is on the verge of destroying Donald Trump’s presidency, with momentous consequences not just for the United States but also the world.

Mercifully, Trump himself has tested negative for the virus. But his leadership has proved catastrophic, and public opinion is turning on him.

A recent CNN poll showed his Democratic challenger Joe Biden leading Trump 53 percent to 42 percent among registered voters. In fact Biden has led in every head-to-head poll taken in the last six weeks.

Recent polling of all voters has also awarded Biden a powerful advantage; a Real Clear Politics general election poll tracker has the former vice president up 6.4 points over Trump.

Admittedly, in the 2016 elections, Trump showed that he doesn’t need a majority of the popular vote to win. But Biden is already ahead of the president in swing states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He’s neck and neck with Trump in Michigan, one of the rustbelt states that gave Trump victory in 2016 – a state the Republicans must win to have any chance this year.

Biden beats Trump in Florida by 6 points, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of North Florida. If results like these are duplicated in November, Biden will win by a landslide.

The clearest sign yet that the pressure was getting to Trump came at his White House briefing on Tuesday.

The briefing collapsed into near chaos as the president clashed with journalists, and bizarrely claimed that he had “total authority” when it came to public health rules over the virus.

And remember this. In the United States, unlike Europe, the worst effects of the coronavirus pandemic are yet to come.

Worst yet to come

There have been more than 23,000 deaths so far. While each is an awful tragedy, statistically this number is a pinprick for a population of 330 million.

The projection is that it is going to get much worse, though it’s guesswork exactly how bad. And it stands to reason that those hardest hit will include Trump’s heartland supporters, who have so far stayed loyal.

Working-class people without access to decent healthcare – or any healthcare – will remember Trump’s campaign slogan and decide whether he has made life great for them.

Those who were attracted by Trump’s promise of strength and success will have noted the frightened, confused figure at his briefings, a commander-in-chief who can no longer command himself, let alone preserve and protect the United States.

The president has already been dreadfully complacent at dealing with the problem. According to the latest polls from CBS, only 47 percent believe Trump is handling the crisis well – for the first time the majority of Americans believe he is doing a bad job. The main concerns are a lack of testing and medical equipment and being too slow to act on preventing the virus’ spread.

That’s before we get onto Trump’s irresponsible touting of an unproven malaria drug in fighting coronavirus in the face of scepticism from his own medical expert Dr Anthony Fauci.

No wonder Trump’s sinking in the polls. A symbolic moment came on 23 March when three major networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – turned off the president’s briefing, never to return. What a turnaround!

Political penalties

Until just a few weeks ago, he was a nailed-on, stone-cold certainty to win this November’s presidential election. Against him a divided Democratic Party whose likely candidate, Biden, carried serious liabilities: age, apparent confusion, identification with the old-style politics rejected by angry older voters and idealistic new ones.

In Trump’s favour were a booming economy, record employment numbers and hundreds of millions of campaign funding from big billionaire financial backers. Add in Fox News and Trump’s proven campaigning exuberance and this year’s election looked like a walkover for the Republicans.

Not anymore it seems.

#TrumpPresser @msnbc back to the reporter Q & A. #Trump having a major temper tantrum as his feet are held to the fire.

— (((MarciaGYerman))) (@mgyerman) April 13, 2020

In one purely practical way, the coronavirus crisis could help Trump. Every American state will have to make hasty new arrangements to allow voters postal or online ballots. For those states controlled by Republicans this will give new opportunities for voter suppression – denying likely Democrat voters the chance to vote at all.

This was a factor in the victories of George W Bush in 2000 and 2004.

But the political penalties of the crisis vastly outweigh this. The coronavirus is about to hit Trump where it hurts him most. The wallet.

It’s the economy

The economic statistics are not just horrific. They’re terrifying. Worst of all is the job market. Many are Trump’s own people. They believed in him because he gave them prosperity and secured them jobs.

In 1932 the incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin Roosevelt in a depression. A more recent incumbent Republican, George H W Bush, was fatally damaged by a much milder recession in 1992, losing to a scarcely known challenger, Bill Clinton. It looks like Trump will have both a depression and a pandemic on his hands.

Many intelligent commentators have argued that coronavirus plays to Trump’s strengths – above all his hostility to globalisation and hatred of China. Trump is already playing the Chinese card and will go on doing so. No wonder, blaming China is Trump’s last hope.

It helped him win the presidency but this low, dishonest tactic won’t enable him to save it.

As the coronavirus hits Republican supporters harder over the coming weeks, life will get more difficult for Trump. He will soon find that even his friends will turn on him.

Trump will soon look like a president on his way out. Meanwhile his state of political health will be monitored closely by his allies in the Middle East, leaders with whom the Trump clan established personal connections.

The Middle East impact 

Paradoxically, the US’s closest ally in the region is so well embedded in US politics and Congress that Trump’s disappearance would have least effect. Israel can seamlessly jump ship and move over to Israel-supporting Biden now that the threat posed by former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been eradicated.

Biden’s imminent arrival might however hasten the project to annex the Jordan Valley on which both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the Blue and White party Benny Gantz agree. But the prospect of Trump as a one-term president would have a galvanising effect on Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s carefully laid plans to capture the throne of Saudi Arabia.

He has already conducted two purges of his family to clear out all remaining obstacles to becoming king. The latest was launched last month with the arrest of his uncle Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, who had plans to block his nephew’s path to power through the constitutional mechanism of the Allegiance Council.

But as Middle East Eye reported, Mohammed bin Salman plans to be king by the time of the G20 summit in November, which Saudi Arabia is hosting. The plan was to force his father, King Salman, to abdicate.

What better preparation could have been made than sending his father out to live on a secluded island to protect him from coronavirus?

Trump’s disappearance would also threaten the power that bin Salman’s mentor, Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, wields across the region.

The Trump clan have been especially welcome in the Gulf because they conduct themselves like fellow princes with contracts and policies in their pockets.

A return to Biden will mean a return of the US deep state in the shape of the CIA and the State Department – wounded beasts with a sackful of beans to spill about Trump’s allies around the region.

Who knows – we may even get the truth about who ordered the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

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

Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in 2017 and was named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He also was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.

Featured image is from Windover Way Photography

O Primeiro Ministro Conte anunciou aos italianos, em directo na televisão, em 10 de Abril, que a Itália não assinou nenhum compromisso com o MES (1), o fundo europeu “salva-Estados”, e que o seu Governo discutirá apenas “um MES não condicionado”, ou seja, que não imponha condições que sejam prejudiciais aos interesses nacionais e à soberania do país. Posição correcta.

No entanto, o Primeiro Ministro não anunciou aos italianos que, em 10 de Abril, o Presidente Trump emitiu, a pedido do governo Conte, um “Memorando sobre a Prestação de Assistência ao Covid-19 à República Italiana” (2) que contém, de facto, fortes restrições para o nosso país.

Trump anuncia que “o Governo da Itália solicitou a assistência dos Estados Unidos”. Assim, com base na autoridade que lhe foi conferida pela Constituição e pelas leis, “ordena o seguinte” para ajudar “um dos nossos aliados mais antigos e mais próximos”.

As ordens, emitidas aos Secretários dos Departamentos e às Agências dos Estados Unidos, estabelecem dois tipos de intervenção:

A primeira, de natureza médica, para ajudar a Itália a combater o Covid-19, “demonstrando ao mesmo tempo a liderança dos Estados Unidos diante das campanhas de desinformação da China e da Rússia”. Ao Secretário da Defesa, o Presidente ordena que disponibilize, para assistência, “os mais de 30.000 militares e funcionários dos EUA, em Itália” com as suas “estruturas”.

A segunda e mais consistente intervenção consiste em “apoiar a recuperação da economia italiana”, que corre o risco de acabar “numa profunda recessão”. O Presidente Trump ordena aos Secretários do Tesouro e do Comércio, ao Presidente do Banco de Exportação e Importação, ao Administrador da Agência dos EUA para o Desenvolvimento Internacional, ao Director da Corporação Internacional Americana de Finanças para o Desenvolvimento  (agência governamental que financia projectos de desenvolvimento privados) para usarem as suas ferramentas, a fim de “apoiar as empresas italianas”.

Ainda não se sabe quais ferramentas serão usadas pelos Estados Unidos para “apoiar a recuperação da economia italiana”, nem quais serão as condições concedidas para a “ajuda”. Mas o plano de Washington é claro: explorar a crise e as fracturas na União Europeia para reforçar a influência USA em Itália, enfraquecendo, ao mesmo tempo, as relações da Itália com a China e com a Rússia.

Confirma-o, a autoridade com que foi lançado o plano de “Assistência à República Italiana”: uma série de ordens presidenciais dadas não apenas aos Secretários dos Departamentos acima mencionados, mas ao Secretário de Estado (3) e ao Assistente do Presidente para Assuntos de Segurança Nacional. (4)

Um dos objetivos do plano certamente enquadra-se no que o New York Times define como “uma corrida armamentista global para obter uma vacina contra o coronavírus, que está a desenvolver-se entre os Estados Unidos, China e Europa”. (5) Os primeiros que forem capazes de produzir a vacina – escreve o NYT – “podem ter a oportunidade não só de favorecer a sua população, mas de ter vantagem ao enfrentar as repercussões económicas e geoestratégicas da crise”.

A companhia farmacêutica americana Johnson & Johnson (6)  anunciou, em 30 de Março, que havia seleccionado uma possível vacina contra o Covid-19, na qual trabalha desde Janeiro, em conjunto com o Departamento da Saúde, com um investimento conjunto de mais de um bilião de dólares. A empresa anuncia que, após os ensaios clínicos programados para Setembro, a produção de vacinas poderá começar nos primeiros meses de 2021 em “tempos substancialmente mais acelerados do que o normal”, atingindo rapidamente a capacidade de produção de mais de um bilião de doses.

O plano de “assistência” à Itália, ordenado pelo Presidente Trump, também poderá incluir o fornecimento da vacina que, provavelmente, será usada (talvez tornando-a obrigatória) sem se preocupar com os tempos de teste e produção “substancialmente mais acelerados do que o normal”, nem o custo económico e político dessa generosa “assistência”.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Trump ordina l’«assistenza» all’Italia

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Notes

(1)https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccanismo_europeo_di_stabilit%C3%A0

(2)https://it.usembassy.gov/memorandum-on-providing-covid-19-assistance-to-the-italian-republic/

(3)https://it.usembassy.gov/u-s-assistance-to-italy/

(4)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Advisor_(United_States)

(5)https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-competition.html

(6)https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/cnbc-transcript-johnson-johnson-ceo-alex-gorsky-speaks-with-cnbcs-squawk-box-today.html

Il premier Conte ha annunciato agli italiani, in diretta televisiva il 10 aprile, che l’Italia non ha firmato alcun impegno per il Mes (1) , il fondo europeo «salva-Stati», e che il suo governo discuterà solo su «un Mes non condizionato», ossia che non imponga condizioni lesive per gli interessi nazionali e la sovranità del paese. Giusta posizione.

Il premier  non ha però annunciato agli italiani che in quello stesso momento, il 10 aprile, il presidente Trump  emetteva, su richiesta del Governo Conte, un «Memorandum sulla fornitura di assistenza per il Covid-19 alla Repubblica Italiana»,(2) che contiene di fatto pesanti condizionamenti per il nostro paese.

Trump annuncia che «il Governo dell’Italia ha richiesto l’assistenza degli Stati uniti». Quindi, in base all’autorità conferitagli dalla Costituzione e dalle leggi, «ordina quanto segue» per aiutare «uno dei nostri più vecchi e stretti alleati».

Gli ordini, impartiti ai segretari dei dipartimenti e delle agenzie degli Stati uniti, stabiliscono due tipi di intervento.

Il primo di carattere sanitario per aiutare l’Italia a combattere il Covid-19, «dimostrando allo stesso tempo la leadership degli Stati uniti di fronte alle campagne di disinformazione cinese e russa». Al segretario della Difesa il presidente ordina di rendere disponibili, per l’assistenza, «gli oltre 30.000 militari e dipendenti statunitensi in Italia» con le loro «strutture».

Il secondo e più consistente tipo di intervento è quello di «sostenere la ripresa dell’economia italiana», che rischia di finire «in una profonda recessione». Il presidente Trump ordina ai segretari del Tesoro e del Commercio, al presidente della Banca di Export-Import, all’amministratore dell’Agenzia Usa per lo sviluppo internazionale, al direttore della United States International Development Finance Corporation (agenzia governativa che finanzia progetti di sviluppo privati) di usare i loro strumenti per «sostenere le imprese italiane».

Ancora non si sa quali strumenti verranno usati dagli Stati uniti per «sostenere la ripresa dell’economia italiana», né quali saranno le condizioni a cui verranno concessi gli «aiuti». È però chiaro il piano di Washington: sfruttare la crisi e le fratture nella Ue per rafforzare l’influenza Usa in Italia, indebolendo allo stesso tempo i rapporti dell’Italia con Cina e Russia.

Lo conferma l’autorevolezza con cui è stato varato il piano di «assistenza alla Repubblica Italiana»: una serie di ordini presidenziali impartiti non solo ai segretari dei dipartimenti sopracitati, ma al Segretario di Stato(3) e all’Assistente del Presidente per gli Affari di sicurezza nazionale.(4) Uno degli obiettivi del piano rientra sicuramente in quella che il New York Times definisce «corsa agli armamenti globale per un vaccino anti-coronavirus, che si sta svolgendo fra Stati uniti, Cina ed Europa». (5) Il primo che riuscirà a produrre il vaccino – scrive il NYT – «può avere la possibilità non solo di favorire la propria popolazione, ma di avere il sopravvento nell’affrontare le ricadute economiche e geostrategiche della crisi».

La compagnia farmaceutica statunitense  Johnson & Johnson (6)  ha annunciato il 30 marzo di aver selezionato un possibile vaccino contro il Covid-19, a cui sta lavorando da gennaio assieme al Dipartimento della Sanità, con un investimento congiunto di oltre un miliardo di dollari. La compagnia annuncia che, dopo i test clinici previsti per settembre,  la produzione del vaccino potrebbe iniziare nei primi mesi del 2021 in «tempi sostanzialmente accelerati rispetto a quelli usuali», raggiungendo rapidamente la capacità produttiva di oltre un miliardo di dosi.

Il piano di «assistenza» all’Italia, ordinato dal presidente Trump, potrebbe includere anche la fornitura del vaccino, che probabilmente verrebbe usato (magari rendendolo obbligatorio) senza preoccuparsi dei tempi di test e produzione «sostanzialmente accelerati rispetto a quelli usuali», né del costo economico e politico di questa generosa «assistenza». 

Manlio Dinucci

 

 

Notes

(1)https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccanismo_europeo_di_stabilit%C3%A0

(2)https://it.usembassy.gov/memorandum-on-providing-covid-19-assistance-to-the-italian-republic/

(3)https://it.usembassy.gov/u-s-assistance-to-italy/

(4)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Advisor_(United_States)

(5)https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-competition.html

(6)https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/cnbc-transcript-johnson-johnson-ceo-alex-gorsky-speaks-with-cnbcs-squawk-box-today.html

„Die Internationale“ ist das weltbekannte Kampflied der sozialistischen Arbeiterbewegung. Die deutsche Version des ursprünglich französischen Textes von Emil Luckhard (1910) lautet: „Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde, die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt! (…) Heer der Sklaven, wache auf! (…) Völker, höret die Signale! Auf zum letzten Gefecht! (…) Es rettet uns kein höh’res Wesen, kein Gott, kein Kaiser noch Tribun! Uns aus dem Elend zu erlösen, das können wir nur selber tun!“

Diese Aufforderung erging nach der gewaltsamen Niederschlagung der Pariser Kommune im Mai 1871 an die internationale Arbeiterbewegung. Sie erging nicht an die herrschende „Elite“ der Ausbeuter und Bedränger. Doch gerade diese sogenannte Elite scheint heute zum letzten Gefecht zu blasen, indem sie durch eine verpflichtende „Massen-Schutz-Impfung“ einen Bevölkerungsrückgang (Depopulation) anstrebt. Die krankmachende oder gar tödliche Zusammensetzung dieses Impfstoffes, der auch Nano-Chips zur Kontrolle der Menschheit enthalten wird, wurde in den Geheim-Laboren der Welt sicher schon gemischt. Auch die aktive Sterbehilfe älterer und kranker Mitbürger mittels starker Schlafmittel und Opiate haben diese dunklen Gestalten bereits auf den Weg gebracht. Ebenso eine weltweite Umverteilung der allgemeinen Reichtümer von unten nach oben, von den Armen zu den Superreichen. Sollten wir Bürger dieser Welt uns eingedenk dieser Pläne der Kabale nicht wieder daran erinnern, an wen der Aufruf zum letzten Gefecht in Wahrheit erging?

Zwei dieser „Weltbürger“, die solche finsteren Pläne mit verfolgen, sind der ehemalige US-Außenminister und Friedensnobelpreisträger Henry Kissinger und der schwerreiche US-Unternehmer und Mäzen Bill Gates.

Vor über 50 Jahren war Kissinger Außenminister und Chef des Nationalen Sicherheitsrats der USA sowie Verfasser des „National Strategic Security Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200)“. Demnach sollte die Depopularisierung „die höchste Priorität in der US-Außenpolitik gegenüber der Dritten Welt sein“, (…) weil“die US-Wirtschaft große und wachsende Mengen von Rohstoffen aus Übersee braucht, vor allem aus den weniger entwickelten Staaten.“(Eggert, W. (2003). Die geplanten Seuchen AIDS – SARS und die militärische Genforschung. München, S. 64)

RT Deutsch schrieb am 7. April 2020, dassKissinger in einem Meinungsartikel für das „Wall Street Journal“ forderte, „in einem ersten Schritt ‚neue Techniken und Technologien zur Infektionskontrolle und entsprechende Impfstoffe für große Bevölkerungsgruppen‘ zu entwickeln. (…)In einem zweiten Schritt gelte es, das Augenmerk jetzt darauf zu richten, die ‚Wunden der Weltwirtschaft zu heilen‘.“ (https://de.rt.com/25kn) Die Bürger der Welt sollten also – ob sie wollen oder nicht – geimpft und darüber hinaus kontrolliert werden, ob sie dieser Impfpflicht auch nachgekommen sind.

Im gerade erwähnten RT-Artikel wird Friedensnobelpreisträger Kissinger auch als Kriegsverbrecher bezeichnet, weil er als Architekt der US-Aggression gegen Vietnam und anderer verdeckter CIA-Geheimoperationen für den Tod von Millionen Menschen verantwortlich sei. Über die inzwischen unzensierte Internet-Suchmaschine „Google“ kann sich jeder seine eigene Meinung bilden.

In der Frage der „Massen-Schutz-Impfung“ scheinen sich Kissinger und der US-amerikanische Unternehmer und Mäzen William „Bill“ Henry Gates III einig zu sein. Am 1. April 2020 veröffentlichte die „Washington Post“ einen Artikel von ihm, in dem er seine Vision beschreibt, die Menschen auf der ganzen Welt impfen zu lassen: “…die Entwicklung eines Impfstoffs ist nur die halbe Miete. Um die Amerikaner und die Menschen auf der ganzen Welt zu schützen, müssen wir Milliarden von Dosen herstellen.”Es solle bereits jetzt mit dem Bau von verschiedenartigen Anlagen zur Herstellung von Impfstoffen begonnen werden. (www.welt.de„Bill Gates: Massenproduktion von Corona-Impfung vorbereiten“)

Welche heimliche Agenda verfolgt Bill Gates? Auf mehreren Webseiten wird behauptet, dass der ehemalige Microsoft-Chef Impfungen für einen guten Weg zur Verringerung der Weltbevölkerung halte. Als Beleg wird eine Rede aus dem Jahre 2010 angeführt (unter anderem Webseitewww.basel-express.ch). Erinnern wir uns in diesem Zusammenhang an Kants Wahlspruch der Aufklärung „Sapere aude!“: „Habe den Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!“

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the most immediate objective is to slow its spread, minimise the death toll and help people through the crisis.  But, despite government promises to support citizens who are now losing their jobs and income, the underlying establishment concern will be as it always has been: to preserve the global inequitable system of wealth and power.

Private interests, including airlines, fossil fuel industries and sinister-sounding ‘businesses crucial to national security’, have been busy lobbying governments for taxfunder-paid bailouts. Notoriously, Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic even asked its employees to take eight weeks of unpaid leave, while hundreds of thousands in the UK are struggling to access benefits after becoming unemployed.

Governments are now channelling money into the economy in amounts that have not been seen since the Second World War. However, there have been calls to ensure that public rescue packages should only be agreed if major changes are made to the economy, including significant public ownership of business. There should also be legal and financial consequences for socially irresponsible or criminal corporate behaviour. Surely this all makes sense and would have massive public approval?

So far, the omens are not good. Last week, the US approved a $2 trillion ‘financial stimulus package’ largely intended to prop up the corporate economy. Zach Carter, a senior reporter at HuffPost, warned that:

‘It is not an economic rescue package, but a sentence of unprecedented economic inequality and corporate control over our politics that will resonate for a generation.

‘It represents a transfer of wealth and power to the super rich from the rest of us, with the support of both political parties ― a damning statement about the condition of American democracy.’

In particular, as we will see below, many voices are rightly urging political leaders around the world not to abuse public funds by bailing out corporations that are complicit in climate breakdown. Instead, the priority should be to stimulate the vitally-needed transition to a truly green economy.

‘An Unraveling Of Our Planet’s Entire Life Support Systems’

The previous global economic crisis and financial meltdown of 2007-2009 only led to a temporary dip in carbon emissions. Vested interests moved quickly at that time to ensure that there would be no long-term shift to a low-carbon future.  In the US alone, $700 billionin public money was given as an initial bailout in 2008 to the very banks who were responsible for the crisis. But public funds were funnelled into the financial system for years afterwards, rising to almost $5 trillion by 2015.

