Ukraine Has Asked Russia to Fill Its Budget Holes

May 6th, 2020 by Paul Antonopoulos

The ambitious Nord Stream 2 pipeline project aims to deliver Russian gas to Europe via the Baltic Sea, thus bypassing Ukraine and reducing risk from Russia’s perspective. While Ukraine has consistently said it will prevent the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the country is now also offering Russian state-owned Gazprom its gas storage facilities.

However, there are two major reasons why Moscow might not agree to Ukraine’s offer:

Moscow has difficulty in having confidence in Ukraine considering it maintains a pro-NATO policy.

Russia has enough of its own warehouses to store gas.

Although the proposal for storing Russian gas in Ukraine first appears logical, given the huge lack of trust in bilateral relations, this is a rather ambitious proposal by Kiev as it also continues to do everything in its power to prevent the construction of Nord Stream 2.

The Director General of the Ukrainian gas transportation system Sergei Makogon suggested that Gazprom lease Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities for the temporary storage of Russian gas transported to Europe. He said it would be three to five times cheaper for Gazprom than it costs in European Union countries who consume this gas – just $10 per thousand cubic meters. He added that in winter, as demand grows in the European Union, Gazprom will be able to take gas from underground Ukrainian gas storage facilities and send it to Europe.

He also predicts that Ukraine may end its role as a Russian gas transit in 2025 after the five-year contract between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogas expires, along with the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. This would be another major economic blow to Ukraine when considering after the first leg of the Turkish Stream was put into operation, the Ukrainian system had already lost 15 billion cubic meters of annual transit. The loss Ukraine faces because of the Turkish Stream will become even greater with the second phase of the pipeline that will run through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, and account for another 15 billion cubic meter loss, is complete..

Although Makogon said he hopes Ukraine can store gas on behalf of Russia, he also announced that Ukraine “will make every effort to prevent the completion of Nord Stream 2, as this project has a clear political character and runs counter to European principles of solidarity.” So effectively he made two contradictory statements as one is friendly and the other is aggressive, thus again demonstrating why Russia finds it difficult in trusting Ukraine.

Russian officials point out that there is sufficient gas storage in Russia’s territory and that Russia does not currently need the assistance of other countries in this regard. Even if there is a need to rent a warehouse, in the case of Ukraine, a competitive price will not be sufficient as guarantees for safeguarding Russian gas will be needed so theft that has happened in the past will not be repeated.

It also needs to be factored in that because of the coronavirus, there is a decline in gas consumption. The need for gas storage will increase in winter – this is seemingly obvious. However, we are now only weeks away from summer and the demand for gas will significantly reduce, in addition to the fact that Gazprom has sufficient capacity for its own storage. Therefore, Makogon’s proposal for Ukraine to store Russian gas is actually a more of a desperate plea linked to the fact that Ukraine is experiencing a significant economic downturn, and the head of the Ukrainian gas transportation system is looking for an opportunity to somehow fill the deep budget holes.

It should also be considered that the infrastructure Ukraine is offering to Russia is generally 50 years old. Because of all this, it is highly unlikely that there will be agreements for the storage of Russian gas made between Moscow and Kiev.

Remembering that after tough negotiations last December, Kiev and Moscow signed a five-year agreement on the transit of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine. The new contract stipulates that Gazprom will send at least 65 billion cubic meters of gas through Ukraine in the first year and then at least 40 billion annually from 2021 to 2024. This five-year agreement will bring Kiev more than $7 billion, which is critical for its short-term economic survival, but what then after that?

*

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.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Bay of Pigs 2.0 – Armed Invasion of Venezuela?

May 6th, 2020 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Amid the global pandemic, Washington moves forward with its agenda in Latin America. Onсe again, the target is Venezuela. The American government’s opposition to the popular regime of Nicolás Maduro has reached increasingly drastic levels, with the United States officially stating the dangerous lie that the Venezuelan State would be involved in the international narcotics trafficking and, since then, carrying out bold military and intelligence maneuvers to destabilize the Bolivarian government.

At the end of March, Washington formally accused the government of Nicolás Maduro of involvement with drug trafficking. A 15 million dollar reward was offered for information leading to the arrest of the Venezuelan president. Since this moment, the American policy towards Venezuela has completely hardened, with increasingly aggressive maneuvers conducted against the South American government. Shortly after announcing the millionaire reward for data leading to Maduro’s arrest, U.S. President Donald Trump sent military troops to Venezuela. Powerful US Navy ships were sent to the Venezuelan coast in a military operation to “fight drug trafficking in South America”.

In practice, the US wants to surround Venezuela, obstruct the country’s navigations and repeat the old strategy of suffocating the enemy to overthrow Maduro, thus guaranteeing Washington’s interests in South America. However, the frontal attack through a maritime siege was not enough to overthrow Maduro and, then, the South American country was invaded by mercenary troops in the service of the USA in the beginning of April. Little or nothing was reported by the western media agencies regarding the invasion of Venezuela, however, it not only occurred but was extremely significant, requiring great government attention to dismantle the foreign conspiracy.

The way in which the invasion was designed is still little known outside Venezuela, however, it is speculated that there was a triad of collaboration between the United States, Colombia and the Guaidó’s Venezuelan opposition. At first, these three elements conspired to allow armed mercenaries to enter Venezuelan soil to overthrow the government. According to official sources, the guerrillas left Colombia on a sea route to enter Venezuela, being transported by an American company possibly hired by Guaidó himself. The attack occurred more specifically in the Chuao region, in the state of Aragua. Several photos and videos of the operation to contain the invasion can be easily found on the internet. The Venezuelan Attorney General has published a series of evidences, including the contracts signed between Guaidó and the American company, which describe the sea routes from Colombia, exactly as done during the attack, attesting the veracity of the Maduro government’s allegations.

On Sunday, Venezuelan Interior Minister Néstor Reverol made a public statement immediately after the invasion attempt, stating that the country’s security forces wounded, captured and slaughtered several terrorists in La Guaíra, just 20 miles from Caracas. In his words:

“A group of mercenary terrorists from Colombia tried to carry out an invasion by sea, to commit terrorist attacks in the country and to assassinate the leaders of the revolutionary government”.

The allegations on the part of the Venezuelan government were quickly answered by the Colombian authorities, who, however, did nothing but claim “no basis in the charges”, without providing proof that such invaders would not have left Colombia in coordinated action.

Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and Colombia were broken last year. Gradually, Colombia becomes a satellite state of American interests in South America, being absolutely occupied and submitted to Washington. It is worth remembering that in 2018 Colombia became NATO’s first “global partner” in Latin America. The most curious and even ironic in this whole scenario is the American accusation against Maduro’s government of involvement with drug trafficking, when, in fact, Colombia, its greatest ally in the global South, is the Latin nation with the greatest historical link to the international drug trafficking in the Americas, being a true Narco-State. Washington deflects the focus of its allies by imputing its crimes to its enemies.

The failed operation brings to mind a similar episode that took place in Cuba in 1961, the so-called Bay of Pigs Invasion. On that occasion, Cuba was invaded by a group of paramilitary mercenaries trained by the CIA and financed by the Italian-American Mafia who intended to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government. The operation was a complete failure and a real humiliation for the United States, which had to withdraw and recognize the Cuban victory. Again, history repeats itself, with mercenaries being paid and trained by the United States to invade non-aligned countries in an outsourced war tactic. And again, the US is defeated.

This “Bay of Pigs 2.0” reveals a truly outdated posture of American geopolitics. Increasingly, Washington is trying to revive Cold War tactics in a completely different global context and where such measures are intolerable. How long will the US insist on this strategy? When will they realize that their aggressive international policy is not effective in the current dynamics of international relations?

*

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.

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

Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has made an audacious salient call for debt cancellation for low income countries. It was published in the Opinion section of the April 30, New York Times, Why the Global Debt of Poor Nations Must Be Canceled, (printed in full below). PM Abiy is correct, debt cancellation is absolutely necessary to save lives and for developing nations to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. To compel a nation like Ethiopia to spend almost half of its revenue on debt service, while its people are suffering from a perfect storm of Desert Locust swarms, food insufficiency, and a weak healthcare infrastructure, is immoral if not criminal. PM Abiy wrote:

“At the very least, the suspension of debt payments should last not just until the end of 2020 but rather until well after the pandemic is truly over. It should involve not just debt suspension but debt cancellation…

“These steps need to be taken with a sense of urgency. The resources freed up will save lives and livelihoods in the short term, bring back hope and dynamism to low-income economies in the medium term and enable them to continue as the engines of sustainable global prosperity in the long term.

“In 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health. Ethiopia spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health. We spend 47 percent of our merchandise export revenue on debt servicing…

“The dilemma Ethiopia faces is stark: Do we continue to pay toward debt or redirect resources to save lives and livelihoods?”

PM Abiy’s analysis of the urgent need for the cancellation of debt service is relevant to the exacerbating effect of COVID-19 in Africa’s rising food insecurity.

image

Smoked fish produced in Ghana is sold all over the country and in neighboring Togo – as long as transport routes and borders can remain open for the movement of food to markets. Credit Jane Hahn/Oxfam America

COVID-19 Worsens Food Crisis

In the month from March 30 to April 30, COVID-19 cases in Africa rose from 4,760 to 37,296-800% increase, and the total of deaths from 146 to 1,619-1,100% increase.  Experts are legitimately concerned, that millions more may die from hunger and poverty as a result of the needed efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Closing borders, stay at home orders, loss of income, interruption of supply chains, and disruption of traditional animal migration cycles inauspiciously contribute to amplifying food insecurity.

“If the pandemic worsens, as many as 50 million more people could face a food crisis in the [Sahel} region,” according to Coumba Sow, Food and Agricultural Organization Resilience Coordinator for West Africa in her interview: FAO: COVID19: 50 Million in Sahel Could Face Food Crisis. Coumba Sow reports that across West Africa, 11 million people need immediate food assistance and that this number could rise to 17 million in the period from June to August. She says that it is “crucial to anticipate COVID-19’s impacts on agriculture, food security and the lives of vulnerable women and children. Ensuring that food systems and food supply chains are maintained is one of the most important action to take at national and regional levels.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) projects that the number of people facing acute food insecurity could rise from 135 million to 265 million in 2020 as a result of COVID-19.  According to the WFP, five of the countries that had the worst food crisis in 2019 were located in Africa; Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Arif Husain, economist for the WFP said:

“COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are hanging by a thread. It is a hammer blow for millions more who can only eat it they earn a wage. Lockdowns and global economic recession have already decimated their nest eggs. It only takes one more shock—like COVID-19 to push them over the edge.”

Mauritanian herders (Courtesy of UN-FAO)

A New Financial Architecture Required

While debt cancellation is essential, international and federal mechanisms are required to issue i.e. create new lines of credit to build up nation-wide advanced healthcare infrastructure, which all African nations lack. This endeavor should be part of a much larger undertaking to place African nations on a path to become developed industrialized economies.  I discuss the importance of emerging nations  to generate physical economic wealth in my earlier article: World Needs New Economic Platform to Fight COVID-19Trillions of dollars of new credit must become accessible for African nations to address the dearth of infrastructure in energy, roads, railroads, and healthcare, that is literally killing Africans, every day. Successful transformation of African nations requires an urgent focus on nurturing combined manufacturing-agricultural processing industries. Speaking at a Johns Hopkins webinar on April 22, Gyude Moore, former Liberian Minster of Public Works (2014-2018) emphasized that creating manufacturing jobs is essential to transitioning to a more developed economy.

What has been glaringly brought to the surface by the combined COVID-19 pandemic and the malnourishment of Africa’s population is; that the global economic-political system of the last five decades has failed. A new financial architecture is compulsory to save lives and put civilization on the trajectory of progress. This new financial architecture should encompass the following essential missions in Africa:

  • Cancellation of debt
  • New credit generation for physical economic growth
  • Massive investment in hard infrastructure
  • Urgent mobilization to establish modern health infrastructure
  • Significant upgrading of manufacturing and agricultural sectors

It is unacceptable in the twenty-first century for every nation not to be equipped with advanced modern healthcare infrastructure.  One of the most egregious defects of globalization is that nations have become dependent on imported food from thousands of miles away because it is somehow construed to be cheaper than producing food at home.

Nations exist to foster the continuation of a human culture moored to the conception that human life is sacred. There is no equivalency between servicing debt and safeguarding human life.  Money really has no intrinsic value. Banks are mere servicing bureaus of an economy.  Governments legitimately create credit to generate future physical wealth to benefit their citizens. When borrowing or lending arrangements fail to benefit society then they should be restructured or cancelled. Such financial reorganizations have been achieved many times throughout history.

PM Abiy has brought to the attention of the world, a profound underlying principle that should govern all national and international policy: the promotion of human life is supreme, monetary instruments are not.

***

Why the Global Debt of Poor Nations Must Be Canceled

Delaying the repayments to the Group of 20 is not enough.

By Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 2019

April 30, 2020, New York Times

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — On April 15, Group of 20 countries offered temporary relief to some of the world’s lowest-income countries by suspending debt repayments until the end of the year. It is a step in the right direction and provides an opportunity to redirect financial resources toward dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

But if the world is to survive the punishing fallout of the pandemic and ensure that the economies of countries like mine bounce back, this initiative needs to be even more ambitious.

At the very least, the suspension of debt payments should last not just until the end of 2020 but rather until well after the pandemic is truly over. It should involve not just debt suspension but debt cancellation. Global creditors need to waive both official bilateral and commercial debt for low-income countries.

These steps need to be taken with a sense of urgency. The resources freed up will save lives and livelihoods in the short term, bring back hope and dynamism to low-income economies in the medium term and enable them to continue as the engines of sustainable global prosperity in the long term.

In 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health. Ethiopia spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health. We spend 47 percent of our merchandise export revenue on debt servicing. The International Monetary Fund described Ethiopia as being at high risk of external debt distress.

The dilemma Ethiopia faces is stark: Do we continue to pay toward debt or redirect resources to save lives and livelihoods? Lives lost during the pandemic cannot be recovered; imperiled livelihoods cost more and take longer to recover.

Immediate and forceful action on debt will prevent a humanitarian disaster today and shore up our economy for tomorrow. We need to immediately divert resources from servicing debt toward responding adequately to the pandemic. We need to impede a temporary health crisis from turning into a chronic financial meltdown that could last for years, even decades.

Ethiopia must spend an extra $3 billion by the end of 2020 to address the consequences of the pandemic, while our balance of payments is set to deteriorate. Increasing health care spending is essential, irrespective of debt levels, but we have less money on hand, and much of it is due to creditors.

A moratorium on bilateral and commercial debt payments for the rest of this year will save Ethiopia $1.7 billion. Extending the moratorium till the end of 2022 would save an additional $3.5 billion.

Low income countries can use the financial resources freed up by cancellation or further deferment of debt repayments to invest in our battle against the pandemic, from providing necessary medical care to our citizens to ameliorating our financial difficulties.

In October, the I.M.F. reported that the five fastest-growing economies in the world were in sub-Saharan Africa, which includes Ethiopia. In early April, the World Bank reported that sub-Saharan Africa would face its first region wide recession in over 25 years and the region’s economy could shrink by as much as 5.1 percent.

This is not a result of bad policies, mismanagement or any other ill typically associated with developing economies. The recession will be the product of the coronavirus outbreak.

Preventing or at least minimizing the recession is critical to maintaining years of hard-won economic gains across the continent. The current moratorium in bilateral debt collection until the end of the year will help, but it won’t be enough, given the gravity of the challenge we face.

The moratorium must be extended until the coronavirus health emergency is over or canceled altogether. The creditors need to do this unconditionally.

Official bilateral creditors are no longer the principal source of external debt financing for many developing countries. Private-sector creditors, including investment banks and sovereign funds, are. They should play their part in the effort to rescue African economies from permanent paralysis with a sense of solidarity and shared responsibility. It would help avoid widespread sovereign defaults and chaos in the market.

And it would be morally indefensible if resources freed up from a moratorium in bilateral debt collections were to be used to pay private creditors instead of saving lives.

Most of our countries managed to borrow funds on the back of solid economic performance and highly promising and evidence-based development programs and trajectories. Nobody foresaw this promise being derailed by a once-in-a-century event such as the coronavirus pandemic.

Under these circumstances, there is no room for traditional arguments such as moral hazard. Low-income countries are seeking relief not because we squandered the money but because we need the resources to save lives and livelihoods.

It is in everybody’s enlightened self-interest that the borrowers be allowed breathing space to get back to relative health. The benefits of rehabilitation of the economies of the hardest-hit countries will be shared by all of us, just as the consequences of neglect will harm all of us.

*

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.

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in the economic development policy of Africa for 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com

Throughout his tenure, Trump showed indifference toward public health.

His proposed 2020 budget calls for cutting $900 million from the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

It proposes a $17.9 billion cut to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

It includes reduction or elimination of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) programs that are essential to public health.

If adopted by Congress and signed into law, vital public health programs harmed will include HIV/AIDS special projects, maternal and child health services, rural health services, the EPA, Medicaid and Medicaid, food stamps, initiatives to combat the opioid crisis, along with what’s needed to contain COVID-19 outbreaks.

Trump defied reality, falsely claiming his regime’s coronavirus task force is no longer needed, shutting it down at month’s end to focus on restarting the economy.

Pence compounded the deception, saying the action is “a reflection of the tremendous progress we’ve made” in containing COVID-19 outbreaks, reality much different.

The news came as the CDC and FEMA “forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now,” daily coronavirus deaths to be around 3,000 by June 1, far higher than currently.

According to Trump, things will shift to an unspecified phase 2 response, “something in a different form,” at a time when much of the US is experiencing increased outbreaks.

Last month, infectious disease expert/HHS official Dr. Rick Bright was demoted because of his outspoken early in the year warning about the risk of spreading COVID-19 outbreaks, unpreparedness to contain them, and dangers of using untested drugs like hydroxychloroquine to treat infected patients.

He slammed what he called “cronyism over science,” pressure by former Eli Lilly executive/HHS secretary Alex Azar and other department officials to direct millions of dollars in contracts to Trump regime favorites.

By formal whistleblower complaint to the Office of Special Council, his attorney said the following:

He “encountered indifference which then developed into hostility from HHS leadership, including secretary Azar, as (he) and his (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) staff raised concerns about the virus and the urgent need to act.”

The complaint followed unacceptable Trump regime public health actions and his reassignment to a lower-level National Institutes of Health position.

Throughout Trump’s tenure, Bright was pressured to award regime contracts to companies represented by lobbyists with DLT and Jared Kushner connections.

His opposition to crony capitalism and Trump’s mishandled COVID-19 response led to his demotion in retaliation for speaking out.

The official whistleblower complaint filed on his behalf by attorney Debra Katz highlights the dismissiveness of top HHS officials toward the need to prepare for coronavirus outbreaks in the US, his opposition to using untested drugs sold by Trump regime cronies, and his demotion for sounding the alarm.

The complaint also stressed Bright’s concern about COVID-19’s contagiousness and potentially high mortality rate among vulnerable individuals with weak immune systems.

His concerns about the “urgent need to act” swiftly were ignored. Trump regime hostility toward him grew in response to what he told congressional members and the press.

Reportedly he’s scheduled to give congressional testimony next week.

Will his remarks, likely to be widely reported by anti-Trump establishment media, drive another stake into the heart of his reelection campaign?

His formal complaint stresses “baseless smear campaign (tactics) against him, leveling demonstrably false allegations about his performance in an attempt to justify what was clearly a retaliatory demotion.”

It also calls for investigating his crony capitalism charges and reversing his reassignment to a lower level position.

November presidential and congressional elections are shaping up to be a referendum on Trump’s mishandled COVID-19 public health crisis response and devastating economic collapse, especially the latter.

He faces an uphill struggle for another term in office.

Protracted harder than ever hard times in the run-up to November may be his undoing.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from ASPR Twitter

Phony Foreign Threats to the US Power Grid

May 6th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Fear-mongering is longstanding US policy that accompanies its geopolitical agenda.

The late Nobel laureate Harold Pinter described how the US operates worldwide, saying its ultimatum to other countries is “(k)iss my arse or I’ll kick your head in.” 

Domestic policy is much the same. US hegemony tolerates no opposition, demands subservience.

Pinter added that Washington “doesn’t give a damn about the UN, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant.”

Both right wings of the US war party need enemies to advance their imperial agenda.

They don’t exist so they’re invented — fear-mongering a tactic used time and again to manipulate the public mind.

No matter how often most Americans were duped by earlier phony threats, they’re easy marks to be fooled again — why the late Gore Vidal described America an “the United States of amnesia.”

The last oral historian Studs Terkel corrected him, saying:

“Gore, it’s not the United States of amnesia. It’s the United States of alzheimer’s.”

Invented US enemies are falsely accused of all sorts of things they had nothing to do with.

Endless repetition by establishment media manipulates most people to believe almost anything, no matter how implausible.

Along with the Trump regime’s war of words on China, DJT declared a nonexistent national emergency threat to national security by executive order to protect the nation’s power grid from cyber-attacks by Russia, China, or other US adversaries.

Phony threats to the US power grid surfaced before. In 2009, the UK Telegraph falsely claimed “cyberspies from China and Russia have hacked into the US electricity grid (with) hidden software that could be used to disrupt power supplies,” citing unnamed officials.

Nothing of the sort occurred.

Around the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed Obama regime officials said “(t)he Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid.”

“So have the Russians,” implying they have attacking it in mind. No cyber or other attacks occurred.

In mid-2017, the Washington Post falsely claimed that “(h)ackers allied with the Russian government have devised a cyberweapon that has the potential to be the most disruptive yet against electric systems that Americans depend on for daily life, according to US researchers,” adding:

CrashOverride malware “could be deployed against US electric transmission and distribution systems with devastating effect.”

“Russian government hackers have shown their interest in targeting US energy and other utility systems.”

No evidence was cited in the above reports because none exists.

No national emergency to the US power grid existed earlier or now from any other nations.

Trump’s executive order, falsely suggesting otherwise, combines fear-mongering with a move to curb or ban imports from China, Russia, and other nations that compete with corporate America for key technological applications.

Trump’s EO calls for establishing a task force on energy infrastructure procurement policies to achieve this objective.

It lets the energy secretary and other US officials prohibit or limit purchases of power-related equipment from nations allegedly posing a potential threat to the US power grid.

The EO relates to equipment used in power plants, substations, and control rooms, including nuclear reactors, transformers, large generators and their backups.

In 2019, then-DNI Dan Coats falsely accused Russia, China, and other countries of threatening US infrastructure, including the nation’s power grid.

In April, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), together with the UK National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), warned that unidentified national and international “advanced persistent threat (APT) groups” are “exploit(ing)” COVID-19 outbreaks by cyber operations against their countries — again no evidence cited.

Trump’s EO called for creating a vendor “blacklist” to curb or prevent US power companies from buying equipment from unacceptable foreign sources.

Claims that they’re “increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities” in the United States bulk-power system with “potentially catastrophic effects” ignores nonexistent threats from China, Russia and other countries on the US target list for regime change.

In sharp contrast, the US poses an enormous threat to all nations it doesn’t control.

Wanting them transformed into client states is what wars by hot and other means are made of.

Ongoing endlessly in multiple theaters, new eruptions could happen against other nations at any time.

That’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about, threatening everyone everywhere.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The sinister potential of coronavirus lockdown to suppress dissent was on display on Monday as police broke up a small group of protestors outside Westminster Crown Court during a case management hearing for Julian Assange. The dozen protestors, who included Julian’s father John Shipton, were all social distancing at least 2 metres apart (except where living in the same household). The police did not observe social distancing as they broke up this small and peaceful protest.

This is a stark illustration of the use of the current emergency powers to suppress legitimate dissent.

For the first time, there was something of a court victory for Assange’s defence team, as they obtained their preferred date of September for resumption of the extradition hearing. Last week magistrate Baraitser had tried to impose a choice of July or November based on the availability of Woolwich Crown Court. As defence witnesses have to come from around the world, July was too early for the defence, while November would mean another lengthy period of incarceration for the unconvicted Assange. This is not the first time the defence have secured the agreement of the US-led prosecution to a procedural request, but it is the very first time Baraitser has acceded to anything proposed by the defence, throughout all the lengthy proceedings.

SO the Assange hearing will resume in September, and of course I intend to be there to report it, if not myself incarcerated. The exact date is not yet known nor the venue. It will not be Woolwich but another Crown Court which has availability. I suspect it may be at Kingston-upon-Thames, because the government will want to maintain the theatre of the peaceful Julian being an ultra-dangerous offender and that is the other purpose built “anti-terrorism court” in London.

It is well worth reading this excellent article from El Pais by Julian’s partner, Stella Morris. It says a great deal that in the state that is actually holding Europe’s most prominent political prisoner, no newspaper would publish it. It is a truism that the general public fail to notice the slide into authoritarianism before it is too late. I confess I never thought to witness the process first hand in the UK. The information on guns in the article is new to me:

After Julian was arrested a year ago, Spain’s High Court opened an investigation into the security company that had been operating inside the embassy. Several whistleblowers came forward and have informed law enforcement of unlawful activities against Julian and his lawyers, both inside and outside the embassy. They are cooperating with law enforcement and have provided investigators with large amounts of data.

The investigation has revealed that the company had been moonlighting for a US company closely associated with the current US administration and US intelligence agencies and that the increasingly disturbing instructions, such as following my mother or the baby DNA directive, had come from their US client, not Ecuador. Around the same time that I had been approached about the targeting of our baby, the company was thrashing out even more sinister plans concerning Julian’s life. Their alleged plots to poison or abduct Julian have been raised in UK extradition proceedings. A police raid at the security company director’s home turned up two handguns with their serial numbers filed off.

We are now to be expected to entrust ourselves to a new coronavirus tracing app, currently being trialed on the Isle of Wight, that allows the government to know precisely where we are and with whom. The results will be permanently stored in a central database – something that is not required for the ostensible purpose of the app. The UK is alone among European states in seeking to create a national centralised database containing traceable unique identifiers for individuals. Precisely to address civil liberties concerns, all other countries are using a devolved database approach with amalgamation only of research useful date which cannot identify individuals. The UK is also refusing to share code with the public, or even precise detail of developers. The US firm Palantir, which has developed the app for NHSX, is coy about where its development is carried out and by whom. So far nothing has been released on the architecture of the App.

I highly recommend this podcast by Matrix Chambers on the very alarming civil liberties implication of the approach to the tracing app by Boris Johnson’s government.

There is no organisation or group with an interest in data privacy which is not sounding the alarm. The Register reports:

Controversially, the NHSX app will beam that contact data back to government-controlled servers. The academics who signed today’s open letter fear that this data stockpile will become “a tool that enables data collection on the population, or on targeted sections of society, for surveillance.”

As we reported yesterday, Britain has abandoned the international consensus on how much data should be collected to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

The letter said:

We hold that the usual data protection principles should apply: collect the minimum data necessary to achieve the objective of the application. We hold it is vital that if you are to build the necessary trust in the application the level of data being collected is justified publicly by the public health teams demonstrating why this is truly necessary rather than simply the easiest way, or a “nice to have”, given the dangers involved and invasive nature of the technology.

Then a further report in The Register emphasised still more the UK government’s rejection of the Apple-Google app being used by virtually every other country, which is specifically devised to make impossible centralised storing of information which identifies individuals:

Presumably the goal with this kind of explanation is to comfort the vast majority of UK folk who don’t understand how the entire internet economy works by connecting vast databases together.

So long as you can rely on one piece of per-user data – like a “big random number” – everything else can be connected. And if you also have a postcode, that becomes 100 times easier. Ever heard of Facebook? It’s worth billions solely because it is able to connect the dots between datasets.

Indeed, it may be possible to work out who is associating with whom from the app’s ID numbers. Bear in mind, the Apple-Google decentralized approach produces new ID numbers for each user each day, thwarting identification, especially with the ban on location tracking.

Levy also glossed over the fact that as soon as someone agrees to share their information with UK government – by claiming to feel unwell and hitting a big green button – 28 days of data from the app is given to a central server from where it can never be recovered. That data, featuring all the unique IDs you’ve encountered in that period and when and how far apart you were, becomes the property of NCSC – as its chief exec Matthew Gould was forced to admit to MPs on Monday. Gould also admitted that the data will not be deleted, UK citizens will not have the right to demand it is deleted, and it can or will be used for “research” in future.

Yes, that is Matthew Gould in charge of the whole project. Matthew Gould, who as Private Secretary to first David Miliband and then William Hague, and then as UK Ambassador to Israel, held an extraordinary total of eight secret meetings with Liam Fox and Adam Werritty together.

1) 8 September 2009 as Miliband’s Principal Private Secretary (omitted from O’Donnell report)
2) 16 June 2010 as Hague’s Principal Private Secretary (omitted from O’Donnell report)
3) A “social occasion” in summer 2010 as Ambassador designate to Israel with Gould, Fox and Werritty (omitted from O’Donnell report)
4) 1 September 2010 in London (only one September meeting in O’Donnell report)
5) 27 September 2010 in London (only one September meeting in O’Donnell report)
6) 4-6 February 2011 Herzilya Conference Israel (omitted from O’Donnell report)
7) 6 February 2011 Tel Aviv dinner with Mossad and Israeli military
8) 15 May 2011 “We believe in Israel” conference London (omitted from O’Donnell report)

Funnily enough, I was recalling Matthew Gould last week when the Cabinet Secretary, after his “investigation”, published his report “exonerating” Priti Patel of bullying. It reminded me of when then Gus O’Donnell as Cabinet Secretary published his “investigation” into the Fox-Werritty affair, in which Gus O’Donnell systematically lied and covered up the meetings between Fox, Werritty and Matthew Gould, claiming there had only been two such meetings when in fact there were eight. It is also a good moment perhaps to pay tribute to the redoubtable Paul Flynn MP, recently deceased, who after I briefed him attempted to question Gus O’Donnell on the Public Administration Committee about the meetings he was covering up. With admirable persistence, despite continual efforts to block him, Flynn did manage to get Gus O’Donnell to admit directly that one of the Fox/Werritty/Matthew Gould meetings was with Mossad.

Hansard Public Administration Committee 24/11/2011

Q<369> Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.

In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—

Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?

Paul Flynn: Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.

Chair: I have to take a point of order.

Robert Halfon: Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.

Paul Flynn: I quote the Daily Mail: “Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations”—not from me, from the Daily Mail—“that he was close to the country’s secret service, Mossad.” There may be nothing in that, but that appeared in a national newspaper.

Chair: I am going to rule on a point of order. Mr Flynn has made it clear that there may be nothing in these allegations, but it is important to have put it on the record. Be careful how you phrase questions.

Paul Flynn: Indeed. The two worst decisions taken by Parliament in my 25 years were the invasion of Iraq—joining Bush’s war in Iraq—and the invasion of Helmand province. We know now that there were things going on in the background while that built up to these mistakes. The charge in this case is that Werritty was the servant of neo-con people in America, who take an aggressive view on Iran. They want to foment a war in Iran in the same way as in the early years, there was another—

Chair: Order. I must ask you to move to a question that is relevant to the inquiry.

Q<370> Paul Flynn: Okay. The question is, are you satisfied that you missed out on the extra four meetings that took place, and does this not mean that those meetings should have been investigated because of the nature of Mr Werritty’s interests?

Sir Gus O’Donnell: I think if you look at some of those meetings, some people are referring to meetings that took place before the election.

Q<371> Paul Flynn: Indeed, which is even more worrying.

Sir Gus O’Donnell: I am afraid they were not the subject—what members of the Opposition do is not something that the Cabinet Secretary should look into. It is not relevant.

But these meetings were held—
Chair: Mr Flynn, would you let him answer please?

Sir Gus O’Donnell: I really do not think that was within my context, because they were not Ministers of the Government and what they were up to was not something I should get into at all.

Chair: Final question, Mr Flynn.

Q<372> Paul Flynn: No, it is not a final question. I am not going to be silenced by you, Chairman; I have important things to raise. I have stayed silent throughout this meeting so far.

You state in the report—on the meeting held between Gould, Fox and Werritty, on 6 February, in Tel Aviv—that there was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK ambassador was present…

Sir Gus O’Donnell: The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual’s biases.

When I put in Freedom of Information requests for the minutes of the eight meetings involving all of Liam Fox, Adam Werritty and Matthew Gould, they came back as blank sheets of paper, with literally everything removed but the date, in the interests of “national security”. When I put in a Freedom of Information request for all correspondence between Adam Werritty and Matthew Gould, I received a refusal on the grounds it would be too expensive to collect it.

I should make my position perfectly plain. I think a coronavirus tracing app is an important tool in containing the virus. I would happily use the safeguarded one being developed by Google/Apple with decentralised data and daily changing identifiers, not linked to postcodes, being adopted by major European governments.

But I think serious questions have to be asked about why the UK government has developed its own unique app, universally criticised for its permanent central data collection and ability to identify individuals from their unique codes. That this is overseen not by a scientist or health professional, but by the man who held all those secret meetings with Fox and Werritty, including with Mossad as admitted to Parliament by the then Cabinet Secretary, frankly stinks.

*

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.

Featured image is from Elekhh – CC BY-SA 3.0

Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type – ran an in-depth article of the problems free speech poses to American society in the coronavirus era. The headline:

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

Authored by a pair of law professors from Harvard and the University of Arizona, Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods, the piece argued that the American and Chinese approaches to monitoring the Internet were already not that dissimilar:

Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices… But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.

They went on to list all the reasons that, given that we’re already on an “inexorable” path to censorship, a Chinese-style system of speech control may not be such a bad thing. In fact, they argued, a benefit of the coronavirus was that it was waking us up to “how technical wizardry, data centralization, and private-public collaboration can do enormous public good.”

Perhaps, they posited, Americans could be moved to reconsider their “understanding” of the First and Fourth Amendments, as “the harms from digital speech” continue to grow, and “the social costs of a relatively open Internet multiply.”

This interesting take on the First Amendment was the latest in a line of “Let’s rethink that whole democracy thing” pieces that began sprouting up in earnest four years ago. Articles with headlines like “Democracies end when they become too democratic” and “Too much of a good thing: why we need less democracy” became common after two events in particular: Donald Trump’s victory in the the Republican primary race, and the decision by British voters to opt out of the EU, i.e. “Brexit.”

A consistent lament in these pieces was the widespread decline in respect for “experts” among the ignorant masses, better known as the people Trump was talking about when he gushed in February 2016, “I love the poorly educated!”

The Atlantic was at the forefront of the argument that The People is a Great Beast, that cannot be trusted to play responsibly with the toys of freedom. A 2016 piece called “American politics has gone insane” pushed a return of the “smoke-filled room” to help save voters from themselves. Author Jonathan Rauch employed a metaphor that is striking in retrospect, describing America’s oft-vilified intellectual and political elite as society’s immune system:

Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick.

The new piece by Goldsmith and Woods says we’re there, made literally sick by our refusal to accept the wisdom of experts. The time for asking the (again, literally) unwashed to listen harder to their betters is over. The Chinese system offers a way out. When it comes to speech, don’t ask: tell.

As the Atlantic lawyers were making their case, YouTube took down a widely-circulated video about coronavirus, citing a violation of “community guidelines.”

The offenders were Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massahi, co-owners of an “Urgent Care” clinic in Bakersfield, California. They’d held a presentation in which they argued that widespread lockdowns were perhaps not necessary, according to data they were collecting and analyzing.

“Millions of cases, small amounts of deaths,” said Erickson, a vigorous, cheery-looking Norwegian-American who argued the numbers showed Covid-19 was similar to flu in mortality rate.  “Does [that] necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of oil companies, furloughing doctors…? I think the answer is going to be increasingly clear.”

The reaction of the medical community was severe. It was pointed out that the two men owned a clinic that was losing business thanks to the lockdown. The message boards of real E.R. doctors lit up with angry comments, scoffing at the doctors’ dubious data collection methods and even their somewhat dramatic choice to dress in scrubs for their video presentation.

The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) scrambled to issue a joint statement to “emphatically condemn” the two doctors, who “do not speak for medical society” and had released “biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests.”

As is now almost automatically the case in the media treatment of any controversy, the story was immediately packaged for “left” and “right” audiences by TV networks. Tucker Carlson on Fox backed up the doctors’ claims, saying “these are serious people who’ve done this for a living for decades,” and YouTube and Google have “officially banned dissent.”

Meanwhile, over on Carlson’s opposite-number channel, MSNBC, anchor Chris Hayes of the All In program reacted with fury to Carlson’s monologue:

There’s a concerted effort on the part of influential people at the network that we at All In call Trump TV right now to peddle dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus… Call it coronavirus trutherism.

Hayes, an old acquaintance of mine, seethed at what he characterized as the gross indifference of Trump Republicans to the dangers of coronavirus. “At the beginning of this horrible period, the president, along with his lackeys, and propagandists, they all minimized what was coming,” he said, sneering. “They said it was just like a cold or the flu.”

He angrily demanded that if Fox acolytes like Carlson believed so strongly that society should be reopened, they should go work in a meat processing plant. “Get in there if you think it’s that bad. Go chop up some pork.”

The tone of the many media reactions to Erickson, Carlson, Trump, Georgia governor Brian Kemp, and others who’ve suggested lockdowns and strict shelter-in-place laws are either unnecessary or do more harm than good, fits with what writer Thomas Frank describes as a new “Utopia of Scolding”:

Who needs to win elections when you can personally reestablish the social order every day on Twitter and Facebook? When you can scold, and scold, and scold. That’s their future, and it’s a satisfying one: a finger wagging in some vulgar proletarian’s face, forever.

In the Trump years the sector of society we used to describe as liberal America became a giant finger-wagging machine. The news media, academia, the Democratic Party, show-business celebrities and masses of blue-checked Twitter virtuosos became a kind of umbrella agreement society, united by loathing of Trump and fury toward anyone who dissented with their preoccupations.

Because this Conventional Wisdom viewed itself as being solely concerned with the Only Important Thing, i.e. removing Trump, there was no longer any legitimate excuse for disagreeing with its takes on Russia, Julian Assange, Jill Stein, Joe Rogan, the 25th amendment, Ukraine, the use of the word “treason,” the removal of Alex Jones, the movie Joker, or whatever else happened to be the #Resistance fixation of the day.

When the Covid-19 crisis struck, the scolding utopia was no longer abstraction. The dream was reality! Pure communism had arrived! Failure to take elite advice was no longer just a deplorable faux pas. Not heeding experts was now murder. It could not be tolerated. Media coverage quickly became a single, floridly-written tirade against “expertise-deniers.” For instance, the Atlantic headline on Kemp’s decision to end some shutdowns was, “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.”

At the outset of the crisis, America’s biggest internet platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit – took an unprecedented step to combat “fraud and misinformation” by promising extensive cooperation in elevating “authoritative” news over less reputable sources.

H.L. Mencken once said that in America,

“the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head.”

We have a lot of dumb people in this country. But the difference between the stupidities cherished by the Idiocracy set ingesting fish cleaner, and the ones pushed in places like the Atlantic, is that the jackasses among the “expert” class compound their wrongness by being so sure of themselves that they force others to go along. In other words, to combat “ignorance,” the scolders create a new and more virulent species of it: exclusive ignorance, forced ignorance, ignorance with staying power.

The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant. It’s astonishing that they don’t see this.

Journalists are professional test-crammers. Our job is to get an assignment on Monday morning and by Tuesday evening act like we’re authorities on intellectual piracy, the civil war in Yemen, Iowa caucus procedure, the coronavirus, whatever. We actually know jack: we speed-read, make a few phone calls, and in a snap people are inviting us on television to tell millions of people what to think about the complex issues of the world.

When we come to a subject cold, the job is about consulting as many people who really know their stuff as quickly as possible and sussing out – often based on nothing more than hunches or impressions of the personalities involved – which set of explanations is most believable. Sportswriters who covered the Deflategate football scandal had to do this in order to explain the Ideal Gas Law, I had to do it to cover the subprime mortgage scandal, and reporters this past January and February had to do it when assigned to assess the coming coronavirus threat.

It does not take that much work to go back and find that a significant portion of the medical and epidemiological establishment called this disaster wrong when they were polled by reporters back in the beginning of the year. Right-wingers are having a blast collecting the headlines, and they should, given the chest-pounding at places like MSNBC about others who “minimized the risk.” Here’s a brief sample:

Get a Grippe, America: The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now: Washington Post

Coronavirus is scary, but the flu is deadlier, more widespread : USA Today

Want to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus? Do the Same Things You Do Every Winter : Time

Here’s my personal favorite, from Wired on January 29:

We should de-escalate the war on coronavirus

There are dozens of these stories and they nearly all contain the same elements, including an inevitable quote or series of quotes from experts telling us to calm the hell down. This is from the Time piece:

“Good hand-washing helps. Staying healthy and eating healthy will also help,” says Dr. Sharon Nachman, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York’s Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. “The things we take for granted actually do work. It doesn’t matter what the virus is. The routine things work.”

There’s a reason why journalists should always keep their distance from priesthoods in any field. It’s particularly in the nature of insular communities of subject matter experts to coalesce around orthodoxies that blind the very people in the loop who should be the most knowledgeable.

“Experts” get things wrong for reasons that are innocent (they’ve all been taught the same incorrect thing in school) and less so (they have a financial or professional interest in denying the truth).

On the less nefarious side, the entire community of pollsters in 2016 denounced as infamous the idea that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination, let alone the general election. They believed that because they weren’t paying attention to voters (their ostensible jobs), but also because they’d never seen anything similar. In a more suspicious example, if you asked a hundred Wall Street analysts in September 2008 what caused the financial crisis, probably no more than a handful would have mentioned fraud or malfeasance.

Both of the above examples point out a central problem with trying to automate the fact-checking process the way the Internet platforms have of late, with their emphasis on “authoritative” opinions.

“Authoritiesby their nature are untrustworthy. Sometimes they have an interest in denying truths, and sometimes they actually try to define truth as being whatever they say it is. “Elevating authoritative content” over independent or less well-known sources is an algorithmic take on the journalistic obsession with credentialing that has been slowly destroying our business for decades.

The WMD fiasco happened because journalists listened to people with military ranks and titles instead of demanding evidence and listening to their own instincts. The same thing happened with Russiagate, a story fueled by intelligence “experts” with grand titles who are now proven to have been wrong to a spectacular degree, if not actually criminally liable in pushing a fraud.

We’ve become incapable of talking calmly about possible solutions because we’ve lost the ability to decouple scientific or policy discussions, or simple issues of fact, from a political argument. Reporting on the Covid-19 crisis has become the latest in a line of moral manias with Donald Trump in the middle.

Instead of asking calmly if hydroxychloroquine works, or if the less restrictive Swedish crisis response has merit, or questioning why certain statistical assumptions about the seriousness of the crisis might have been off, we’re denouncing the questions themselves as infamous. Or we’re politicizing the framing of stories in a way that signals to readers what their take should be before they even digest the material. “Conservative Americans see coronavirus hope in Progressive Sweden,” reads a Politico headline, as if only conservatives should feel optimism in the possibility that a non-lockdown approach might have merit! Are we rooting for such an approach to not work?

From everything I’ve heard, talking to doctors and reading the background material, the Bakersfield doctors are probably not the best sources. But the functional impact of removing their videos (in addition to giving them press they wouldn’t otherwise have had) is to stamp out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed, like when the damage to the economy and the effects of other crisis-related problems – domestic abuse, substance abuse, suicide, stroke, abuse of children, etc. – become as significant a threat to the public as the pandemic. We do actually have to talk about this. We can’t not talk about it out of fear of being censored, or because we’re confusing real harm with political harm.

Turning ourselves into China for any reason is the definition of a cure being worse than the disease. The scolders who are being seduced by such thinking have to wake up, before we end up adding another disaster on top of the terrible one we’re already facing.

*

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.

Featured image is from the author

EU member states are losing over $17 billion in corporate tax a year from US firms abusing the law to shift their profits into the UK, Switzerland and Luxembourg, where corporate tax rates in practice range from 10 per cent to 0.8 per cent. The $17 billion annual corporate tax loss is in addition to the $10 billion in corporate taxes the EU was reported earlier this month to be losing to the Netherlands each year. The UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – the “axis of tax avoidance” – together are costing the EU 12 times the budget of the European Research Council, a pan-European science and technology funding body currently funding over 70,000 researchers and that has funded seven Nobel Prize-winning projects.

The findings come amid increasing urgency in the EU to address the risks corporate tax havens impose on measures to tackle both the health and economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic. Denmark, Poland and France have now banned companies registered in tax havens from receiving bailouts and Italian PM Giuseppe Conte lambasted the Netherlands last week for “tax dumping” following the Tax Justice Network’s earlier report. The Tax Justice Network is cautioning that the European economy cannot be rebuilt on top of a “tax haven trapdoor”.

Continuing analysis published earlier this month, the new report from the Tax Justice Network analyses data published this year by the US detailing where US firms declared their costs and profits in 2016 and 2017. Instead of declaring profits in the EU countries where they were generated, US firms were found to have shifted billions in profits ($115 billion in 2017) to the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, where corporate tax rates in practice are far lower, in order to underreport their profits elsewhere in the EU and consequently pay billions less in tax. The UK, Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg together are responsible for half of the world’s corporate tax avoidance risks, as measured by Corporate Tax Haven Index 2019, for which the four corporate tax havens have been dubbed the “axis of tax avoidance”.

The report finds that Luxembourg is responsible for the biggest corporate tax losses from US firms across the EU, costing EU countries over $12 billion in lost corporate taxes a year, followed by the Netherlands at $10 billion a year, Switzerland at $3 billion and the UK at $1.5 billion.

Corporate tax losses have been biggest in the four EU countries with the highest reported cases of Covid-19: France lost just under $7 billion in corporate tax to the axis of tax avoidance, Germany lost over $4 billion, Italy lost just under $4 billion and Spain lost over $2 billion.

The report highlights the highly wasteful nature of the corporate tax haven model. In return for costing EU members over $27 billion in lost corporate tax a year, the axis of tax avoidance collected just about $4 billion in additional corporate tax a year. For every $1 dollar in corporate tax, the axis of tax avoidance collected from the shifted profits of US corporations, the EU as a whole lost nearly $7 in corporate tax from those corporations.

The degree of wastefulness varies among the four corporate tax havens. Along with being responsible for the biggest corporate tax losses from US firms across the EU, Luxembourg is also the most wasteful. In return for costing EU members over $12 billion in lost corporate tax a year, Luxembourg collected just $0.4 billion in additional corporate tax a year. For each additional $1 Luxembourg collected from US firms, the EU lost $32. The Netherlands collected an additional $2 billion in return for costing EU countries approximately $10 billion (just under $5 in corporate tax lost by the EU for each $1 collected by the Netherlands). Switzerland collected an additional $0.8 billion in return for costing EU countries $3 billion ($4 lost for each $1 collected). The UK collected an additional $0.7 billion in return for costing EU countries approximately $1.5 billion (a little over $2 lost for each $1 collected).