Kyla Tienhaara, an environment and economy researcher at Queen’s University, Ontario, notes of oil, gas and coal corporations after the 2008 crash:

‘the fossil fuel lobby ensured that carbon capture and storage projects sucked up a significant amount of green stimulus funds, but not a lot of carbon dioxide.’

With academic understatement, she warns now that:

‘bailouts to the fossil fuel industry and airlines would be monumentally counterproductive.’

Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California at Berkeley, uses stronger wording:

‘it would be insane to reflate the fossil economy as it was.’

Basav Sen, who directs the Climate Policy Project at the US-based Institute for Policy Studies, is clear:

‘We’re facing down not just a pandemic and a global economic meltdown, but an unraveling of our planet’s entire life support systems.’

He adds:

‘A healthy future for oil and gas inevitably means a bleak future for most humans and for ecosystems. At precisely the time that scientists say we should be phasing out oil and gas production, a bailout to this destructive industry is a giant step backwards.’

Mary Robinson, the former Irish president who served twice as UN climate envoy, warns:

‘Money has poured into the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement [of 2015]. That can’t continue.’

The figures involved are almost beyond comprehension. A new study by an alliance of US-based environmental groups reveals that the world’s largest investment banks have pumped more than £2.2 trillion into climate-wrecking fossil fuels. US bank JP Morgan has been the biggest offender, responsible for over £220 billion in oil, gas and coal projects.

It was economists at JP Morgan who issued a stark warning last month that the climate crisis threatens the very survival of humanity. Inevitably, there was no sign from the investment bank that it would respond with the only obvious sane move: the immediate cessation of all its fossil fuel funding. Instead, the bank was at pains to point out that the alarming study came from a team that was ‘wholly independent from the company as a whole’.

Does anything more clearly sum up the madness of a global economy fuelled by climate-wrecking industry and Big Money? Not even the imminent threat of human extinction is enough to divert the current profit-driven course towards the abyss.

Civilisation’s demise would be the ultimate crash resulting from a deeply unjust corporate-driven global system of finance and economics.  Even now, at this terminally late stage of human existence, BBC News can only tangentially hint at the grim reality, with bland headlines such as:

‘Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds’.

Roger Harrabin, the grandly-titled BBC ‘environment analyst’, wrote that:

‘The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims.’

Note the BBC newspeak: ‘claims’; not ‘reports’ or ‘concludes’. The BBC article continued in typically anodyne fashion:

‘The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live.’

The researchers warn that:

‘unless there’s a significant policy change, household energy consumption could double from 2011 levels by 2050.’

2050? Three decades away? We simply do not have that much time. The United Nations insisted two years ago that humanity has only until 2030 to make the radical and drastic carbon cuts necessary to prevent merely the worst impacts of global warming.

For obvious reasons, there is no sustained critical reporting in ‘mainstream’ media about the destructive nature of the global system of profit maximisation and endless ‘economic growth’. As we have long observed, you simply cannot expect the corporate media to report the truth about the corporate world.

Battered By Propaganda

A core problem for society is that we have been battered by a system of propaganda that tells us repeatedly – or simply takes as a given – that capitalism, despite a few ‘failures’ or ‘flaws’, has been primarily responsible for huge progress in the human condition since the Industrial Revolution. However, as economic anthropologist Jason Hickel correctly observes, we should reject this ‘fairytale’ promulgated by big business, political leaders and state-corporate media.

In reality, it has been people at the bottom of the pile – working for centuries to extend the voting franchise, setting up trade unions, improving healthcare and education – who have been primarily responsible for advancements in living standards. These grassroots factors, says Hickel, ‘are the forces that matter’.

Even Noam Chomsky, the world’s most renowned dissident, only ever appears rarely in the ‘mainstream’ to critique the ruling inequitable economic system and the charade that passes for ‘democracy’. Ideologically correct-thinking editors and journalists in the major news media, selected by a system that rewards obedience to power, are unlikely to offend their employers by promoting ‘extreme’ views like Chomsky’s:

‘What our leaders are good at, and have been very good at for the last 40 years, is pouring money into the pockets of the rich and the corporate executives while everything else crashes.’

Meanwhile, climate scientists continue to wave their arms frantically about climate breakdown, trying in vain to make governments and business divert from their disastrous course towards human extinction. A new study of human-caused emissions of methane from the extraction and use of fossil fuels may have been ‘severely underestimated’. Emissions are likely 25-40 per cent even higher than previously thought.

Inevitably, climate records continue to tumble. Researchers are now warning that the polar ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s:

‘The ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is tracking the worst-case climate warming scenario set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).’

Is it any wonder, after decades of ignored ‘wake-up calls’, that climate scientists are venting their feelings of powerlessness and despair? Joe Duggan, a science communicator at Australian National University, has been running a six-year project collating such responses from climate researchers.

One scientist, Professor Katrin Meissner of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, told Duggan that:

‘I feel powerless and, to a certain extent, guilty. I feel like I have failed my duty as a citizen and as a mother because I was not able to communicate the urgency of the situation well enough to trigger meaningful action in time.

‘What we are doing right now is an uncontrolled, risky experiment with the planet we live on.’

Dr Jennie Mallela, of Australian National University, commented:

‘So how do I feel? Frustrated, angry that our science is ignored by politicians, scared for my husband [a bushfire fighter] and all the others who are on the frontline fighting these fires and trying to help.

‘But mostly I feel devastated for my son, and his generation, who will have to heal this planet and live with the mass environmental destruction we have caused.’

Environmental scientist Alexandra Jellicoe recently published a beautiful and heartfelt open letter to her young children:

‘Can I keep you safe? Your future is uncertain. Can I prepare you for that? […] I am brokenhearted. What is a mother if she cannot keep her child safe?’

She continued:

‘I imagine sometimes what I would like to do to keep you safe in this terrifying world we have created. I imagine an army of compassionate people fully informed of the risks who live freely enough to disrupt the fossil fuel economy. We would hijack the media and create urgent public awareness campaigns…

‘The hardest work, I imagine, would be to create a world that is kinder, less competitive and more equal. Philanthropy and aid are not solutions for the world’s poorest but the symptoms of a broken global economy. My army and I would rage at the injustice of it all, driven forward in the knowledge that these things must be addressed to keep you safe.’

In short:

‘We are at a cross-roads now. You have two futures and I am powerless to influence which finds you.’

As individuals, it may sometimes feel that we are powerless. But the brighter, safer, saner future can still be attained, if we remember that together we have more power than the destructive forces driving us towards extinction.

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The onset of the coronavirus has had a number of consequences in the health and livelihoods of millions of people. There has however, been another consequence that is little remarked upon, and that is the almost total disappearance from the news cycle of the ongoing wars in Syria and Iraq.

The western media have long ignored their presumed obligation to report fairly and accurately on matters of significant importance. This is nowhere more obvious than in the ongoing Middle East conflicts.

In 2003, fresh from the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 (now a war in its 20th year and still the subject of sustained misinformation and outright lying) the United States and its allies manufactured a crisis regarding Iraq. This time it was Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that allegedly threatened the lives and safety of all of the democracy loving west.

Iraq was invaded by the United States, supported inter alia, by its loyal Australian acolyte who has never seen an example of United States aggression, invasions and sanctions since 1945 of which it disapproved.

Iraq of course had no “weapons of mass destruction”. That should have been the occasion for heartfelt apologies, reparation for the death and destruction caused, and a rapid withdrawal. In a different world perhaps.

Five years ago the United States and its allies decided that President Assad of Syria’s time was up and yet another invasion of a sovereign nation was undertaken. This time the pretext was varied. Assad had “lost control of his country”, was “incapable of defeating the terrorists” ravaging his country, and “killing his own citizens”.

The pretext here was a little known and highly dubious legal concept of “right to protect”. It was to be invoked, solely by western nations, to protect the citizens of countries where their own governments were allegedly incapable of doing so.

That the terrorists concerned were armed and financed by the same western powers (together with their hangers on like Saudi Arabia and Israel) was not to be mentioned in polite company. Five years later the Syrian terrorists are on the verge of defeat, thanks in no small part to the intervention of Syria’s real friends, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah from the Lebanon.

The Americans initially set up a number of military bases in Syria (as they had done in Iraq) and militarily opposed any attempts by the legitimate Syrian government to exercise any form of control over these bases. Such was the utter contempt shown by the western forces under United States control for Syria’s sovereignty they did not even bother to try and justify their intervention in legal terms. Such a justification would in any case have no foundation in law.

Also of significance was the fact that one of the areas of Syria that the United States forces controlled was Syria’s oil producing region. United States actions went beyond mere control and exclusion of the rightful sovereign government. They produced oil from those oilfields and exported it, retaining the income thereby produced.

There could be few examples of more blatant and illegal theft of a country’s resources. If there is one good thing to emerge from this fiasco it is that we are no longer inflicted with the claim that this is all done in the name of a “duty to protect”.

In fact, as far as the Australian parliament and the Australian media are concerned, it is difficult to detect anything at all. That country’s ongoing involvement in three wars, the longest now approaching two decades in total, rarely rates a mention in the national parliament. As for debate? It is now 10 years since Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war was last the subject of a Parliamentary debate. The Labor Opposition initially objected to the country’s involvement in the Iraq invasion and occupation but in their six years of government between 2008 and 2014 did absolutely nothing to withdraw Australian troops from that country.

As for Syria, it remains the great unmentionable. Were the Australian parliament to actually manifest some degree of principle and integrity and withdraw their troops from United States initiated wars, who knows what terrible retribution might follow. The memory of Prime Minister Whitlam’s’ fate in 1975 when he planned to close the United States spy base at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory still holds successive Australian governments in thrall.

Then, in early 2020 a newly quasi-independent Iraqi government recovered a degree of courage and integrity and unanimously passed a resolution demanding the exit of uninvited foreign troops. This was clearly directed at the United States and its hangers on like Australia.

The Australian government’s response was a stunned silence. The Defence and Foreign Ministries both stalled for time, clearly waiting for guidance from their United States masters. When the American government announced that it had no intention of leaving Iraq, the Australian government regained its voice and indicated that it too would remain for the foreseeable future. We are still awaiting an explanation from the Australian government how they reconcile this decision with their professed adherence to the international rule of law they are so fond of quoting.

There was also a deafening silence from the mainstream media and the battery of political commentators whose adherence to the United States view of the world was cruelly exposed for the umpteenth time. Whatever happened to the rule of law? Here was a sovereign government, duly elected, asserting that it made the rules for its own country and being studiously ignored and its wishes disregarded.

The Iraqis did not accept the rebuttal of their legitimate demands. A number of significant events have occurred in recent weeks, but as noted above, the morbidity and mortality figures for the coronavirus have vastly reduced the reporting of competing headlines for matters like war, peace, and the rights of sovereign governments.

The United States has been forced to close, at last count, eight of their Iraqi military bases. This does not equate with a withdrawal, but rather a consolidation in a fewer number of heavily guarded bases. Even those are not immune from attack by a variety of local groups that have mounted increasingly sophisticated and well-armed attacks upon these fortresses.

The United States response has been an increase in aerial attacks with resulting civilian casualties, as well as the military forces of the Iraqi government whom they profess to be there to support. The Americans have almost entirely ceased non-aerial military operations, recognising that local hostility to their continued presence has reached such a level that it is unsafe for them to venture beyond their remaining heavily fortified bases.

The propaganda war continues unabated. The problems the United States and its allies are facing in Iraq are all the fault, it is alleged, of the Iranians. That the Iranian forces are in Iraq at the specific invitation of, and with the support of, the legitimate Iraqi government, is not recognised by the western media who continue to unfailingly portray Iran in a negative light.

Those same western media outlets actually fail to comprehend the illogicality and stupidity of railing against foreign forces in Iraq when the fundamental cause of the fighting is the continuing aftermath of an illegal invasion 17 years ago; the theft of the country’s natural resources by the unwelcome and unwanted invaders; and the blatant refusal of those invaders to obey the legitimate demands of the sovereign Iraqi government.

The message from the Iraqi government could not be clearer. You are not welcome. Pack up and leave.

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James O’Neill is an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

Autonomie ist der Zustand und das Lebensgefühl der Selbstbestimmung, Unabhängigkeit (Souveränität) und Selbstverwaltung. Philosophisch gesehen ist es die Fähigkeit, sich als Wesen der Freiheit zu sehen und aus dieser Freiheit heraus zu handeln. Sie ist auch die Kraft zum Nicht-Mitmachen (Adorno). Das Naturrecht sagt, dass es etwas gibt, was von Natur aus recht ist. Es unterscheidet sich vom durch Menschen gesetztes, sogenanntes positives Recht dadurch, dass es dem Menschen allein schon deshalb zusteht, weil er Mensch ist. Da es durch keinen Machthaber oder wie auch immer gearteten Mehrheitsbeschluss geschaffen wird, ist es vorstaatliches Recht. Das heißt, die Gesetze eines Staates müssen sich kritisch am Naturrecht messen lassen. (1) Das Wissen darüber, was von Natur aus recht ist, ermöglicht uns, totalitären Ideologien und Diktaturen von einem festen mitmenschlichen Standpunkt aus entgegenzutreten, ein Gefühl der Empörung gegen Unrecht und Unmenschlichkeit zu empfinden, auch wenn eventuell die ganze Gesellschaft einem Diktator zujubelt.

Was ist Naturrecht?

Das naturrechtliche Denken nimmt seinen Anfang in der antiken griechischen Philosophie, vor allem in der Auseinandersetzung Platons mit den Sophisten. Ihnen hielt Platon entgegen, dass es objektive, absolut gültige Normen, Werte und Gesetze gibt, die nicht von den wechselnden Meinungen der Menschen abhängig sind. An diesen objektiven Ideen dessen, was Recht ist, muß sich der Staat und die Staatsführung zu allen Zeiten messen lassen. Platon hat hinter dem Recht die objektive Idee der Gerechtigkeit gesehen.

Das höchste Ziel im menschlichen Leben ist das vernunftbestimmte Leben und dazu kann der Mensch nur gelangen, wenn er in Kindheit und Jugend lernt, seine Begierden und Affekte zu mäßigen. Er muss das goldene Maß der Mitte einhalten lernen (Gerechtigkeit, Tapferkeit und Besonnenheit). Wenn das nicht schon im Kindes- und Jugendalter zur Lebensgewohnheit wird, dann wird er später von extremen Affekten hin- und hergerissen und wird nie zu einer tugendhaften, besonnenen, vernunftbestimmten Lebensführung (Klugheit) gelangen.

Der große Kirchenlehrer Thomas von Aquin hat die Philosophie des Aristoteles mit der von Augustinus herkommenden christlichen Philosophie und Theologie verbunden. Er hat damit überragende Bedeutung für die Herausbildung des christlichen Naturrechts, der christlichen Anthropologie und Theologie, in deren Zentrum der Mensch als Person steht. Die von Gott erschaffene Seins-Ordnung sei vollkommen gut. In ihr wirke das „ewige Gesetz“, lex aeterna. Das ist die göttliche Weisheit, als oberstes Gesetz. Von diesem ewigen Gesetz könne der Mensch durch seine Vernunft einen Teil erkennen. (2)

Der Mensch hat eine natürliche Neigung zum Guten, die ihm durch das ewige Gesetz „ins Herz geschrieben“ ist. Sie hilft ihm, das Naturrichtige besser zu erkennen. Die wesentlichen natürlichen Neigungen des Menschen sind diejenigen zur Wahrheitserkenntnis und zum Gemeinschaftsleben. Mit seiner Vernunft kann der Mensch die Gesetze der Natur erkennen und erfasst damit die von Gott geschaffene Ordnung.

Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar

Artikel 1 des deutschen Grundgesetzes (GG) lautet: „Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.“Absatz 1 von Artikel 1 ergänzt: „Die Würde des Menschen stellt den obersten Verfassungsgundsatz dar, an dem folglich alle staatliche Gewalt ihr Handeln auszurichten hat. Sie ist daher Maßstab für Legislative, Exekutive und Judikative. Der Staat hat alles zu unterlassen, was die Menschenwürde beeinträchtigen könnte.“(3) Und diese Menschwürde ist überpositives Recht (Naturrecht).

Was sich jedoch gerade nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern weltweit abspielt, ist das Gegenteil von dem, was das deutsche Grundgesetz fordert. Die Würde des Menschen wird mit Füssen getreten – und das erinnert an das Deutschland der 30er Jahre, den aufkommenden Faschismus. Jeder denkende und fühlende Mitbürger kann es „am eigenen Leib spüren“.

Wir sind nicht mehr frei und können unser Leben nicht mehr selbstbestimmt und unabhängig führen. Die Regierungen lassen uns keinerlei Handlungsspielraum und verweigern uns das verbriefte Recht, diesen Wahnsinn nicht mitzumachen, den totalitären Machenschaften entschieden und mit aller Willenskraft entgegenzutreten. Der Rechtsstaat ist gestorben.

Doch unsere Gedanken sind frei (Cicero) und niemand kann uns unsere Würde nehmen. Auch können wir den Mut aufbringen, uns unseres eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen (Kant). Und wir wissen, was von Natur aus recht ist. Deshalb werden wir uns dem Diktat korrupter Politiker, Wissenschaftler, Mediziner, Journalisten oder fragwürdiger Mäzene wie Bill Gates nicht unterwerfen. (4)

Bereits vor über 100 Jahren gab der große russische Schriftsteller Leo N. Tolstoi seine Einschätzung von Regierenden zu Protokoll: „Man könnte die Unterordnung eines ganzen Volkes unter wenige Leute noch rechtfertigen, wenn die Regierenden die besten Menschen wären; aber das ist nicht der Fall, war niemals der Fall und kann es nie sein. Es herrschen häufig die schlechtesten, unbedeutendsten, grausamsten, sittenlosesten und besonders die verlogensten Menschen. Und dass dem so ist, ist kein Zufall.“(5)

Von der Wissenschaft – auch der Medizin – erwartet die menschliche Gemeinschaft zu Recht, dass sie die Not der Menschen lindert und dem Schutz des Lebens dient. Aber immer mehr Wissenschaftler verhökern ihr Wissen und Können und oft auch ihre Seele dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex. Sie entfernen sich sogar so weit von ihrem Menschsein, dass sie die Mittel für die allgemeine Vernichtung der Menschheit vervollkommnen helfen.

Einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Aufklärung und Ermutigung der Menschen könnten die Massenmedien leisten, da sie gemäß nationaler und internationaler Vereinbarungen der wahrheitsgemäßen Information von uns Bürgern und dem Frieden verpflichtet sind. Doch das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Sie stehen „im Dienst der Kriegshetze und Hasspropaganda“ und „im Dienst der Verdummung der Massen“ (Bertha von Suttner).

Erhalten wir uns also das Lebensgefühl der Selbstbestimmung, Unabhängigkeit (Souveränität) und Selbstverwaltung und die Fähigkeit, uns als Wesen der Freiheit zu sehen und aus dieser Freiheit heraus zu handeln.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Noten

(1) Messner, J. (1984, 7. unveränderte Auflage). Das Naturrecht. Handbuch der Gesellschaftsethik, Staatsethik und Wirtschaftsethik. Berlin

(2) de.wikipedia.org. Stichwort „Naturrecht“

(3) Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

(4) Siehe NRhZ Nr. 741 vom 8.04.2020: „Auf zum letzten Gefecht!“

(5) Tolstoi, Leo N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Frankfurt am Main, S. 74

There never was any doubt. In 2016, Sanders capitulated to unfit to serve Hillary.

History repeated on Monday as expected. Biden’s agenda since the 1970s matches Hillary’s with a gender difference.

It’s much the same as Trump’s with a party label difference.

Both expected standard bearers for each right wing of the one-party state are dismissive toward public health and welfare, the rule of law, government of, by, and for everyone equitably, and world peace.

Both are unfit to serve in any public office at any level, clearly not the highest in the land.

When Americans most need responsible leadership at a time of national duress that risks long-lasting economic hardships on the nation’s working class and erosion of remaining personal freedoms, their choice for president in November is none at all.

Both presumptive party nominees are on the same disturbing page on vital issues mattering most to most people.

Sanders pretends otherwise, betraying his supporters, fooling no one following accurate independent sources of news, information and analysis — largely online, reliable sources everyone should follow exclusively.

As president and commander-in-chief, Biden, like Trump, will serve America’s privileged class exclusively — what he’s done throughout his political career, his disturbing voting record showing what he stands for.

He’ll wage endless wars of aggression and by other means on invented enemies like his predecessor(s).

In 2016, Sanders actively campaigned for Hillary, the same likely ahead for Biden, ignoring his public record as US senator and vice president.

In 2016, Sanders touted Hillary as a presidential candidate who’s “ready to transform America” — ignoring her dirty business as usual agenda as co-president with husband Bill, US senator, and secretary of state.

Saying it’s  “imperative (to) elect Hillary Clinton as our next president” destroyed Sanders’ phony populism and revolutionary      change rhetoric.

Backing her and now Biden revealed his unstated support for monied interests and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex that’s at war on humanity at home and abroad.

Live-streamed Monday from their respective Vermont and Delaware home states, Sanders formally capitulated to Biden on national television in a carefully choreographed event, saying:

“We need you in the White House. I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” adding:

“I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every (Dem), I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse…”

“I have been very pleased that your staff and my staff have been working together over the last several weeks to come up with a number of task forces.”

I “look forward to working with you and bringing some great people into those task forces.”

Sanders pretended that “a more just and fair society” will emerge when “this crisis ends.” Polar opposite looms as planned.

Sanders: “I know you are the kind of guy who is going to be inclusive…It’s called democracy (sic). You believe in democracy (sic). So do I…Joe, I very much look forward to working with you.”

Sanders, Biden, and vast majority of America’s political class knows that democracy in the natio has been pure fantasy from inception.