The axis of tax avoidance’s low effective tax rates and frequent use as conduits for profit shifting to other corporate tax havens outside the EU result in a huge transfer of wealth out of Europe and into the offshore bank accounts of the world’s wealthiest corporations and individuals.

The report highlights three main measures the EU can take to end the abuses of its own corporate tax havens:

  • The long-delayed introduction of unitary taxation (the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base, in its most ambitious form) would make the practice of shifting profit into corporate tax havens in order to reduce tax obligations elsewhere obsolete, since corporations would be required to pay tax based on where the corporation employed workers to generate the profit instead of where the profit was ultimately declared.
  • Adopting an EU-wide minimum corporate tax rate of 25 per cent or above would remove most incentives for profit shifting; and an excess profits tax of 50 per cent or 75 per cent during the crisis would ensure that companies making profits from the pandemic are sharing those fully with the states where they derive them.
  • The introduction of public country by country reporting would ensure transparency for multinational companies and member states alike, ensuring accountability for any continuing profit shifting.

In addition to these recommendations, the Tax Justice Network has also published a “bail or bailout” test to clarify uncertainty on how governments can determine which companies are discreetly using tax havens to pay less tax, following bans in Denmark, Poland and France on companies registered in tax havens from receiving Covid19 bailouts. The 5-step test is designed to prevent tax payer’s money from ending up in corporate tax havens and to ensure tax transparency from bailout recipients into the future.

Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network, said:

“The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the grave costs of an international tax system programmed to prioritise the interest of corporate giants over the needs of people. For years, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – the axis of avoidance – have fuelled a race to the bottom, handing over wealth and power in the EU to the biggest corporations and taking it away from the nurses and public service workers risking their lives today to protect ours.”

“Now more than ever, EU countries must reprogramme their tax systems to prioritise people’s wellbeing over the interests of the wealthiest corporations. That starts with transparency – where the real obstacle comes from EU multinationals rather than their US counterparts, since it’s EU multinationals that have lobbied to prevent their country by country reporting data from becoming public. We estimate that profit shifting by US multinationals alone costs Germany $4 billion a year – and EU and other multinationals will only add to this.

”Why wouldn’t a German healthcare company, or a Portuguese supermarket chain, want to show people that they are paying the right amount of tax in those countries where they make money – rather than shifting their profits to EU tax havens? Why wouldn’t the German government, and every other EU government, want to show their citizens and smaller businesses that multinationals are being taxed fairly? As major Covid19 bailout measures are being put in place, we urge people to raise these questions today with their elected representatives.”

*

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.

Featured image is from TP

China Warns of Confrontation with US

May 6th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

On Sunday, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet accused hostile Trump regime and congressional members of “politicizing (COVID-19 to) stigmatiz(e) other countries,” while “tout(ing)” (the US) an an “international leader” in combatting the coronavirus — ignoring Washington’s mishandled response, letting it spread widely in the US.

Establishment media are part of the mass deception, falsely blaming China for Washington’s failings.

US Political Science Professor Tom Ginsburg said red state lawsuits against Beijing aim to “cover up for the US government’s own errors,” along with supporting Trump and GOP congressional candidates in November elections, a foolhardy stunt going nowhere.

Georgetown University Professor David Steward noted that “(a)ll those folks looking at China ought to be looking over their shoulder saying, ‘Wait a minute, can we be sued?’ ”

On Tuesday, China’s Xinhua slammed the US as a “disrupter-in-chief,” adding:

The Trump regime “dropped the ball because of either self-conceited arrogance or gross negligence, or both.”

The US is the epicenter of COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths. AP News reported that Trump dropped the ball in dealing with outbreaks and economic collapse.

The wire service described what it called his “cascading failures and incompetencies,” adding:

“(A) nation with unmatched power, brazen ambition and aspirations…cannot come up with enough simple cotton swabs.”

Xinhua stressed that instead of addressing and correcting its own blunders, Trump regime hardliners focus on coverup and blaming others for their own failures — including lack of transparency, a US specialty.

On Monday, Reuters said the following:

“An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told” the wire service, adding:

US anti-China sentiment is the highest in decades, Beijing preparing for a possible worst-case scenario with the US, according to unnamed Chinese sources.

Reuters cited an internal report prepared by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) that’s affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, its leading intelligence agency.

The wire service said it didn’t see the report, but cited internal sources familiar with its findings and recommendations, adding:

It cannot “determine to what extent the stark assessment described in the paper reflects positions held by China’s state leaders, and to what extent, if at all, it would influence policy.”

“But the presentation of the report shows how seriously Beijing takes the threat of a building backlash that could threaten what China sees as its strategic investments overseas and its view of its security standing.”

Sino/US mistrust and friction are deepest since before Nixon met with Mao and visited three Chinese cities from February 21 – 28, 1972.

Bilateral differences have little to do with trade, everything to do with China’s rise on the world stage as a political, economic, industrial, technological, and military powerhouse.

Facing what increasingly looks like an uphill reelection struggle, part of Trump’s campaign strategy focuses on blaming China and other countries for his own failures, including his regime’s mishandling of the public health and economic crises gripping the US.

Instead of full-scale efforts to contain COVID-19 outbreaks, treat infected patients, and help growing millions of unemployed Americans get by during hard times, the Trump regime and Congress did pathetically little.

Trump shunned cooperative efforts with other nations to contain coronavirus outbreaks and develop treatments.

He rejected more aid for tens of millions of unemployed US workers unless a new stimulus package includes a cut in payroll taxes.

Along with other GOP hardliners, his aim is all about driving a stake through the heart of Social Security and Medicare by reducing or cutting off funding for these vital social programs.

They should be expanded in normal times. It’s most important now following economic collapse that created human suffering that’s likely to be protracted without government help for tens of millions without work and income.

Half of US households reported that one or more of its members lost employment or had their working hours slashed because of current conditions, according to a late April released Marist survey.

Things are getting worse not better. Trump falsely claims otherwise.

He’s fiddling and whistling pass the graveyard while the US ship of state is sinking for the vast majority of its people, especially its most vulnerable.

On Monday, Public Citizen president Robert Weissman explained that a US public health crisis wouldn’t exist “if we had a Medicare for All system,” adding:

“(W)e need an immediate solution” to help tens of millions of Americans without healthcare coverage.

“At the very least, everybody must be guaranteed health care amid a national health emergency, without fear of facing bankruptcy or unmanageable bills.”

Without it, many unemployed and poor Americans will likely skip seeking treatment, because of unaffordability, if develop coronavirus symptoms.

Public polls showed that around 14% of Americans will avoid treatment if develop a fever and/or dry cough, 9% if believe they’re infected with COVID-19.

According to the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) lobbying group, US health insurers “are bracing for an extraordinary increase in costs related to treating (insured) patients with COVID-19 infections.”

AHIP is seeking congressional bailout help to deal with the issue.

Health insurers, the US wouldn’t need if had universal coverage that would save hundreds of billions of dollars annually, will likely get help.

Expect ordinary Americans in duress without coverage to be largely shunned, including for treatment if ill and need hospitalization and/or expensive drugs.

Time and again, polls show most Americans support Medicare for all.

At times like now, it’s crucial. Yet most congressional members and Trump oppose the idea.

Nations are best judged by how they treat children, their elderly, infirm, otherwise ill, and most disadvantaged.

The US fails the test on all counts under both right wings of the one-party state.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Chinese doctors in face masks deployed overseas. Photo: Facebook

Pesticide Dicamba Increased Cancer Risks

May 6th, 2020 by Center For Biological Diversity

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found that use of the pesticide dicamba can increase the risk of developing numerous cancers, including liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancers, acute and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and mantle cell lymphoma.

The findings come as use of the drift-prone herbicide has skyrocketed across millions of acres throughout much of the Midwest and South in the past three years due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of dicamba on genetically engineered soybeans and cotton.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Epidemiology, is the most comprehensive epidemiological study on dicamba’s association with cancer to date. It followed nearly 50,000 pesticide applicators in Iowa and North Carolina for over two decades, documenting pesticide use and cancer incidence.

“This sweeping study exposes the terrible human cost of the EPA’s reckless decision to expand the use of dicamba,” said Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “For the EPA to approve widespread use of this poison across much of the country without assuring its safety to people and the environment is an absolute indictment of the agency’s persistent practice of rubber-stamping dangerous pesticides.”

In addition to studies in humans showing dicamba use is associated with certain types of cancers, animal studies have found that dicamba can alter liver function in a way that is known to induce liver tumors and promote liver cancer in combination with other carcinogens. Dicamba is also known to cause DNA mutations and induce oxidative stress, two pathways known to cause cancer.

In 2015 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate, another widely used herbicide, to be “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on similar human, animal and mechanistic criteria.

“Just as with glyphosate, we were falsely told that dicamba was completely safe for humans and there was nothing to worry about,” said Donley, who was not involved in the NIH study. “With dicamba’s ability to drift for miles, people in many areas of the country are now routinely forced to breathe in this dangerous pesticide.”

In approving dicamba for over-the-top use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans, the EPA concluded that the herbicide was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Due to that designation, the EPA approved the expanded use of dicamba in 2016 without analyzing the cancer risk posed by the herbicide.

In addition, in 2018 the EPA reapproved the expanded dicamba use despite documented reports that the drift-prone pesticide damaged an estimated 5 million acres of crops, trees and backyard gardens between 2016 and 2017.

The EPA is expected to re-approve dicamba again by the end of this year.

A report released by the Center in 2018 found that the recently expanded dicamba use threatens the already imperiled monarch butterfly: it harms flowering plants that provide nectar for the adults as they travel south for the winter and harms the milkweed that provides an essential resource for reproduction.

National Family Farm Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety and Center for Biological Diversity have challenged the approval of the new dicamba use on GE crops. A decision on that case is expected soon. The organizations are asking for the court to vacate, or cancel, the new dicamba use, which would prevent millions of pounds of dicamba being applied this year.

*

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.

Featured image is from USDA

Pompeo on China: The Diabolical US Blame Game

May 6th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Blaming others for its own failings, wrongdoing, and high crimes is longstanding US policy.

Calling COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus” is part of the Trump regime’s deceptive blame game scheme — despite no credible evidence linking its origin to China.

Falsely blaming the country is all about wanting it vilified, weakened and isolated on the world stage — US war by other means waged against numerous nations on its target list for regime change, how the scourge of imperialism operates.

Most people believe managed news misinformation and disinformation because it’s fed to them repeatedly by establishment media, notably on television propaganda reports masquerading as news.

On Sunday, Pompeo repeated his often stated Big Lie, falsely claiming the following:

“We can confirm that the Chinese Communist Party did all that it could to make sure that the world didn’t learn in a timely fashion about what was taking place (sic).”

“There’s lots of evidence of that (sic)” — none cited because it doesn’t exist.

Time and again, China, Russia, Iran, and other sovereign independent countries the US doesn’t control are falsely blamed for all sorts of things they had nothing to do with.

When no credible evidence backs accusations made, they’re groundless.

It’s true for phony claims about Russian US election meddling, blaming victim of US/NATO/Israeli state terrorism Iran for committing it, calling model democratic state Venezuela a dictatorship, and now falsely blaming China for a global COVID-19 public health crisis that most likely was made in the USA.

Pompeo:

“We’re going to hold those responsible (in China) accountable (sic), and we’ll do so on a timeline that is our own.”

“China has a history of infecting the world (sic)…These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab (sic).”

“(T)here is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan (sic).”

Again, none was cited, just Pompeo’s spurious claim, contradicting the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). See below.

In response to whether he believes China intentionally released the coronavirus or if its spread was accidental, Pompeo said:

“I don’t have anything to say about that.”

Separately, when Trump was asked if he saw evidence indicating that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was COVID-19’s origin, he said:

“Yes, I have. Yes, I have.” Asked about what evidence proves it, he said: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”

No one should accept anything he, Pompeo, or most others in Washington say at face value.

On April 30, an ODNI press release said the following:

“The Intelligence Community…concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.

No evidence was cited, nor about the claim that it “originated in China.”

The ODNI has no knowledge about whether the coronavirus came from “contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Most likely it was neither. No evidence suggests it. Widespread outbreaks have all the earmarks of a diabolical second 9/11 that was made in the USA, not China or elsewhere.

What’s playing out in real time serves US imperial interests, a campaign to control other nations, their resources and populations by waging wars by hot and other means.

The scheme also involves controlling ordinary Americans under a master/serf relationship — wrapped in the American flag for cover.

The Trump regime’s Homeland Security Department joined the China blame game.

According to AP News on Monday, the DHS claims China “intentionally concealed the severity” of COVID-19 outbreaks, based on an agency document it saw (sic), adding:

Beijing failed to report coronavirus cases to the WHO “for much of January (sic),” it reportedly claimed.

According to the organization, it was informed by Beijing of pneumonia outbreaks on  December 31, later identified as COVID-19.

The WHO reported the news on social media days later, it said.

After outbreaks began in late December, China delayed a handful of days alone before reporting them, hardly reflecting coverup.

China’s Wuhan Municipal Health Commission informed the WHO around four months ago about what was going on.

Further information followed as events unfolded. Actions by China warrant high praise.

Its rapid all-out response to contain outbreaks prevented their far greater spread cross-border.

While the US, UK, and other Western countries did little for weeks in early 2020, Trump notably calling COVID-19 no different than flu that would vanish on its own, these countries bear major responsibility for widespread outreaks of the disease.

If other nations experiencing large numbers of cases acted as swiftly and effectively as China, COVID-19 outbreaks would likely be contained within their borders, fewer outbreaks occurring in neighboring states.

According to AP News,”China informed the WHO of (initial) outbreak(s) on Dec. 31.”

“It contacted the US Centers for Disease Control on Jan. 3 and publicly identified the pathogen as a novel coronavirus on Jan. 8.”

If “missteps” occurred, they were minor compared to how things were mishandled in the West, notably by the US and UK.

AP: “There is no public evidence to suggest (that China) plot(ted) to buy up the world’s medical supplies.”

It’s the world’s leading exporter of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators, shipping them to scores of countries worldwide.

China’s Foreign Ministry slammed false Trump regime accusations, on Friday its spokesman Geng Shuang saying:

“The US government has ignored the facts, diverted public attention and engaged in buck-passing in an attempt to shirk its responsibility for incompetence in the fight against the epidemic.”

Separately according to reports, the CIA and Britain’s MI6 prepared their own blame game report directed at China, falsely accusing its authorities of a COVID-19 coverup.

Phony anti-China accusations are reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs that didn’t exist and the Big Lie that won’t die claim of Russian US election meddling.

In the run-up to US November elections and their aftermath, the falsified blame game against China and other nations on the US target list for regime change will no doubt continue unabated.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from High North News

The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded its eponymous prize for “International Reporting” to The New York Times “for a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime”, which not only further discredited the so-called “Fourth Estate”, but also stands as proof that it harbors an anti-Russian infowar agenda.

The Russian Embassy in the US condemned the Pulitzer Prize Board’s awarding of its eponymous prize for “International Reporting” to The New York Times “for a set of enthralling stories, reported at great risk, exposing the predations of Vladimir Putin’s regime”, describing it as “a wonderful collection of undiluted Russophobic fabrications, which can be studied as a guideline on creating false facts.” The six articles and two videos that were responsible for the outlet receiving that “recognition” shared the theme of military-intelligence intrigue, be it accusing the country’s GRU intelligence agency of involvement in several shadowy assassination attempts across Europe or claiming that businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin had a hidden hand in election meddling in Madagascar, for example. Other assertions that were made by the “journalistic” pieces in question also include the Russian state’s complicity in carrying out war crimes in Syria.

As has become the norm in the Western Mainstream Media’s reporting about Russia, an abundance of unnamed sources, fabricated recordings, and disreputable sources were relied upon to push fearmongering narratives about the Eurasian Great Power. The conclusions that were reached — or rather, “reverse-engineered” after first determining the meta-narrative and then subsequently fleshing it out from a variety of geopolitical angles — were predictable enough because they perfectly conformed to the “politically correct” interpretation of President Putin’s global intentions. It’s for that reason why The New York Times’ pieces were “celebrated” by the Pulitzer Prize Board with this supposedly “distinguished” award in an attempt to “legitimize” them for posterity. The Russian Embassy in the US therefore did the right thing by condemning this charade as Russophobic and describing The New York Times’ work as “a guideline on creating false facts.”

That said, the success of the Pulitzer Prize Board’s efforts to manage global perceptions about Russia as part of the West’s ongoing Hybrid War against it is dependent on whether their targeted audience even cares about what that institution says. In theory, the Pulitzer Prize is supposed to be one of the most distinguished awards that any journalist or outlet can ever receive, but it’s actually more akin to an elite club commending its own members. To explain, the Pulitzer Prize Board counts among its ranks representatives from The Washington Post and even The New York Times itself. It also includes other professionals as well, such as those from Bloomberg, National Public Radio, and a few folks from academia. Prior to Trump’s rise, these figures might have been almost universally respected, but the American President has since opened the eyes of a broad swath of the country and even the world more broadly to the so-called “Fourth Estate’s” insidious political agendas.

Trust in traditional media is dwindling by the day, meaning that the awards ceremonies that they preside over are becoming similarly less prestigious as well. This holds true for the Pulitzer Prize, which is only meaningful insomuch as someone respects the “Fourth Estate”, the Pulitzer Prize institution itself, and the latter’s particular members of the board. It can be argued that a considerable proportion of people don’t care all that much for any of them anymore, which further diminishes the soft power sway that they hold over the population. In fact, it can even be said that their awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for “International Reporting” to The New York Times for its blatantly obvious infowar attacks against Russia actually erodes whatever “credibility” those said pieces might have previously held among some of their targeted audience since it’s natural to suspect them of having a political agenda nowadays that secretly influenced their decision.

That’s precisely the problem with any journalistic award given to a piece that even remotely has any relevance in the political sphere since it’s all but impossible to convince the public that it was independently decided for purely apolitical reasons. This is especially so in the context of the ongoing New Cold War, the US’ “deep state” divisions, and the active efforts of the latter’s media surrogates to undermine Trump’s promised “New Detente” with Russia over the past few years. Interestingly the US and Russia made some unexpected progress on improving their relations last month after Moscow urgently dispatched counter-COVID aid to America and their leaders closely cooperated to revive OPEC+, making one wonder whether the “Fourth Estate’s” attempt to “legitimize” their anti-Russian fearmongering narratives might have also been partially intended to offset this positive development.

Looking forward and keeping in mind the Pulitzer Prize Board’s adherence to the top fearmongering narrative of the past year, it’s entirely predictable that next year’s winner of the “International Reporting” award might have something to do with disparaging China in a similar fake news-driven manner as they did with Russia. Of course, that also depends on whatever else happens across the next 12 months since it’s entirely possible that the Russiagate narrative might once again be resurrected ahead of the November elections, especially in the event that Trump is re-elected. Nevertheless, the takeaway is that the Pulitzer Prize and other similar ones awarded to those whose work is even remotely political can’t be said to have been decided independently since they’re inextricably connected to the “Fourth Estate’s” “politically correct” considerations. For this reason, they shouldn’t be taken seriously by any objective observers and should continually be called out for what they are.

*

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.

This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Free Julian Assange!

May 6th, 2020 by Massoud Nayeri

Sooner or later, the war criminals will realize that their sadistic tortures and inhumane conditions in their maximum-security prisons are not helping them in covering up their crimes which have been exposed universally by Julian Assange.

Ironically, for every minute that Assange is unjustly kept in confinement; one person stands up in support of him and joins the Assange defense movement around the world.

Free Julian Assange!

He is a brave truth-teller, an innocent journalist and a loving father of two beautiful children.

Let him be with his family during this pernicious coronavirus pandemic.

*

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.

Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

Assange Could Die in Prison, There Is No Time to Lose

May 6th, 2020 by Dr. David Halpin

We write this open letter, as British medical doctors, to express our serious concerns about the physical and mental health of Mr Julian Assange. Our professional concerns follow the shocking eye witness accounts of Craig Murray and John Pilger at the case management hearing that took place on Monday 21 October 2019 at Westminster Magistrates Court. The hearing related to the upcoming February 2020 hearing of the request by the US government for Mr Assange’s extradition to the US in relation to his work as a publisher of information, including information about alleged crimes of the US government.

Having entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012, he sought and was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government. In April 2019, he was removed from the embassy and arrested by the Metropolitan Police. He was subsequently detained in Belmarsh prison, where he is being kept in solitary confinement.

During the seven years spent in the embassy, Mr Assange was visited and examined by numerous experts, each of whom expressed alarm at the state of, and the effects of his confined living conditions on, his health, and requested that he be allowed access to a hospital. No such access was permitted, and Mr Assange was unable to exercise his right to free and necessary expert medical assessment and treatment throughout the seven-year period.

  • In late 2015, Mr Assange’s doctor reported concerns about his physical condition and requested that he be allowed to receive hospital treatment.
  • An Opinion of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was formally adopted on 4 December 2015, and concluded that Mr Assange was being arbitrarily detained by the Governments of the UK and Sweden. Crucially, it was made clear at the time by the Working Party that any continued arbitrary detention of Mr Assange would constitute torture.
  • Three clinicians – Sondra S Crosby, Brock Chisholm and Sean Love – visited Mr Assange from January 2018 onwards. The group examined him for 20 hours over three days in October 2018 and concluded that he was in desperate need of medical care.
  • At the beginning of May 2019, Mr Assange was described as suffering from “moderate to severe depression”, and, later that month, he was moved to the medical ward at Belmarsh prison following a significant deterioration in his health. This resulted in Mr Assange being too unwell to appear via video link in court for a preliminary extradition hearing.
  • On 31 May 2019, Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, published a report based on his visit to Belmarsh prison on 9 May 2019 accompanied by two medical experts, with special expertise in assessing victims of torture. This involved a 60-minute conversation with Mr Assange, an hour-long physical examination and a two-hour psychiatric examination. Mr Melzer reported, “we all came to the conclusion that he showed all the symptoms that are typical for a person that has been exposed to psychological torture over an extended period of time.”
  • Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union have published statements expressing their concern over the treatment of Mr Assange and the risks he faces if extradited to the US.
  • Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador, published a detailed and shocking eye witness account of Mr Assange’s recent hearing, stating that he exhibited “all the symptoms of a torture victim.” His account was corroborated by the eye witness account of John Pilger, the renowned investigative journalist.

Medical doctors have a professional duty to report suspected torture of which they become aware, wherever it may be occurring. That professional duty is absolute and must be carried out regardless of risk to reporting doctors. We wish to put on record, as medical doctors, our collective serious concerns and to draw the attention of the public and the world to this grave situation.

It is our opinion that Mr Assange requires urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health. Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed hospital. Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr Assange could die in prison. There is no time to lose.

***

Below is the response of Rt Hon. Robert Buckland QC MP.

*

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.

Featured image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.

Just over two months into the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” between Afghan Taliban and the US on February 29, the conflict-stricken country is witnessing a sharp escalation in violence as the insurgent group has stepped up its attacks on national defense forces.

Between March 1 and April 15, the Taliban militants mounted more than 4,500 attacks in Afghanistan that were 70% more as compared to the same period of last year – Reuters reported on Friday citing several sets of data.

Armed faction spurned the statistics and claimed that their attacks had dropped 54.7% to 537, killing 54.2% fewer members of Afghan security forces. They also accused the US for jeopardizing the agreement by supporting the Afghan military and delaying the release of 5,000 Taliban’s combat and political prisoners, a key part of the treaty.

Even though Pentagon spokesperson Jonathon Hoffman complained that the surge in hostilities was “unacceptably high” and “not conducive to a diplomatic solution” – the recent escalation of violence identified some critical pinholes in the US-Taliban accord that allowed the militants to kill more than 900 local and national forces, almost double from prior year’s 520.

The agreement rested the key agenda of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire on the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. In so doing, the US left a crucial vacuum in the pact that permitted Taliban to scale up the attacks and upheaval to prevail in the strife-torn Afghanistan.

John Sopko, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in his letter to the US Congress accompanying quarterly report faintly touched the issue.

“Although not all such attacks are expressly prohibited by the text, U.S. officials had said they expected the level of violence to remain low after the agreement came into effect,” Spoko said.

So the “historic” deal, hyped as a gateway to peace in Afghanistan, did not lead the road to an all-inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue. Instead, it constituted a messy environment where neither of the sides was constricted to cut back on violence, the only way to restore stability in the country.

By seeking Taliban to “prevent the use of Afghan soil by any group or individual against the security of the United States and its allies” ONLY – the American envoy deliberately undermined the territorial integrity of regional stakeholders – China and Russia in particular – which also wielded intense efforts to make the negotiations successful.

As Washington bartered its security and lives of the US-led NATO troops for providing a timeline for withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan – the deed was bluntly an exchange of guarantees between Taliban and the US.

Right off the bat, it appeared to be a process of extending pledges rather than a course of a political dialogue in which Taliban clearly had the predominant edge and the US was forced to kneel down and capitulate to the armed group for the safety of its assets and forces.

While Taliban intensifies their attacks, the US may dub the level of strikes against the Afghan military “unacceptably high” and plead for reduction in violence. But it cannot term assaults an infringement of the agreement simply because the arrangement never stipulated the insurgents to cease hostilities.

The key to durable and sustainable peace in Afghanistan was inevitably an all-embracing intra-Afghan dialogue that was scheduled to kick off on March 10 after prisoners swap though yet to kick off. The opacity about the release of detainees has made the prospect of the peace in country much more distant.

In a rare Twitter spat with his Taliban counterpart Zabihullah Mujahid on Saturday, Col. Sonny Leggett of the US military spokesperson in Afghanistan stressed on the necessity of reducing violence and returning to the political path to stem the spread of the Covid-19. Mujahid rejoined with the demand to implement the Doha agreement.

Peace in Afghanistan is in the interest of Afghan people and region and it cannot be achieved without unswerving political interaction and reduction in violence. But it is a matter not to be discussed between the military spokespersons on a social media platform; it should have been deliberated earlier and incorporated in the agreement too.

After shielding its interests, the US signed the covenant in haste to dispense with the Afghan impasse. It didn’t really make a serious effort to persuade Taliban on moderating attacks on Afghan forces that was essentially required for triggering peace in the country.

The typical display of the US behavior, to turn its back on international community or allies after meeting its objectives, had raised doubts over its integrity before and questions its plausibility again as it urges Taliban to pay heed to global call to end violation and focus on the Covid-19.

As Afghanistan sees a spike in the coronavirus patients and Afghan government and Taliban have shown readiness to at least partially release the prisoners to accelerate the peace process and contain the spread of the killer bug – both the sides should slowly cap the role of foreign military intervention in their country and move forward with a political will that is indeed the path to any dispute resolution.

*

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.

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

Featured image is from Moscow Times

Muting Justice: Rescheduling Julian Assange’s Hearing

May 6th, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“When we think of the repression of journalists, we automatically evoke foreign lands.  We rarely, however, evoke or remember our own dissidents.” – Peter Oborne, Middle East Eye, May 5, 2020 

It all spoke well of British justice, which meant poorly.  As one correspondent from the Australian Associated Press put it in describing the latest case hearing for Julian Assange,

“There are no lawyers here in person.  Assange will not be present.  There are 6 journalists here and there will be 6 members of the public.”

The icy District Judge Vanessa Baraitser had already relented last week on vacating May 18 as the date for Assange’s full extradition hearing.  Facing several submissions about open justice, the impaired and frustrated channels of legal advice and the overall deprivation of a fair hearing being posed by the pandemic regulations, Baraitser accepted that the parties needed to be physically present.  She had little time for much else.     

This hearing had little to do with abstractions of justice or wise words on the merits of press freedom.  It was all business, a game of logistics on when to have the full hearing.  Who would be available and at what times?  The only thing missing in these deliberations, apart from the protagonist himself, were the cucumber sandwiches and sherry.

Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Assange, chewed over two undesirable dates:

“The November date is too late for us and the July date is perhaps unworkable for us.” 

James Lewis QC, representing the United States, had another slot in mind.

“We would much prefer September if possible.” 

Clair Dobbin, also representing the US, has her hands full with the Child Abuse inquiry; US prosecutors needed to journey across the Atlantic, and this, given the conditions posed by COVID-19, would hard over summer.  Lewis was similarly tied up, having to discharge various public duties towards the end of July.

Baraitser seemed wearied by it all, conceding that another venue, better suited to the hearing, might have to be found.

“It’s going to take some negotiation to find a crown court that is open in September, in the current climate, and willing and able to take this hearing.”

Martin Silk, who has been covering the case with steely attentiveness, noted the symbolic, and practical aspects of sham justice that the Assange case is throwing up. 

“Three mainstream and four non-mainstream journalists have told me they were unable to listen in to Julian Assange’s hearing via conference this morning.  Apparently just got hold music because the court clerk didn’t unmute the call… lucky I tweeted.”

It is suitably repugnant that this theatre continues even as British politicians sing the praises of press freedom.  Last week, Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab added his name to those of the Dutch, French and German foreign ministers to “celebrate the crucial role journalists play around the world,” thereby doing their little, and inconsequential bit, to commemorate World Press Freedom Day.  What was particularly repellent in the statement was the cap doffing to this year’s theme, being very WikiLeaks, as it were, and equally shunned in practice. 

“This year’s theme ‘Journalism without fear or favour’ emphasises the importance of taking action to secure independent journalism as a prerequisite for a functioning society.”

The statement also rings hollow when considering the entire scope of Assange’s hearings, which have been poorly conducted, appallingly managed and meagrely rationed in terms of resources.  Those covering the case have also been treated with mild contempt.  The very fact that it has dragged on in purgatorial fashion for so long suggests a form of torment by prolongation, a macabre display of institutional corruption.  The US imperium wants its man and Britain will deliver, but must be seen to be observing some due process, however shoddy.

Such a farce does not stop Raab from confidently fluting the notes of press freedom.

“We must oppose all attempts by any state,” continues the statement, “to use the pandemic to adopt restrictions on press freedom, silence debate, abuse journalists or spread misinformation.” 

Such fine sentiments that have tended to skip the deliberations of Judge Baraitser and for that matter the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other branches of the British government.  Peter Oborne, sporting a keen nose for sniffing hypocrisy, spots a recent pattern.  The Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has hectored the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, for the corporation’s Panorama programme which reported shortages of personal protective equipment and the mortal dangers posed to health workers by COVID-19.  Raab had little to say about Egypt’s gruff expulsion of The Guardian reporter Ruth Michaelson in March, ostensibly for questioning official government figures on COVID-19 infections.  Ditto on that country’s record on jailing contrarian journalists unhappy to march to the drum beat of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.  In such mattes, the FCO remains remote.

This ghastly record of indifference was topped, in Oborne’s mind, by the foreign secretary’s absence of interest in protecting Assange.  “If there was an ounce of sincerity in the foreign secretary’s claim that he is a supporter of media freedom, he would be resisting the US attempt to get his hands on Assange with every bone in his body.”  The WikiLeaks publisher had, after all, “done more than every other journalist in Britain put together to shed light on the way the world truly works.”    

The interim period will be another one of charming hope against bitter experience.  To avoid any serious risk of succumbing in prison to coronavirus, bail is being entertained though it is unlikely to move the glacial bench.  As Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, has described with moving melancholy, the publisher’s life “is at severe risk.  He is on remand at HMP Belmarsh, and COVID-19 is spreading within its walls.”  Those in power remain deaf to such calls, which is much in keeping with the dictates of muted justice.

*

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.

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]

Sweden Is the Model

May 6th, 2020 by Mike Whitney

At present, there is no vaccine for the coronavirus. That means that one of the two paths to immunity is blocked. The other path is “herd immunity,” in which a critical mass of infection occurs in lower-risk populations that ultimately thwarts transmission.

Herd immunity is the only path that is currently available. Let that sink in for a minute. The only way our species can effectively resist the infection is through the development of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells. In other words, the only way we can lick this thing is by the majority of the population getting the infection and thereby developing immunity to future outbreaks.

That being the case, one would assume that the government’s policy would try to achieve herd immunity in the least painful way possible. (Young, low-risk people should go back to work if they so choose.) But that is not the government’s policy, in fact, the government’s policy is the exact opposite. US policy encourages people to remain at home and self quarantine until the government decides to lift the lockdown and allow some people to return to work. This policy assumes that the infection will have vanished by then, which of course, is extremely unlikely. The more probable outcome is that– when people return to work– there will be another surge in cases and another spike in deaths. We will have shifted the curve to a future date without having flattened it. We will have inflicted catastrophic damage on the economy and gained nothing. This is an idiotic policy that goes nowhere.

After 6 weeks of this nonsense, many people are getting fed-up and demanding that the lockdowns be ended. In response to the public outcry, many governors are planning to restart their economies and lift the restrictions. What this means, is that, after wasting a month and half on a failed strategy, many states are ready to follow in Sweden’s footsteps with one critical difference, they’re not going to have a team of crack epidemiologists carefully monitoring their social interactions to see if a wave of new Covid cases is going to overwhelm the health care system. That means that things could get out of hand fast, and I expect they will. As we said in last week’s column, the lockdowns must be lifted gradually, that is crucial.

“You have to step down the ladder one rung at a time”, says Senior Swedish epidemiologist and former Chief Scientist of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Johan Giesecke.

In other words, slowly ease up on the restrictions and gradually allow people to get back to work. That is the best way forward.

There is also the question of whether herd immunity will be sufficient to fight off reinfection. This question was posed to Giesecke in a recent interview in which he was asked:

“Why are you gambling that herd immunity will protect your people from re-infection?”

Giesecke answered,

“There has not been a single proven case of anyone getting a second infection from the virus….so far there have been no reinfections….If you have it once you don’t get it again….There will be herd immunity, that’s clear, and it will last over the period of this outbreak.”

The interviewer then asked Giesecke why he was so certain that surviving the infection would produce herd immunity?

Because it’s a coronavirus,” Giesecke said, “and we know about 6 other coronaviruses, so why would this one be special? ….At present, 30% of the population of Stockholm is immune or has already had the infection. We do not have herd immunity today, but to go from 30% to 50% will only take weeks.“

Giesecke candidly admits that he cannot be absolutely certain that infection survivors are immune, but he strongly believes that they are. (Please, excuse my choppy transcription of the taped interview.)

Giesecke again:

When you (in the US and elsewhere) ease the lockdowns you will have more deaths…We will not have as many deaths because we will have herd immunity by the time the other countries start to lift their lockdown which means the virus won’t spread much more in Sweden, whereas you will have a higher number of cases and deaths.”

If Giesecke is right, then Sweden is on the path to “normal” while the US is still chasing its tail, still following a policy that is clearly counterproductive, and still listening to self-appointed pontiffs like Bill Gates who obviously want to drag this thing out forever so he can implement his vaccination-surveillance panopticon. This needs to change. The safety and well-being of the American people should take precedence over the Hodge-podge of competing interests and conflicting agendas that have shaped the current policy. Now take a look at excerpt from an article at the National Review:

“Spring is in the air, and it is increasingly found in the confident step of the people of Sweden. With a death rate significantly lower than that of France, Spain, the U.K., Belgium, Italy, and other European Union countries, Swedes can enjoy the spring without panic or fears of reigniting a new epidemic as they go about their day in a largely normal fashion.

Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s Emergencies Program, says: “I think if we are to reach a new normal, I think in many ways Sweden represents a future model — if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns.”

The Swedish ambassador to the U.S., Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter, says: “We could reach herd immunity in the capital” of Stockholm as early as sometime in May. That would dramatically limit spread of the virus.

…Dr. Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist of Sweden… heroically bucked the conventional wisdom of every other nation and carefully examined the insubstantial evidence that social-isolation controls would help reduce COVID-19 deaths over the full course of the virus.

As Tegnell told NPR in early April: “I’m not sure that there is a scientific consensus on, really, about anything when it comes to this new coronavirus, basically because we don’t have much evidence for any kind of measures we are taking.”….”To me it looks like a lot of the exit strategies that are being discussed look very much like what Sweden is already doing,” he told Canada’s Globe & Mail….

Sweden has about 2,200 reported COVID-19 cases per million population. This is lower than the number in the U.S. (3,053 per million), the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, and also lower than in many other EU countries. It’s slightly above the number in Germany, which has been hailed for its approach to the virus….

Sweden has 265 reported COVID-19 deaths per million population. That is somewhat higher than in the U.S. (204 per million) but lower than the number in many other EU countries….on an age-adjusted basis, Sweden has done significantly better than the U.S. in terms of both cases per million and deaths per million — and with no lockdowns….

Unlike its Nordic neighbors and everywhere else…Sweden doesn’t have to worry about when and how to end social isolation. They don’t have to decide who to keep locked down and who to let out. They don’t have to get into civil-liberty arguments over involuntary restrictions or whether to fine people for not wearing masks and gloves….

Now many countries and U.S. states are beginning to follow Sweden’s lead. But California and other states continue to pile up isolation-induced health costs and blow gigantic holes in their budgets with lockdowns that, nationwide, have generated more than 30 million newly unemployed.” (“Sweden Bucked Conventional Wisdom, and Other Countries Are Following“, National Review)

This is an excellent article that’s worth reading in full. And what the article shows, is that Sweden is the model. They put the right people in the right positions to do the research, read the data and make right decisions on critical issues of public health. Then they implemented the right policy which is going to make their social and economic transition much easier.

Sweden is on the path to recovery while the United States is still trying to get out of the hole it dug for itself.

*

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.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

The birth of the lethal COVID-19 remains a mystery, as French virologists have determined a male patient near Paris who was diagnosed with pneumonia on December 27, and actually was infected with the novel coronavirus. This is a stunning scientific find.

The Frenchman, in his 50s who has since fully recovered, said he had not been to China, and he told local media that he has no idea where and how he caught the deadly virus in the first place. The man, presumably, got infected with the virus through “community transmission.”

French doctors at Avicenne and Jean-Verdier hospitals near Paris went over the files of 14 patients admitted with flu-like symptoms in December and January, and re-tested the previously-kept nasal swabs of the 14 patients. After repetitive tests, one patient’s swab came back positive. The hospitals had alerted the National Health Agency, while urging French virologists to re-test swabs kept in their hospitals for the COVID-19.

Earlier, in Santa Clara County, California, local physicians announced that an autopsy confirmed the first coronavirus death in the populous US state happened on February 6.

And, according to a report by Business Insider, a young couple in San Francisco said they were both ill with a fever, dry cough, fatigue and “very oddly restrictive breathing” difficulties – which physicians say bore clear resemblances of the COVID-19 contagion — in middle December. The couple recovered too.

In a testimony to US Congress in March, Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC), said it was possible that the seasonal flu and the novel coronavirus were circulating at the same time, and some COVID-19 deaths had been diagnosed as flu-related in the US.

Like what were ascertained or known to date, China’s Wuhan city was on the same timeline as California and Paris reporting the mysterious disease.

On December 31, Wuhan health authorities said the city was treating some cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause, and local physicians could not determine if the pneumonia was readily spread by humans.

At that time, Chinese virologists and public health officials were closely monitoring the disease, in an attempt to get to know its communicability and lethality, and to see if it might develop into something more severe.

About 20 days later, Chinese scientists found the virus to be fairly contagious and deadlier than many variants of the avian flu. To contain its spread, the Chinese government took the draconian move to impose a complete lockdown of the city.

As more places in the world are taking a scientific approach to probe their earliest possible COVID-19 cases, Wuhan city should not be considered as the “definite birthplace” of the new coronavirus, experts say, though the city was first caught with an abrupt and tragic outbreak.

Famed infectious disease specialist Zhong Nanshan and Zhang Wenhong, who advised many countries on ways to stem the coronavirus spread and to cure the infected patients, said Wuhan might not be the origin of the virus. An infected case from anywhere could transmit the disease to the city.

Provided the world’s medical scientists keep persistence in pursuing the birth and formations of the coronavirus, truth will eventually come out, illuminating the virus’ exact origin.

Countries should not resort to a blame game, or explore conspiracy theories to stigmatize and demonize a place, a city, a country or a group of people.

Only through close cooperation and coordinated scientific research, the origin of the coronavirus’ animal host, and the path of its transmission from the host animal to humans can be discovered. And, only via cooperation built on good will, effective medicines and vaccines will be created to combat COVID-19.

*

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.

The author is an editor with the Global Times. [email protected]

Featured image is from Luo Xuan/GT

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Birth of Coronavirus Still a Mystery, Blame Game Needs to be Averted
  • Tags: ,

Facebook Deletes Accounts of Palestinian Activists and Journalists

May 6th, 2020 by The Palestinian Information Center

Facebook on Monday evening removed dozens of accounts run by Palestinian activists and journalists without prior notice.

Some accounts were deleted for no reason and other users were informed they “violated the site’s policies”.

Sada Social Center on Tuesday said it had received dozens of reports from Palestinian Facebook users that their accounts were arbitrarily deleted.

Sada Social said the deleted accounts belong to Palestinian activists and journalists who use the social networking site to publish daily news.

The center is currently making a list of the removed accounts in order to contact the Facebook administration to recover them.

*

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.

Featured image is from the author

Imagine if you will a ship from a nation not at war with anyone sailing in international waters on a quiet June day being suddenly attacked by unidentified warplanes and torpedo boats, their markings covered up to conceal their country of origin. The vessel under attack had little with which to defend itself, but its crew heroically made sure that a large national flag was hoisted to demonstrate that it was not a belligerent in anyone’s conflict. The attackers noted the nationality of the vessel, but persisted in their aggression in a clear attempt to sink the ship and kill all its crew. The officers on the ship radioed that they were under attack and asked for help, but even though friendly fighter aircraft were within striking distance and were automatically dispatched, they were then mysteriously recalled. The attacks lasted for two hours, longer than the Pearl Harbor attack that brought about American entry into World War 2, killing and wounding more than two hundred of the crew. Life rafts lowered into the water as the vessel seemed to be sinking were machine gunned by the attacking aircraft and torpedo boats to make escape or evacuation of the wounded impossible but the captain and survivors worked heroically, and successfully, to keep the ship afloat. When the vessel finally made it back to port, the officers and crew were sworn to silence by their own government and a cover-up was initiated that has persisted to this day. Many of the ship’s survivors have died since that day 53 years ago, and the attempts of the remainder to see justice before they are also gone have been ignored.

I am, of course, referring to the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, which took place on June 8, 1967, nearly 53 years ago. The anniversary of the attack is coming up in a month and the remaining officers and crew will hold a ceremony at the Navy memorial in Washington D.C. to honor the memory of their thirty-four shipmates killed and the 172 who were wounded. Seventy per cent of the crew were casualties, the highest percentage of casualties on any ship that remained afloat in the history of the U.S. Navy. The lightly armed intelligence gathering vessel Liberty and its heroic crew emerged from the near destruction as the most decorated ship for valor in a single action in the United States Navy.

Israeli willingness to attack and kill Americans unnecessarily, apparently to send a message, has been noted before. There is the case of Rachel Corrie (image on the right) run over by an Israeli bulldozer and of Furkan Dogan, a Turkish-American who was, like the crew of the Liberty, killed in international waters when he sailed on the Gaza relief vessel Mavi Marmara. But in spite of that, the deliberate attempt to destroy the Liberty, which, according to former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, was clearly approved at the highest level of the Jewish state’s government, still has shock value.

Israel’s apologists, a virtual fixture at all levels in the U.S. government as well as in academia and the media, have long been making the argument that the attack on the Liberty was some kind of “friendly fire” accident. But the relatively recent discovery that a Navy spy plane intercepted and recorded Israeli both helicopter and fighter pilots mentioning the American flag displayed by the ship during the attack suggests otherwise. Other recordings made of the Israeli communications revealed that some of the pilots did not want to attack. One pilot said, “This is an American ship. I can see the flag. Do you still want us to attack?” Israeli ground control responded, “Yes, follow orders. Hit it!” before admonishing the pilots to “finish the job.”

But while one expects the Israelis to behave abominably, based on any assessment of the years of war crimes committed in places like Lebanon and what remains of Palestine, the greatest crime against the Liberty crew was committed by the United States government itself. President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reportedly were informed of the attack shortly after it began and it was Johnson who twice personally ordered the recall of the U.S. fighter planes going to rescue the Liberty. Admiral Lawrence Geis, commander of the carrier group in the Mediterranean that the planes had launched from, objected and McNamara responded testily that “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.” It was McNamara, again acting on LBJ’s orders, who had the crew sequestered after the ship made it to Malta, issuing a “gag-order” over the incident with the understanding that anyone who spoke up would be secretly court martialed and imprisoned.

To maintain the cover-up, Captain William McGonagle, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in saving the ship, had his medal awarded without any publicity in a private ceremony at the Washington Naval Yard rather than at the White House as was otherwise normal. The President of the United States did not make the award, yet another dismissal of the valor of the Liberty crew.

Normally an attack on a U.S. Navy vessel would have mandated an official Court of Inquiry, but in the case of the Liberty an improvised team consisting of Admiral Isaac Kidd and Chief Counsel Ward Boston was pulled together in the Mediterranean under orders from Admiral John S. McCain, father of Senator John McCain, who was based in London. The Navy’s official ‘Court of Inquiry’ therefore consisted in reality of just Kidd and Boston making a quick visit to the Liberty at sea and then rushing back to Washington via London, where McCain endorsed the 700 page draft document without reading it. The hastily prepared report bypassed all ordinary fact-finding and legal review procedures and no one knows what channels the ‘Findings of the Court of Inquiry’ followed in Washington.

Image below: Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara (Source: History.com)

Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara Plan Airstrikes in Vietnam ...

Acting under orders from the White House, the inquiry had been given only a week to prepare its report, a procedure that normally requires six months. The result was also predetermined by McNamara acting for LBJ, who ordered that the conclusion would be that the attack on the Liberty had been a “case of mistaken identity.”

No crewmen from the Liberty were even allowed to provide formal testimony during the inquiry proceedings. Nevertheless, the inquiry’s chief counsel Ward Boston subsequently confirmed in a sworn affidavit that he and Kidd had strongly disagreed with the coerced findings, believing instead that Israel had staged an unprovoked attack intending to sink the ship and kill all the crew. Admiral Kidd referred to the Israelis as “murderous bastards.” Boston also observed that the transcript of the court of inquiry that was subsequently released had been altered, presumably by someone acting on behalf of the White House, to delete and change testimony damaging to Israel.

As is often the case, there is a back story to what happened to the Liberty. In the years prior to the attack on the Liberty, President John F. Kennedy was concerned over powerful and wealthy American Jews attempting to hijack U.S. foreign policy to favor Israel. He also took steps to prevent Israeli development of nuclear weapons. After he was assassinated, his successor as president Lyndon B. Johnson, who has been described as having a political career “interwoven with Jews,” saw things quite differently. He turned a blind eye over the Israeli nuclear program and surrounded himself with Jewish friends and advisors who were actively engaged in promoting the Zionist agenda, some of them plausibly as actual agents of Mossad.