No rule of the people ever existed. American exceptionalism, the indispensable state, and moral superiority don’t exist, never did.

Hypocrisy, not democracy, defines how Americans are governed – the nation an increasingly totalitarian plutocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy.

Elections when held are farcical. Dirty business as usual always wins.

Republicans and undemocratic Dems are two sides of the same coin on issues mattering most — notably corporate and high-net-worth favoritism, endless imperial warmaking, and harsh crackdowns on resisters for positive change.

Powerful monied interests never had things better. On the other side of the economic storm, they’ll likely emerge stronger than ever, ordinary Americans worse off than before it emerged.

Protracted main street Depression conditions have affected most Americans  for years— deepened under high unemployment and lockdowns.

Fundamental freedoms and social justice are at risk of disappearing altogether on the phony pretext of protecting national security.

The world’s richest nation is uncaring about its most disadvantaged people. It’s dismissive toward ordinary people everywhere.

America’s rage to dominate threatens escalated wars and full-blown homeland tyranny at a time when the nation’s only threats are invented.

Whether Trump, Biden, or a dark horse is chosen president by the US ruling class in November, governance of, by, and for the nation’s privileged class exclusively will continue like always.

A hardened censorship new normal may equate truth-telling journalism the way it should be with incitement, hate speech, and terrorism.

Dark forces in America want views opposed to the official narrative suppressed.

They want digital democracy undermined, thought control instituted as the law of the land, social and conventional media giants serving as gatekeepers, sanitizing news, information and opinions, suppressing what’s most important for everyone to know – the hallmark of totalitarian rule.

America already is unfit and unsafe to live in. The worst may lie ahead, COVID-19 restrictions serving as gateway for likely draconian times to come.

Public health concerns will pass. Its likely disturbing aftermath will become reality — the triumph of disaster capitalism, social injustice, and totalitarian control over a free and open society.

Trump, Biden, or another frontman for powerful interests will enforce all of the above — state and media propaganda convincing people it’s for our own good.

That’s the most likely draconian aftermath to what’s unfolding now in real time.

What’s unacceptable is heading toward becoming the new normal, a brainwashed public convinced to go along — mass resistance the only option against a worst-case outcome.

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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.

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Confucius Is Winning the Covid-19 War

By Pepe Escobar, April 14, 2020

Seoul went for fast mobilization of scientific expertise, immediate massive testing, extensive contact tracing, and social distancing, as well. But, crucially, most of it voluntary, not imposed by the central power. Because these moves were organically integrated, South Korea did not need to restrict movement drastically or to close down airports.

Hong Kong’s success is due in large part to a superb health care system. People in the frontline, with institutional memory of recent epidemics such as SARS, were willing to go on strike if serious measures were not adopted. Success was also due in large part to myriad professional links between Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s healthcare and public health systems.

What Dr. Anthony Fauci Hopes to Never Hear Again: “I’m Shaking It, Boss”

By Edward Curtin, April 14, 2020

Brave and cool-handed doctor that he is, he must be sweating now, wondering if getting so far out in front will result in unfair attacks on his feeling for flesh and blood human beings. Hand shaking has been around a while, and like hugs and kisses, people seem to like it, so the doctor is entering dangerous territory.

The triple “ever” in his statement seems to have raised some eyebrows with those who believe three is a magic number.  Some say that you can never be too careful with such statements from public officials and you must read them as if they were entrails and you were a haruspex.  I doubt it.

Are Ventilators Killing More People Than They’re Saving??

By Mike Whitney, April 14, 2020

The root problem seems to be that coronavirus is a relatively new phenomenon and the methods for treating it are still in their early phases. Nothing is set in stone, not yet at least. Even so, you might have noticed that, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson contracted the infection and was bundled off to ICU, the medical team did NOT put him on a ventilator, but put him on oxygen instead. And the difference couldn’t be more striking, because today, after 3 days in ICU, Johnson is alive, whereas he probably would be dead if he was intubated. Yes, I am making a judgment about something of which I cannot be entirely certain, but I think I’m probably right. If Johnson had been put on a ventilator, he probably would have died.

COVID-19 and the War on Cash: What Is Behind the Push for a Cashless Society?

By John W. Whitehead, April 14, 2020

As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.

Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

Hell Is Other People: Pandemic Lifestyles and Domestic Violence

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 14, 2020

The global lockdowns and forced hibernations should not just be seen as measures of imposed isolation.  The Pandemic State has done much to kill off that delicate creature of solitude, the routine of tranquil space essential to life.  Privacy does not merely die before the wizardry of heat sensors, drones and state surveillance; it also vanishes in spaces crowded and crammed, even with your intimates.

Get Ready for an Unacceptable “New Normal”: Censorship, Extrajudicial Arrests, Is Martial Law the Next Shoe to Drop?

By Stephen Lendman, April 14, 2020

The US military and National Guard are today’s “militia.”

Martial law suspends civil rule, replacing it with military authority under the president as commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces — including the National Guard when activated.

During the Civil War, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers.

He suspended the Constitution and habeas corpus, forcefully closed courts, arbitrarily ordered arrests, conscripted US citizens without congressional consent, and closed newspapers opposing his policies.

The Citizen Is Back

By Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin, April 14, 2020

This view has impacted our world, with the current Covid-19 crisis further highlighting Margaret Thatcher’s words, commonly referred to as the Iron Lady. She was one of the apostles of privatization and the shrinking of the state. She also preached by example and countless have followed. The state has shrunk in most Western countries, and, a few years after she uttered those words, her gospel found true believers in the former socialist countries. On both sides of the demolished Berlin Wall one saw massive transfers of wealth from the public sector to private hands. Tax cuts and privatization resulted in considerably weakened states, poorer financially and logistically than major companies.

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Following the news regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) we’d be led to believe humanity faces an unprecedented crisis – and judging by the socioeconomic damage being done – it is not that difficult to believe some sort of unprecedented crisis is indeed unfolding.

Yet the sense of urgency imposed upon the general public – prompting lockdowns around the globe and unprecedented measures being put in place – all centered around fighting a supposedly dangerous pathogen and avoiding overburdening global healthcare infrastructure – is entirely artificial.

While there are enough ventilators for regular use, there is a lack of preparedness for cases of mass casualty such as influenza pandemics, natural disasters and massive toxic chemical releases. The costs of stockpiling and deployment of state-of-the-art mechanical ventilators for mass casualty settings in developed countries are prohibitive. According to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November 2005, the United States would need as many as 742,500 ventilators in a worst-case pandemic. When compared to the 100,000 presently in use, it is clear that the system is lacking.

And in a full decade’s time, nothing was done to address this shortage leading to hysteria across the West amid the Covid-19 outbreak where governments claim to be pressing private business into making ventilators on production lines usually used for producing automobiles and appliances.

If the problem was well known a full decade ago and those in power – particularly in the US from US President George Bush to President Barack Obama to current US President Donald Trump – did nothing about it electing instead to spend US tax dollars on wars and banker bailouts – should the public trust American or Western leadership during this supposed crisis?

Should the hysteria these interests are fostering among the public be entertained?

If Covid-19 is such a threat to the globe – grinding everyday life to a standstill in ways two decades of America’s “War on Terror” have failed to do – why wasn’t more done to prepare for it? Especially when shortages were well-known even to MIT students working on class projects?

If Anything we are Told About Covid-19 Were True… 

Lockdowns and rushes to build ventilators constitute just one dimension of this current crisis.

Another is the rush to make vaccines.

Already – the notion of getting your vaccines – including “flu shots” – are imposed upon the general population as absolutely critical for public health. Yet if this were as critical as the public is led to believe – why are vaccines entrusted to some of the most corrupt and untrustworthy corporations on Earth?

Even the US’ own Department of Justice has repeatedly convicted big-pharma corporations for everything from falsifying safety and efficacy reports to bribing doctors, regulators, and politicians. Yet the same US government that repeatedly investigates and convicts these corporations also grants them approval via the FDA to make things we are told are absolutely critical for public health – including vaccines.

If vaccines were truly as important as we are told they are – their research, development, production, and distribution should be absolutely transparent, open source, and nationalized.

Corrupt corporations – not suspected of, but repeatedly convicted for putting profits before public health – should be shuttered, their assets seized and nationalized, and their work placed in the public domain for maximum oversight and transparency.

But that’s only if anything we are told about vaccines in general or the upcoming Covid-19 vaccine were true. Apparently it isn’t true – thus the lack of genuine urgency to match the mere sense of urgency the government and the corporations that influence their policy try to impose upon the general public.

This sense of urgency isn’t being imposed upon the public for the nation’s best interests, but for the special interests that drive US policy forward and their best interests. Hysteria and the urgency it prompts makes for a malleable public ready to accept virtually anything as an “answer” to the dangers they’ve been told to fear.

Vaccine research, development, and distribution will make pharmaceutical corporations billions of dollars whether they actually work or not. For example, consider how pharmaceutical corporations made billions during the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak when World Health Organization “experts” in the pay of big-pharma declared it a “pandemic” prompting Western governments to stockpile big-pharma drugs that later turned out to be absolutely useless in combating the virus.

Political Games of Hegemony During a “Pandemic?” 

And if anything we are being told about the urgency of Covid-19 were true, the United States amid these “trying times” would recognize fighting Covid-19 globally is in its own best interest as well – helping to fight it regardless of whose borders it turns up within. Yet crippling economic sanctions remain in place against nations like Iran who have been particularly hit by the virus.

Nations like Russia also remain under US sanctions – and ironically have sent aid to the US – aid coming from companies under US sanctions.

NBC would report in their article, “Firm under sanctions made Russian ventilators shipped to U.S., pictures show,” that:

A subsidiary of a Russian company that has been sanctioned by the U.S. manufactured ventilators that were transported from Moscow to New York this week to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic, according to pictures of the delivery.

Obviously if Covid-19 was such a deadly threat, the US would temporarily put its hegemonic foreign policy aside – and work to combat the outbreak – if only to save itself. It isn’t – because Covid-19 the pathogen doesn’t live up to Covid-19 hysteria.

Little we are being told about Covid-19 is true – what little grain of truth exists amid what the public is being told is overshadowed by the unwarranted hysteria deliberately spread about the virus. That hysteria isn’t leading to measures to actually stop the outbreak – but to prime the public for profit-making schemes that will fill the coffers of pharmaceutical corporations and legislation that will strengthen the grip of governments over their respective populations.

Massive corporations will survive and will profit not only from false solutions offered to “fight” Covid-19 but also from assets sold by broken small and medium businesses and property owners selling assets at bargain prices after lockdowns and economic crisis.

“Post-Covid-19″ – the same corrupt and incompetent interests that left the world either unprepared for a real pandemic – or panicked the public over a deliberately over-hyped virus – now stand to profit from and prosper in the wake of it.

If anything we were told about Covid-19 were true, the people who told us about it, panicked us over it, and demanded action from us in the face of it – but left us entirely unprepared for it in the first place – should be the final causalities of the virus – uprooted socially, economically, and politically from society and replaced by leaders, economic systems, and healthcare infrastructure capable of weathering not only viral pandemics, but socioeconomic and psychological pandemics as well.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

As the Raging Twenties unleash a radical reconfiguration of the planet, coronavirus (literally “crowned poison”) has for all practical purposes served a poisoned chalice of fear and panic to myriad, mostly Western, latitudes.  

Berlin-based, South Korean-born philosopher Byung-Chul Han has forcefully argued the victors are the

“Asian states like Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore that have an authoritarian mentality which comes from their cultural tradition [of] Confucianism.”

Han added:

“People are less rebellious and more obedient than in Europe. They trust the state more. Daily life is much more organized. Above all, to confront the virus Asians are strongly committed to digital surveillance. The epidemics in Asia are fought not only by virologists and epidemiologists, but also by computer scientists and big data specialists.”

That’s a reductionist view and plenty of nuances should apply. Take South Korea, which is not “authoritarian.” It’s as democratic as top Western liberal powers. What we had in a nutshell was the civic-mindedness of the overwhelming majority of the population reacting to sound, competent government policies.

Seoul went for fast mobilization of scientific expertise, immediate massive testing, extensive contact tracing, and social distancing, as well. But, crucially, most of it voluntary, not imposed by the central power. Because these moves were organically integrated, South Korea did not need to restrict movement drastically or to close down airports.

Hong Kong’s success is due in large part to a superb health care system. People in the frontline, with institutional memory of recent epidemics such as SARS, were willing to go on strike if serious measures were not adopted. Success was also due in large part to myriad professional links between Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s healthcare and public health systems.

Barbarism with human face

Then there’s Big Data. Han argues that in neither China nor other East Asian nations is there enough critical analysis in relation to digital vigilance and Big Data. But that also has to do with culture, because East Asia is about collectivism, and individualism is not on the forefront.

Well, that’s way more nuanced. Across the region, digital progress is pragmatically evaluated in terms of effectiveness. Wuhan deployed Big Data via thousands of investigative teams, searching for possibly infected individuals, choosing who had to be under observation and who had to be quarantined. Borrowing from Foucault, we can call it digital biopolitics.

Where Han is correct is when he says that the pandemic may redefine the concept of sovereignty: “The sovereign is the one who resorts to data. When Europe proclaims a state of alarm or closes borders, it’s still chained to old models of sovereignty.”

The response across the EU, including especially the European Commission in Brussels, has been appalling. Glaring evidence of powerlessness and lack of any serious preparations have appeared even though the EU had a head start.

The first instinct was to close borders; hoard whatever puny equipment was available; and, then, social Darwinist-style, it was every nation for itself, with battered Italy left totally to itself.

The severity of the crisis especially in Italy and Spain, with elders left to die to the “benefit” of the young, was due to a very specific EU political economy choice: the austerity diktat imposed across the eurozone. It’s as if, in a macabre way, Italy and Spain are paying literally in blood to remain part of a currency, the euro, which they should never have adopted in the first place.

As for France, read here for a relatively decent summary of the disaster in the EU’s second-largest economy.

Going forward, Slavoj Zizek gloomily predicts for the West “a new barbarism with a human face, ruthless survivalist measures enforced with regret and even sympathy, but legitimized by expert opinions.”

In contrast, Han predicts China will now be able to sell its digital police state as a model of success against the pandemic.

“China will display the superiority of its system even more proudly.”

Alexander Dugin ventures way beyond anyone else. He’s already conceptualizing the notion of a state in mutation (like the virus) turning into a “military-medical dictatorship,” just as we’re witnessing the collapse of the global liberal world in real time.

Enter the triad 

I offer, as a working hypothesis, that the Asia triad of Confucius, Buddha and Lao Tzu has been absolutely essential in shaping the perception and serene response of hundreds of millions of people across various Asian nations to Covid-19. Compare this with the prevalent fear, panic and hysteria mostly fed by the corporate media across the West.

The Tao (“the way”) as configured by Lao Tzu is about how to live in harmony with the world. Being confined necessarily leads to delving into yin instead of yang, slowing down and embarking on a great deal of reflection.

Yes, it’s all about culture, but culture rooted in ancient philosophy, and practiced in everyday life. That’s how we can see wu wei – “action of non-action” – applied to how to deal with a quarantine. “Action of non-action” means action without intent. Rather than fighting against the vicissitudes of life, as in confronting a pandemic, we should allow things to take their natural course.

That’s much easier when we know this teaching of the Tao: “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.”

It also helps to know that “life is a series of natural and spontaneous choices. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

Buddhism runs in parallel to the Tao:

“All conditioned things are impermanent. When one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”

And to keep our vicissitudes in perspective, it helps to know:

“Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.”

As far as keeping much-needed perspective, nothing beats, “the root of suffering is attachment.”

And then, there’s the ultimate perspective:

“Some do not understand that we must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.”

Confucius has been an overarching presence across the Covid-19 frontline, as an astonishing 700 million Chinese citizens were kept for  weeks under different forms of quarantine.

We can easily imagine them clinging to a few pearls of wisdom, such as:

“Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.” Or “he who learns, but does not think, is lost. He who thinks, but does not learn, is in great danger.”

Most of all, in an hour of extreme turbulence, it brings comfort to know that, “the strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.”

And in terms of fighting a dangerous and invisible enemy on the ground, it helps to know this rule of thumb:

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”

So what would be the ultimate insight a serene East can offer to the West in such hard times? It’s so simple, and it’s all in the Tao: “From caring comes courage.”

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

‘Once the pandemic subsides, vital conclusions must be drawn and implemented. Many citizens have become painfully aware that the invisible hand of the market is no more than a useless extremity, as the sacrosanct laws of supply and demand have failed them. So did profit-driven globalization’.

The pandemic, which engendered a planetary panic, and the ensuing financial and economic crisis have shown that many governments, including those of ‘developed countries’, were unprepared to handle the emergency. Our Republican movement offered a rational and timely solution by creating the Civil Solidarity Headquarters and proposed a range of necessary and operational measures.

The planet has a chance to change for the better, argue insightful intellectuals and conscientious citizens. We present the opinion of Professor Yakov M. Rabkin of the University of Montreal (Canada), expert of the Studrespublika Final-2015 who is often invited to share his thoughts with us. 

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This view has impacted our world, with the current Covid-19 crisis further highlighting Margaret Thatcher’s words, commonly referred to as the Iron Lady. She was one of the apostles of privatization and the shrinking of the state. She also preached by example and countless have followed. The state has shrunk in most Western countries, and, a few years after she uttered those words, her gospel found true believers in the former socialist countries. On both sides of the demolished Berlin Wall one saw massive transfers of wealth from the public sector to private hands. Tax cuts and privatization resulted in considerably weakened states, poorer financially and logistically than major companies.

When forest fires were raging around Moscow in the summer of 2010, causing thousands of deaths from suffocation, some people recalled that a specialized Federal forestry service had been disbanded under Yeltsin. It used to employ 70 000 forest rangers who identified and put out fires. In the United States, the Global Health Security and Biodefense team on the National Security Council staff was disbanded under Trump.

But the problem is more serious than the personalities involved. The state used to protect the citizens from abuses of the private sector. This is how anti-trust legislation came about over a century ago. Labour laws, unemployment insurance, and consumer protection followed. These social rights, stronger in Europe, and weaker in the United States, were part of the defense of capitalism in the context of the Cold War. When the Soviet Union began to wilt, powerful private interests realized that they no longer needed ‘a capitalism with a human face’. They embarked on massive dismantling of social rights in capitalist countries. 

One of these rights is health. A cursory look at the number of beds per capita reveals four leaders: Japan, South Korea, Russia and Germany. Italy is 25^th, Spain 27^th, the United States 31^st. This ominously correlates with the dynamics of the current pandemic. The four leading countries not only have more beds but they were fast to recognize and react to the oncoming peril.

Contrary to Thatcher’s belief, people cannot look after themselves when Covid-19 strikes. They turn to their respective states in search of protection from the pandemic. Some states rose up to the task and some clearly failed. It matters little whether the state is democratic or authoritarian. What does matter is its ability to protect its citizens in case of emergency. 

Some states turned out to be unprepared for emergencies, experiencing tragic shortages of medical supplies. In imitation of the private sector, they came to depend on long supply lines for most essential products, becoming a pale replica of a private enterprise.

Once the pandemic subsides, vital conclusions must be drawn and implemented. Many citizens have become painfully aware that the invisible hand of the market is no more than a useless extremity, as the sacrosanct laws of supply and demand have failed them. So did profit-driven globalization.

Citizens should reclaim their status of citizens after being reduced to that of  ‘customers’. This ubiquitous term borrowed from the world of business has merged citizens, passengers, students, patients and many others into an amorphous mass of ‘customers’. We all know that words have power.

But words can also take power away. This power must be returned to the citizens, the only ones capable of freeing the state from the control of the private sector. The state must resume its primary function of protector of the citizen and acquire adequate means to do so.

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Professor Yakov M. Rabkin is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Montreal, co-editor of Demodernization: A Future in the Past (Columbia University Press)

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This article was originally published on studrespublika.com.

All images in this article are from studrespublika.com

America’s Daily Report’s Christina Aguayo interviews Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai on the discourse surrounding Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US and the role of Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Bill Gates, the Clintons and the WHO.

 

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“Unfortunately this guy Fauci has been in this environment for nearly 4 decades across multiple presidents and is essentially embedded in this scientific establishment which has created an unfortunate lie about the immune system and an unfortunate lie about the solution to this coronavirus or more importantly infectious disease without any real emphasis which is a real issue about the fact that it is an overactive dysfunctional weakened immune system that overreacts and that’s what causes damage to the body. And unfortunately Fauci has not talked about that because the truth of that leads to a solution which has nothing to do with mandating vaccines and shutting down the country.” –Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

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As any risk-taking pioneer knows, it is lonely taking the lead and suffering the derisive scorn of one’s compatriots.  I have been there and so can understand what Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the U.S. government’s coronavirus efforts, must be feeling.  Fauci was recently quoted by Time magazine as saying to interviewer Kate Linebaugh:

I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.

Time got the quote wrong.  He actually said:

I don’t think we ever should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.

You can’t be more emphatic than repeating a word three times.

Brave and cool-handed doctor that he is, he must be sweating now, wondering if getting so far out in front will result in unfair attacks on his feeling for flesh and blood human beings. Hand shaking has been around a while, and like hugs and kisses, people seem to like it, so the doctor is entering dangerous territory.

The triple “ever” in his statement seems to have raised some eyebrows with those who believe three is a magic number.  Some say that you can never be too careful with such statements from public officials and you must read them as if they were entrails and you were a haruspex.  I doubt it.

I’ve heard it said that it might be a clever coded message to his in-crowd that they can still give the secret handshake, or is it the elbow shake, while the public gets the shakedown.  I also doubt that kind of paranoiac speculation.

Maybe it’s a way to “walk it back” if the heat gets too hot. Who knows?   Maybe the triple “ever” in his statement will give him an opening to say he was only joking. I don’t think so.  He doesn’t seem like the joking type.