Most prominent among that group were the Krims, Arthur and Mathilde, he a leading media lawyer and studio head who was a Democratic Party fundraiser and she a geneticist, a Swiss born convert to Judaism who had lived in British Mandate Palestine with her first husband, an Irgun terrorist. Jewish terror was a cause which she actively supported. The Krims were regular companions of LBJ throughout his presidency, with a reserved room in the White House and a house near his ranch in Stonewall Texas when he was on vacation there. Johnson also stayed at their mansion in New York.

At the time of the Six Day War when the Liberty was attacked, the Krims were constantly at the side of LBJ and it is generally accepted that they were both working on behalf of the Israeli government to cultivate a decisive presidential tilt towards Israel. Johnson, in fact, was informed of the Israeli intention to go to war against its neighbors in advance and gave the green light, even agreeing to come to the aid of the Jewish state if things went wrong. To seal the deal, Mathilde was even having an affair with LBJ, a situation well known to White House staff and to the Secret Service.

Since 1967, there have been a number of documentaries, books and unofficial inquiries regarding the attack on the Liberty, but resistance from the usual suspects has meant that the story has not become better known. Meanwhile Congress, the Pentagon and the White House have refused to authorize fair and impartial formal hearings that would recognize the deficiencies in the 1967 inquiry and which would include testimony from the remaining Liberty survivors. Senator John McCain was notorious for his offhand treatment of entreaties from the survivors as was then congressman and now governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, a former Navy Seal. DeSantis now calls himself the most pro-Israel governor in the United States.

The most serious unofficial inquiries have involved former military officers. In 2003, Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, formed an independent commission of inquiry to look into the attack. It produced Loss of Liberty, a documentary that included actual interviews with survivors. The commission, which included Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, Marine General Ray Davis, and Ambassador James Akins, reviewed all documentary evidence in the case and interviewed both survivors and other naval officers who were involved indirectly. They learned that the Liberty had been surveilled by the Israelis for at least eight hours prior to the attack and that the ship was both clearly marked as American and was unmistakable as a uniquely configured and immediately recognizable intelligence collection vessel, not even close to the profile of an Egyptian horse transporter as Israel subsequently claimed. During the carefully planned attack, Israeli used radio jamming in an attempt to prevent the Liberty from radioing its predicament.

Moorer’s commission concluded that Israel had deliberately attacked the Liberty and sought to sink it and kill its entire crew. The crewmen who were killed were “murdered” by Israel while the U.S. should have regarded the attack as an act of war and responded appropriately. The cover-up of what had taken place was ordered by the White House and the fact that the truth about the incident continues to be hidden is a “national disgrace.” In an op-ed Moorer wrote in 2004, he concluded by asking “Did our government put Israel’s interest ahead of our own? If so, why?”

In October 2003 the Moorer commission presented its report on Capitol Hill, though its audience was often limited to congressional staffers rather than the understandably fearful members. One year later Representative John Conyers of Michigan overcame considerable resistance to have the report and some accompanying information entered into the Congressional Record. Moorer and Admiral Staring, a former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, who had been the legal officer in the McCain office in London who had not been allowed to carefully review the Court of Inquiry report, continued to advocate for an honest investigation of the attack on the Liberty until they died in 2004 and 2013 respectively.

Which leads us to the present and the question of justice for the U.S.S. Libertysurvivors who will be gathering next month. The tale of the Liberty demonstrates that even fifty-three years ago the United States government was betraying its own people out of deference to Jewish power and to the state of Israel. If anything, as horrific as the killing of 34 personnel on board of the Liberty was, the situation has gotten even worse as Washington sends billions of dollars to the Jewish state annually while also giving its kleptocratic government a green light to commit war crimes and other aggressions that will ultimately draw in the United States, and could plausibly bring about our ruination. It is unpleasant to say the least to watch an unrestrained and unprincipled client state do terrible damage to a much larger patron enabled by the machinations of a dual-loyalty fifth column, but that is what we are seeing.

And the actual rot really began with the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, when patriotic Americans died at the whim of a feckless president who loved a foreign country more than his own. One hopes he is rotting in hell. Today few Americans even know about the Liberty even though they are now facing an election in which two presidential candidates will seek to outdo each other in expressing their love for Israel. Trump and Biden should instead take pause and first demand as a sine qua non justice for the survivors of the U.S.S. Liberty.

*

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.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Rounding up undocumented workers, migrant and refugees is part of a brutal order of things in Malaysia.  When matters economic are going well, authorities turn the blindest of eyes.  The money pours in; development goals are being met.  During times of crisis, the eye sharpens in the search for scapegoats.  With the enervating effects of the COVID-19 response, the vulnerable are easy fare. 

Malaysia has deemed it unnecessary to ratify the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its relevant 1967 protocol, a situation that has given officials a misplaced sense of confidence.  The writ of the universal right to asylum, they claim, does not run through the country.  But for a time, an exception of sorts was made towards Rohingya refugees under the umbrella of Islamic solidarity.  Malaysia’s previous Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, had called their treatment at the hands of Myanmar’s military as genocidal, a form of “institutionalised terrorism” involving mass killing, rape “and other gross violations of human rights (that) resulted in Rohingya feeling the country en masse.” 

The milk of human kindness, however, is curdling.  Last Friday, 586 undocumented migrants were arrested in Kuala Lumpur.  Among them were members of the Rohingya community, who have become conspicuous in number.  They were taken, under police guard, to detention facilities.  While this seemed like dramatic, populist theatre, the official explanation given by police chief Abdul Hamid Bador was that the arrests were made to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. 

“We cannot allow them to move freely … as it will be difficult for us to track them down if they leave identified locations.” 

The irony of these moves was not missed on Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch.  Such detentions were bound to worsen outbreaks in the camps while also dissuading undocumented individuals from assisting authorities.  In the words of a UN statement,

“The fear of arrest and detention may push these vulnerable population groups further into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment, with negative consequences for their own health and creating further risks to the spreading of COVID-19 to others.”

The Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin has been off-handed in his remarks on the Rohingya refugees, whom he considers, at best, to be a nuisance tolerated by Malaysian hospitality.  He has taken particular umbrage at any society or body claiming to represent their welfare, including the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation Malaysia (MEHROM).  His response has been to consult the rule book with the keenness of a black letter administrator. 

“The Home Ministry has made checks with the [Registrar of Societies] and found no organisations under the name ‘Rohingya’ are registered in Malaysia.” 

It followed that any such organisation claiming to “represent the Rohingya ethnic group is illegal under the [Societies Act 1966].”

Having dismissed their defenders as illegal and unworthy, Hamzah’s conclusion was stark: any Rohingya national holding a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees card “have no status, rights or basis to make any claims on the government.” Such a card was paperwork without merit.

Flavouring the press conference with a touch of menace, Hamzah also noted that the Movement Control Order (MCO) phase had seen 19 reports submitted to the Royal Malaysia Police against members of the Rohingya community.  Four investigations had also been opened. 

The Rohingya situation is particularly perilous, having been exacerbated by the MCO imposed in targeting the spread of COVID-19.  This has effectively prevented the earning of meagre wages and any form of income support.  The President of MEHROM Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani has valiantly sought to publicise their plight, but such efforts have failed to inspire.  Suspicions are rife that citizenship is being demanded, along with privileges even as they pose an epidemiological risk. 

The pandemic has done its bit to encourage paranoia against low-income workers and Chinese tourists, and it is something the fragile political leadership in the country is pressing.  But the Rohingya are now looming as prominent targets.  Malaysians hear, as Tengku Emma Zuriana Tengku Azmi of the European Rohingya Council describes it, of boats filled with Rohingya refugees seeking to land potentially “steal their resources.” 

Malaysian naval vessels have been tasked with preventing such boats from docking even after entering territorial waters.  The universal right to seek asylum is been ignored with a degree of bog standard contempt, as is the right against non-refoulement.  But the official line given is one of self-preservation and territorial integrity, despite Malaysia’s borders being, for the most part, strikingly pervious to undocumented arrivals.  But officials are resolute in rhetoric: to permit such “undocumented migrants” to enter by either land or sea would risk bringing in COVID-19.  To soften the blow, however, the Home Ministry has advertisedtheir humanitarian credentials by supplying such vessels with food supplies before escorting them out of Malaysian waters. 

Phelim Kine of Physicians for Human Rights remains unconvinced by the arguments favouring the taking of vessels back out to sea.  “Malaysian authorities could and should have tested the Rohingya refugees for coronavirus and then appropriately isolated or quarantined them to prevent a possible transmission of the virus.”

This unsavoury picture has been helped by Malaysia’s own uneven response to the coronavirus and internal political instability. But when in doubt, point the finger elsewhere, and that elsewhere has presented itself, as in other countries, an alibi of distraction and persecution.  The plague, as Albert Camus portrayed so convincingly in his novel by that name, stirs in all of us.

*

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.

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]

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Rohingya in Malaysia: Coronavirus and Alibis for Paranoia
  • Tags: ,

Since 2006, William Roebuck, a US Diplomat, has been working toward ‘regime change’ in Syria at any cost. The destruction of Syria, hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, and the migration of one-third of the population have been the price of the US policy under Roebuck’s tenure.  The ultimate goal of ‘regime change’ has never been about greater freedoms, democracy, or human rights for Syrians, but has been with the single target spelled out by Roebuck in 2006: to break the relationship between Iran and Syria. 

William Roebuck, US Ambassador ‘to the Kurds in Syria’

William Roebuck is a 27 year veteran of the US State Department, having served under Presidents Bush, Obama, and currently Trump.  His current title is Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He is a former US Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain.  He has served in the US embassies in Iraq and chargé d’affaires in Libya under Obama. Seymour M. Hersh wrote about the US Embassy in Libya and its role in arming the terrorists used by the US in Syria.  For the past several years, he has been based in Northeast Syria and managing the Kurds.

Roebuck designed the 2011 “Arab Spring” in Syria

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange revealed a plan concocted by William Roebuck, the former US Ambassador to Syria.  Wikileaks published US diplomatic cables, and chapter 10 of “The Wikileaks Files” concerns Roebuck’s cable sent on December 13, 2006.  Ambassador Roebuck wrote that the US should take action to try to destabilize the Syrian government by provoking it to overreact, both internally and externally. That plan was put into action in March 2011 at Deraa, where armed terrorists were interspersed among unarmed civilians in street protests. The terrorists were provoking the police and security forces by shooting at them, as well as shooting unarmed civilians which were blamed on the security forces.

The cables prove that ‘regime change’ had been the goal of US policy in Syria since 2006 and that the US promoted sectarianism in support of its policy, which built the foundation for the sectarian conflict which resulted in massive bloodshed. Roebuck advocated for exploiting Syria’s relationship with Iran, which makes Syria vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes. Roebuck advised that the US should destabilize the Syrian government by promoting sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia, which at the time was not an issue in Syria, which is a secular government and a tolerant society. By promoting sectarian conflict, which he had observed in the oil-rich Arab Gulf monarchies, Roebuck was crafting the destruction of Syrian society.  The ultimate US goal in Syria was to destabilize the Syrian government by violent means, resulting in a change of government, and the new government would be pro-Israeli, and anti-Iranian.

Roebuck’s memo leaked

In November 2019 an internal memo written on October 31 by Roebuck was leaked to the press. He criticized Trump for failing to stop Turkey from invading the Northeast of Syria. “Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing,” Mr. Roebuck wrote, calling the abuses “what can only be described as war crimes and ethnic cleansing.”

Roebuck praised the SDF as a reliable partner acting as guards to keep US troops safe while they occupied Syria illegally, to steal the Syrian oil, which is to be used to support the SDF, instead of the Pentagon payroll.

Two is the company, but three is a crowd

The US state department has a Syrian trio: William Roebuck, and the special representative for Syria engagement, James Jeffrey. Joel Rayburn is a deputy assistant secretary for Levant Affairs and special envoy for Syria.

Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish officials are often confused as to which US officials are in charge on any given issue, and whether their policies were personally driven, or reflected US foreign policy directives. Many analysts agree that the US foreign policy on Syria is a confusing mess.

Roebuck pushes the Syrian Kurds to unite

The Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have begun direct talks which US diplomat William Roebuck has promoted. For the last two years, he has been working with the Syrian Kurds.  The goal is to unite all Kurdish parties in Syria in one body, which could be part of the UN peace talks in Geneva to end the Syrian conflict.  The KNC and PYD have had serious disagreements over the years.

The KNC is part of the Istanbul-based ‘Syrian opposition’ and aligned with the Kurdish nationalist Massoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq.  The KNC received criticism as being pro-Turkish after the Turkish Army invaded the Northeastern region of Syria.

The PYD is part of the political arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who had been the US partner fighting ISIS.  PYD bases its political and organizational projects on the PKK’s ideology. The PKK is considered as an international terrorist group accused of thousands of deaths in Turkey over the decades.

The first direct negotiations between the KNC and PYD were held in early April at an illegal US military base near Hasakah, with William Roebuck, an SDF commander Mazlum Abdi in attendance.  Roebuck has met numerous times over the past three months with the KNC, trying to push the idea of unification among the Kurdish factions.

At an April 25 press conference in Qamishli, it was announced that Roebuck had presented a draft that called for a unified political vision for Syria.  After about four meetings, the two sides were in agreement on the following points: Syria is to be a federal, democratic, and pluralistic state; the current Syrian government in Damascus was not acceptable; the Kurdish northeast region was to be a political unit.  It was stressed that both parties were committed to resolving the Syrian crisis through the implementation of UN Resolution 2254, and the new Syrian constitution must recognize Kurdish national, cultural, and political rights.

The SDF and PYD do not have political representation in the Geneva talks because of Turkish opposition to their participation, given the fact that Turkey views the groups as terrorists.  Turkey rejects any project that would lead to Kurdish autonomous rule in Syria, which is the goal of the US. When Trump ordered the sudden withdrawal of US troops from the Northeast of Syria in October, the Kurdish leaders immediately turned to the Syrian government in Damascus to save them from extermination at the hands of the invading Turkish Army.  However, the US did not want the Kurds to be protected by Damascus. The US goal is ‘regime change’ using UN Resolution 2254 as their tool. To achieve that end, William Roebuck has continued to work with the Kurds of the Northeast and is now trying to get them united to be at the negotiating table in Geneva. The Kurds might unite, but they will always remain a small minority numbering only 7% of the population, but who are attempting to control 20% of the territory in Syria.  Will there be justice for the Syrian homeowners and landowners within the territory the Kurds call “Rojava”, who have been made homeless and destitute at the hands of the Kurds? Will the Syrians one day rise in a “Kurdish Spring” cleaning to regain their properties?

Ahed al-Hindi, a political analyst based in Washington, DC, told  Al-Monitor that the US goal to unify the Kurdish ranks in northeastern Syria is a part of a project designed to unify the entire Syrian north, including Idlib and the Kurdish Northeast.  The US goal is to prevent the Syrian government from access to the resources which could be used to rebuild Syria.

The next UN peace talks in Geneva

UN Special Envoy Geir O. Pedersen gave a UN Security Council briefing on the situation in Syria on April 29. He announced the agenda for the next session of the Constitutional Committee had been agreed between the co-chairs, and meetings in Geneva would resume as soon as the COVID-19 restrictions would allow. He continued to stress the importance of the current nationwide ceasefire, which was needed to combat and treat COVID-19.  He declared there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict, and the UN Security Council resolution 2254 must be used as the path to a political settlement that would be acceptable for the Syrian people while restoring the sovereignty, borders, and independence of Syria.

*

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.

This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

Global Research: Stay Informed, Be Prepared

May 5th, 2020 by The Global Research Team

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

In an effort to provide this resource to our readers, Global Research has remained independent and continues to deliver vital and timely information, for free, on a daily basis. If reading our pages helps in some way make sense of this crazy world we live in where it is deemed too risky to give your dear mother a hug on mother’s day, we kindly ask you to consider becoming a member or making a donation so that we may continue our project and keep the information circulating:

Click to donate:

Click to make a one-time or a recurring donation


Click to become a member (receive free books!):

Click to view our membership plans

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Global Research: Stay Informed, Be Prepared

A Pandemia da Despesa Militar

May 5th, 2020 by Manlio Dinucci

A cada minuto gastam-se no mundo, cerca de 4 milhões de dólares para fins militares. Indicam-no as últimas estimativas de Sipri: em 2019 [1], a despesa militar mundial quase atingiu 2 triliões de dólares, o nível mais alto desde 1988, líquido da inflação. Isto significa que hoje se gastam em armas, exércitos e guerras mais do que se gastasse na última fase do confronto entre os EUA e a URSS e respectivas alianças.

A despesa militar mundial está a acelerar: num ano, cresceu 3,6% em termos reais. É impulsionada pelos Estados Unidos que, que aumentada 5,3% num ano, subiu em 2019 para 732 biliões de dólares. Este número representa o orçamento do Pentágono, incluindo operações bélicas. Juntam-se-lhe outros elementos de carácter militar: O Departamento para os Assuntos dos Veteranos, que se ocupa com os militares aposentados, tem um orçamento anual de 217 biliões, aumentando continuamente. A comunidade dos Serviços Secretos/Inteligência, composta de 17 agências, declara mais de 80 biliões por ano, que é apenas a ponta do iceberg dos gastos reais em operações secretas. O Departamento de Segurança Interna tem uma despesa anual de mais de 70 biliões. O Departamento de Energia gasta num ano, cerca de 24 biliões para manter e modernizar o arsenal nuclear.

SIPRI Yearbook 2019 | SIPRI

Tendo em conta estes e outros elementos, a despesa militar real dos Estados Unidos já ultrapassa, anualmente, 1 trilião de dólares. A da NATO, estimada pelo Sipri em 1.035 trilião em 2019, é, portanto, na realidade muito maior.A despesa militar da Rússia, 65 biliões em 2019, são 11 vezes inferior à dos EUA e 16 vezes inferior à da NATO. A despesa militar da China é estimada pelo Sipri em 261 biliões, cerca de um terço da dos Estados Unidos, embora o número oficial fornecido por Pequim seja de cerca de 180 biliões.

Entre os países europeus da NATO, estão à cabeça a França, a Alemanha e o Reino Unido com cerca de 50 biliões cada um deles. A despesa militar italiana, em 12º lugar no mundo, é estimada pela Sipri em 26,8 biliões de dólares em 2019. Portanto, é substancialmente confirmado que a despesa militar italiana, aumentou mais de 6% em relação a 2019, ultrapassou 26 biliões anualmente, equivalente a uma média de 72 milhões de euros por dia. Com base no compromisso assumido na NATO, deverá  continuar a crescer até atingir uma média de cerca de 100 milhões de euros por dia.

Os Estados Unidos – anunciou o Secretário de Estado, Mike Pompeo – solicitaram aos Aliados para destinarem outros 400 biliões de dólares para aumentar a despesa militar da NATO. A Itália, dentro da Aliança sob comando USA, está ligada a mecanismos automáticos de despesa. Por exemplo, faz parte da «Land Battle Decisive Munitions Initiative” [2] para a compra de munições cada vez mais sofisticadas e caras (mísseis, foguetões, projécteis de artilharia) para as forças terrestres. Faz parte do grupo com os Estados Unidos, a França e o Reino Unido que, com base em um acordo concluído em Fevereiro passado, fornecerão à NATO satélites militares de “capacidade espacial”,  numa vasta gama de actividades. 

Deste modo, a Itália entra, em todos os aspectos, no novo programa espacial militar da NATO, preparado pelo Pentágono e pelos dirigentes militares europeus unidos, juntamente com as principais indústrias aeroespaciais, na sequência do novo Comando Espacial dos EUA criado para “defender os interesses vitais americanos no Espaço, o próximo campo de batalha da guerra”.

Tudo isto comporta outras despesas militares com dinheiro público, enquanto são necessários enormes recursos para enfrentar as consequências socio-económicas da crise do coronavírus, em particular, o aumento do desemprego. No entanto, existe uma empresa que se responsabiliza: a NATO, que em 29 de Abril lançou “um programa inovador para contratar jovens profissionais”, aos quais promete um “salário competitivo” e oportunidades de carreira como “futuros dirigentes e influenciadores”.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Pandemia della Spesa Militare

il manifesto, 05 de Maio de 2020

 

Notas:

 
  • Posted in Português
  • Comments Off on A Pandemia da Despesa Militar

Pandemia della Spesa Militare

May 5th, 2020 by Manlio Dinucci

Ogni minuto si spendono nel mondo circa 4 milioni di dollari a scopo militare. Lo indicano le ultime stime del Sipri: nel 2019 [1] la spesa militare mondiale ha quasi raggiunto i 2.000 miliardi di dollari,  il più alto livello dal 1988 al netto dell’inflazione. Ciò significa che oggi si spende in armi, eserciti e guerre più di quanto si spendesse nell’ultima fase del confronto tra Usa e Urss e le rispettive alleanze.

La spesa militare mondiale sta accelerando: in un anno è cresciuta del 3,6% in termini reali. Essa è trainata da quella statunitense che, aumentata in un anno del 5,3%, è salita nel 2019 a 732 miliardi. Tale cifra rappresenta il budget del Pentagono, comprensivo delle operazioni belliche.

SIPRI Yearbook 2019 | SIPRI

Si aggiungono a questo altre voci di carattere militare: Il Dipartimento per gli affari dei veterani, che si occupa dei militari a riposo, ha un budget annuo di 217 miliardi, in continuo aumento.La Comunità di intelligence, composta da 17 agenzie, dichiara oltre 80 miliardi annui, che sono solo la punta dell’iceberg della spesa reale per operazioni segrete.Il Dipartimento per la sicurezza della patria ha una spesa annua di oltre 70 miliardi.Il Dipartimento dell’Energia spende in un anno circa 24 miliardi per mantenere e ammodernare l’arsenale nucleare.

Tenendo conto di queste e altre voci, la spesa militare reale degli Stati uniti già supera i 1000 miliardi di dollari annui.

Quella della Nato, stimata da Sipri in 1.035 miliardi nel 2019, è quindi in realtà molto più alta.

La spesa militare della Russia, 65 miliardi nel 2019, è 11 volte inferiore a quella Usa e 16 volte a quella Nato.

La spesa militare della Cina viene stimata dal Sipri in 261 miliardi, circa un terzo di quella Usa, anche se la cifra ufficiale fornita da Pechino è di circa 180.

Tra i paesi europei della Nato sono in testa Francia, Germania e Regno Uniti con circa 50 miliardi ciascuno. La spesa militare italiana, al 12° posto mondiale, è stimata dal Sipri in 26,8 miliardi di dollari nel 2019. Viene così sostanzialmente confermato che la spesa militare italiana, aumentata di oltre il 6% rispetto al 2019, ha superato i 26 miliardi di euro su base annua, equivalenti a una media di 72 milioni di euro al giorno. In base all’impegno preso nella Nato, essa dovrà continuare a crescere fino a raggiungere una media di circa 100 milioni di euro al giorno.

Gli Stati uniti – ha annunciato il segretario di stato Mike Pompeo – hanno sollecitato gli Alleati a stanziare altri 400 miliardi di dollari per accrescere la spesa militare della Nato. L’Italia, all’interno della Alleanza sotto comando Usa, è agganciata a meccanismi automatici di spesa. Ad esempio, fa parte della «Land Battle Decisive Munitions Initiative» [2] per l’acquisto di munizioni sempre più sofisticate e costose (missili, razzi, proiettili di artiglieria) per le forze terrestri. Fa parte con Stati uniti, Francia e Regno Unito del gruppo che, in base a un accordo concluso lo scorso febbraio, fornirà con i propri satelliti militari «capacità spaziali» alla Nato in una vasta gamma di attività.