He said he was being honest and I think we should take him at his word. Honesty is hardly ever heard and mostly what we need from him. You’ve heard that before, I assume, and agree.  For we depend on him; he is, as they say, “America’s Doctor.”

I don’t doubt that his words “don’t…ever” mean never, and never is a long, long time.  Like eternity, I guess.

When you’re in the anti-germ business, no measures are too extreme. I know where he’s coming from and think I know where he’s going, too.  I’m a germaphobe myself and have always been extremely uncomfortable with the hand-to-hand stuff and have panic attacks at the thought of mouth-to-mouth activity. The other interpersonal bodily activities are beyond repulsive to me.

Whenever I’ve seen pictures of prisoners being visited by loved ones who were separated by a screen and couldn’t touch, I would have this weird thought that I always kept to myself until now: that it also made sense for those outside prison cells to be separated by screens.  I suppose it’s why I’m really into cell phones.  Screens do protect us from bugs, and most digital devices have anti-virus protection, which is especially handy during plague times.

As I said, I have taken pioneering risks myself and suffered ridicule as a result. I have recounted these experiences in detail before. What follows is a summary offered as a friendly warning to Dr. Fauci of how irrational people can be when your good advice and actions threaten their distorted sense of nostalgia for the old days and ways.  They can get very nasty with their criticism.

My fear of germs and unhappiness with relationships led me to take radical steps.  A few years ago, I woke up one morning and looked in the mirror and said to my image, “Man, you are a pathetic sad sack.”  Then I heard a report on National Public Radio that said the latest cool thing was to marry yourself – they called it sologamy, I think the guy said. It made you feel good about yourself, something I really needed.  They interviewed this woman who had just married herself and boy was she flying high and enthusing about the great feeling it gave her.  She said she had realized she had fallen out of love with herself and marrying herself was like the second time around.  It really stirred my blood and got me thinking what I could do for myself in a germ-free way.  I started humming that old song, you know, “Love is lovelier, the second time around.…”

So I took the plunge and married myself.  Sad to say, the relationship didn’t work out; actually it was a disaster, and so I eventually filed for a divorce. It was no one’s fault really, but we were emotionally devastated nevertheless. At least we had no children and few knew of the marriage since it was so intimate that I hadn’t invited anyone to the wedding.  So the mockery I suffered then was mostly self-induced, and was small in comparison to what followed.

About six months later, CNN, as they so often do, alerted me to a new technological possibility with a report about a Japanese man, Akihito Kondo, a school administrator, who fell in love years ago with Miku, a cyber-celebrity hologram. He had finally taken the plunge and married Miku in a lovely ceremony in front of thirty-nine people.  Kondo seemed radiantly happy and not at all confused.

So I took another chance and married an anime hologram friend named Meto.  She was cute as a button, and being on the lightweight and ethereal side, posed no risk of germs.  But she was such a lightweight, even I couldn’t stand her and so we parted amicably without ever formally marrying.

It was then I resolved not to listen to the mainstream media for relationship advice.  I was still rather desperate for a partner, however, and didn’t know where to turn when I happened upon an offbeat podcast where a doctor, no less, was talking about how he thought sexbots would be the wave of the future since they posed none of the problems our flesh is heir to and now were powered by artificial intelligence, which was an added bonus. He also said they came germ free, which was the key for me. So I ordered one by the name of Sveltlana and we have been a healthy couple for about seven months now.

My friends and family ridiculed me terribly at first, but now with the coronavirus pandemic, they are softening their mockery. I have withstood the worst of their abuse as a risk-taking pioneer must. There is no need for me to tell them that Svetlana wears gloves and a mask or that we never shake hands.  Why would we? I think they may even be starting to get jealous.

I think Dr. Fauci may be shortly facing just the first and mildest form of abuse for his brave advice to never shake hands.  He seems like the sort that can soldier on despite the criticism. But everyone needs encouragement in these diseased times.  If, as seems likely, he is planning to follow my germophobic path forward toward a clean robotic future, he might appreciate my cautionary story so he can find strength to vaccinate himself against the silly criticism he is sure to encounter.

So many people have gotten into the sick habit of shaking hands, kissing, and hugging that when a public servant of his prescience and prominence warns that these social habits must be abandoned in the name of public health, there is bound to be an irrational, gut reaction.  Such people, who are living in the past and need to stop and think, have always resisted the sage advice of futurists of every stripe, and such pioneers have had to stand strong in the face of public ignorance. Dr. Fauci, like his associate Bill Gates, is a true pioneer.

There is one thing I do not doubt: that digital distance living and a robotic future will only find full popular acceptance when leaders are willing to step up, do the right thing, and take the heat.  Keeping people locked in their cells, living the techno life separated from other bodies, will demand a strong hand from the bosses.  It’s called doing one’s job.  Will “America’s Doctor” get the appreciation he wants for doing his?

Boss: “Sorry, Luke.  I’m just doing my job.  You gotta appreciate that.”

Luke: “Nah – calling it your job don’t make it right, Boss.”

At least that’s what Cool Hand Luke thought.  But naysaying didn’t get him too far, did it.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

Featured image is from Flickr

Governments around the world are offering a tragic lesson in how denial, incompetence, and inequity have exacerbated the unfolding coronavirus pandemic. That is just as true in the United States, where President Trump’s lies, denials, and half measures — as well as our woefully underprepared health system — are making the virus deadlier.

But there are also tremendously impactful foreign policy decisions that are magnifying the pandemic’s toll. As we take steps to resolve the crisis, reversing this damage is every bit as critical as other aspects of our response.

Wars. The various wars that the United States has carried since 2001 have set the stage for an incendiary spread of disease in countries around the world.

Consider Yemen, where an ongoing cholera epidemic that began in 2016 became the fastest growing disease outbreak in modern history. The crisis is directly related to the war that Saudi Arabia has been prosecuting there since 2015 with critical U.S. assistance.

Aid agencies like UNICEF and the WHO have pointed to the war — which has displaced millions and devastated public sanitation and medical facilities — as the primary cause of the outbreak. Yemen’s cholera outbreak is a tragic harbinger of coronavirus’ potential impact in that country and others where the U.S. has waged the “War on Terror.”

The commitment to war has had consequences for this country too. Decades of rising military spending — we now spend 53 cents of every discretionary tax dollar on the military — have starved the U.S. of the resources to build a better public health system or take other preventative measures.

Sanctions and blockades. Every ten minutes, someone in Iran dies of COVID-19. The crisis is made far worse by the fact that U.S. sanctions have prevented the country from accessing medical supplies and critical materials for manufacturing medicines. Targeting a country’s medical industry for political purposes is always indefensible, but during a pandemic it’s unconscionably dangerous.

Similarly, the U.S. has supported Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza since 2007. Medical supplies are among the many civilian items that embargo has kept out of the Palestinian enclave. With limited access to food, drinkable water, and medicine, the trapped people in densely populated Gaza are facing disaster as coronavirus hits.

UN officials have warned that similar catastrophes could unfold in North Korea or Venezuela as a result of U.S. sanctions as well.

Militarizing borders. The Trump administration’s hardline stance against asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border has led to makeshift camps of thousands on the Mexican side. This approach is inhumane and illegal, violating international and U.S. laws protecting asylum seekers. It has also produced a public health crisis, concentrating large numbers of malnourished people in squalid conditions, exposed to the elements, with no running water and limited access to medicine.

Tragically, the U.S. has exported this inhumane approach all over the world.

Jordan, for example, has received assistance from U.S. taxpayers and contractors to fortify its borders with war-torn Iraq and Syria since 2015. As a result, sprawling camps on the Syrian side of the border at Rukban and Hadalat have swelled to between 70,000 and 80,000 people. The UN has warned of a looming disaster once coronavirus hits these encampments, already characterized by abject desperation and abandonment.

Blaming China. President Trump, sharing talking points with far-right groups, for weeks mislabeled coronavirus as “the Chinese virus.” The function of this xenophobia is to deflect attention away from the U.S. government’s own mismanagement of the crisis, pointing to a foreign power — or worse, people who aren’t white — instead.

Trump is not the first president to blame China for U.S. problems, but he’s taken it to dangerous new levels. Beyond the current crisis, making China into an enemy is just the latest step in a long-term competition that’s already led to trade wars and, in the background, an ongoing gearing up for military confrontation.

The impact will be disastrous. Already, racists have taken license to attack Asians and Asian-Americans in public. And stoking division on a world scale will undermine one of the most important keys to our collective survival of this crisis: cooperation across borders.

If there is one thing that a pandemic makes clear, it’s that no country is an island unto itself.

The promise that we could wall off the country from the world and wage wars to “keep America great” was always a deadly lie. Now the cost is even greater, as anything we do that stokes infection abroad — from wars to sanctions to border militarization — ultimately creates more wellsprings for the disease here and abroad.

Nationalism will only make a global pandemic worse. We are all in this together, and our foreign policies should reflect that.

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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Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Featured image is from EuroYankee

The New Cold War between the US and China abruptly took a new form following the global outbreak of COVID-19, but Beijing still has a solid chance of coming out on top in this struggle for global leadership if it accurately assesses the changed geostrategic situation in the Eastern Hemisphere and accordingly crafts the right policies for responding to it.

The military situation in northwestern Syria is steadily escalating.

On April 10 and April 11, the Turkish Army and its proxies shelled positions of Kurdish armed groups in northern Aleppo. The most intense shelling took place near the areas of Tell Rifaat, Sheikh Hilal, Bosoufane, al-Malikiyah, Maraanaz, Kaft Anoun, Kasht’ar, al-Irshadiyah and Menagh Air Base.

On April 12, the Kurdish-led Afrin Liberation Forces announced that they had stricken a position of the Turkish Army near in the area of Sherava in the same part of Syria with an anti-tank guided missile. According to the Kurdish group, 3 Turkish soldiers were killed and 3 others were injured. 2 vehicles of Turkish forces were allegedly destroyed.

Both Turkish forces and Kurdish armed groups claim that their attacks are retaliatory strikes only and accuse each other of regular acts of aggression and terrorism.

The Russian Military Police is reportedly working to establish four new observation posts near the town of Tell Tamr in Syria’s northeast. According to local sources, Russian forces have already checked the area and are now preparing to establish permanent positions near al-Abush, Umm Kayf, Abu Rasin and Zirkan.

Kurdish sources claim that this move is a forced measure needed to put an end to regular ceasefire violations by the Turkish Army and its proxies. Despite these claims, the Turkish-Russian ceasefire deal on the operation of Turkey’s Operation Spring Shield still works successfully preventing a resumption of large-scale hostilities in the region.

In southern Idllib, the Turkish Army is fortifying its positions near the contact line with Syrian forces near the town of Saraqib. According to the Syrian Army, at least 50 Turkish vehicles entered the region of Greater Idlib on April 12 only. Pro-government sources describe such actions as a signal that the Turkish military is not planning to fight against al-Qaeda-linked militants in Idlib, but rather preparing for a new round of confrontation with the Syrian Armed Forces.

On April 11 and April 12, intense artillery duels between the Syrian Army and Turkish proxies were reported near the town of al-Bara in southern Idlib and Hdadah Hilltop in northern Lattakia. Later, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) claimed that its forces had repelled a Syrian Army attack in the vicinity of the town of Kafr Taa in western Aleppo. Militants claimed  that an officer of pro-government forces was killed. Pro-Damascus sources reported no notable clashes in the area, but such claims by Idlib armed groups are a useful signal of the current level of tensions in the region. Greater Idlib is steadily moving towards the resumption of full-scale military hostilities.

The Syrian Army and its allies fully repelled ISIS attacks near al-Sukhnah and Wadi al-Waer in the province of Homs killing two dozens of terrorists, according to pro-government sources. Clashes in the area broke out last week after ISIS cells conducted a large attack on positions of Syrian troops involved in a security operation in the area. Pro-militant sources claim that up to 40 Syrian soldiers were killed in the confrontation with the terrorists.

Currently, the army is deploying reinforcements to the countryside of al- Sukhnah. Most likely, government forces are planning to conduct a new security operation against ISIS cells hiding in the desert.

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We are in lockdown in Virginia after Governor Ralph Northam last week closed beaches, book stores, libraries, restaurants, coffees shops, cancelled live music concerts, and ordered churches closed. He said to not have gatherings of more than 10 people and to practice “social distancing,” which I think in this strange world of invisible enemies, threatening us at all times, means staying away from people mostly and staying about 6 feet apart when you are with people. I am not totally sure, though. The governor’s edict – or maybe it was the CDC’s — qualified the 6-feet distance, or “socially distancing” recommendation to say that spouses and children and their parents did not have to stay 6 feet apart.

I am a public-school teacher, not in school now, because they are closed, of course. I love my church, my libraries, bookstores, musicians I go to hear, and getting together with my friends. Two friends in the last few days have declined walking outside together, even though I said, “We can walk apart from each other if you want to.” I am not sure why. Quarantine? Just stay home? Will walking outside endanger me or others? I thought we could gather as long as it’s less than 10 people. Isn’t two OK?

I have worked to keep clarity and a sense of humor, while trying to make sense of a morass of fear and language around this virus, which I know may be serious, but which I also think has been surrounded by a lot of panic and misinformation. I found a few anchoring facts that seem reliable – people with the virus have a recovery rate in the high 90 percents, and infection, or testing positive for it, does not mean you will get the disease. Also, most people who die, who have tested positive, die of other serious causes, though the CDC has misled the public by forcing doctors to say the deaths were caused by the virus rather than saying the truth, which often is that the person died of heart disease, diabetes, old age, pneumonia, while they had also had tested positive for Corona virus. They died with the virus but not from it.

Some doctors have reminded us that outside in the sunshine is one of the safest places we can be when an illness like this is a worry.  Fear and misinformation have convinced people that inside their homes, in closed rooms, they are safer from this invisible enemy that we are “at war with,” according President Trump. The War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the U.S. is always at war with someone or something. I am not buying this war any more than I have bought the others. “Somewhere behind all wars are a few founding lies,” wrote Mark Kurlansky in Non-Violence: Twenty-Five Lessons in the History of a Dangerous Idea. I do not think this “war” is much different than others with its early lying and distortions that take hold, take on lives of their own, and manipulate us into group-think and rash actions, like forcing all businesses to close, probably causing many small business owners to lose what they have spent their lives building.

Isolation and loneliness, especially loneliness of the elderly, who can’t see their friends, go to the symphony, to book groups, to church  – all activities that give life sustenance and meaning;  economic despair, unemployment, exacerbated addictions without the social supports that keep people alive and healthy – all these kill many more people that any virus, I believe.

Language viruses infect our culture this spring. This is not a “lockdown,” as it really is, not government control, as it really is, or the government’s taking our civil liberties, such as practicing our religion at our churches or exercising our right to peaceably assemble. I do not think the writers of the Constitution wrote that we have the right to peaceably assemble, unless there is a sickness around. No, this is not lockdown. As people comply with hardly a word of protest, they are not calling it lockdown; instead they are not only doing as they are told, they are speaking as they are told — “sheltering in place” or “staying home” or “social distancing.” These are creepy terms, meant to make government-enforced lockdown sound cozy and good for us.

We are also told that this is the “new normal.” Words and phrases like this distort realities, and not for the better, I believe. This is not normal at all. Human beings are meant to live in communities. Research supports that human touch, emotional and physical connection, strengthens immunities and prevents disease. There are viruses that cause people to get sick, and some to die, but so much of this so-called pandemic is not adding up. We are not seeing the deaths from this virus in the context of deaths from other causes, such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, car accidents, domestic violence.

I remain skeptical that the government knows what is good for us after studying other wars and calamities and their precipitating and enabling language and lies. Lies around the Gulf of Tonkin incident ignited the U.S. war against Viet Nam. The Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter was told to tell a false story of babies yanked from incubators to whip the U.S. government into the war frenzy of the first Iraq War. The Weapons of Mass Destruction and “mushroom cloud” nonsense, touted by politicians and bureaucrats, sent thousands of Americans to their deaths, destroyed a whole country, and scattered millions as war refugees. I have mistrusted the media, while continuing to seek alternative, independent-thinking information sources, after almost every major U.S. media outlet championed war against Iraq.  U.S. media outlets never issued formal retractions after that devastation and after the lies were made plain. I remain skeptical of the government and health bureaucrats when they approved harmful drugs, such as high dosages of estrogen from mare’s urine, which scientists knew caused cancer in women, and they approved it anyway. Women died. The examples of government deceptions that cause death are numerous. We must read and talk and listen, and keep thinking.

Now, because the government and its highly paid health and disease bureaucrats told them to, people put their pictures inside “Stay at Home” or “I am Saving Lives by Staying at Home” signs or even the stronger “Stay the F Home” admonition to others and shared them on the Internet.  Language changes have been fascinating and frightening when friends now are scared to walk outside, even in pairs.  My teenage son, whom his dad and I wheeled in a stroller in demonstrations against the U.S. war in Iraq when he was a toddler while a gauntlet of counter protestors screamed in our faces, today tells me that I shouldn’t drive to do farm chores on my friend’s farm to help with food production because the government said, “We have to stay home,” my son said.

Death has done it this time. Death and fear and language. Insidious death. Unseen. Phantom death on the TV or computer screens — or even rumored to be there. We don’t even have cable TV in our home, but this fear has infected our home. The red numbers are out there flashing, digits rising, blinking. Attractive people with super white teeth and expensive haircuts talk non-stop. Bureaucrats and politicians wield language of fear and death – death, like the greenish smoke, snaking by each door in the Charlton Heston movie, The Ten Commandments, my brothers and I watched on TV when we were children. Maybe our “Stay at Home” hashtags will save us like the blood painted in the shape of the cross on the doors in the Charlton Heston movie.

Today a “news” station showed a cartoon-colored virus spray cascading over a barricaded grocery aisle to the cartoon people on the other side. Over weeks, we have had to look at lines of bright stick people in diagrams multiplying and stacking up, dead presumably, if we did not “social distance” because the deaths will rise exponentially. But even the exponential part is being called into question by health professionals.  On social media today a New York writer, I somehow ended up “friends” with, posted an obscure study saying that 6-feet distance is not enough to stay safe while running outside. It was complete with cartoon figures and bright-colored virus sprays, clouding the air and making their way to a cartoon runner many feet away. Oh, brother.

Tell people, like the politicians and bureaucrats are doing, that they may have it, not know it, may not even know how long they have had or will have it. You could not even be sick and still have it, give it to others. Reading and listening to so-called news, I could not get a handle on how long you could have it and not know it – some said five days, someone else said two weeks or more. It may be me. It may be you. Paranoia abounds. But, guess what? We all have it. We are all going to die. This virus, however, has a recovery rate in the high 90 percents. Most people recover – not in the hospital but at home, I read today  Contracting it and recovering may build immunity and make us stronger. Our bodies – and our lives – are amazing, are miracles. How can we miss this in this season of resurrection?

Because I miss my friends, and I love getting outside in the sunshine, especially before the government closed the Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive, even to motorists, I still wanted to better understand Governor’s Northam’s rules after he closed the beaches and businesses too. My teenage son is worried I am not following the rules or taking them seriously enough. I am. Nothing is open. I only go to the grocery store. I have been making the best of it. We have planted flowers, moved mulch, cleared brush, had a fire on the deck and made Smores. I taught him how to thread a needle, how to sew on a button, how to mend a tear, with two different kinds of stitches, as my mother taught me, I taught him to make French toast. We played Jenga and listened to my 60s and 70s Pandora station.

I do not like lockdown, however. I do not like the sorrow and grief I feel as I hear of friends and acquaintances losing their beloved businesses they have spent their lives building. And many others do not have the economic privilege to “work at home” or not work at all.  I like being free to come and go as I chose while being responsible for my health and caring for the health of others. When I learned we will likely have to endure this government-mandated lockdown until the end of April at least, I wanted to understand it better. Maybe others were having similar questions, and I could help. I called the CDC press line, planning to tell them I was a freelance journalist doing a story on safe practices for outdoors.

I thought I would be able to talk to someone and ask my questions right then, take notes. Write my story. I was trying to get a handle on how the 6 feet rule (or is guidance, surely not a law?) worked with gatherings of 10 people or less – and how did that work with being outdoors?  Maybe I should call Northam’s office with my questions. I decided to start with the CDC. I also wanted to tell my son, whom I told he could walk to a nearby friend’s house, and they could walk or play in the neighborhood (stay apart if they wanted to) and that the CDC and the governor said that was OK. I was worried about this health, staying inside so much, and know he misses his friends and is out of the school routine. But my son said no, he didn’t want to go outside to meet his friend. I said, “Why not?” He said, “You know, quarantine.”

So, I planned to ask the CDC and the governor if it was OK to walk outside with my friend – if one friend was OK, and should we walk 6 feet apart?  I see people walking in my neighborhood, in pair and small groups. I knew people in Walmart were not always 6 feet apart though they have little tape marks on the floor now because maybe because the governor told them to do that.  Surely, outside is healthier than Walmart with all the hands that have touched the bread bags and housewares from China.

I planned to ask how the 6 feet rule worked with gatherings of less than 10, which I thought were OK. And how did it work with family members, which the governor and the CDC said were not required to stay 6 feet apart. What if you had a cook-out in this glorious spring weather with, say, eight people, five family members and three close friends, middle-aged, healthy, not sick? Would we have to stay 6 feet apart? And what about beaches? They are closed, but the governor said not for fishing, and that the beaches could still be used for exercise. So, can you fish with your spouse or child or friend and not get in trouble? Can you walk on the beach with your boyfriend, for exercise, or would you have to be six feet apart?

I had my notes ready and planned to start by asking the CDC press office these questions. But things are different now than they were when I was a reporter 20 years ago and got people on the phone quickly then wrote my story. The woman who answered the CDC phone said that I would have to complete an online form, listing my name and my questions, and then a press officer would get back to me. I haven’t done that yet. Maybe I will take a walk outside instead.