L’Italia entra così a tutti gli effetti nel nuovo programma militare spaziale della Nato, preparato dal Pentagono e da ristretti vertici militari europei insieme alle maggiori industrie aerospaziali, sulla scia del nuovo Comando spaziale creato dagli Usa per «difendere i vitali interessi americani nello spazio, il prossimo campo di combattimento della guerra».

Tutto ciò comporta altre spese militari con denaro pubblico, mentre occorrono enormi risorse per fronteggiare le conseguenze socio-economiche della crisi del coronavirus, in particolare l’aumento della disoccupazione. C’è però una azienda che assume: la Nato, che il 29 aprile ha lanciato «un innovativo programma per assumere giovani professionisti», ai quali promette un «salario competitivo» e possibilità di carriera quali «futuri leader e influencer».

Manlio Dinucci

 

Note

[1] https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/yb19_summary_ita.pdf
[2] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_06/20190625_1906-factsheet-lbdm.pdf

  • Posted in Italiano
  • Comments Off on Pandemia della Spesa Militare

WHO’s Integrity Questioned. Skepticism?

May 5th, 2020 by Peter Koenig

Russian NTV: Donald Trump refused to Fund WHO. There are more and more people in the world who are skeptical of the organization. Does this skepticism have any Foundation?

Peter Koenig: Yes, it is true, and yes it does. WHO’s integrity is increasingly questioned around the world by academics as well as governments. And for good reasons. About half – sometimes even more – of WHOs budget is funded from private sources, mostly pharmaceuticals, the Bill Gates Foundation and other industries, like telecommunication giants – which is why WHO, so far, has kept silence about the dangers of rolling out 5G – yet, the principle of “do no harm” and disease preventions are a key mandate of WHO.

As you know and witness, WHO sides very much with the “guru” of vaccinations, Bill Gates, who funds a big junk of WHO’s budget, and WHO’s discourse is also in general pro-vaccination “at any price” – and against more conventional – and cheap – remedies to fight the COVID19 virus, like Hydroxicloroquine – which was instrumental in fighting the disease in China. In fact, China has made Hydroxicloroquine one of their key medication in the fight of coronaviruses.

President Trump also has promoted these more conventional medications – instead of waiting for a vaccine – who knows how effective such a vaccine will be? – so that the economically and socially destructive general lockdown can be lifted.

Dr. Anthony Fauci with Bill Gates (Source: Children’s Health Defense)

This puts Trump in clinch with the National Institute for Health (NIH) and Dr. Fauci, Director NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of 27 agencies under NIH). Dr. Anthony Fauci is a close ally of Bill Gates and also an avid defender of vaccination. It’s known that Dr. Fauci is also closely linked to the pharma-industry. In fact, between CDC – the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and NIH, they own, yes own, hundreds if not thousands of vaccine patents. Doesn’t this smell of a conflict of interest?

NTV: Where does WHO spend the money received from countries?

PK: I assume by money received from countries you refer to the member governments annual regular contribution? – Well these funds enter the regular budget of WHO. They are used for WHO’s operating cost, studies, special research institutes WHO has around the world -and special programs – and so on.

These contributions constitute the regular budget of WHO.

The biggest contribution comes from the US- these are the funds now withheld by President Trump. That’s a big junk. But I’m not worried that a big part of it will be made up by extra contributions from the Bill Gates Foundation and the pharma-industry – making WHO even more dependent on Big Business -and I’m afraid to say, less reliable for her service to the people.

Bill Gates’ influence on WHO is enormous. It is said, that Bill Gates pushed for Dr. Tedros’ appointment – the two have known each other for many years. Dr. Tedros was Chairman of the GAVI Institute, the association of pharmaceuticals that the Gates Foundation created, to pursue their more often than not disastrous vaccination agenda – with the backing of WHO. Now, Dr. Tedros is at the head of WHO….

NTV: How do you assess WHO’s behavior during the current pandemic? Were they trying to silence the beginning of the pandemic?

PK: Well, let’s put it this way – this “pandemic” was planned for a long time. And it is clear that WHO knew about it. There is the 2010 Rockefeller Report – that outlines in detail what the world is going through today – the so-called “Lock Step” Scenario.

Then, the last preparatory stage was Event 201, organized by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health – the very center that today is monitoring COVID19 statistics worldwide.

The Event 201 was co-sponsored by the Bill Gates Foundation, and the WEF (World Economic Forum), and many pharma industries and UN agencies, including the World Bank, participated in the Event 201 on 18 October in NYC.

A key activity of the Event was a computer simulation of a pandemic called SARS-2-nCoV — it produced 65 million deaths within 18 months and a catastrophic plunge of the stock market and almost total destruction of the world economy.

A few weeks later, the first COVID-19 patient was identified in Wuhan. The decision to declare this a world pandemic was taken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland at the end of January 2020 (21-24 January 2020) – where Dr. Tedros was present (all behind closed doors, of course). At that time in January, there were practically no registered COVID-19 cases outside of China.

So, yes- WHO was aware of what was coming – and followed the orders of silence.

NTV: WHO is accused of lobbying the interests of pharmaceutical corporations. Can they really participate in this?

PK: It is clear, WHO favors the agenda of Big-Pharma – for example huge vaccination programs. You may recall the H1N1 swine flu pandemic of 2009 that lasted about a year? – Following WHO’s strong recommendations, countries around the world bought billions and billions of vaccines — and when they arrived, the “pandemic” was over and the vaccines could no longer be used.

Some countries sent them to Africa as “medical assistance”, knowing very well that they were totally useless in Africa too.

NTV: Corruption scandals in WHO. Have you heard of them?

PK: Well, what I just described before is enough corruption — I don’t believe that most of the staff is aware of what is really going on within WHO, and from my own experience – who didn’t know either when I worked there – WHO staff  is highly dedicated and of high integrity.

The rather unethical stuff that is going on, is happening at the highest management levels.

NTV: Can we say that WHO officials on the ground, in different countries, sometimes play along with the leadership of these countries, so as not to spoil relations and continue to receive funding?

PK: I do not believe that WHO staff on the ground in the countries are corrupt. They do their job – and many of them very well, dedicated to the people of the countries where they serve. I have no doubt about this.

Corruption at WHO is systemic at the top.

NTV: The US refusal to give money – how serious is this blow to WHO? Is it true that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) now contributes the largest amount? How will this affect the organization and its work?

PK: It [the US withholding her contribution] is a serious blow. But as I said before, there will be – you may call it plenty of “compensatory” contributions by Bill Gates and the Big Pharma, as well as possibly other industries that have an interest in shaping WHO’s discourse – on vaccination, on 5G – and whatever else may emerge.

As a side note, interestingly, the IMF when presenting recently their latest Economic Outlook in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic – they had three economic projection scenarios. Two of them included the possibility of a new pandemic – or a new wave of the old pandemic in 2021. – I was wondering, does the IMF know something we don’t know?

*

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; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the 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.

Three-quarters of a century ago the Third Reich lay in ruins, its ruler Adolf Hitler dead, having shot himself in the right temple with his 7.65mm pistol on 30 April 1945. Hitler had refused to leave Berlin over previous days, knowingly sealing his fate. An escape southwards to Bavaria was still possible in the final hours, or to farther flung destinations.

Hitler’s personal pilot Hans Baur recalled that on 29 April 1945,

“I tried to persuade him that there were still planes available, and that I could get him away to Japan or the Argentine, or to one of the Sheikhs, who were all very friendly to him on account of his attitude to the Jews”. (1)

Baur’s offer was not taken seriously by Hitler, who saw the historical importance of remaining in the German capital.

Furthermore, by April 29th Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the SS Leibstandarte, was preparing to engage the Soviet Army from their headquarters in the Reich Chancellory, positioned beside the Führerbunker.

Today it is not well known that the Red Army, in mid-February 1943, came close to capturing Hitler in person at the frontline.

During this time, Baur had flown the German dictator to the city of Zaporozhye, in south-eastern Ukraine. Zaporozhye is situated less than 200 miles south of Kharkov, where the Third Battle of Kharkov was then starting.

With Hitler having reached the airstrip at Zaporozhye, he had a discussion with the Wehrmacht hierarchy nearby. Hitler’s chief valet SS officer Heinz Linge, who was present, recalled that,

“While Hitler was in conference with his generals, the airfield where our aircraft were parked came under Russian attack, with the result that part of it was captured. The report came as a shock for us and in confusion, lacking any experience of the front, we waited anxiously to see how Hitler would handle the situation. We had the report passed to him at once. It amazed us to see that he could hardly be bothered with it, this report which had hurled us all into a state of near panic. Issuing a few pithy instructions as to how the problem was to be cleared up, he quietly resumed his conference”. (2)

Had the Soviets been aware of Hitler’s presence, they would presumably have attacked with much greater determination, possibly capturing the Nazi leader along with his generals, thereby bringing the war to an early end.

German military figures possessing any sense were aware that, by the mid-1940s, the war had been lost long ago. Not in 1943, nor even in 1942. From a strict military viewpoint the critical mistakes by Hitler and, more broadly the Wehrmacht’s top brass, were committed from the beginning of their invasion of the USSR in June 1941. One particularly prominent dignitary, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, had sensed danger months before. He warned Hitler that the unfolding designs for Operation Barbarossa were “too ambitious”, and would place enormous strain on the Nazi war machine (3). With Keitel pouring over the plans for Barbarossa with his monocle in late 1940 and into 1941, he foresaw that the attack would likely not succeed.

Keitel then informed Hitler that he opposed it and offered his resignation, which was rejected. He had expounded his views as a professional soldier, not from any ethical reservations pertaining to the Nazi invasion’s planned murderous conduct. Later on Keitel, who was not truly sinister at heart, did enter private despair at the crimes committed in the east, unlike some other German generals. His unquestioned loyalty to Hitler would lead to complicity. Keitel faced the hangman’s noose at Nuremberg in 1946 – while others who believed in and strongly supported the mass murders like General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff of the German Army High Command, would not suffer the same demise. Halder, a virulent anti-communist and anti-semite, managed to ingratiate himself with the Americans after the war.

From the start, Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union was spread out over too wide an area: 1,800 miles in breadth no less (4). On 22 June 1941, three million German soldiers would be split up into three different Army Groups. They were supported by about 800,000 men from the armed forces of Romania, Italy, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia. These German-led armies were then stretched unnecessarily across vast expanses of the western and south-western Soviet Union. It was an immediate and glaring error that performed a leading role in the invasion’s failure and, with it, the ultimate demise of Nazi Germany.

Simply put, Hitler and most of Germany’s military leaders had been too greedy from the start. They did not direct their primary focus towards the most important objective by far: Taking the capital city, Moscow, before the autumn rains and winter snow arrived. The great majority of the Wehrmacht’s strength should have been concentrated towards the centre, with a smashing blow aimed at Moscow.

Lieutenant-Colonel Donald J. Goodspeed, the knowledgeable Canadian military historian who had fought in western Europe from 1944, discerned that

“Hitler wanted too much and, as a consequence, got nothing. The same fundamental error was repeated again and again”. (5)

Hitler wanted Leningrad, he wanted the Crimea, the Donbas, the Caucasus. Two months into the invasion, a Führer Directive was issued by Hitler on 21 August 1941 reinforcing his strategy, and stating that,

“The most important objective to be achieved before the onset of winter is not the occupation of Moscow, but the taking of the Crimea, the industrial and coal region of the Donets Basin and the severing of Russian oil deliveries from the Caucasus area, in the north encirclement of Leningrad and link-up with the Finns”.

Belatedly recognising this strategic error, General Halder wrote that Hitler’s above command was “decisive to the outcome of this campaign” (6). When the Führer Directive in question was relayed, it should be mentioned that it was supported by the majority of German military men, including at the end the influential General Heinz Guderian. He caved in when discussing the directive personally with Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, among the presence of many other officers who nodded in agreement when Hitler was speaking.

Hitler failed to realise that to kill off – much like his own dictatorial regime – one must go for the political power structure, namely head and not the tail of the Soviet apparatus. The head of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was in Moscow (the capital city), not in the Crimea or the Donets Basin. With Moscow captured and Stalin ousted the Soviet system, which in reality was anything but socialist in nature, would have disintegrated.

Lieutenant-Colonel Goodspeed wrote in his 1977 book The German Wars that,

“the bulk of the Red Army had been concentrated in front of Moscow for the defence of the capital. If these Russian armies could be encircled and forced to surrender, the war would be as good as over”. (7)

Even as late as August 1941, a frontal attack on Moscow by the core of the German Army would almost certainly have led to the capital’s fall by October. The brutal manner of the invasion would increase Soviet resistance; but even this could have been rendered irrelevant with the early capture of Moscow.

Goodspeed noted from the invasion’s outset in June 1941 that,

“Quite conceivably, a single great thrust along the Warsaw-Smolensk-Moscow axis might have secured the Russian capital for the Germans by the end of August”. (8)

While it is necessary to highlight Hitler’s blunders, one should remember that he first took personal command of forces in the field as late as 19 December 1941. On that date, he appointed himself Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. Up until the early 1940s, Hitler had no experience in a military leadership role, and his knowledge of combat was restricted to the First World War, a very different conflict. Unlike Napoleon or his idol Frederick the Great, Hitler had neither risen through the ranks of a military establishment, nor had he commanded forces in his youth.

When the Soviets struck with a huge counter-attack in early December 1941, which threatened to over-run the static German positions, Hitler did partially redeem himself by ordering the Wehrmacht to stand their ground. The renowned British military historian, Liddell Hart, wrote of the situation in late 1941 that,

“In retrospect, it is clear that Hitler’s veto on any extensive withdrawal worked out in such a way as to restore the confidence of the German troops, and probably saved them from a widespread collapse”. (9)

As Hart also notes, however, in a broader sense the damage was already done; and yet the Germans had exacted monumental casualties on the Soviets in the first weeks and months of Barbarossa. During the Battle of Bialystok-Minsk, that took place across the Polish-Belarusian frontiers and which concluded on 9 July 1941, the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre inflicted over 300,000 casualties on the Red Army. Almost 5,000 Soviet tanks were destroyed during this battle, while the Germans lost less than 20,000 men and about 100 panzers.

Another major conflagration took place between the Germans and Soviets starting on 8 July 1941, and that occurred around the city of Smolensk, in western Russia, about 250 miles from Moscow. Despite the Germans being outnumbered in both manpower and tanks, over coming weeks they inflicted almost 750,000 casualties on the Soviets (10). In comparison the Wehrmacht lost about a quarter of a million men. It is difficult to envisage the sheer enormity of these blows, coming in spite of the thinly spread German invasion.

On 23 August 1941, less than 300 miles further south, the Battle for the Ukrainian capital of Kiev was beginning. Hitler had refused to drive on to Moscow following the destruction of Soviet forces around Smolensk – sending a significant proportion of his forces south towards Kiev, a city home to almost 900,000 residents. The Battle for Kiev would drag on for about four weeks, costing precious time, but the spoils for the Wehrmacht were great. In one of the most spectacular encircling movements witnessed in modern warfare, the Germans surrounded Kiev on all sides by 17 September 1941. Over following hours, they captured more than 650,000 Soviet troops in Kiev, a greater disaster relating to manpower than Stalingrad would prove to be for the Germans. (11)

No other country in Europe, and perhaps the world, could have sustained such losses as these apart from the Soviets – who could call upon a supply of ready-made soldiers, from the southern Soviet Union and parts of Eurasia, to eventually patch up their casualty list. Stalin was culpable for the catastrophe at Kiev, having over preceding days repeatedly rebuffed allowing a withdrawal from the city. Hitler would make a similar mistake at Stalingrad over a year later.

At the end of September 1941, Hitler at last directed his attention towards Moscow with the impending start of Operation Typhoon. It was too late, the torrential Russian rain showers were fast approaching and would turn the “roads” into quagmires, a logistical nightmare. Entering October 1941 Army Group Centre, commanded by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, would lead the assault on Moscow. At this point, they were still positioned around 200 miles from the Russian capital, a considerable distance so late in the year.

Antiaircraft guns guarding the sky of Leningrad, in front of St. Isaac’s Cathedral (Source: CC BY-SA 3.0)

Even now, Army Group Centre could have been bolstered in their march to Moscow with forces dispatched southwards from Army Group North. Instead, the latter army was engaged in the pointless, not to mention inhumanely cruel, Siege of Leningrad. The pitfalls of ideology again performed a role here, as Hitler wanted to annihilate the city that bore the name of Lenin, a leading founder of the Soviet state. Leningrad was, at best, of secondary importance to Moscow. Regardless, Hitler was confident that Moscow would soon fall. From 3 October 1941, Army Group Centre was implementing two giant pincer movements around the Russian towns of Vyazma and Bryansk – which in coming days would bag for the Germans more than 650,000 Soviet troops, equivalent to over 80 divisions. (12)

Since the start of fighting on 22 June 1941, the Soviets had lost almost four million men by early October, whereas the Germans had suffered not much more than 500,000 casualties at this stage. Meanwhile, the first snows fell in western Russia on 7 October 1941, especially early. It was a dark presentiment for the Germans, and would prove to be one of the coldest winters in Russian history. The snow was light for now and evolved into heavy rain, turning the landmass into rivers of mud, hampering the German advance.

Despite this, on 8 October 1941 Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Army took the Russian city of Oryol, less than 200 miles south-west of Moscow. Four days later, on October 12th, German forces made surprisingly steady ground as they stormed the city of Kaluga, 93 miles south-west of Moscow. Next day the Wehrmacht captured the Russian cities of Rzhev and Kalinin. On 19 October 1941 Mozhaysk fell to the Germans, a town just 60 miles west of Moscow. The following day nearby Borodino was also taken. These latest German successes had sparked a great deal of disarray in Moscow. Some residents of the city, along with a number of Soviet officials and bureaucrats, were fleeing in panic eastwards (13). To dampen the hysteria, Stalin declared a state of siege on October 19th and took ruthless steps to eradicate defeatism. Stalin himself remained in Moscow.

By 24 October 1941 the rains returned with ferocity, massively slowing the Wehrmacht’s advance. On October 25th the German assault on Moscow had almost ground to a halt, with the terrain a seething mass of mud, impassable for modern panzers. Ironically, horses were seen moving through the morass beyond the immobile panzers, with the Germans using these animals to dislodge their motorised machinery from the mud.

Hitler’s form had been boosted during October 24th, when the German 6th Army captured the USSR’s third largest city, Kharkov, in eastern Ukraine, home to nearly a million inhabitants. Even these victories were far from decisive. After a critical three week delay, Army Group Centre’s advance on Moscow did not resume until 15 November 1941. The mud had frozen solid and the panzers were able to shift into gear again – but the temperature was sinking towards -20 Celsius, and heavy snow falls were another hindrance. These conditions resulted in frostbite cases among some German troops, who lacked sufficient winter clothing and were shorn of basic medical supplies.

Nevertheless on 22 November 1941, the Wehrmacht took the medieval town of Klin, just over 50 miles north-west of Moscow. The following day, November 23rd, Solnechnogorsk was taken, a town less than 40 miles from Moscow. On November 27th, the German 7th Panzer Division established a bridgehead across the Moscow-Volga Canal, and was fewer than 25 miles from the Kremlin. Also during November 27th, the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” captured the town of Istra, less than 25 miles west of Moscow.

On November 30th, the Wehrmacht’s 2nd Panzer Division had advanced within 20 miles of Moscow to the north. Over coming hours, the Germans continued to creep forward. By 2 December 1941, SS First Lieutenant Otto Skorzeny, who was in the Das Reich Panzer Division, remembered how, “In the clear weather, I could see the spires of Moscow and the Kremlin in my field glasses” (14). On 2 December 1941, a column of motorcycle units from the 2nd Panzer Division descended upon the town of Khimki, 11 miles north-west of Moscow.

Passing Khimki, the German motorcyclists were soon a mere 10 miles from the Kremlin, and five miles from Moscow’s outer suburbs, but they dared not advance further due to a lack of armoured support in the rear. Further south, some forward German elements had actually penetrated the Russian capital’s outskirts (15). It is as far as they would get, with much of the Wehrmacht’s motorised infantry tied up in the forests encompassing Moscow’s outer reaches. In early December the temperatures had dropped lower still, approaching -30 Celsius, freezing the oil in the sumps of panzers and trucks.

On December 5th the Red Army launched their great counteroffensive, and it was now plainly clear that Operation Barbarossa had failed. From a purely military standpoint, in spite of Barbarossa’s various flaws, some German troops had indeed reached the edge of Moscow. One can imagine what would have occurred had the attack been focused upon the Russian capital from the beginning, or even as late as August. The veteran world war historian, Jacques R. Pauwels, wrote that, “On the evening of that fateful fifth of December, 1941, the generals of the Wehrmacht’s high command reported to Hitler that, on account of the failure of the Blitzkrieg-strategy, Germany could no longer hope to win the war”. (16)

The Wehrmacht’s inability to secure Moscow in 1941 was undoubtedly the turning point of World War II. The Germans would regroup in the summer of 1942 and, despite further huge gains, they lacked the necessary strength to seize the decisive initiative, and were further stymied by a shortage of raw materials.

*

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.

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 Jessica Green, “Hitler said ‘I’m ending it today’, then killed himself in his bunker”, Daily Mail, 3 April 2019

2 Heinz Linge, With Hitler to the End (Frontline Books, 1 July 2009), p. 177

3 Michael E. Haskew, “The Not-So-Secret Way Hitler Conquered Europe During World War II”, The National Interest, 8 September 2019

4 John Graham Royde-Smith, Operation Barbarossa European History, Encyclopaedia Britannica

5 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Houghton Mifflin; First Edition, 1 Jan. 1977), p. 404

6 Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War, (Allen Lane 1795, 6 Aug. 2009)

7 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 396

8 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 403

9 Liddell Hart, A History of the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 17 July 2014)

10 Lloyd Clark, Kursk: The Greatest Battle (Headline Review, 24 May 2012)

11 C. Peter Chen, Operation Barbarossa, World War II Database, January 2007

12 Jürgen Matthäus, Jewish Responses To Persecution 1933-1946 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 28 Sept. 2017), p. 275

13 Kenneth R. Whiting, The Development of the Soviet Armed Forces (Air University, 1977), p. 43

14 Otto Skorzeny, My Commando Operations (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1 Jan. 1995), p. 112

15 Royde-Smith, Operation Barbarossa, Encyclopaedia Britannica

16 Jacques R. Pauwels, “75 Years Ago, the Battle of Stalingrad”, Global Research, 5 February 2018

Unreliable COVID-19 “Estimates”in Virginia: Increase in “Testing Numbers” Attributable to Change in “Counting Methodology”: Health Officials

By Kate Masters, May 04, 2020

Officials with the Virginia Department of Health abruptly announced Friday that they were changing their methodology for reporting the number of COVID-19 tests conducted in Virginia.

The announcement came after data on the state’s coronavirus surveillance page appeared to show a dramatic one-day increase in test results, from 90,843 on Thursday to 105,648 on Friday.