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Christine E. Black‘s work has been published in Antietam Review, 13^th Moon, American Journal of Poetry, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod International, Red Rock Review, The Virginia Journal of Education, Friends Journal, The Veteran, Sojourners Magazine, Iris Magazine, English Journal, Amethyst Review, and other publications. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Pablo Neruda Prize. 

Featured image is from Getty

Marshal Ivan Konev, the famous Soviet general who was responsible for liberating most of Eastern Europe from Nazi Germany and its allies has been a figure of respect. He has been immortalized in a series of busts and statues that can be found throughout Eastern Europe, including Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia. However, Czechia is a country that is beginning to act in a very “un-European” way after removing a monument of Marshal Konev from Prague.

Konev was the first Allied commander to enter the Czechslovakian capital after the Prague uprising in 1945 and was immortalized when a monument to him was erected in 1980. However, this cultural and historical monument was defiled when it was removed on April 3 by Prague District 6 mayor Ondřej Kolář. Kolář used the coronavirus state of emergency to remove the statue to avoid protests from “strange people from both the right and left scum,” as he described the people who opposed the statues removal.

Czech President Miloš Zeman shared outrage over the removed statue as “an abuse of the state of emergency,” but is yet to have the monument reinstated in Prague or delivered to Russia. Although Zeman may be friendly to Russia, there is little doubt he is an anomaly in a country that is continually moving towards Western liberalism.

The actions of Kolář is rather much closer akin to that of authoritarian and historical revisionist Ukraine who has long embarked in a process of removing all traces of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Although Western countries may oppose the Soviet Union and its guiding socialist ideology, even in liberal United Kingdom, the grave and monument to Karl Marx is preserved and not harassed in Highgate Cemetery, along with other communist figures like Mansoor Hekmat and Claudia Jones.

Czechoslovakia surrendered to the Nazi war machine in 1938 without a fight by handing over all their weapons, unlike the Polish who resisted in 1939. Czechoslovakia only had its statehood restored when the Soviet Union expelled the Nazis from the entirety of Eastern Europe.

 

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated:

“Czechia respects Red Army soldiers, where in addition to the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and other nations of the then Soviet Union, fought for our liberation. The statue of Marshal Konev is a war memorial and is covered by the 1993 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, but the relocation of the statue does not contradict its wording. The MFA expects the statue to be treated with dignity.”

The Ministry then states

“If the Russian Federation were interested in obtaining a statue of Marshal Konev, it would have to negotiate with its owner. This is not for the MFA. “

Effectively, although the Ministry claims it respects all victims of the Soviet Red Army and expects the statue to be treated with dignity, it is wiping its hands clean of taking any responsibility for the defiled monument. Czechia is not willing to go beyond words to defend its own history and those who died for its own statehood, and rather Mayor Kolář has free reign to do as he wants with no repercussion from the state. Kolář should be restrained at the state level and Prague should not keep aloof under far-fetched pretexts of non-interference in local self-government.

In other European countries – such as Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, the Netherlands – this would be absolutely unthinkable and only political marginals and radicals are capable of this. Yet  Czechia, that has submissively swung towards the West, is acting in a manner that not even the West engages in.

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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

There are 2 camps in the Middle East: those countries which work with ‘Israel’, and those who do not.  The countries which have established relationships with ‘Israel’ are Turkey; United Arab Emirates (UAE); Saudi Arabia; Qatar; Bahrain; Oman; Jordan; Egypt. This group of countries is backed up by the US and the EU.

The countries which do not have a relationship with Israel are Syria; Lebanon; Iraq; Iran; Occupied Palestinian; Yemen; Algeria.  This group of countries has established a very good relationship with Russia and China.

The world is split between 2 spheres of influence, with the US and EU on 1 side, and Russia and China on the other.  This situation is very similar to the ‘Cold War’ years when the world was split between the Soviet Union and the US.

The Arab Gulf role in the Middle East conflicts

In Syria, since 2011 the Arab Gulf countries, allied with Turkey and ‘Israel’, have sent and trained terrorists, who are following the political ideology of Radical Islam, which is not a religion, or a sect. These countries have bowed to the pressure of the US sanctions on Syria, and have refused to do business with Syria, even on humanitarian items.  They have also waged political war on Syria, by accepting the removal of Syria from the Arab League, which was proposed by Qatar at the beginning of the conflict.

In Libya, the Arab-Gulf countries have been funding both sides of a civil war, while stealing petroleum resources there.  While Turkey and Qatar are funding and supporting the forces of Prime Minister Sarraj, the UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are funding and supporting the opposing forces of Field Marshall Haftar. Recently, it was revealed that the UAE bought Israeli military weapons and sent them to Haftar. Beginning in 2011, these countries participated in the ‘regime change’ project which saw Colonel Qaddafi removed from power, and murdered.

The chaos that exists in Iraq today began with the US military intervention in Iraq, which included 2 wars.  The Arab Gulf countries, with their ally Israel, have funded and supported the Iraqi Kurdish separatists, who have been successful in dividing Iraq.  It was the Arab Gulf countries that nurtured and gave birth to the political ideology we know as Radical Islam. The various terrorist groups, such as ISIS, Jibhat al Nusra, Al Qaeda, and others are all the creation of the Arab Gulf countries.  The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw the stealing of petroleum resources, gold bullion from the Central Bank, and antiquities from the National Museum in Baghdad. This looting of Iraqi resources is continuing.  The Arab Gulf countries have funded and supported differing Muslim sects to ensure the various groups will continue to fight, thus keeping Iraq weak and divided.

Lebanon may be a small country; however, it has a big role to play in the region. The Arab Gulf countries have funded and supported the US and the ‘Israel’ during the 2006 war on the Lebanese Resistance movement, and have launched a propaganda war through their media.  On the political side, the Arab Gulf has invested in certain Lebanese politicians who work as their agents. The Arab Gulf countries have deported Lebanese workers who belong to a certain religious sect, which fuels the sectarian conflict in the region. The Arab Gulf countries have waged economical war on Lebanon by freezing bank accounts, under the guise of ‘fighting terrorism’, but in reality, they are fighting the Lebanese Resistance movement.

Saudi Arabia, one of the wealthiest countries on earth, is waging war on one of the poorest countries on earth, Yemen. After many years, and war crimes, they have failed to occupy Yemen. It is Saudi Arabia’s strategic goal to occupy and annex Aden, the main port of Yemen, which sits on the gateway to the Red Sea.  The UAE is the partner in the war on Yemen.

Like a couple who are not invited to the party, Turkey and its ally Qatar, have been singled out of the Arab Gulf alliance.  Differing political ideologies have created the split: with Turkey and Qatar following the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, while the rest of the Gulf adhere to the Salafi and Wahabi strain of Radical Islam.

The US-EU-NATO responsibility in the current Middle East conflict zone

“The Arab Spring” was not a grass-roots movement but was a 3 party project designed in Washington and Brussels.  2011 saw ‘regime change’ plans put into action in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, which has also suffered from a US ‘regime-change’ project in 2003. The Arab Gulf: UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar participated in “The Arab Spring” by funding the US-EU-NATO project, at the behest of the ‘western civilized nations’, who used the Arabs as their source of funds.  The Arabs were also used for propaganda purposes, such as Qatar’s “Al Jazeera”, and Saudi Arabia’s “Al Hadath” and “Al Arabia”.

The US is continuing to steal resources from Syria and Iraq, such as the oil and gas wells they have occupied illegally, in the contrivance of international law. The US has made numerous unprovoked military attacks on Syria, and has very severe economical sanctions on Syria which prevent the rebuilding of Syria, and have prevented Syria from buying even the most critical humanitarian items, including supplies to fight the COVID-19.

Turkey-Israel relationship

Turkey has bought stolen Syrian oil, firstly from ISIS, and later from the Syrian-Kurdish separatists.  Turkey then sells the oil to ‘Israel’ through a private Israeli businessman.  Turkey and ‘Israel’ work in tandem, and both have played a major role in the 9-year conflict in Syria. They share intelligence to coordinate attacks on Syria.  Turkey is currently occupying parts of Syria, and ‘Israel’ has been occupying the Golan Heights of Syria since 1967. Both Turkey and ‘Israel’ have plans to annex Syrian lands.  Turkey is occupying the Syrian region of Iskenderun since the end of WW1.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

“The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.”—Lysander Spooner, American abolitionist and legal theorist

Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.

Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now.

What is this war on cash?

It’s a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

According to economist Steve Forbes,

“The real reason for this war on cash—start with the big bills and then work your way down—is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.”

Much like the war on drugs and the war on terror, this so-called “war on cash” is being sold to the public as a means of fighting terrorists, drug dealers, tax evaders and now COVID-19 germs.

Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with the ultimate method to track, control you and punish you.

In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal. The rationale (by police) is that cash is the currency for illegal transactions given that it’s harder to track, can be used to pay illegal immigrants, and denies the government its share of the “take,” so doing away with paper money will help law enforcement fight crime and help the government realize more revenue.

Despite what we know about the government and its history of corruption, bumbling, fumbling and data breaches, not to mention how easily technology can be used against us, the campaign to do away with cash is really not a hard sell.

It’s not a hard sell, that is, if you know the right buttons to push, and the government has become a grand master in the art of getting the citizenry to do exactly what it wants. Remember, this is the same government that plans to use behavioral science tactics to “nudge” citizens to comply with the government’s public policy and program initiatives.

It’s also not a hard sell if you belong to the Digital Generation, that segment of the population for whom technology is second nature and “the first generation born into a world that has never not known digital life.”

And it’s certainly not a hard sell if you belong to the growing class of Americans who use their cell phones to pay bills, purchase goods, and transfer funds.

In much the same way that Americans have opted into government surveillance through the convenience of GPS devices and cell phones, digital cash—the means of paying with one’s debit card, credit card or cell phone—is becoming the de facto commerce of the American police state.

Not too long ago, it was estimated that smart phones would replace cash and credit cards altogether by 2020. Right on schedule, a growing number of businesses are adopting no-cash policies, including certain airlines, hotels, rental car companies, restaurants and retail stores. In Sweden, even the homeless and churches accept digital cash.

Making the case for “never, ever carrying cash” in lieu of a digital wallet, journalist Lisa Rabasca Roepe argues that cash is inconvenient, ATM access is costly, and it’s now possible to reimburse people using digital apps such as Venmo. Thus, there’s no longer a need for cash.

“More and more retailers and grocery stores are embracing Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay,” notes Roepe. “PayPal’s app is now accepted at many chain stores including Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Home Depot, and Office Depot. Walmart and CVS have both developed their own payment apps while their competitors Target and RiteAid are working on their own apps.”

It’s not just cash that is going digital, either.

A growing number of states are looking to adopt digital driver’s licenses that would reside on your mobile phone. These licenses would include all of the information contained on your printed license, along with a few “extras” such as real-time data downloaded directly from your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

Of course, reading between the lines, having a digital driver’s license will open you up to much the same jeopardy as digital cash: it will make it possible for the government to better track your movements, monitor your activities and communications and ultimately shut you down.

So what’s the deal here?

Despite all of the advantages that go along with living in a digital age—namely, convenience—it’s hard to imagine how a cashless world navigated by way of a digital wallet doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for what little privacy we have left and leave us vulnerable to the likes of government thieves and data hackers.

First, when I say privacy, I’m not just referring to the things that you don’t want people to know about, those little things you do behind closed doors that are neither illegal nor harmful but embarrassing or intimate. I am also referring to the things that are deeply personal and which no one need know about, certainly not the government and its constabulary of busybodies, nannies, Peeping Toms, jail wardens and petty bureaucrats.

Second, we’re already witnessing how easy it will be for government agents to manipulate digital wallets for their own gain. For example, civil asset forfeiture schemes are becoming even more profitable for police agencies thanks to ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data) devices supplied by the Department of Homeland Security that allow police to not only determine the balance of any magnetic-stripe card (i.e., debit, credit and gift cards) but also freeze and seize any funds on pre-paid money cards. In fact, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment for police to scan or swipe your credit card.

Third, as commentator Paul Craig Roberts observed, while Americans have been distracted by the government’s costly war on terror, “the financial system, working hand-in-hand with policymakers, has done more damage to Americans than terrorists could possibly inflict.” Ultimately, as Roberts—who served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan—makes clear, the war on cash is about giving the government the ultimate control of the economy and complete access to the citizenry’s pocketbook.

Fourth, if there’s a will, there’s a way. So far, every technological convenience that has made our lives easier has also become our Achilles’ heel, opening us up to greater vulnerabilities from hackers and government agents alike. In recent years, the U.S. government has been repeatedly hacked. In 2015, the Office of Personnel Management had more than 20 million personnel files stolen, everything from Social Security numbers to birth dates and fingerprint records. In 2014, it was the White House, the State Department, the Post Office and other government agencies, along with a host of financial institutions, retailers and entertainment giants that had their files breached. And these are the people in charge of protecting oursensitive information?

Fifth, if there’s one entity that will not stop using cash for its own nefarious purposes, it’s the U.S. government. Cash is the currency used by the government to pay off its foreign “associates.” For instance, the Obama administration flew more than $400 million in cash to Iran, reportedly as part of a financial settlement with the country. Critics claim the money was ransom paid for the return of American hostages. And then there was the $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills that the U.S. flew to Iraq only to claim it had no record of what happened to the money. It just disappeared, we were told. So when government economists tell you that two-thirds of all $100 bills in circulation are overseas—more than half a trillion dollars’ worth—it’s a pretty good bet that the government played a significant part in their export.

Sixth, this drive to do away with cash is part of a larger global trend driven by international financial institutions and the United Nations that is transforming nations of all sizes, from the smallest nation to the biggest, most advanced economies.

Finally, short of returning to a pre-technological, Luddite age, there’s really no way to pull this horse back now that it’s left the gate. While doing so is near impossible, it would also mean doing without the many conveniences and advantages that are the better angels, if you will, of technology’s totalitarian tendencies: the internet, medical advances, etc.

To our detriment, we have virtually no control over who accesses our private information, how it is stored, or how it is used. Whether we ever had much control remains up for debate. However, in terms of our bargaining power over digital privacy rights, we have been reduced to a pitiful, unenviable position in which we can only hope and trust that those in power will treat our information with respect.

Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have come full circle, back to a pre-revolutionary era of taxation without any real representation.

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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].

Perhaps the most serious revelation to have emerged from the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, is President John F. Kennedy‘s willingness to knowingly increase the possibility of nuclear war by up to 50%.

US General David Burchinal, then a high-ranking planner on the Pentagon staff, recalled how JFK took Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev “right to the brink of nuclear war and he looked over the edge and had no stomach for it”.

In Khrushchev’s critically important correspondence to JFK, which the latter received at 6pm on 26 October 1962, the US president rebuffed complying with its key suggestions. The experienced American author Noam Chomsky noted that,

“Kennedy nonetheless refused Khrushchev’s proposal for public withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba and Turkey; only the withdrawal from Cuba could be public, so as to protect the US right to place missiles on Russia’s borders or anywhere else it chose”. (1)

As the missile crisis was peaking, JFK declared the highest nuclear alert short of launch, DEFCON 2. According to the Harvard University strategic analyst, Graham Allison, president Kennedy authorised “NATO aircraft with Turkish pilots” or of other nationalities “to take off, fly to Moscow, and drop a bomb”.

Allison highlighted that Kennedy “ordered actions that he knew would increase the risk not only of conventional war but also of nuclear war”. Allison estimates that the possible 50% figure is a realistic evaluation pertaining to the increased chance of nuclear war erupting, because of JFK’s hegemonic actions during the missile crisis. His willingness to gamble with the fate of the world, in order to maintain US imperialist goals, has been dispatched to oblivion by the institutions of power.

One of the pivotal factors resulting in the missile crisis was, quite clearly, the major terrorist war launched by the Kennedy administration against revolutionary Cuba, titled Operation Mongoose. This campaign of subversion and terror had the strong backing of Kennedy. He endorsed it in late November 1961 (2). The terrorist attacks on Cuba are euphemistically described as “clandestine operations” or “covert actions”, when in fact they constituted murderous assaults over a sustained period of time.

JFK placed his younger brother, the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in charge of directing Operation Mongoose. RFK pushed ahead vigorously with the plans, assisted by Air Force officer Edward Lansdale. Operation Mongoose included introducing “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba and its leader Fidel Castro, a phrase used by Robert Kennedy’s biographer, Arthur Schlesinger, who was also JFK’s Latin American advisor.

Early in 1962, Robert Kennedy informed CIA and Pentagon officials that ousting Castro “is the top priority of the United States government – all else is secondary – no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared”. (3)

The terrors of the earth were brought home through various actions: the bombing of Cuban petrochemical plants and other industrial installations, the sinking of her vessels, poisoning of food crops and livestock, etc.

The Kennedy administration escalated the terrorist assaults against Cuba in August 1962, two months before the missile crisis. On August 23rd, JFK issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) No. 181: “a directive to engineer an internal revolt that would be followed by US military intervention” involving “significant US military plans, maneuvers, and movement of forces and equipment” against Cuba. (4)

The day after Kennedy’s directive, August 24th, exile terrorists based in Miami executed a speedboat machine gun attack on a Cuban seaside hotel, killing a number of Cubans and Russians inside. This latest rampage incensed not only the Cuban government, but undoubtedly those in the Kremlin. Also in August 1962, CIA agents contaminated a large Cuban sugar shipment destined for the Soviet Union. Tainting of Cuba’s sugar exports here was not an isolated affair.

More terrorist attacks took place during September 1962, including targeted raids on two Cuban cargo ships and, somewhat incredibly, an attack on a British cargo vessel. The vast majority of these acts were carried out freely from Miami, by right-wing Cuban exile groups.

Castro said of the early assaults against Cuba that,

“Well in the first few days and months those terrorist activities were organised by [Fulgencio] Batista elements really – former police officers and Batista people mixed in with some counter-revolutionaries. But even then the US administration, using those elements, was working intensely against Cuba… Cuba has had to face more terrorism than practically any other country on earth”. (5)

Among those engaged in the attacks from almost the beginning, were the Cuban-born mercenaries Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. These men would quickly become two of the most notorious international terrorists in the Western hemisphere, perpetrating outrages not only upon Cuba, but across Latin America, even including assaults on embassies and diplomats. Posada and Bosch were arch-enemies of Castro personally, and the Cuban leader described the pair as “the most bloodthirsty exponents of imperialist terrorism against our nation”.

Bosch fled to Miami in July 1960 with his wife and four children, following the failure of an anti-communist rebellion he helped to organise from the Escambray Mountains, in central Cuba.

Posada joined Bosch in Miami shortly thereafter in February 1961. From the early 1960s, Miami was becoming one of the biggest bases for terrorist planning operations anywhere in the world. Over previous months, Posada had been implementing terror and sabotage acts within Cuba itself, enjoying CIA assistance, as confirmed by him in interviews. Posada said,

“the CIA taught us everything… they taught us explosives, they taught us how to kill, bomb, trained us in sabotage”. (6)

Posada worked as a CIA agent for a number of years from the mid-1960s, as well as being an informant (7). He relocated to Venezuela, spending extensive periods in the South American country, including jail time. Bosch was in contact with the CIA in Miami from January 1962, as declassified files show, and late the following year he met a CIA agent twice in New York City (8). Bosch followed quickly on Posada’s heels, before the former moved to Chile in December 1974, where he (Bosch) received protection from the far-right US-supported dictator, Augusto Pinochet.

Regarding Posada, Chomsky wrote that his “subsequent operations in the 1960s were directed by the CIA. When he later joined Venezuelan intelligence with CIA help, he was able to arrange for Orlando Bosch, an associate from his CIA days who had been convicted in the US for a bomb attack on a Cuba-bound freighter, to join him in Venezuela to organize further attacks against Cuba”. (9)

Just two months after Castro’s assumption to power, in March 1959 the US National Security Council (NSC), under president Dwight D. Eisenhower, was formulating designs to overthrow the new Cuban government. By May 1959, the CIA was already arming anti-communist individuals inside Cuba, including Posada who was still present in his birth country at this point.

Posada remembered how the CIA provided him with “time-bomb pencils, fuses, detonator cords, and everything necessary for acts of sabotage” in Cuba (10). Posada’s early activities were smoked out by the Cuban government and he just evaded capture.

Through 1959, the CIA was supervising bombing and incendiary air raids on Cuba, which increased in frequency during the winter of 1959-1960. In March 1960, the Eisenhower administration made a formal decision in secret to overthrow Castro as soon as possible. Eisenhower would not succeed. In January 1961 his two-term presidency ended, and now the plans would be left for Kennedy to advance.

On 17 April 1961, Kennedy sanctioned a US-run invasion at the Bay of Pigs in western Cuba, which was originally concocted by Eisenhower. Posada himself was involved in organising the Bay of Pigs attack, but he would not be present at the disembarkation point. Posada, though already a terrorist, then had no military experience. He would not receive proper training in arms until 1963 at Fort Benning, the US Army post straddling the Georgia-Alabama border.

Castro, who was present in the frontline at the Bay of Pigs, said of the invasion that, “within about 60 hours, between dawn on the 17th and 6pm on the 19th we defeated them, after a terrible battle in which we lost more than 150 men and had hundreds of wounded. The battle was fought within sight of American ships offshore. We took about 1,200 mercenaries prisoner, almost all of the enemy forces who had been in battle, the exceptions being, of course, the dead”. (11)

The Bay of Pigs invasion was enacted in an atmosphere of “hysteria” relating to Cuba in the White House, as testified to by former Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, in July 1975 before the US Senate’s Church Committee. The mood in Washington immediately following the failed attack degenerated further, and was “almost savage” according to Chester Bowles, a veteran US politician.

Bowles revealed “there was an almost frantic reaction for an action program which people would grab onto” (12). This became the terrorist campaign that was Operation Mongoose. At a National Security Council meeting shortly after, Bowles found the atmosphere “almost as emotional” and he noticed “the great lack of moral integrity” on display.

The Bay of Pigs defeat was not terribly surprising. JFK, with some influence over its implementation, was a military novice who saw intermittent action in the US Navy during World War II. He was honourably discharged before war’s end due to “physical disability”. For reasons such as these, Kennedy was held in contempt by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff – and especially by General Curtis LeMay, the hawkish Air Force commander.

The situation was different in Cuba. By 1961 Castro was an experienced commander of forces in the field, and his authority was unquestioned. For much of the 1950s, he and his units pursued combat primarily through the execution of guerrilla warfare, and often against significantly larger enemy numbers.

Guerrilla tactics require high levels of organisation, planning and imagination. Castro’s guerrillas proved themselves capable of meeting the challenging demands, borne out by their toppling of the tyrant Fulgencio Batista in early 1959, someone who had been propped up by the world’s most powerful country. From the early 1950s, through operations and other campaigns across Cuba, Castro had also acquired an intimate knowledge of the Cuban terrain. His attention to detail was strengthened by having a photographic memory, noticed by those close to him and written about in future decades by historians. (13)

Castro’s knowledge and expertise as a military commander, combined with his familiarity of the Cuban landmass, would prove invaluable in the anticipation of, and reaction to, the Bay of Pigs invasion – and in responding more broadly to other threats later on.

Of president Kennedy, the actual record shows that he was a firm proponent in waging both terrorist campaigns and aggression to attain his ends. These grim realities are overlooked or unknown by delusional admirers glorifying his legacy. In early 1962, JFK requested the Joint Chiefs of Staff to attack South Vietnam by sending US aircraft to bomb villages there, which stood as a clear invasion, and that included among other things chemical warfare usage. (14)

In the Caribbean JFK’s terrorist war against Cuba was, as stated, a central factor which resulted in the missile crisis occurring from mid-October 1962. It was hoped that these attacks would undermine Castro’s popularity, before another planned US invasion that was scheduled for October 1962 – as the Cubans and Russians most likely knew, an element behind Khrushchev’s shipping of nuclear missiles to Cuba.

During the years leading up to the missile crisis, from March 1955 until October 1960 Washington had stationed over 3,000 nuclear weapons across Europe, in half a dozen NATO countries (15). The nuclear arsenals were placed there with Moscow in mind, and it was initially implemented during the Eisenhower presidency. Yet by the time the missile crisis was unfolding under Kennedy, there were almost 5,000 US nuclear devices scattered across Europe. The Soviets did not station nuclear-armed weaponry outside their borders, until Khrushchev dispatched his missiles to Cuba in 1962.

The Kennedy presidency swiftly renewed terrorist operations against Cuba, after the missile crisis had officially concluded on 28 October 1962. During 8 November 1962, an exile team sent from America destroyed a Cuban industrial plant, an attack which the Castro government claimed led to the deaths of 400 workers. Ten days before Kennedy was assassinated, the US president approved a CIA plan for “destruction operations” on Cuba by US-backed proxies “against a large oil refinery and storage facilities, a large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor facilities, and underwater demolition of docks and ships”. (16)

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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 John Buell, “President Trump: Nuclear Business As Usual?”, Common Dreams, 29 November 2017, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/11/29/president-trump-nuclear-business-usual

2 L.V. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Political Military and Intelligence Aspects (Palgrave Macmillan; 1999 edition, 8 Jun. 1999), pp. 23-24

3 Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, Volumes 10-12, p. 42

4 Noam Chomsky, Who Rules The World? (Metropolitan Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Hamish Hamilton, 5 May 2016), p. 109

5 Fidel Castro, My Life: A Spoken Autobiography (Simon & Schuster Ome; Reprint edition, 9 June 2009), p. 252

6 Brett Wilkins, “Luis Posada Carriles, Hemisphere’s Most Wanted Terrorist, Dies Free In Miami At Age 90”, CounterPunch, 28 May 2018, https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/28/luis-posada-carriles-hemispheres-most-wanted-terrorist-dies-free-in-miami-at-age-90/

7 The National Security Archive, “Luis Posada Carriles – The Declassified Record”, 10 May 2005, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/

8 The National Security Archive, “Central Intelligence Agency – Washington D.C.”, 20 May 2005, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB157/19761209.pdf

9 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Penguin, 1 January 2004), p. 86

10 Ann Louise Bardach, Twilight of the Assassins, The Atlantic, 1 November 2006, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/11/twilight-of-the-assassins/305291/

11 Castro, My Life: A spoken Autobiography, p. 258

12 Thomas G. Paterson, Kennedy’s Quest For Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963 (Oxford University Press; New Ed Edition, 19 Mar. 1992), p. 136

13 Servando Gonzales, The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol (Spooks Books, 1 Jan. 2002), p. 164

14 Noam Chomsky, “Anniversaries From ‘Unhistory'”, Truthout, 6 February 2012, https://truthout.org/articles/anniversaries-from-unhistory/

15 Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin & William Burr, “Where they were [US nuclear weapons abroad]”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1999, https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/pidb/meetings/where-they-were.pdf

16 Chomsky, Who Rules The World?, p. 109

In No Exit, the translated title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, Huis Clos, three deceased characters find themselves in a room, ostensibly in Hell, in what transpires as a permanent wait.  Locked after being ushered in by a valet, with quite literally no means of escape, they are confronted with each other’s moods, lies and eventual confessions.  Sadism, cowardice and mendacity figure.  The torment each character subjects the other to leads to that famous observation: L’enfer, c’est les autres (Hell is other people.)  Humans are inventive, and tiringly so, in ensuring that torture or physical requirement need not be necessary in inflicting enduring misery.

The global lockdowns and forced hibernations should not just be seen as measures of imposed isolation.  The Pandemic State has done much to kill off that delicate creature of solitude, the routine of tranquil space essential to life.  Privacy does not merely die before the wizardry of heat sensors, drones and state surveillance; it also vanishes in spaces crowded and crammed, even with your intimates. 

In the context of health and a raging pandemic, paranoia can also be a continuous companion.  Does a cough in bed or a rising fever entail a risk to the entire family? The unfortunate sufferer, whatever the actual illness, risks accusation and banishment.  The converse is also true: using a disease to affect vulnerability, thereby keeping a tormented partner or relation in that space.  The range of human manipulations in that regard are legend and endless.

As Crystal Justice, chief marketing and development officer at the US National Domestic Violence Hotline puts it,

“We are hearing from survivors how COVID-19 is already being used by their abusive partners to further control and abuse, how COVID-19 is already impacting their ability to access support and services like accessing shelter, counselling, different things that they would typically lean on in their communities.”

The British medical journal The Lancet, in a survey on the literature on forced isolation, had few surprises.  “Most reviewed studies reported negative psychological effects including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion and anger.”  Problems arise from the duration of quarantine, leading the authors to warn that such periods should be “for no longer than required”.  Clear rationales for such quarantine, accompanied by “information about protocols” with sufficient provisions, should follow. Such technical formulations, fine as they are to script, do little to alleviate the social an physical constrictions that place people in Sartre’s room of hell.   

If hell is other people, some versions are more hellish than others.  China, the first country to impose lockdown measures in response to COVID-19, saw the immediate social effects: neglect, domestic violence, enervating anxiety.  Retired police officer turned activist Wan Fei claimed that domestic violence reports had doubled since China’s cities had gone into lockdown.  The police station in Jingzhou’s Jianli County had received over triple the number of reports from February 2019 – 162 in total.  “According to our statistics, 90% of the causes of violence are related to the COVID-19 epidemic.”

This has also been accompanied by a certain apathy in some responses from the police authorities, if the observations of Feng Yuang, director of Weiping, a Beijing-based women’s rights non-profit, are anything to go by. “The police can detain people for insulting (leading respiratory disease expert) Zhong Nanshan online and arrest someone for not wearing a mask on the street. If they use the epidemic as an excuse not to deal with domestic violence cases, that’s not acceptable.”

Consulting the statistics on domestic violence is always a dispiriting exercise.  They have become even more telling of late.  The United Nations calls it the “shadow pandemic”.  Following the March 17 lockdown in France, a 30% increase in domestic violence reports has been registered.  Helplines in Cyprus and Singapore have registered an increase in calls – 30% and 33% respectively.  A Women’s Safety New South Wales (Australia) survey found that frontline workers had registered a 40% increase in calls for assistance from survivors, with 70% reporting an increase in the level of complexity in cases during the coronavirus outbreak.  (Rates of domestic violence in Australia – with one in four women experiencing some physical form of it since 15, was already horrendous.)

The impediments for sufferers to access services has also seen social workers and activists turn to more virtual and online methods of communication, a point that can only ever be half-satisfying at best.  Calls to Italian helplines may have dropped (it tends to be difficult to make calls in near presence of an abuser), but the use of emails and text messages has increased.  Lella Palladino of the activist group EVA Cooperativa told the Guardian about the desperation arising from those in confined spaces. “For sure there is an overwhelming emergency right now.  There is more desperation as women can’t go out.”

The Pandemic State is insular and closed.  Technology has given an illusion of proximity to ameliorate this condition, at least to some degree.  It is being praised for connecting people during periods of pandemic isolation.  But you still have to be able to use it.  Unfortunately for those unblessed in their fraught human relations, living in less than commodious accommodation, there may simply be No Exit. 

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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]

At times like now, ideas lying around dormant on the shelf become reality.

Economic and other crisis conditions are times when most people can be convinced to accept unacceptable policies they’d likely reject otherwise.

During and after 2008-09 economic crisis conditions, Americans were brainwashed to accept force-fed austerity, frozen wages, and loss of benefits when economic stimulus and other government help were needed.

Economic recovery was for the nation’s privileged class exclusively.

Ordinary Americans experienced protracted hard times that may become much worse today looking ahead, the same true in other Western societies.

In his 1995 book titled, “The Rotten Heart of Europe,” noted euro expert Bernard Connolly said the following:

“The true story of the ERM (Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism) has been one of duplicity, skullduggery, conflict; of economic harm done to every country and in the caste interests of the elite; of the distortions of economic logic and the dilution of political accountability,” adding:

“The implication is that increasing globalization of economic activity and mobility of production has been purposely implemented in such a way as to render already destroyed ‘nation-state(s)’ meaningless entit(ies) in economic terms.”

Protracted “austerity will lead to social unrest” in Europe, the US or elsewhere. Hard times are fertile ground for revolutions and fascist dictatorships.

Censorship is the new normal in the US and West — speech, press, and academic freedoms at risk. Without them all other rights are threatened.

Social and conventional media, Google, and other tech giants are complicit in a campaign to suppress content conflicting with the official narrative.

Controlling the message is the hallmark of totalitarian rule. Anything conflicting with the official narrative on vital issues is considered “inauthentic behavior.”

The US already is a police state. Is martial law the next shoe to drop? Will Trump declare it if current conditions worsen?

While not included in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 9 mentions suspension of habeas, saying the following:

“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Will Trump invoke “public safety” or another pretext to take this action?

Article 1, Section 8 empowers Congress to call “forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

The US military and National Guard are today’s “militia.”

Martial law suspends civil rule, replacing it with military authority under the president as commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces — including the National Guard when activated.

During the Civil War, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers.

He suspended the Constitution and habeas corpus, forcefully closed courts, arbitrarily ordered arrests, conscripted US citizens without congressional consent, and closed newspapers opposing his policies.

His Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free a single slave. He wanted them deported at war’s end to maintain America as a white supremacist society.

History taught in the US at all levels of education conceals the nation’s dark side.

What happened before can happen again by presidential diktat.

According to Constitutional Law Professor Bruce Ackerman, US presidents can institute policies by executive orders, military orders, national security and homeland security presidential directives, along with other ways of circumventing Congress and the courts.

They wage illegal wars without Security Council and congressional authorization.

White House lawyers justify the unjustifiable. “They serve as authoritative judges for the executive branch, providing a legal framework for millions of civilian and military personnel as they implement executive decrees,” Ackerman explained.

Checks and balances don’t work, new ones needed, he stressed — enforced to restrain executive power-grabbing.

Following Japan’s December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, Hawaii, not a US state at the time, was placed under martial law.

After Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, martial law was declared in New Orleans.

Throughout US history, it’s been imposed by federal or state authorities numerous times on the pretext of public safety, restoring order, or another reason.

Will Trump impose it if the US economy is reopened too soon, as apparently planned, and COVID-19 outbreaks increase greatly?

Will larger-scale outbreaks than already if occur be used as a pretext for hardening police state rule, including suspension of the Constitution and imposition of martial law?

Most of the population is locked down. Will Trump by presidential diktat order the extrajudicial arrest and indefinite detention of targeted individuals on the phony pretext of public safety and security?

This type harshness is what fascist tyranny is all about.

Is it coming ahead to the US full-blown in the form of presidential national emergency powers?

The USA Patriot Act was written before 9/11. Is other draconian legislation on the shelf — ready to be rolled out by congressional action or presidential decree?

Is America the way it was pre-COVID-19, warts and all, to be replaced by hardened rule?

If COVID-19 abates and more greatly flares up this summer or fall will November elections be suspended or cancelled?

Whatever may unfold ahead most likely was planned by the nation’s ruling class.

It happened pre-and-post-9/11. It may be happening again now for ill, not good — including draconian mass surveillance more intensive than before, along with other police state policies.

Is a dystopian future coming for ordinary Americans, resisters subject to harsh repercussions — constitutional rights declared null and void?

What’s unthinkable may be planned and inevitable.

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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 konbini.com

Never before in US history were social distancing, sheltering in place, and lockdowns advised or imposed by states and cities because of a contagious diseases outbreak.

COVID-19 is unique because its outbreak resulted in all of the above in place in most of the US and other countries.

Why this disease and not other contagious ones?

True enough it’s highly contagious so precautions are clearly warranted, especially for the elderly, anyone with a weakened immune system, and others in poor health from other issues.

According to biomedical data scientist Dr. John Ioannidas,

“reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected” is lacking including from the WHO and CDC in the US, adding:

Death rates are “buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from influenza-like illness.”

At least eight coronavirus strains exist. Infection rates worldwide differ markedly, some countries more successful in containing outbreaks than others — the US notably unsuccessful, China very successful with four times the population.

Is its healthcare system more advanced than America’s or other Western countries?

Is it because of increasing US indifference toward public health, its infrastructure unprepared to deal with a widespread outbreak of any infectious disease — including healthcare professionals lacking personal protective equipment (PPE) when most needed?

US public health officials haven’t provided a demographic breakdown on COVID-19 infected individuals and deaths from the disease.

What was the actual breakdown according to age and pre-existing health issues of individuals affected?

What were the personal health habits of infected individuals, including smoking, alcohol consumption, unhealthy diets, lack of exercise, use of illicit drugs, overuse of legal ones, STDs, and hypertension, etc.?

In 2017, data showed that health issues related to smoking alone cost an estimated 168 billion dollars in the US — compared to only 11 billion for illicit drug use.

Overuse of prescription drugs causes far more harm. All pharmaceuticals have potentially harmful side effects — why using no more than necessary as prescribed is vital.

Around one-third of the US population is obese, largely because of unhealthy diets and lack of regular exercise.

US children, youths and adults are poorly educated on good health practices.

US television ads notably promote all sorts of unhealthy junk foods health conscious individuals avoid.

Hazardous to health GMO foods and ingredients infest US supermarket shelves, comprising most foods Americans eat daily.

One Green Planet’s Erin Trauth explained why many US doctors “can’t help you with (proper) nutrition.”

Most US medical schools provide too little nutrition education nor on the dangers of over-medication.

She explained that “the US is one of the most overly medicated countries in the world, yet we can’t seem to get a handle on heart disease, obesity, and allergies.”

Big Pharma provides considerable funding to US medical schools, indoctrinating future doctors to prescribe drugs as the first line of defense in treating illnesses.

An earlier joint American Medical Student Association (AMSA)/Pew Charitable Trusts study found how extensively drug companies influence US medical schools and healthcare in the country overall.

Med school students are taught about what drugs to prescribe for what health conditions. Professors promote their use, some on Big Pharma’s payroll.

Drugs clearly play a roll in treating diseases. Overuse or improper combinations of medications can be harmful to human health.

A sound rule of thumb is getting  reliable medical advice, using drugs in proper amounts, never more than needed.

China’s Zhejiang University School of Medicine’s “Handbook of CoVid-19 Prevention and Treatment” provides reliable information on prevention and containment of COVID-19 — what’s not emphasized in the US.

It stresses the importance of proper nutrition, use of probiotics an herbal formulas, along with traditional Chinese good health practices other than prescription drugs that most Americans rely on predominantly for health issues — instead of sound preventive practices to avoid them.

Scientifically proven good health practices provide the most effective defense against disease and premature aging.

Clearly laid off Americans and others elsewhere want to go back to work.

Doing it prematurely may increase outbreaks instead of continuing all-out efforts to contain them.

China’s draconian two-month lockdown worked. Though data is highly imperfect, they show the current rate of outbreaks in the US is around sixfold what China experienced.

Short-term pain for longterm gain makes sense. Back to work in the US can wait until COVID-19 outbreaks are at least substantially contained.

Reopening the economy too soon could increase their numbers considerably.

The economy can’t function with sick workers. Wellness depends on widespread COVID-19 testing, PPE for medical staff, and treatment for the sick.

A national initiative is needed. States with large and growing numbers of outbreaks can’t do it on their own.

Trump and Joe Biden want worker safety and welfare sacrificed for corporate profit-making at all times under all conditions.

Now is time when universal healthcare is most needed.

Without it in the US makes containing and treating outbreaks of diseases much harder because of affordability.

It’s compounded by US public health getting short shrift — warmaking, corporate handouts, and profit-making prioritized over human health.

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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 global pandemic is being used by the United States as a smokescreen for illegal actions in the international scenario, which, due to the media focus on coronavirus coverage, are not reported and happen unnoticed. The new American foreign policy target is the outer space. Washington conducted a dangerous legal and political maneuver in the space race of the 21st century, approving measures that violate public international law in its new decree on space mining.

Last week, American President Donald Trump passed a decree establishing the United States’ right to extract mineral resources from the outer space. In the document, it is possible to read:

“Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global common”.

The American government seems to be once again completely ignoring the fact that outer space has its own law and a specific legal status that cannot be violated by a simple presidential decree. With the emergence of space technology in the 1950s, the collective fear that it would be used for military purposes made international society choose to create an international treaty for outer space, being celebrated in 1957 the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Cosmic Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (or simply “Space Treaty”). According to this document, outer space has the legal status of “international territory”, which means that it is a common space of humanity and of all nations, and a country or individual cannot claim ownership or sovereignty over it.

With these data alone, we can already contemplate the conflicting nature between the presidential decree and the Space Treaty (that was signed by the USA), since the decree does not recognize space as a common global territory. In practice, the American government is unilaterally granting US citizens the right to freely explore space resources, far from the legal domain of Space Law. In addition, the decree provides that partnerships should be sought with other countries and private companies for the conclusion of strategic agreements in the space mining sector, which means that the American plan aims to expand violations of the Space Treaty on a global level, causing Space Law’s reduction to legal insignificance.

The American decree, however, must be analyzed in depth, taking into account other facts and circumstances. Indeed, there is nothing exactly new in this law. The United States has long been tightening its strategic policies on outer space. In 2015, the so-called “Space Act” was approved, an audacious and permissive law that establishes the legal regime for private space exploration in the USA, with a special focus on the issue of mineral resources and water. The private sector already seems to be the dominant one in terms of extraction and industrialization of mineral resources from the outer space, which undoubtedly constitutes a real danger to the security of these operations due to the greater difficulty in controlling private actions at the international level. So, what will it be like to deal with practical issues like space debris, safety and pollution inside and outside the Earth? In fact, the coming scenario is one in which we will take our internal problems out of the Earth, exploiting space resources in disarray and unsustainably polluting the extraterrestrial environment.

It was not in vain that Donald Trump hurried to create a Space Force as a new member of the American armed forces. With this measure, the American government created the force that will support and secure these explorations and future strategic operations. And all these measures appear in a favorable global context: as the resources of our planet become increasingly scarce, with pollution and overconsumption depleting our natural reserves, causing a growing concern for the environment, nothing more strategic than to seek these resources from an abundant source like outer space, where water and minerals seem to be infinite.

With depleted or very weak reserves, we will soon be dependent on resources from space exploration. How will it be if these resources keep in the hands of private multinationals interested only in their own profit? This is the vital importance of the Space Treaty in our time: to prevent space technology from leading us to a future of more inequality, misery and violence. Washington seems to be wanting to expand its hegemonic status beyond the planet, guaranteeing dominance over the most abundant and secure source of natural resources. What is starting now is a true gold rush. Whoever is in a hurry to establish strategic space exploration policies will be above other nations. Our point is that these policies must be established within a legal standard common to all peoples. The Space Treaty is far from being a perfect law, but it is the only way we currently have to prevent the degradation of the outer space.

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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

A man struggled in the desert heat with his mouth as parched as sandpaper. He was fading fast from lack of the basic essentials to exist, number one  being water. Someone hands him a giant bottle of water and he is so appreciative. He drinks the water, but hours later on his journey through the unforgiving sands, he realizes that the water alone cannot save him.

So it is for all we working stiffs who make up the 99+ % of this empire. Yes, we need this thing referred to as the Universal Basic Income or UBI instituted NOW, and not in six months or for only a brief duration. Touted by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and articulately endorsed by Public Banking expert attorney Ellen Brown,  it proposes that ALL citizens would receive a $1000 monthly stipend from the government (Tax Free).

The Spanish government is about to do a similar plan, and keep it going forever if necessary. I say ‘necessary’ because this upside down New Gilded Age our empire has become seems to continually give 10X more of OUR tax money to the super rich each time they throw us working stiffs a bone. In all candor, if the UBI is not instituted we will have a worse situation than during our Great Depression of the 1930s or Dickens’ London from his novel A Christmas Carol. Furthermore, Ellen Brown, in her interview with this writer, explained how a Universal Basic Income would NOT be inflationary. Thus, it is the quickest way for working stiffs and the unemployed or retired working stiffs, and of course the indigent, to breathe some fresh greenback air… before they start eating up each other… and I don’t mean literally.