Video: California Doctors Debunk Covid-19 Media Hysteria

By Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, May 03, 2020

Two doctors, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care, which offers Bakersfield’s only private walk-in COVID-19 testing site, held a press conference on April 22 to report their conclusions about COVID-19 test results. The doctors said that 12% of Californians tested so far have been infected. Extrapolating that to the general population, they estimated that as many as 5 million Californians have likely contracted the virus. They then used the total number of COVID-19 deaths statewide (roughly 1,200, as of last week) to calculate a death rate of just 0.03% — similar to the average death rate from seasonal flu. The media conference is in Bakersfield in Kern County, California.

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

By Wayne Dupree, May 02, 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.

“They’re Writing COVID On All the Death Certificates”: NYC Funeral Directors Doubt Legitimacy of Deaths Attributed to Pandemic.

By Project Veritas Action, May 01, 2020

Project Veritas today released another video featuring conversations with funeral home directors and their staff throughout New York City questioning the number of deaths officially attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In late April, a Project Veritas reporter spoke with Michael Lanza, the director of Staten Island’s Colonial Funeral Home.

Video: COVID-19 Admissions and Death Certificates. Money for the Hospitals. New Interview with Senator Scott Jensen

By Sen. Scott Jensen, April 30, 2020

“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000.

If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much.

Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.”

Video: COVID-19: 70% of Patients Are on Ventilators. Is It a “Solution”?… Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell

By Dr. John Whyte and Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, April 28, 2020

In preparation of opening what became a full COVID-positive intensive care unit, we scoured the data just to see what was out there—those who have experienced it before us, primarily the Chinese and the Italians; it was hard to find exactly, like the rate of what we call successful extubation—meaning, someone was put on a ventilator and taken off. And that data are still hard to find. I imagine there are a lot of people still on ventilators. But from the data we have available, it appears to be somewhere between 50% and 90%. Most published data puts it around 70%. So, that’s a very, very high percentage in general, when one thinks of a medical disease.

Video: How COVID-19 Death Certificates Are Being Manipulated. Montana Physician Dr. Annie Bukacek

By Dr. Annie Bukacek, April 25, 2020

The Center for Disease Control, updated from yesterday April 4th, still states that “mortality” data includes both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19. … The CDC counts both true COVID-19 cases and speculative guesses of COVID-19 the same, they call it death by COVID-19. They automatically overestimate the real death numbers by their own admission.


Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.

We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.

If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.

  • Posted in NO READ MORE LINK
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: US COVID-19 “Estimates” and Death Certificates, More Money to Hospitals

The Western Mainstream Media’s aggressively propagated infowar narrative that President Putin “disappeared” and is “paralyzed” in the face of World War C is factually false because it ignores the Russian leader’s regular video conferences with various officials that are widely reported on by his country’s domestic media, which actually prove that he’s decentralizing state affairs to a degree by delegating important tasks to relevant decision makers, as all responsible leaders should do during times of crisis such as this one.

Yet Another Infowar Product From The Fake News Factory

The Western Mainstream Media never tires when it comes to disparaging President Putin even if their latest infowar narrative contradicts everything that they’ve spent over the last decade trying to indoctrinate their audience into believing. The so-called “Fourth Estate” previously invested much of its efforts into wrongly depicting the Russian leader as a “dictator” who’s supposedly “obsessed with controlling everything” in his country, which is why it’s so surprising that they’re now aggressively propagating the notion that he’s “disappeared” and is “paralyzed” in the face of World War C. This claim is factually false since it’s refuted by his country’s domestic media consistently reporting on his regular videoconferences with various officials, but it’s likely being pushed upon the public anyhow in order to artificially manufacture a sense of uncertainty about Russia’s long-term political stability, which could then be used as another angle from which to attack the progress that he and Trump have recently made in pursuit of their hoped-for “New Detente“.

Russia’s Ongoing Decentralization Process Should Be Celebrated, Not Condemned

Far from shirking his duties, President Putin is embracing them like never before, albeit in a manner which admittedly caught his critics unaware. They’ve invested so much time, money, and effort into portraying him as a “power-hungry dictator” that they’re simply unable to adapt their weaponized narrative to the reality that he’s now decided to decentralize state affairs to a degree by delegating important tasks to relevant decision makers, as all responsible leaders should do during times of crisis such as this one. No single individual, let alone of the world’s geographically largest state, can deal entirely on their own with such a situation as World War C, hence why President Putin made the wise choice to share the burden of leadership with other officials. It would have been egocentric to the extreme as well as highly dangerous if he believed that he could single-handedly manage Russia’s response to COVID-19, which is impossible for any one person to do. Nobody has the knowledge, time, and management capabilities to take full “dictatorial” control over such a crisis.

Russia Isn’t A One-Man Show

President Putin is aware of his limitations as a human being, and he also has an eye on his eventual retirement from public life, whether that’s as early as 2024 or perhaps even as late as 2036 if the public approves constitutional amendments to allow him to run for two additional terms during a forthcoming referendum, the date of which is presently unknown since the it’s been indefinitely postponed because of World War C. Whatever one’s criticisms of the Russian leader might be, few would ever assert that he isn’t a skilled manager, for better or for worse depending on their perspective. With this in mind, it’s completely within his character to gradually prepare for the country’s inevitable transfer of power whenever that moment arrives, hence why he understands the importance of delegating responsibilities to relevant officials in the context of the current crisis in order to reduce the country’s dependence on him personally. This is also in line with the proposed constitutional amendments that aim to reduce the power of the presidency in favor of parliament.

Russia’s Decentralization Is Over A Decade In The Making

There’s some truth to the claims that President Putin previously concentrated a lot of power in his hands, but that was entirely legal within the framework of the Russian Constitution and was mostly exercised in response to the federal intervention in Chechnya that characterized the country’s most pressing domestic challenge at the beginning of the century. Under powerful presidential systems such as Russia’s, the elected head of state has the final say in deciding the country’s course of action in crisis situations, which enables it to more rapidly respond to challenges as they develop. Seeing as how that particular one has been completely resolved, it was fitting for President Putin to begin gradually loosening the reins of control over the country as it returned to normalcy, which explains the expansion of his United Russia party throughout the land and its embedding of influence into practically all public state structures. This initial phase of pragmatic decentralization was followed by the “technocracy” that former President Medvedev encouraged during his time in office.

Constructive Criticism Of Russia Should Be Fact-Based & Fair

The third phase is the present one that’s currently unfolding before the world’s eyes whereby President Putin has sought to constitutionally reform the state legislature in order to grant it more responsibilities by the time he leaves office. The unexpected onset of World War C simply accelerated these plans that were already in progress since the official end of the second federal intervention in Chechnya in April 2009. Therefore, it’s not out of the ordinary whatsoever for President Putin to take advantage of these circumstances by “leading from behind” while tasking relevant officials to “lead from the front” in his stead, which they’ll eventually have to do once he inevitably leaves office. As the author wrote in March 2018, “It’s Okay To Constructively Criticize Russia, Even President Putin Does It!“, and even RT published an usually scathing op-ed the other day about the Russian government titled “Once he recovers from Covid-19, PM Mishustin faces new ordeal – reviving economy & Kremlin’s popularity with thinning oil kitty“. Such criticisms, however, should be fact-based and fair, but that isn’t the case with the Mainstream Media’s latest infowar attack, which therefore makes it propaganda.

*

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.

This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

This article entitled “Bill Gates offered House of Reps $10m bribe for speedy passage of compulsory vaccine bill – CUPP” published in Nigeria’s Daily Post (Abuja) is based on a controversial and unconfirmed statement by Nigeria’s opposition party CUPP (see below). The statement was signed by the spokesperson of CUPP.

If adopted, compulsory vaccination in Africa’s most populated country (206 million) would set the stage for a vaccination program for the entire continent.

***

The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), on Monday, alleged that it has intercepted a human intelligence report that the Nigeria House of Representatives leadership was poised to forcefully pass the compulsory vaccine bill without subjecting it to the traditions of legislative proceedings.

In a statement issued and signed by the spokesperson of the opposition political parties, Barrister Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere (and sent to DAILY POST in Abuja on Monday), the body urged lawmakers in the lower chamber to rise against impunity.

The body in the statement alleged that a sum of $10 million was offered by the American Computer Czar, Bill Gates to influence the speedy passage of the bill without recourse to legislative public hearing, a development they averted as anachronistic, adding that the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila should be impeached if he forces the bill on members.

The statement read:

“Opposition Coalition (CUPP) has intercepted very credible intelligence and hereby alerts Nigerians of plans by the leadership of the House of Representatives led by Femi Gbajabiamila to forcefully and without adherence to the rules of lawmaking to pass the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill 2020 otherwise known as the Compulsory Vaccination Bill which is proposing a compulsory vaccination of all Nigerians even when the vaccines have not been discovered.

“This intelligence is coupled with the information of the alleged receipt, from sources outside the country but very interested in the Bill, of the sum of $10 million by the sponsors and promoters of the Bill to distribute among lawmakers to ensure a smooth passage of the Bill.

“This will manifest in a wishy-washy public hearing which the promoters still insist on cancelling under the pretext of containment of the spread of the coronavirus. The intelligence is that the House will under whatever guise pass the Bill tomorrow 5th May, 2020 upon resumption.

“The Nigeria opposition rejects the Bill and urges opposition lawmakers in the House of Representatives to confront the Speaker of the House with these facts tomorrow at plenary and resist every plan to illegally pass the Bill.

“We have been informed that the alleged deal on the passage of the Bill was struck during a trip to Austria a few months back while the financial support for the promotion of the Bill was allegedly received last week to mobilize for a push leading to the hurried attempt to pass the Bill by any means necessary.

“Nigerians are reminded that at present, there is no discovered/approved vaccine anywhere in the world and one now begins to wonder why the hurry to pass a Bill for a compulsory vaccine when there is none.

“What if the world eventually does not find a vaccine or cure for coronavirus just like it has not found a cure for HIV AIDS? What is the hurry in passing a Bill based on speculation or is there anything else the leadership of the House would want to tell Nigerians? Is this bill what will stop the mass deaths and infections rising in Lagos, Kano, Abuja, Gombe, Borno, Kaduna, Ogun, Bauchi and indeed all over the country?

“Is this Bill going to revive and grow the economy and reduce hunger and give us more testing kits or bed spaces? Is this Bill going to stop the stealing of palliatives meant for poor and vulnerable Nigerians? Is it true that all these noises for the Bill is all for the alleged $10 million?

“The leadership of the House needs to start speaking now on why the hurry when there are a lot of urgent Bills to be passed which are not being attended to.

“Where is the Bill to make the wearing of face masks compulsory now that the Federal Government has against all wisdom insisted on easing the lockdown and the people have trooped out already without obeying the health regulations that will make them safe?

“Where are the economic revival Bills to protect jobs and vulnerable Nigerian workers whose livelihoods are threatened daily by this pandemic? Where are the Bills to compel the Federal Government to look inwards and encourage emergency research for the manufacture of essentials like test kits, ventilators, Personal Protective Equipment, vaccines, drugs, masks, sanitizers etc

“All opposition lawmakers should prove they are not part of the evil or partakers of the financial inducement and confront Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila to come clean.

“Let all parliamentary rules be dropped and opposition members should turn the House upside down using their parliamentary privileges if that is what it takes to stop this foreign-sponsored Bill.

“Why make a law for a vaccine that has not been discovered? Does it mean that Femi Gbajabiamila and the promoters have an idea of the vaccine and when it will be ready? When nations like Madagascar are making local remedies which is working, APC is making a law to compulsorily inject Nigerians with vaccines our former slave masters have not yet discovered.

“The plan to push the passing of the bill is evil.

“The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC did not make any contributions to the drafting of the Bill and has even told Femi Gbajabiamila to suspend the Bill as the timing is very wrong but Mr. Gbajabiamila believes he can secure the silence and acquiescence of the NCDC with all the illegal powers been provided for the NCDC in the Bill hence he still wants to push ahead with it the passage.

“Like we told the Federal Government before, do not bring Chinese doctors, shut our external borders, do not ease the lockdown, do not relax Kano lockdown and they refused to heed to wise counsel preferring to play myopic politics with the lives of Nigerians, today the community transmission is getting worse and it has almost been confirmed that the so called strange deaths in Kano of hundreds of citizens is a result of the COVID-19.

“We are saying loudly again and calling on House of Representatives to suspend this Control of Infectious Diseases Bill and await for proper input and scrutiny after the pandemic and charge all efforts towards giving the needed support to reduce the spread and find a homegrown solution.”

According to Nigeria’s This Day Live:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, has set up a 12-man committee to look into [the above] allegations that himself and some members of the House collected a $10 million bribe from a foreign sponsor to see to the speedy passage of the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill.

Gbajabiamila made the announcement at the resumption of plenary on Tuesday.

The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) had, in a statement issued by its spokesperson, Ikenga Ugochinyere, on Monday, alleged that the leadership of the House received $10 million bribe from Bill Gates to sponsor the controversial Bill.

Reacting, the spokesperson of the House of Representatives, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, had told THISDAY that the House could not fall for cheap blackmail.”

*

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.

Featured image is from Daily Post

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Compulsory Vaccination in Africa? Bill Gates Allegedly Offered Nigeria House of Representatives $10 Million for Speedy Passage of Compulsory Vaccine Bill: CUPP Opposition Party
  • Tags: , , ,

Some 400 doctors and 900 health care workers have signed an open letter to the government, urging them to exercise caution regarding the roll-out by Proximus of a forerunner of the next generation of mobile data, known as 5G.

The six-page letter goes out under the name of the Hippocrates Electrosmog Appeal.

Last week, Proximus began to test its “5G Light” version of the new generation in 30 communes around Belgium, the timing of which the organisation criticises.

“Even though it could be a simple coincidence, this seems indecent to us at a time when the people are fighting to overcome a human drama which concerns us all. At the same time, consumer organisations have been quick to publish articles claiming that the technology is not dangerous,” the authors write.

The population has been increasingly exposed to electromagnetic radiation over recent decades, from cordless telephones in the home to the current saturation of high-speed internet, mobile phones, wifi in the metro and the growing Internet of Things, the letter says.

Now along comes 5G – or for the time being at least, a sort of 4G+ – which promises to be many times more powerful.

“However, the safety of this exposure has never been demonstrated,” the authors say. “On the contrary, evidence of its harmfulness is accumulating. Since 2011, moreover, electromagnetic radiation from wireless technologies has been considered by the WHO as possibly carcinogenic, largely because of the increased risks of gliomas and acoustic neuromas in long-term users.”

The letter decries the way the precautionary principle has been ignored so far in the deployment of these technologies.

The precautionary principle is a recognised strategy for approaching issues of potential harm when extensive scientific knowledge is lacking. It calls for caution and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove dangerous. Critics argue that it is unscientific and an obstacle to progress.

“When serious and possibly irreversible risks have been identified, the lack of certainty should not be used as a pretext to postpone measures to protect the environment and health.”

The group behind the letter concludes by calling on the government to apply the precautionary principle in order to protect the population, especially children, pregnant women and the elderly; introduce a moratorium on the deployment of 5G pending health impact studies; to raise awareness among citizens, in particular parents, adolescents and pregnant women, about the responsible use of wireless connected objects; to establish truly protective exposure standards; and to create a vigilance centre or a symptom inventory organisation relating to this type of exposure.

“Recent events make the situation even more worrying, but let us agree together that they can also be the occasion for new awakenings and advances in the field of prevention, which must today, more than ever, be the object of all our attention.”

*

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.

Featured image is from TBT

Pandemic Revisionism: The George W. Bush Whitewash

May 5th, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful.  And so are we.  They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people.  And neither do we.” – President George W. Bush, Aug. 5, 2004

Hatred is disorientating, and becomes, over time, a form of enduring fanaticism.  The attacks on US President Donald Trump tend to fall into this camp.  Much criticism of his often grotesque conduct, from his conversion of high office to a social media spectacle of grabs and interruptions, to his whole lowering of the tone, is warranted.  He has brought locker room morals and the ethics of the US corporate boardroom to the White House.  In the annals of the US presidency, he will not favour well, but nor should he necessarily be seen as a singular catastrophe.  There are other worthier contenders for the court historians to consider. 

One of them must be George W. Bush who, true to his misspoken words, never stopped thinking about new ways of harming the US and its people.  This was a president who declared with confidence that there could be such things as an “Axis of Evil” in international relations; that the map of the Middle East needed to be rewritten in blood – yet again – on an adventurist, schoolboy hunch; and proclaimed a Global War on Terror with a sort of mad glee that tolerated an extra-judicial culture of torture, renditions and CIA black sites.  “My blood was boiling,” he writes in that painful, and for the most part hopelessly unreliable read Decision Points.  “We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass.”  This was not a quest marked by the need for sound evidence, be it Saddam Hussein’s fictitious weapons of mass destruction, or forged links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda.  When destroying a country, stubborn motivation can resist the evidentiary brief.      

Domestically, Bush’s tenure oversaw a bloating of the national security state, fattened by inefficient and intrusive surveillance coupled with the use of imperial styled powers that disparaged the workings of Congress.  Air pollution standards were reduced; logging of wilderness areas encouraged and naff intrusions of religion into policy witnessed. 

In responding to Hurricane Katrina, one of the most devastating natural events in US history, the president distinguished himself by continuing his vacation at his expansive Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas before cutting it short.  Once committed in response, he could never dispel the image of detachment from the catastrophe.  Praising the bungling performance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown (“you’re doing a heck of a job”) did not help.

At the helm of the US imperium for eight years was a person of questionable cognitive heft and permanent frat boy immaturity, who had an entertainingly defective grasp of language (entrepreneur not being a French word; misunderestimated, and all that) and a tenuous hold on reality.  During his time in office, dark forces led by Vice President Dick Cheney pulled strings and encouraged this manqué president.  A sense of the impression he left on the United States could be gathered by the fact that the country got its first black president, elected not for being necessarily irresistible in offering small change but for not being Bush.

In retirement, he has been treated as a harmlessly mild, doddery recluse, dedicated to peaceful pursuits, such as painting.  Along with his wife Laura, they are sharing what they have described as “the afterlife in their promised land in Texas”. 

From this world of the afterlife, Bush has suddenly piped up.  The deaths and suffering caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were just too much for him to ignore.  In a video posted by the George W. Bush Presidential Centre, the credentials of sainthood and leadership were offered to rolling images of the United States.  “We are not partisan combatants.”  Pieties aplenty choke the performance.  “We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.  We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise.”  He noted that Americans need to “be compassionate” and “creative in our outreach”.  Remember to show empathy and kindness, those “essential, powerful tools of national recovery.” 

The response to this sop-filled intervention by Bush has been one of reputational restoration.  They have come from the usual circles: starry-eyed thespians and celebrities, many of them centrist or slightly tilted to the left of politics; many, if not Democrats then those with Democratic allegiances.  Andy Worthington had already detected this trend in 2018.  Trump’s place in the White House had caused many to lose their heads, with “a bizarre propensity, on the part of those in the centre and on the left of US political life, to seek to rehabilitate the previous Republican president, George W. Bush.”  They ranged from the former First Lady, Michelle Obama (“a beautiful, funny, kind, sweet man”) to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who, last year, kept companywith the Bushes at a sporting fixture.  “Just because I don’t agree with someone on everything doesn’t mean I’m not going to be friends with them.”  Best forget what he did.  

The COVID-19 video performance has induced another round of emetic showering.  Debora Messing, for one, gushed at the show. “A REAL president,” she tweeted.  Former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill exercised her tear ducts.  “In a million years I never thought I’d be crying watching this, thinking how much better we’d all feel if Bush were president today.”  Historian Seth Kotlar was captured by “nostalgia”, not necessarily for Bush “but for Presidents who genuinely tried to speak to the entire nation, not just a part of it.”

Trump preferred a different reaction and predictable focus: himself.  Bush, he fumed, “was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history.”  That little matter called the impeachment proceedings still rankles.  But Bush, it seems, continues to slide into that place of history where minds atrophy and hagiography quells reality.

*

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.

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]

The Federal Reserve: More Lethal Than Coronavirus

May 5th, 2020 by Rep. Ron Paul

Last week the Federal Reserve announced it will keep interest rates at or near zero until the economy recovers from the government-imposed shutdown. Following this announcement, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell urged Congress and the Trump administration to put aside any concerns about the deficit and spend whatever it takes to stimulate the economy and combat coronavirus.

The Federal Reserve previously announced it would make unlimited purchases of Treasury securities, thus encouraging Congress and the president to increase spending and debt. With some members of Congress talking about another multi-trillion-dollar stimulus bill, and with President Trump proposing a two trillion dollars infrastructure plan as a way to get Americans back to work, it is obvious, and not surprising, that Congress and President Trump gleefully agree with Powell’s advice.

Increasing the purchase of federal debt is not the only action the Fed has taken in a desperate attempt to keep the economy afloat. Since the coronavirus lockdowns began in early March, the Fed has greatly expanded its balance sheet. The Federal Reserve has also launched an unprecedented program to “loan” money directly to businesses.

While some states are beginning to end the lockdowns, it may be months or even another year before all the lockdowns are finally ended. It is unlikely that the economy will completely recover after the shutdown ends.

The economy was teetering on the brink of a recession months before anyone heard of coronavirus. Last September, a panicked Fed began emergency infusions of cash into the repurchasing market, which is where banks make short-term loans to each other. The Fed’s balance sheet expansion also began in September. The Fed was also pushing interest rates down before the coronavirus panic, and it will likely keep rates at or even below zero long after the crisis related to the shutdown subsides.

Economic stagnation combined with zero or negative interest rates remove incentive for people to save. This depletes the supply of private capital available to invest in businesses and jobs. The lack of private capital will put pressure on the Federal Reserve to maintain, and even expand, its new lending programs indefinitely.

Each of the Federal Reserve’s responses to the coronavirus shutdown increases the distortions of the market caused by the Federal Reserve’s meddling with the money supply and interest rates. These increased distortions guarantee the inevitable crash will be much more severe than the current downturn. The one upside is that the next meltdown will likely lead to the end of the fiat money system and thus the end of the welfare-warfare state.

The only way to minimize the coming crisis is to begin immediately unwinding the current system. The first step is to end the lockdown and let businesses reopen and people go back to work. Congress must then begin challenging monetary policy by passing the Audit the Fed bill. Congress should also cut spending, starting with ending our hyper-interventionist foreign policy and bringing the troops home. Ending the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system may cause some short-term pain, but that pain will be dwarfed by the long-term gains in liberty, peace, and prosperity.

*

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.

The Ministry of COVID-Compliance Reminder

May 5th, 2020 by Sundance

The Ministry of Covid Compliance is reminding us this week how the virus has a genetic targeting mechanism able to differentiate between essential cans of vegetables, bottles of liquor, lottery tickets and non-essential products like sneakers and paint.  Thus the Ministry is able to help us better understand the lock-down policy.

We’ve been piling into crowded supermarkets for seven weeks buying food, and we are allowed to purchase liquor and lottery tickets. Those purchases are deemed safe by the state; however, it is critical for viral control that we not purchase sneakers or other hazardous items which pose a greater threat of proximity transmission.

Similarly the COVID-19 virus seems incapable of keeping up with the speed of passenger vehicles, buses, airplanes and trains.  However, once you exit your COVID compliant transportation, the virus can swoop down and attack you if you are in the proximity of a open-space park or beach.

The Ministry appreciates our compliance in avoiding the dangerous virus freedom zones; and is thankful for compliant citizens who do not question the complex data analysis that goes into regional scientific tracking systems.

To avoid an increased infection rate it is critical for American citizens to only visit Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, WalMart & other large institutional retail systems with influential lobbying offices near the Covid Mitigation Ministry.

Effective compliance and mitigation requires that everyone must avoid the small business operations where the virus is more prone to hide out and attack consumers.  The scientific data-hubs in/around K-Street in Washington DC must lead our careful decision-making.