Economic depressions feed into increased  cases of emotional distress, violent behavior, petty crime, spousal abuse, alcoholism, drug addictions of many types, suicide and streets filled with the homeless ( more than even now ) with more and more ‘ Lost children’. Yet, through all of this from the ‘looking glass’ of past drastic hard times, the Super Rich still live like the kings and queens they are NOT!

Those current gated communities and secured high rises will see armed guards patrolling, chauffeurs with automatics and a new industry of domestic mercenaries to work with the local police. It’ll happen, and soon, if the money doesn’t start funneling down quickly, instead of just the usual way UP. As with my anecdote of the man in the desert, working stiffs need that $1000 bucks each month to go along with  their current salaries (if lucky enough to still have work), a temporary unemployment check or the Social Security check we seniors get. It will not solve this horrific problem, but it will give working stiffs some relief.

Now comes the hard part: When will working stiffs wake up and see the tragic inequality that currently exists between us and that 1/4 of 1%? The following chart from a few years ago is the best this writer could find as to how GREAT is the polarity in compensation. In the enclosed list of CEO pay, check out the last column on the right. That shows the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of a median employee of each company, not even the lowest paid full time employee, but those who earn in the middle:

This is NOT a call for revolution, because things of that nature will NEVER occur here in America.

Sadly, the only such upheaval would most likely be one of a Neo Fascist element. Look at the appeal that the Trump phenomena had four years ago and even NOW to understand the mindset of such a right wing cultural shift.

No, our nation is still meandering around from the successful ‘Dumbing Down’ that our educational system has experienced for over 40 or 50 years. The Super Rich achieved so much from the time of Reagan right up to now. They say, from the Left thinkers I admire, that politics does not get things done; only mass movements in the streets can cause change. Well, how about both actions working together?

A) A shift away, finally, from both phony political parties into a new and viable 3rd party for we socialists/progressives;

B) Outside the offices of our elected officials and on the street corners we need  NON Violent demonstrations, demanding a UBI NOW, repeated weekly for as long as it takes to wake up our sleeping politicians and neighbors. Plus, writers and public figures who support UBI  should get on any such airwaves as possible to continually educate others on what needs be done. This will be, once the current pandemic ceases a bit, a time for action to level the playing fields of our economy. WE working stiffs are, in reality, in this together… whether some out there like it or not!!

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Cross Currents and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

Much can be learned about the trajectory and nature of the current 2020 Great Recessions 2.0 underway by understanding what went on in similar deep economic contractions that are combined with financial-banking instability and crashes.

The so-called ‘Great Recession of 2008-09’ was one such ‘dual’ crisis. Another occurred in early years of the Great Depression of the 1930s, from 1929 to 1931. Another is the financial crash of 1907-08 and its aftermath of four years of stagnant growth and re-recessions.

What follows is an excerpt from my 2010 book, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’, specifically the chapter 3 entitled ‘The Dynamics of Epic Recessions. (Note: what others called the ‘Great Recession’ I alternatively called ‘Epic Recessions’ to distinguish them from ‘normal’ recessions). In it I explain how excessive liquidity injections by central banks feeds financial instability and excess debt accumulation throughout the economic system. Excess debt build up during the ‘boom’ period makes the economic system ‘fragile’–meaning sensitive and prone to deep contractions. The contractions, when they come, generate deflation in both financial and goods prices that, together with the debt unwinding, lead to widespread defaults, in both financial and non-financial sectors of the economy. That condition drives the economy into a further deeper contraction. Banking and financial crashes follow. All great (aka epic) recessions are made of such dynamics, which differentiates them from ‘normal’ recessions. Great Depressions are when defaults provoke a sequence of multiple financial-banking crashes.

In a number of ways the current 2020 events are increasingly similar to prior ‘great’ recession events.

The process is still, of course, in early stage and evolving. But the special, very severe contraction underway as of spring 2020 portends an especially severe form of Great Recession. The Fed and other central banks are desperately trying to head off a financial-banking crash by throwing unprecedented magnitudes of free money at the financial institutions. And now at the non-financial sector as well for the first time historically. Whether this ‘all in’ strategy can succeed in preventing defaults, deep financial asset price deflation, and a system wide credit crash remains to be seen.

The process will take months, not weeks, to work itself out. But against the system stabilizing as a result of tens of trillions of dollars of free money is the US and world economies were especially weak on the eve of the virus impact–not strong as some politicians like to argue.

Moreover, monetary policy was largely spent stabilizing the 2008-09 crashes, and thereafter in continuing to subsidize capital incomes and profits instead of preparing for the next cycle. Ditto for fiscal policy, that continued to subsidize capital incomes with massive tax cuts for investors and businesses alike–in the US no less than $10 trillion in such tax cuts, to which Trump added another $5 trillion in 2018-19. Budget deficits surged to more than $1 trillion. In short, fiscal policy like monetary policy on the eve of the current crisis was rendered largely ineffective for the coming crisis. The global economy is also decidedly much weaker this time around as well, with a global manufacturing recession the case in 2019 and trade wounded by Trump’s global trade war launched in 2018.

What follows is the excerpt from my 2010 book, ‘Epic Recession’. Its themes were picked up and developed thereafter further in my 2016 book, ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy’ concluding chapter. Further excerpts from the 2010 book will follow this posts; and after that the updates in the 2016 book. So here’s Part 1 on liquidity, its role generating excess debt, and what I called at the time in 2010 the ‘debt-deflation-default nexus’.

The Dynamics of Epic Recession

The two preceding chapters addressed static quantitative and qualitative characteristics of Epic Recession. This chapter is concerned with the dynamic characteristics of Epic Recessions—i.e. those characteristics that explain the processes by which Epic Recessions evolve over time.

At the top of the pyramid is the explosion in global liquidity. Liquidity is cash and near-cash forms of liquid assets that can be relatively easily and quickly converted to investment. That investment may take the form of real physical assets, like structures, equipment, inventories of products, etc.; or the form of financial assets, like bonds, commercial paper, stocks, derivatives financial instruments, and so forth. Whichever the form, the point is liquidity is the basis for investment. It is the source for issuing credit and thus debt. The extension of credit becomes the debt of the borrower of that credit. Liquidity enables banks to issue loans, corporations to issue bonds, speculators to purchase derivatives, etc.

There are several major sources responsible for the exploding liquidity in the U.S. and global economy over the last several decades. All have contributed to the growing volume of liquidity, such that today there is now a flood of liquidity awash in the global economy. The unprecedented surge in liquidity is the source of credit and corresponding debt accumulation. And it is that credit and debt acceleration that has fueled and enabled the run-up in speculative investing to historic, record levels in turn.

One source of the global liquidity explosion has been the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve. Since the dollar became the de facto global currency in 1944 (and the virtual de jure global currency since 1971 when the last fiction of a gold standard was abandoned), U.S. monetary policies for more than half a century have been injecting trillions of dollars into the U.S. and global economies. That’s trillions of dollars of excess liquidity that has accumulated globally in the hands of investors public and private, corporate and sovereign, individual and institutional.

It represents a record volume between $20 and $40 trillion of investible money capital that cannot lie idle and must find an outlet.

The Fed enables the expansion of credit in the commercial banking system by means of buying government bonds back from the banks, changing their minimum reserve requirements of those banks, or loaning money to individual banks directly through the Fed’s ‘discount window’. Since December 2007 it has added a fourth new ‘tool’ for injecting liquidity into the economy called targeted ‘auctions’ designed to provide massive bailout funding for banks, shadow banks, and even non-financial corporations. By means of these special auctions over the last two years, the Fed has injected or committed to provide between $2 and $11 trillion, depending on which accounting approach one chooses. But Fed actions since December 2007 constitute only the latest of a long string of liquidity pumping actions by the Fed.

When there’s a recession, the Fed injects liquidity. That occurred in response to the normal recessions that happened in 1966, 1970, 1973-75, 1980, 1982, 1990, and 2001. In addition, every time there’s a financial instability event, the Fed injects still more liquidity to offset banks’ anticipated losses to keep them from insolvency and lending. That occurred 1987-1988 in response to the stock market crash of 1987; in 1989-1992 to bail out the savings and loan and junk bond markets; 1997-1998 to rescue the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund and Asian banks and financial institutions with ties to U.S. banks; in 1999 to counter fears about computers coming to a stop with the change in the millennia (a phony mini-panic called the Y2K or ‘year 2000’); 2000-2001 to counter the tech-driven stock market bust, and 2002-2004 to keep the housing market going as the rest of the economy faltered. On occasion the Fed has even injected liquidity to assist Presidents in their election bids or war policies, such as in 1971-72 in the case of Nixon and 2003-04 for George W. Bush.

In contrast to its long term policy of pumping liquidity into the economy, the Fed has done little in the way of successfully retracting that same liquidity after recessions, major financial instability events, or following the accommodation of Presidents’ political demands. The roughly twenty years of Fed ‘net’ liquidity injections into the U.S. economy, from 1986 to 2006 under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, has become known as the Greenspan ‘Put’. Since 2007, an even greater net liquidity injection has occurred under its current chairman, Ben Bernanke. It will no doubt eventually become known as the ‘Bernanke Put’—i.e. a far greater amount in a much shorter period of time.

The Fed’s decades-long, pro-liquidity policies not only contributed to a build-up of liquidity within the U.S. economy, but did so throughout the global economy as well. To the extent easier credit from the Fed was accessible to U.S. banks with operations and dealings abroad—which has become the case increasingly since the early 1990s—some of that Fed-provided liquidity to those U.S. banks was undoubtedly diverted offshore. Similarly, loans to non-bank U.S. companies with foreign subsidiaries no doubt resulted in liquidity flowing offshore to those subsidiaries, as well as for those multinational companies’ growing acquisitions of additional offshore assets since 1990. The latter is called Foreign Direct Investment, or FDI, and that too has been fueled by Fed monetary policies’ creating excess liquidity in the system.

Other U.S. government policies have also contributed to the growth of dollar liquidity globally. U.S. government policies providing foreign aid to sovereign countries for decades increased the flow of dollars and liquidity from the U.S. into the global system. So did funding of U.S. military bases and operations around the world. And policies of free trade, that resulted in chronic and rising U.S. trade deficits since the 1980s. Trade deficits have meant net annual outflows of hundreds of billions of dollars every year from the U.S. economy since the 1980s, culminating in more than $700 billion trade deficits for four years running during the mid-2000s alone. A further consequence of U.S. free trade policies has been the expansion of U.S. companies’ foreign direct investment, or FDI, which, as previously noted, have transferred additional billions of dollars offshore. Then there’s the major structural changes that have occurred in the U.S. tax system since 1980 that have permitted wealthy U.S. investors, individual and institutional, to shift decades of money capital from capital gains, dividends and interest income into offshore tax havens to avoid tax payments to the U.S.—in dozens of small or island nations from Cayman Islands to Seychelles to Vanuatu to Switzerland and beyond. All the above developments have combined to enable a flow of trillions of dollars into offshore venues—going into foreign central banks, private banks and financial institutions, offshore hedge and investment funds, personal and corporate accounts in tax havens, etc. Thus, while the Fed has obviously been a major contributor to the steady growth of liquidity in the U.S. and the global economy, it hasn’t been the only source. U.S. government military, trade and tax policies have contributed as well.

In addition to the Fed, and U.S. military spending, trade and tax policies, at least two other major forces have additionally contributed to the historic expansion of liquidity worldwide in recent decades. One is what is sometimes called the ‘global savings glut’.

There are different interpretations of the meaning of the ‘global savings glut’. For former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, the ‘global savings glut’ represents the accumulated reserves held by foreign central banks, private banks, and investors.

It is the global savings glut, as Greenspan defines it, that caused the flood of liquidity into the U.S. between 2002-2005 that drove down mortgage interest rates, which in turn caused the subprime market boom. It wasn’t the Fed lowering short term rates to 1% and keeping them there for nearly two years that caused the speculative boom in residential housing. The housing bubble occurred worldwide, not just in the U.S. It was the excess global liquidity that flooded into the U.S. housing market that was the culprit. The cause therefore was the glut—sometimes referred to as another sanitized term, ‘global imbalances’—that was responsible. The bubble was thus beyond the Fed’s or any central bank’s control. But even if it is true, as Greenspan maintains, that the post-2002 boom occurred simultaneously in many global markets not just the U.S. and the Fed therefore could not have been responsible; even if one were to agree with him that the global savings glut washing back onto U.S. economic shores circa 2002 was the sole cause the U.S. subprime housing bubble—what then explains the origins of that ‘global savings glut’ itself?

First, data is irrefutably clear that the U.S. housing price bubble began in 1997, not in 2002. The speculation in residential housing markets preceded the Fed’s 2002 lowering of rates as well as the alleged 2002-05 foreign investment inflows by at least five years. Both the Fed’s low 1% rates and the simultaneous global liquidity inflows contributed to the subprime housing bubble. But neither was the originating cause. The subprime boom of 2002-2005 was just the culminating phase of the housing bubble. What set off the start of housing speculation and the beginning of the run-up in housing prices around 1997-1998 is the fundamental question Greenspan must answer, but doesn’t. In addition, Greenspan must explain further why the dot.com technology stocks bubble originated around 1997 as well, and why the speculative bubble in Asian currencies that led to the Asian financial meltdown in 1997-1998 (that in turn spread to Russia and Latin American economies, and required the bailout of the big hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management in 1998) occurred as well circa 1997-1998? What was beginning to happen circa 1997-1998 that precipitated all three bubbles? Was it just coincidental that all three speculative bubbles commenced around the same time? Or is there a common thread and origin to all three?

The global savings glut begins with the river of dollars with which the U.S. flooded the world for decades as a direct consequence of its monetary, fiscal, and military policies. But that flow of dollars was only the start—a kind of priming of the global liquidity pump. The ‘global savings glut’ has been equally important factor contributing to the global liquidity explosion. The glut is the product of the past three decades of unprecedented profits, income and wealth accumulation. But it is not faceless ‘savings’ or ‘reserves’, as Greenspan and others call it. Those are misleading terms that function for the purpose of obfuscating a deeper meaning. The ‘glut’ is in fact the accumulation and concentration of income and wealth among certain strata of investors worldwide, taking the form of excess money and credit capital, that is now increasingly seeking out and flowing into speculative investment opportunities globally at an increasing rate. The glut therefore has a face: the rising global ‘investor elite’ of individuals, funds, investing institutions, corporations, banks, shadow banks and central banks.

The income-wealth accumulated by that elite more than three decades now has derived from both real asset and speculative asset investment, but increasingly in recent years from the latter and decreasingly from the former. The real asset investment has concentrated in manufacturing and infrastructure investment in the so-called ‘BRIC’ countries—i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, and especially China—and to a more limited extent in certain industries like energy extraction and commercial building the petro-economies. The rising share of accumulation of income and wealth from speculative investing has come from commodities, oil, gold, metals, currency and stock speculation, futures and options trading, land and commercial properties, funding of mergers and acquisitions, infrastructure bonds, buying and selling in secondary markets, securitized financial assets, credit insurance, and a host of other derivative based financial instruments.

Once again, the ‘glut’ is therefore not really about ‘savings’ or foreign investors’ reserves. That is a misnomer for what is in essence a concentration of income and wealth among a global strata of investors with a unique control of new, as well as old, forms of money capital. The glut represents global income inequality—not between nations but between the investor classes within most nations and their non-investor countrymen. This investor elite of course includes members in the advanced economies of North America, Europe and Japan, just as it does those in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Soeul, Shanghai, Rio, Bangalore and elsewhere. It is not about third world or ‘emerging markets’ investors. It reflects a global transformation of capital, as well as a restructuring of the various constituent elements of the class in control of that capital.

In addition to the Fed and U.S. military spending, trade and tax policies, and the global savings glut, there is yet a fourth major source of the global liquidity explosion. The policies of the Fed and U.S. government that since 1945 flooded the world economy with dollars, and the policies that since 1980 set in motion the concentration of income on a global scale do not, by themselves, fully account for the explosion of liquidity of recent decades. That record liquidity was also the consequence of the revolution in credit creation that has been unleashed in large part by the shadow banking system.

Normally liquidity is created in the banking system when the central bank of a country injects money into its banking system. That money injection increases the reserves on hand in the banks with which to extend credit to borrowers. As the banks lend the money to customers the money supply increases in the economy. The actual process of credit creation occurs when the private banks actually extend loans—i.e. credit—to borrowers who subsequently make investments. This describes a traditional process by which a central bank (Fed) determines the amount and timing of liquidity injection and credit. But that liquidity creation process has been giving way progressively over recent decades to a different kind of credit creation system that is growing relatively more independent of the central bank and whatever action it may take. Central banks’ injection of money into the banking system may lead to an increase in credit as banks loan out the money to borrowers. But banks’ credit extension is not limited to this process. Banks and shadow banks provide credit, but have been doing so increasingly independent of the money supply and central banks (e.g. Fed) money supply management processes. In other words, credit is becoming unhinged from money.

In the new system of credit, financial instruments themselves are used as the basis of credit extension and thus borrowing and debt. For example, when a financial instrument, like a collateralized debt obligation derivative, is created based on a subprime mortgage, and the market value of that derivative rises, that increased market value is then used as the basis for issuing further credit to purchase yet more financial instruments. Investments are not made based on the central bank increasing or decreasing the reserves banks may have on hand. Loans and credit extension have now little or nothing to do with banks’ existing levels of loanable excess reserves. Because these financial instruments are tradable immediately on secondary markets short term, they are more or less ‘liquid’; that is, can be used like money to purchase other financial assets. And as such financial instruments grow in volume and value, they are in effect increasing the overall liquidity within the system. Such credit financing is especially appropriate for investing in financial instruments. As the value of financial instruments rises (which presumes a continued rise in their price), it enables investing in still more similar financial instruments. The process would not be possible without the development of ‘securitization’ and highly liquid secondary markets for speculative financial instruments. In a sense, therefore, securitization and secondary markets create liquidity for financing still additional speculative investing.

A couple additional concrete examples: credit default swaps (CDS) derivatives and ‘naked short selling’. With CDS an investor may speculate that a company will default, so he ‘buys’an insurance contract (a CDS) to protect against that failure. But the speculator does not actually ‘buy’ in the sense of putting real dollars up to purchase the CDS contract. At most, he may put up a very small share of the actual cost of the CDS and leverage the rest—i.e. owe it as debt. All derivatives financial securities are in a similar way ‘leveraged’. That is, credit (and debt) far beyond what is invested in real money is extended to the borrower. Credit, and corresponding debt, is created independently of bank reserves and Fed efforts to manage levels of bank reserves.

The case of what is called ‘naked short selling’ of stocks by speculators is even more blatant. Short selling has been around for some time. It is associated with stock selling. Professional stock traders borrow to buy stock at its current price with the expectation of selling it later once the price declines and pocketing the difference as pure speculative profits. The borrowing incurs a short term debt for which an interest charge or fee must be paid. The borrowing also creates downward pressure on the stock price in question.

‘Naked’ short selling takes the speculative practice one step further. ‘Naked’ means traders don’t even borrow the funds in order to buy. Naked short selling amounts to buying stock without putting a penny down—i.e. 100% leveraging. Naked short sales amount to selling something you never owned. In other words, it’s another extreme form of speculation, more like pure ‘betting’ or like ‘betting’ when purchasing credit default swaps than buying and selling of a stock per se. Naked short selling results in even greater downward pressure on a stock’s price. Naked short sellers played a major role in the collapse of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Lehman brothers in the intensifying financial crisis during 2008, as speculators turned increasingly toward ‘naked’ short selling.

Naked short selling has the eventual result of causing a rise in corporate debt for those companies targeted by the short sellers. To the extent short selling drives down stock prices it makes it increasingly difficult for corporations to raise capital by means of stock issuance. That forces them to borrow and increase their debt, or to forego real investment activity altogether, which often means a reduction in real investment and jobs. As the recent financial crisis spread globally, the practice of short selling was banned or severely restricted in many places in Asia, Australia, Europe—but not in the U.S. Naked short selling might also be considered a form of ‘financial cannibalism’, in that investors in shadow banks prey upon investors in real asset institutions like non-financial companies.
As shadow banks, hedge funds and their investors have been particular active in naked short selling during the recent financial crisis. According to the premier market research source tracking the hedge fund industry, Hedge Fund Research, hedge funds involved in short selling (including the increasing practice of naked selling) accounted for about 40% of the $3 trillion in global hedge fund assets in 2007-08.

Investing in CDSs and naked short selling represent ‘investment as betting’ and thus an extreme form of speculative investing. But they would not be possible without the new forms of liquidity creation with which they are financed. These new forms of speculative investing typically often result as well in an increase in debt levels for companies with real assets and therefore negative affect levels of real asset investment in those companies. On the other hand, profits and returns to speculators are often significant. Driven by asset price inflation, speculative profits are often several magnitudes greater than profits from investment in real assets, so long as prices continue to rise. Speculative profits also have the added enticement that they can be realized in a much shorter time period. That capital-profit turnover time makes such investments further attractive. And so long as the price of the asset continues to rise, the expectation of profitability is more certain compared, say, to investing in real assets and real products for which demand may or may not materialize at all. Despite the frequency of financial crises in the past twenty years, it appears that profits from speculative investing have grown significantly faster than from real asset investing. For every speculator who waits too long to exit a bubble, and thus loses capital, there are on net more that gain from the run-up and price bubble. That net growth in profits and wealth in turn adds to the ‘global savings glut’ and global pool of liquidity available for subsequent investing.

Financial deregulation has increased the rate and geographic spread of speculative investing. It opened up and accelerated global capital flows. It permitted and stimulated the growth of shadow banking-financial intermediaries as the prime distribution channels for speculative investing and allowed the regulated banking system to play in those same channels and markets. But it did not create the fundamental requirement for speculative investing. That fundamental requirement was the explosion of liquidity. Without that liquidity, and the new forms of leveraging that accompanied it, there would be nothing to speculate with. The new forms of leveraging that expanded it, the new financial instruments that productized it, the new forms of institutions that distributed it, and the new markets in which those financial instruments were sold—are all predicated on the creation of a massive global pool of excess liquidity.

To sum up, there exists today a massive global pool of liquid and near liquid money capital that must find an investment outlet. Estimated roughly in the range of $20 to $40 trillion worldwide, it is thus so excessively large that it cannot find sufficient real, fixed investment opportunities to absorb all of it. There is far more liquidity than real physical asset investment opportunities—notwithstanding the infrastructure growth in China, India, Brazil and the like. More critically, real asset investment may not be as profitable as speculative investing in any event. Meanwhile, that liquidity pool cannot and will not remain idle. It is therefore prone to seek out new price driven speculative opportunities, which are more easily and quickly exploited, with faster turnover and often with greater returns, than physical asset investment in structures, equipment, inventories and such.

The Global Money Parade

The flooding of both the U.S. and global economy with U.S. dollars, the global savings glut, plus new forms of credit creation have produced a historic growth in available liquidity in the global economy. The volume of liquidity is only part of the story, however. Where that liquidity resides and to what uses it is being put are equally important. In what institutions is that liquidity ‘deposited’? In what asset types is it invested? Who are the investors—institutional, corporate, and wealthy individual?

How much of the estimated $20 to $40 trillion in outstanding liquidity today resides in the global network of commercial banks, like J.P Morgan Chase and Bank of America? How much of it in those institutions referred to as ‘shadow banks’ or financial intermediaries—i.e. the investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley? Giant hedge funds, like Citadel, and the hedge fund sector, which grew from just several hundred in the 1990s to more than 10,000 by 2008 with nearly $2 trillion in assets? Private equity firms like Carlyl or Blackstone that controlled several trillions more at their peak? Finance companies like GMAC and GE Credit? GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Or in the allegedly more conservative investing institutions like the $4 trillion money market funds, the multi-trillion dollar pension funds, emerging market funds, sovereign wealth funds of the oil rich economies, etc.?

As noted in a previous chapter, for the U.S. alone it is estimated the network of shadow banking institutions by 2007 accounted for more than $10 trillion, about equal to the assets of the commercial banking sector. And the U.S. share of the global shadow banking network is probably no more than 40% at most. Moreover, the commercial banks have over the last decade merged with shadow banks in various ways—at least the largest of the commercial banks. So it makes less and less sense over time to even refer to the distinction of the two banking sectors. Commercial banks have turned increasingly to the higher profitable speculative forms of investing. And they have long funded the shadow banks to significant extent, set up their own hedge funds and private equity firms, established private bank operations for their wealthiest clients, and acted in part like shadow banks in fact if not in name. So part of the big commercial banks must be considered a segment of the shadow banking sector as well, and a significant amount of their lending activity has no doubt been increasingly speculative.

A testimony to that latter point is the huge amount of lending by commercial banks that has occurred since May 2009 to speculators in foreign currency and emerging markets. The banks borrow from the Fed at 0.25% and loan at substantially higher rates to clients speculating in Asian, Latin American, and Russian currencies. Less involved in highly speculative ventures as general rule are the 8200 or so smaller regional and community banks and thrift institutions in the U.S., although to the extent this group has participated in financing subprime mortgages and highly leveraged commercial property deals they too have forayed into speculative investment in major ways. All these represent a short list of institutional ‘loci’ in which much of the world liquidity resides. Add to these institutionals investing on behalf of clients (as well as on behalf of themselves as institutions), very wealthy individuals who invest directly themselves rather than via institutions, and the thousands of corporations that, to some degree, also invest directly with their companies’ retained earnings.

These investors—individual, corporate, and institutional alike—have been shifting their liquidity increasingly in recent decades into speculative investments; that is, investment opportunities of a short term, price-driven asset nature rather than in longer term enterprise, equipment, and structures that payout with a longer, amortized stream of income. That is, investments in financial asset securities. The profits are greater due to the price volatility, the costs are lower since most speculative investing is in financial securities with no costs of production and low cost of sales, there are no potential supplier bottlenecks, distribution is instantaneous and the market size is global, the turnover in profitability is as short as the investor chooses, and the short term risk is less because the assets can be quickly resold in secondary markets most of the time.

These immense relative advantages in costs of speculative investing in financial securities, compared to investing in real physical assets, combined with the possible quick returns and the potential for excess price-driven profits, together result in a kind of ‘global money parade’ that sloshes around markets internationally seeking speculative opportunities—a financial tornado that causes speculative bubbles wherever it touches down.

That parade consists fundamentally of those investors globally that have become greater in number than ever before, controlling a share of total global liquidity that is at historic record levels, and that exhibit a growing preference for speculative investing. And where has most of the liquidity they control been going? Into foreign exchange trading, over the counter derivatives trading, buying and selling of securitized asset backed securities (ABS), collateralized debt (CDOs), collateralized loans (CLOs), residential and commercial mortgages (RMBS, CMBS), credit swaps (CDSs), interest rate and currency swaps, futures and options trades of all kinds, leveraged buyouts (LBOs), emerging market funds, high yield corporate junk bonds and funds, into stock market speculation world wide, into short-selling of stocks, landed property speculation, and global commodities of all kind from food and metals to gold and oil. A global money parade marching to and fro across global financial markets, from one short term speculative opportunity to another, at times exacerbating asset price volatility, at other times precipitating it, and sometimes even pushing asset inflation to the level of financial bust.

An important dynamic characteristic of Epic Recession is that it is typically preceded by a proliferation of multiple asset bubbles fueled by the global money parade that more or less mature in tandem. When one or more of the bubbles overextends and then collapses, it quickly precipitates similar collapses in other bubbles. The magnitude of the financial bust thereafter evokes a credit contraction well beyond that which may occur in a normal recession. How deep, fast and widespread the contraction depends in part on the degree of financial fragility that has developed at the time of the financial bust; and in part on the degree of consumption fragility as well. Both forms of fragility are a function of debt, debt servicing capability, and income. As debt levels unwind in the Epic Recession, the subsequent trajectory of the Epic Recession depends thereafter on the rate of deflation and defaults, and in turn on the ability or failure of government policies to check and contain the deflation-defaults and/or to reduce debt levels that exacerbate the deflation-default levels and rates.

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The word is that that General Braga Netto is the new “acting president” of Brazil. Firstly, this position does not legally exist. We live in a presidential system, and the power of the executive is in the hands of the President and Vice President, who are elected. Secondly, an “acting president” subverts what was left of the institutions, seals a neo-military authoritarianism in Brazil,  and consolidates the “successive approximations” method, which seems to be all that the military learn in the academy.

There was no need for a doctorate to know that the nefarious and inept Bolsonaro would have no chance of governing the country. The elites bet that he would be tutored by a strong triad composed of Guedes, Moro and Mourão (or Heleno). Everything else was unimportant and it could be left for Bolsonaro to offer positions to clowns; clowns whose only function is to entertain.

That was the plan from the beginning. It turns out that the creators of this plan forgot that Bolsonaro had been expelled from the army precisely because he was incapable of obeying rules and minimally fulfilling the functions he was given. The years as a Congressman, instead of giving him some sense of reality, served only to convince him that he was smart, canny and able to lead the country in “cleaning up communism”. Basically, he convinced himself that he was a new and improved Mussolini, even though he knew nothing of the Italian leader.

Nor did they understand, those who supported the overthrow of Brazil, that Guedes was known in the economic world as technically weak, and to have serious ethical problems. Moro has always been legally incapable, and could only do the damage to Brazilian institutions he has done because our judiciary has about 19 thousand judges, who are anointed to infallibility and omnipotence from a miserable public contest. They can halt the country and companies, arrest or release at their leisure, especially if they have friends and accomplices in the higher ranks. This was the role of TRF4. Moro had no technical legitimacy in Lava Jato. The operation was an example of politically orchestrated institutional violence that will be studied for years, and from it, models of containment and punishment will be developed.

There is a serious problem with the presence of a “military wing” in the government. The Army is not an institution that cultivates any trace of democracy. On the contrary, it is an authoritarian, brutal, elitist institution and – we now know – totally malformed in cognitive terms. Every General is the ripened fruit of that institution, and when a general says that “the Negro is a scoundrel” or refers to the “indolent Indian” we see that the institution was not able to teach even the minimum amount of civility to those who should be the living mirror to the institution’s work. We need to reformulate all of our army’s training or we will be suffering coups for centuries to come. The “Sorbonne line” of the present Armed Forces was removed by Bolsonaro with the fall of General Santos Cruz. Arguably he was the General with the greatest cognitive ability and social understanding of all those who infest executive power. Santos Cruz’s exit represented a lurch towards the barracks; a touch of military discipline to command the population.

Now, in a measure that was already being demanded by the media and wealthy sectors of Brazil, Bolsonaro is removed from power without pomp or circumstance. General Braga Netto – who was in charge when the black musician Evaldo dos Santos Rosa and his family were shot in Rio de Janeiro – takes over Brazil “during the crisis”. International newspapers have reported a “coup” in Brazil, while authorities from other countries have already been informed of Bolsonaro’s “protection” – and who now effectively gives the orders.

Those who think this is a solution are again making serious mistakes.

The first mistake is to believe that Mourão, Heleno and others will accept this coup and conform. The Brazilian Presidency is a very coveted asset, and with the captain out of the effective command line, appearing like a “Queen of England”, we will see the same hatred that Costa e Silva felt for Castelo Branco in 1964 return to the country. From the outside, the army looks like a disciplined and solid institution. Inside, it is a madhouse, with gossip, betrayal, villainy, and low, dirty political disputes. The difference is that everyone dresses almost the same, and do not denounce the absurdities of which they are victims, or that they are part of.

The second mistake is to believe that the democratic process is just a mechanism for choosing who will be President. If democracy is just that, Bolsonaro can be kept as a puppet, waving to people and offending on social networks, leaving the country’s decisions to “adults”. It turns out that democracy is not merely that. There is a couplet in any democracy: representation and participation. And the first point here is key. Whoever voted for the fascist captain did so because they felt REPRESENTED by him. And this feeling is so strong that even the Army will be crushed by the fascists in a complex relationship, which has already been mapped in history. The first opposition to Hitler and Mussolini came from the German and Italian armies. Fascism overthrew the Army with the ease with which it ended the liberal and moderate right in those countries. The PSDB has ceased to exist. Fascism absorbed the electorate of Aécio, Serra and Alckmin. It will do the same with the olive green paper-mache soldiers. It’s only a matter of time.

It is also necessary to consider destabilizing elements such as the neo-Pentecostal evangelicals, and the charlatans fury for power. It will be difficult to accommodate Malafaias, Felicianos and others in their crusade for power. And even if Olavo de Carvalho suddenly “dies” (as was customary in dictatorships) there is a sense of “active participation” in Brazilian fascism that would still need to be tamed by Bolsonaro himself to solidify the regime. Without the leader, these “free radicals” cannot be contained.

Soon enough, the “captain” will be “invited to withdraw” from the government, a term well known in the barracks; armed, uniformed beasts trying to appear polished and educated enough to be accepted by wealthy elites. Bolsonaro, anointed with a controversial stabbing, will be placed into the pantheon of the homeland’s heroes, and will “fall upwards” into a new plan of power in Brazil. The point is that a sanctified fascist is even stronger, and whoever is thinking about this as a solution does not understand that they are creating an even more dangerous monster.

All of this, happening in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, hunger and urban violence that will arise due to the global economic disorganization, and at a time when we have a perverse world leadership. In the past, powerful and wealthy countries became “benevolent leaders” seeking to protect order, life, and capitalist contracts that would allow them to maintain dominance for decades to come. It was like that with England in the 19th century and with the United States after the second world war. Now, Trump is totally unable to understand the role of the U.S. in the world and has already put himself on the road to war with Venezuela, and, in an act of modern piracy, stolen equipment and supplies destined for France, Germany and Brazil. Trump’s “America first” is real and it is a pity that Bolsonaro also saluted the American flag and put Brazil on all fours for the United States.

Now, unlike 1964, it is Bolsonaro – and not the Army – who is allied to the United States. A coup against the fascist has to take into account American opposition to it.

Stay at home. Keep yourself alive.

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The US Seeks to Set New Military Base in Syria Amid Pandemic

By Telesur, April 13, 2020

President Donald Trump administration on Friday deployed a military convoy in Syria to establish a new base in this Arab nation.

A caravan of 35 trucks loaded with vehicles and warfare and logistics materials headed for the city of Shadadi, in the southern Hasakeh province, 866 kilometers northeast of Damascus, as reported by outlet Ikhbariya TV.

Cuba – The Endless Cruelty of US Sanctions – The US Intercepts Chinese Medical Supplies to Cuba

By Peter Koenig and Press TV, April 12, 2020

Cuba complained recently that a shipment of test kits, masks and respirators, donated by the Chinese Alibaba group, didn’t arrive because the American company tasked with transportation feared breaching U-S sanction rules. Washington imposed an embargo on Cuba in 19-62 after the island nation nationalized its oil industry. The measures have been denounced by the United Nations 28 years in a row.

Fitting Together the Pieces of the Coronavirus Puzzle

By Mark Taliano, April 12, 2020

The as yet unfolding story of Coronavirus is a story of corruption and conflicts of interest. Some pieces of the puzzle remain missing, but the big picture is increasingly apparent.

The big picture speaks to the unaccountability of Big Monopolies and Big Money, and the fabricated neutralization of the masses, in a world where the truth has been largely deplatformed and suppressed.

Post-Republic “Weimar America”, Here We Come! Virus Hysteria Adds $10 Trillion to the National Debt

By Mike Whitney, April 12, 2020

There’s no doubt that the Coronavirus is a serious infection that can lead to severe illness or death. There’s also no doubt that ‘virus hysteria’ has been used for other purposes. Wall Street, for example, has used virus-panic to advance its own agenda and get another round of trillion dollar bailouts. In fact, it took less than a week to get the pushover congress to ram through a massive $2.2 trillion boondoggle without even one lousy congressman offering a peep of protest. That’s got to be some kind of record.

COVID-19: Coronavirus and Civilization

By Diana Johnstone, April 11, 2020

Today, quite a number of alternative media commentators are ready to believe in the absolute power not of God but of Mammon, of the powers of Wall Street and its partners in politics, the media and the military. In this view, nothing major happens that hasn’t been planned by earthly powers for their own selfish interest.

Mammon is wrecking the economy so a few oligarchs will own everything. Or else Mammon created the hoax Coronavirus 19 in order to lock us all up and deprive us of what little is left of our freedom. Or finally Mammon is using a virus in order to have a pretext to vaccinate us all with secret substances and turn us all into zombies.

Total System Failure Will Give Rise to New Economy?

By Pepe Escobar, April 11, 2020

Nobody, anywhere, could have predicted what we are now witnessing: in a matter of only a few weeks the accumulated collapse of global supply chains, aggregate demand, consumption, investment, exports, mobility.

Nobody is betting on an L-shaped recovery anymore – not to mention a V-shaped one. Any projection of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 gets into falling-off-a-cliff territory.

UN Ceasefire Defines War As a Non-Essential Activity

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, April 11, 2020

At least 70 countries have signed on to the March 23 call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a worldwide ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like non-essential business and spectator sports, war is a luxury that the Secretary General says we must manage without for a while. After U.S. leaders have told Americans for years that war is a necessary evil or even a solution to many of our problems, Mr. Guterres is reminding us that war is really the most non-essential evil and an indulgence that the world cannot afford—especially during a pandemic.

The “Secret Agenda” of the So-called Elite

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, April 10, 2020

Even the active euthanasia of elderly and sick fellow citizens by means of strong sleeping pills and opiates has already set these dark figures on their way. Likewise a worldwide redistribution of general wealth from the bottom to the top, from the poor to the super rich. Should we citizens of this world, remembering these plans of the cabal, not recall to whom the call for the final battle was actually made?

Two of these “world citizens” who are involved in such sinister plans are the former US Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger and the wealthy US entrepreneur and patron of the arts Bill Gates.

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Despite strong attempts by Ukraine not to buy Russian pipeline gas, they will not be able to receive U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) for at least another five years according to Polish experts from the consulting company ESPERIS. According to the agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine signed in March, the U.S. will sell 6-8 million cubic meters.

The Polish experts say that despite the fact that Ukraine stopped the official importation of Russian gas in 2015, it does not have independence from fuel produced in Russia, since in reality Russian gas still reaches Ukraine via the European Union countries of Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

The Polish experts explain that “By the end of 2019, all the natural gas imported into Ukraine from the EU was shipped via physical reverse from the direction of Slovakia (since 2016 average 8.7 bcma), Hungary (average 2.7 bcma) and Poland (average 1.1 bcma).”

Physical reverse means that effectively Slovakia, Hungary and Poland will buy gas from Russia then reverse its flow into Ukraine. Through this way Ukraine is not buying Russian gas while receiving Russian gas through other means. The ironic part is that as the ESPERIS report explains,

“Natural gas imported from the European suppliers, such as DXT, RWE or PGNiG, is in fact mostly produced in Russia and then sent via Ukraine to EU. Thus, the ultimate independence of Ukraine from the Russian supplies can be reached only by opening of a new source of supply.”

The problem is that Ukraine does not have its own LNG regasification means. The report explains that

“the Ukrainians tried to build LNG importing terminal in Odessa or Ochakiv for several years, but as for now the project seems to be dead at all.”

Romanian LNG terminals may not be possible as Turkey may refuse tankers with raw and highly explosive materials to pass through the Bosporus. The route through Croatia is not profitable due to transit fees and transportation costs.

Therefore, the only realistic port of delivery available for Ukraine would be at the Swinoujscie regasification terminal in Poland. However, Swinoujscie’s capacity for Ukraine is not enough. Ukraine will be able to receive U.S. gas only through Poland, where the floating regasification terminal is planned to be launched in Gdansk, but these deliveries cannot begin before 2025 and only if the Polish side is ready to invest large amounts of money in this construction.

Warsaw advocates the construction of a new pipeline between the gas transmission systems of Poland and Ukraine. However, the Polish report explains that this project requires large expenditures on the part of Kiev and therefore remains frozen as it cannot afford to do it.

Despite the reality that Ukraine is entirely reliant on Russian gas, on April 8 the head of Ukraine’s new gas transit system operator Sergey Makogon declared that the country was ready for zero gas transit from Russia despite not having the means to do so. On January 31, it was reported that the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine since the beginning of that month had increased its price by 2% and could cost more than $7 billion in five years. According to RBC, the total volume of traffic for five years will be 225,000 million cubic meters and the pumping cost will be $31.72 per 1,000 cubic meters, including all taxes and fees.

On December 31, 2019, it was reported that Gazprom and the Ukrainian operator signed a transit agreement for Russian has to reach Europe. According to the document, in 2020, 65,000 million cubic meters of Russian gas will pass through Ukraine. Then, until 2024, annual deliveries will drop to 40 billion cubic meters. Although Ukraine will become a transit country, it somehow also does not want to use Russian gas for its own domestic consumption.

Russia has the largest reserves of gas in the world and in the future the consumption of natural gas will grow because coal and oil consumption will be reduced. In 2018 alone, Gazprom, Russia’s largest gas company, supplied the European Union with more than 40% of its natural gas imports. Although Ukraine is working towards independence from Russian gas, it is in the vague hope that this move will somehow allow the country to move closer to the European Union despite most of the continent relying on and using Russian gas.

The Polish report concluded that “Without the upgrade of pipelines and import terminals in the region neither Ukrainian energy independence nor U.S. LNG export to Ukraine will develop.” Effectively, as Ukraine has the ambition to become “energy independent” from Russia, it has neither the finances or infrastructure to achieve this.

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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

President Donald Trump administration on Friday deployed a military convoy in Syria to establish a new base in this Arab nation.

A caravan of 35 trucks loaded with vehicles and warfare and logistics materials headed for the city of Shadadi, in the southern Hasakeh province, 866 kilometers northeast of Damascus, as reported by outlet Ikhbariya TV.

Local activists reported on the convoy as it was traveling on the road between Deir Ezzor and Hasakeh provinces. They also mentioned that it was guarded by two helicopters and armed forces from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia.

The U.S. maintains several bases in the Syrian oil and gas fields. Washington sponsors the SDF separatist militia, which controls large areas of the Aljazeera region.

“Over the last week, the U.S. military has sent several reinforcements and supplies to northeastern Syria, despite President Trump’s vow to decrease his country’s forces inside the country,” local outlet AMN recalled.

“The U.S. Coalition forces are mostly concentrated in the eastern part of Syria, but they do control a piece of the Homs Governorate that is located along the Iraqi border.”​​​​​​​

#US building up its forces in #Iraq near #Syria border
The #American military deployed #Patriot system to Ain Al-Assad Airbase and also brought some other missiles to protect their forces in Iraq pic.twitter.com/JvPrkX9hsd

— 🇸🇾 NadieHarbieh 🇸🇾 (@HarbiehNadie) April 11, 2020

Since the Arab Spring revolts in 2011, Syria has been going through a civil war in which President Bashar al-Assad is facing the so-called “Syrian Opposition.”

Because of the geopolitical importance of the country and its natural resources, however, external actors are also involved in supporting the contending factions in this civil war.

In 2014, the United States established an “international coalition” to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Besides having ordered airstrikes, Washington has deployed special forces and artillery units to engage ISIL on the ground.

Since 2015, the U.S. has been supporting the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria and its armed wing, the SDF.​​​​​​​

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Featured image: A woman wearing face mask walks in Damascus, Syria, March 24, 2020. | Photo: EFE