Remember, the Ministry is working closely with regional governors to outline the greatest threat.  Walking on a golf course in Massachusetts is safe-behavior; however, if you carry a particularly shaped stick and swing it at a ball, the virus will immediately target you.

These granular distinctions are very important to understand.

In the Ministry of Delaware food trucks are now permitted to operate; however, if you attempt to purchase a dress for Mothers Day, you are putting society at risk.

Currently in most regions the virus is allowing dogs and cats to have their fur trimmed; however, if a human attempts to commercially reduce the length of you sideburns it will create a viral hot-spot potentially putting the health of our planet at risk.

The rebel alliance has noted that specifically random viral targeting appears much more prevalent in the regions where people formerly wore genitalia on their heads.  There is a possibility this could be propaganda because there is not enough conclusive scientific data assembled to quantify the merit of this claim.  Confirmation efforts remain ongoing.

In almost all regions of ministry control, furniture purchasing seems like one of the most potentially dangerous activities.  Out of an abundance of caution these consumer hubs of activity have been shut-down; however, the Ministry is evaluating how the virus would respond if cans of vegetables were placed within the building.

According to the most extensive study conducted so far, commercial buildings with cans of vegetables appear to be the safest venue allowing congregation and proximity.  It is unknown if moving canned foods and sandwiches into the furniture stores, or other less traveled venues, would transfer the benefits of virus mitigation.  The Ministry has a teleconference with scientists and industry experts scheduled later this week to analyze this question.

In the interim, the Ministry would like to remind you the greatest danger is the type of purchasing you make.  Large box retailers with dense populations are safe-spaces.  Smaller business with less density are hazards; and houses of religious worship are death traps due to their propensity to promote the most critically dangerous activity of all, fellowship.

Because the literal health of our nations’ citizens are at risk, we must remain steadfast and resolved to keep all hospitals and patient facilities closed and at precipice of financial ruin.

Remember, we are all in this together; and to prove how critical this is to our society we must all stay apart.

*

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.

Featured image is from TBP

OPCW Insiders Denounce Latest Syria Report

May 5th, 2020 by Dave DeCamp

Over the past year, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been quietly facing a crisis of credibility. The crisis started when whistleblowers within the organization shared information that contradicted the findings of an OPCW investigation into the April 2018 alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Leaks and whistleblower testimony show the organization suppressed the findings of its experts to fit the narrative that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack. That crisis of credibility continues. A group of OPCW insiders have just spoken out against a new report that blames the Syrian government for an alleged 2017 chemical weapons attack.

On April 8th, the OPCW issued the first report from its new Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), a unit of the organization established to identify the perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks inside Syria. The new IIT report found “reasonable grounds” to conclude the Syrian government was responsible for three chemical attacks in Ltamenah, Syria at the end of March 2017. Specifically, two sarin attacks on March 24th and 30th, and one chlorine attack on March 25th. The three alleged attacks jointly “affected” 106 people and did not claim any lives.

The Grayzone published a response to the IIT report from a group of OPCW insiders who called the credibility of the IIT “compromised” and said the report is “scientifically flawed.” According to The Grayzone, the authors who wrote the piece “represent the view of, at minimum, a small group of current and former OPCW officials who took part in its [the IIT report’s] drafting and review.”

The insiders were suspicious of the IIT from its formation. “It was very clear to us during the creation and setup of the IIT that its intent was not to investigate alleged incidents of chemical attacks in Syria. Instead, the team was created simply to find the Syrian government guilty of chemical attacks.” The OPCW was granted the power to attribute responsibility for chemical attacks in 2018.

The insiders question what motive the Syrian government would have to use chemical weapons, pointing out the government’s advantageous position over the opposition at the time. They also point out using chemical weapons would risk western intervention. “Let’s say they took this wild risk by using sarin …They did this by supposedly dropping a couple of sarin bombs on fields; agricultural lands in the middle of nowhere. Really?”

One fact the insiders take great issue with is that no members of the OPCW fact-finding mission (FFM) that initially investigated the Ltamenah incidents, and no members of the IIT ever deployed to the site of the alleged attacks. Instead, the investigators relied on evidence provided to them by members of Syrian opposition groups. The insiders wrote, “not one member of the IIT conducted a field investigation. Literally everything in the case has been provided by the sworn enemies of the Syrian government.”

The insiders say the opposition groups brought “evidence” to the FFM over a period of months and years, and the handovers were generally done in Turkey. “The narratives, the witness accounts, the soil samples, the metal fragments, the photographs and videos; every item of so-called ‘evidence’ had been provided by those who have everything to gain by implicating their enemies in a chemical attack.”

The insiders say the IIT is made up of investigators “without any background or expertise in chemistry, chemical weapons processes or technology, weapons systems or ballistics.” Therefore, the investigators are completely reliant upon experts approved by the OPCW. According to the insiders, these experts “represent the same Western and NATO intelligence agencies, units, institutes, laboratories and individuals that have already become so heavily invested in ‘proving’ the complicity of the Syrian government.”

If the Syrian government was not responsible for any chemical attacks at Ltamenah, it would point to staging by the opposition. The insiders explore how this could have been done. They again point out that the evidence the FFM and IIT used – soil and gravel samples and metal fragments – was given to them by opposition forces, some was even delivered over a year after the alleged incident.

The insiders also take issue with the language used in the report. “Weak language stating that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe’ the official story, it could be argued, actually implies a 50/50 case in which there are similarly reasonable grounds ‘not to believe’ it.”

“Reasonable grounds” was the same language used in the final FFM report on Douma, which was published in March 2019. The report found “reasonable grounds” to believe a chlorine chemical attack likely occurred. Although the report did not explicitly attribute blame, it ignored an engineering assessment by an OPCW employee that concluded there was a “higher probability” the two cylinders found in Douma were “manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.” This conclusion would point to a staging. Ignoring this conclusion, like the OPCW did, would lead the reader to believe the Syrian government was responsible. The engineering assessment was published by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media in May 2019, kicking off the Douma whistleblower scandal.

So far, four whistleblowers from the OPCW have come forward to speak out against the Douma investigation. The Douma incident resulted in airstrikes against Syrian government targets from the US, UK, and France. Two of the whistleblowers who spoke out both claimed US officials were brought in to OPCW headquarters to present “evidence” to the FFM that the Syrian government was responsible for a chlorine attack in Douma. The Douma scandal shows the OPCW has been operating with a pro-western government bias.

The IIT is expected to release reports on the April 2017 attack in Khan Shaykhun and the April 2018 incident in Douma. The alleged attack at Khan Shaykhun resulted in US airstrikes on a Syrian government airbase. Similar to the Ltamenah incident, the Khan Shaykhun FFM was unable to visit the site of the alleged attack and relied on other groups to provide evidence. Among those groups were the Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets. This group of first responders claims to be neutral in the conflict but receives the bulk of its funding from western governments. Out of all the incidents the IIT is expected to report on, the Douma incident is the only one where an OPCW FFM was actually deployed to the site of the alleged attack. But when that FFM reached conclusions not acceptable to the OPCW and the western powers it favors, the team was replaced.

After the IIT published its report on Ltamenah, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a statement that said, “The United States shares the OPCW’s conclusions.” Pompeo went on to praise the organization, “The United States commends the thorough investigations and expert work of the OPCW, which has again demonstrated that its efforts in Syria are unbiased and professional.”

The OPCW’s credibility is able to survive since most western mainstream media outlets refuse to cover the Douma scandal. When the scandal is mentioned, it is usually referred to as “Russian disinformation.” In a story about the coming IIT reports, The Guardian quoted a chemical weapons expert who referred to the scandal as part of “Russian-led disinformation campaigns.” The expert said, “For example, the supposed whistleblower controversy at the OPCW last year, which the organization comprehensively rejected with an official inquiry. Even though the criticism was found to be baseless it does not stop the conspiracy theorists.”

The two whistleblowers at the center of the controversy responded to the OPCW’s “official inquiry” in letters published by The Grayzone, and in Peter Hitchens’ blog at The Mail on Sunday. The whistleblowers’ responses completely dismantle the OPCW’s weak attempt at downplaying the leaks and discrediting the two men. As far as the scandal being a “Russian-led” disinformation campaign, the leaks and dissent came from within the OPCW, not from Russia.

As these IIT reports come out, it is important to look at them in the proper context. The OPCW should not have the power to assign blame while the Douma scandal goes unresolved. The IIT reports will likely be weaponized by western powers to increase sanctions on Syria – collectively punishing the citizens of a sovereign nation trying to rebuild after nine brutal years of war.

*

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.

Dave DeCamp is assistant editor at Antiwar.com and a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn NY, focusing on US foreign policy and wars. He is on Twitter at @decampdave.

Featured image is from Syria News

An economic cataclysm has been unleashed upon the world by Western politicians and bureaucrats. Unbelievably, economic activity in the West has slowed to a creep, as entire populations have been confined to their homes for weeks, if not months. As a result, millions have had their lives turned upside down. Most entrepreneurs and self-employed persons have had their livelihoods jeopardized.

The EU economy may shrink by 5 percent according to the European Central Bank (ECB), and similar figures have been forecast for the US. The economic devastation wrecked upon Western economies by governments will have consequences for many years to come. It will inevitably lower European and US citizens’ quality of life for a long time, impacting their health as well.

It is important to understand that this disaster is not the result of the coronavirus pandemic, which is a public health problem, but of overzealous government officials reacting to the pandemic. A growing number of researchers and health professionals are suggesting that the total number of cases is far higher than previously thought, which means that COVID-19 is far less deadly than the media and government advisors insist. These revised death rates put COVID-19 fatalities in many places at a rate similar to that of the flu, which kills hundreds of thousands of people every single year globally, without provoking any notably large political reaction.

This raises a question: Why the enormous and extreme reactions to the virus from Western politicians, bringing the entire economy to its knees and severely curtailing the fundamental individual freedoms of millions of citizens? Of course, there is the usual incompetence and herd behavior in the political leadership of many countries to be reckoned with. But other reasons exist for this disastrous and irresponsible behavior. Here are some.

First, politicians have generally little understanding of how markets work. Steeped in administrative and policy thinking, most politicians have never worked in the private sector or studied market economics. They neither understand nor appreciate the complexity of markets which make our high standard of living possible. This complexity includes an unfathomable number of daily exchanges, myriad commercial relations, and never-ending adaptation to surrounding conditions. The logic of politics, however, dictates that politicians cannot be seen as “doing nothing,” so they seek always intervention in markets. This is not new; it has always been a typical trait of politicians and bureaucrats. The political reactions to the coronavirus pandemic have just dramatically confirmed this truth yet again.

Secondly, politicians naturally make political calculations. Having reelection constantly in mind, they do not want to be held responsible for anything that goes wrong. In a crisis, they always prefer to act than not to act—all else being equal, to show that they tried something. At least then—in their minds—they cannot be accused of idleness, negligence, shortsightedness, or callousness. However deleterious their actions, politicians generally are not held accountable and can present themselves as heroically standing firm in dangerous times, acting forcefully and with determination. President Roosevelt’s harmful economic policies during the Great Depression and World War II are an example of this.

Thirdly, politicians sometimes rely too much on scientists, who generally have no training in social matters at all. Even more so than politicians, scientists often have great difficulty in grasping the concept of the spontaneous order of the market, not surprising given that they are followers of the rigorous scientific process. Albert Einstein’s frankly embarrassing economic proposals are a famous example. Whereas the politician is at least fully aware of the subtle gray shades in policymaking and the fine balancing act of satisfying various stakeholders, the scientist generally means well but sees the world in black and white.

Thus, if a scientist is asked how to stop the spread of a pandemic, he or she would probably answer that the best and most efficient way is to order the strict confinement of the entire population to their homes for weeks. This is what the France’s influential “Conseil Scientifique” has recommended, and it may well be true from a purely scientific point of view (although that is open to debate now). The problem arises when politicians enthusiastically follow such opinions without considering them in the light of their political and economic consequences. The first two reasons mentioned above may explain why politicians tend to place excessive trust in scientists: politicians are not familiar enough with market economics to fully grasp the consequences of acting on purely scientific advice, and it may be in their interest to act on such advice, since to do something—anything—is key.

A fourth reason why politicians have acted so recklessly to counter the spread of COVID-19 is certainly the political pressure that they are under. In times of (perceived) crisis, they are looked up to for guidance, if not for orders to follow, by an unwitting and politically uneducated electorate. But the pressure comes not only from the people, which perhaps is normal in a democracy, but also from foreign politicians. No leader wants to be outdone by his foreign colleagues and be left with the weakest plan to address the crisis. In this case, the UK‘s Boris Johnson reversed his policies, and Sweden‘s Stefan Löfvén has been slowly bowing to precisely this external pressure to act.

But the strongest pressure on governments probably comes from the media, in particular in the current times of pervasive internet and social media. Politicians are now constantly scrutinized and held responsible in a way that just a generation ago they were not. Further, mass media is prone to dramatize and exaggerate events, as this makes for better ratings, but also because journalists are not virologists. Mainstream media often tends to misinterpret and simplify the facts, inadvertently or not. An example of this is the mortality rate of COVID-19, which is constantly reported to be much higher than it is, because only declared cases are used (case fatality rate (CFR)). More generally, the prevailing attitude from the media is that everything must be done to save a small minority of the entire population today, even if that comes at the price of future economic pain for tens of millions of people. This is the classic socialist and interventionist dilemma: Where does it stop? In a world of scarce resources, how much taxpayer money should the state spend to save one life?

Finally, it is necessary to entertain a darker and more cynical explanation for the political reaction to the pandemic: power in a time of crisis. The state never misses a chance to increase its power. Crises are considered great political opportunities, and have thus been used countless times in history by rulers. This was the case during and after World War I and World War II, as well as after 9/11, with the passage in Congress of the PATRIOT Act (Providing Appropriate Tools to Restrict, Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act). But this is also true of smaller crises, such as the current panic. The economic stimulus packages that are now being proposed will again benefit corporatist bankers, as happened during the financial crisis. This is why the big banks have been the first to call for and cheer more “economic stimulus.” They stand to immediately benefit from such “government aid.”

That most Western governments have now decided to emulate the Chinese dictatorship in imposing a severe lockdown of society should be a wake-up call for those innocent souls who still think, even after the show trial of Julian Assange, that the West still protects individual freedom. A dangerous and frightening political evolution is on the way in an already fragile political and economic system. The political consequences of the generalized confinement of millions of people in Europe will be of long-lasting consequence to the balance of power between state and society. Though the Western “liberal democratic” order was never really one except in name, it is clear that a decisive step has now been taken away from it.

This politically triggered economic crisis could then also lead, hopefully, to a clearer understanding among the population that constitutional changes are due in many countries, in order to limit the powers of executive branches everywhere. Let us hope that this will be the lesson learned by the millions confined to their homes by the arbitrary will of the state.

*

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.

Featured image is from Mises Wire

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Economic Cataclysm: Politicians Have Destroyed Markets and Ignored Human Rights with Alarming Enthusiasm

It was appropriate that during the week in which we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, Israelis and Americans were discussing the Israeli government’s declared intention to annex large portions of occupied Palestinian lands. As was the case at San Remo, the arguments made and the language used by the parties to this discussion were deeply upsetting, demonstrating no respect for the victims of their designs, the Palestinian Arab people.

One of the purposes of San Remo was to ratify the British and French claims to divide up the Arab East, which they saw as the spoils of World War I. It made no difference to them that the Arab inhabitants of the region opposed their imperial ambitions. Nor did they care to honour the agreements they had previously signed with Arab leaders in which they claimed to respect the Arab’s right to independence at the war’s end. The signed agreements had been but a ruse to secure Arab support against the Ottoman Empire. And with the war over, the British representative said “In Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting… the desire and prejudices of the… Arabs who inhabit that ancient land.”

Masking their real intent to control territories that would give them footholds in the Eastern Mediterranean, the participants at San Remo declared that the Arabs were not ready for self-rule and so would require British and French tutelage. The result was that the Arab East was carved up into Lebanon and Syria, which became French Mandates, and Palestine and Trans-Jordan, which were placed under British control, with the British pledging to honor their honor their commitment to support a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.

San Remo Conference 1920.JPG

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920 (Source: Public Domain)

By what right were these decisions made? On the one hand, the justification was the imperialist’s “right of conquest.” Underlying this claim, however, was a deep and abiding racism, that viewed Arabs as a lower form of humanity not deserving of the same consideration accorded to Westerners.

One hundred years later, much the same is in evidence in the discussion over Israel’s plans to annex the occupied Palestinian lands. And it is true for most of the American sides involved in this discussion: the Trump Administration and the foreign policy establishment.

For their part, the Trump Administration issued their own updated version of San Remo calling it the “Deal of the Century.” They recognised Israel’s right of conquest, giving them the nod to annex large portions of the lands they occupied in 1967. That the “Deal” was Israel-centric was no surprise, since it was concocted by three US administration officials, all of whom are invested in an illegal West Bank settlement.

Like San Remo, the “Deal” declared that the Arabs were not ready for statehood, so it did not recognise their sovereign rights. Instead, it laid out “specific terms and conditions” they must fulfill before they were to be allowed to practice a form of limited self-rule in portions of the West Bank.

Which parts of the territories could Israel annex? According to the “Deal,” that would be decided by a US-Israeli map-making committee, once again replicating the San Remo Conference’s arrogant contempt for Arab rights. In the end, however, the decision on what to include would be, in the words of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “an Israeli decision.”

The way Israel’s annexation plans are being discussed Washington’s foreign policy establishment is not much better. While most of them are opposed to Israel annexing the territories, their reasoning is oftentimes disturbingly Israel-focused. Largely made up of former administration officials, whose failures have brought us to where we are today, or media commentators who have had a dismal record on Middle East issues, this foreign policy crowd are wringing their hands in nervous anticipation of annexation, but for all the wrong reasons. The rhetoric they have been using to express their concerns displays a total lack of understanding of their responsibility for the current state of affairs, coupled with a strong undercurrent of racism.

A featured opinion piece in the Washington Post by that paper’s prize-winning deputy editorial page editor, Jackson Diehl, serves as a good example. The article, headlined “Trump now has the power to forever alter Israel’s character,” establishes from the outset that the concern was about annexation’s effect on Israel.

There are, it appears, two major concerns. Annexation will aggravate Israel’s future relations with a post-Trump United States. It would alienate liberals and put bipartisan support for Israel at risk. The other major concern is that annexation would compromise the establishment a two-state solution in which Israel can remain a “Jewish democratic State.” Here is Diehl:

“If there is no Palestine, Israel will be doomed to become a binational state rather than a Jewish one, or else adopt an apartheid system in which millions of Palestinians are ruled by Israel but lack full political rights.”

There are several observations to be made in pointing out where this “analysis” falls short. In the first place, it ignores the fact that apartheid already is the current reality for Palestinians living under varying forms of oppressive Israeli rule in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the rest of the West Bank. Despite having a “Palestinian Authority,” Israel continues to conduct nightly raids into Palestinian cities, confiscate Arab-owned lands, and stifle Palestinian freedom and economic development by controlling all access and egress for Palestinians.

It also fails to recognise the hypocrisy of claiming that Israel can ever be both Jewish and democratic, a fact brought home by the racist campaign waged by Benjamin Netanyahu against the recently elected 15 members of Israel’s Knesset from the Arab-led “Joint List.” This incitement took the form of Netanyahu’s claim that should his opponents have established a government with Arab support, it would be an illegitimate “minority government.”

What the foreign policy establishment also fails to acknowledge is their responsibility for this mess. Their acquiescence, in and out of government, to Israeli settlement expansion, and their silence in the face of Israel’s gross violations of Palestinian human rights are the reasons why there 650,000 settlers in the West Bank and what Israel calls “East Jerusalem”, more than triple the number that existed when the current “peace process” began. Past administrations’ failures to take effective measures to rein in these Israeli policies have created a sense of impunity, helping to move Israeli politics to where it is today. They have also contributed to weakening and discrediting Palestinian leadership leading to the dysfunctional situation in the Palestinian polity.

So spare me the crocodile tears or the nervous hand-wringing over the lost prospects of a two-state solution. That might have been possible 30 years ago, if the terms of the Oslo Accords had been honoured; they were ignored because Israel’s refusal to honor its terms was not punished by the US “honest broker.” What we have today is one-state, an Apartheid State, with slightly more Arabs than Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Nor will we see the fulfillment of the “Deal of the Century” since that holds no promise for the Palestinians who will not accept a future as a people who will be permanently subordinate to Israel.

This is the reality created over the past 100 years since San Remo. And it will continue to be the reality until Palestinians are seen by Israeli Jews and US policymakers as equal human beings with full rights.

*

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.

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

Tensions between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian Army are growing in southern Idlib. Recently, government forces repeatedly shelled positions of the terrorist groups in the Zawiya Mountain area. The most intense shelling targeted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorists near Fatterah and Sufuhon.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the al-Qaeda-affiliated “Wa Harid al-Muminin” operations room described this as a blatant violation of the ceasefire regime and announced that they’d killed several pro-government fighters in retaliatory strikes.

At the same time, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham blocked several Turkish military vehicles near the town of Darat Izza in western Aleppo. According to local sources, the group is opposing the growth of the Turkish military presence there because earlier Turkish-backed forces opposed its attempt to reopen commercial crossings with the government-held area in western Aleppo and eastern Idlib.

Contraband traffic and various fees on commercial activities are an important source of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s income. Therefore, despite the public declarations to defeat the Assad regime, the group is interested in trade between the militant-held part of Greater Idlib and the government-controlled part of Syria.

Militant groups directly controlled by Turkey also faced a series of attacks. On May 2, a prominent commander of the Sham Corps, known as Haj Talib al-Khatib, survived an assassination attempt receiving light injures. Unknown gunmen on a motorcycle fired on his vehicle on the road linking the towns of al-Nerab and Sarmin. Late on the same day, Abu ‘Arib, a field commander of the Ahrar al-Sham, died from a land mine explosion on the frontline in southern Idlib. A part of Pro-Turkish sources accuses Hayat Tahrir al-Sham of staging such attacks in order to undermine the influence of its Turkish-controlled counterparts even further.

ISIS cells assassinated two Syrian intelligence officers and a supposed Hezbollah member in the province of Daraa in attacks on April 30 and May 2. These assassinations became the latest in a series of ISIS attacks on government forces. Using the instability on the frontline in Idlib, the terrorist group expanded its operations southern Syria.

The ISIS activity is also growing in Iraq.

Early on May 2, ISIS cells carried out coordinated attacks on positions of the Popular Mobilization Forces in the province of Saladin. Nine fighters of the Tigris Regiment were killed near Mukeshefah and a member of the 41th Brigade was killed near Balad. ISIS militants also briefly seized the PMF positions in the Mukeshefah area.

Later on the same day, ISIS terrorists armed with machine guns and sniper rifles fired on a police station in the village of Zaghinah in Diyala province. Four police officers were killed and nine others were injured.

In a separate development, ISIS units detonated an improvised explosive device on the route of a PMF convoy in the district of Udhaim, and then attacked the convoy’s vehicles with machine guns. A soldier was killed and 3 others were injured.

The increasing number of ISIS attacks in late April and early May even drew the attention of the US-led coalition. On April 29, coalition warplanes bombed the ISIS stronghold in the Hamrin Mountains. The strikes followed a PMF security operation in the area. Nonetheless, the following developments in the provinces of Saladin and Diyala demonstrated that the ISIS threat remains an important factor of the security situation in the country.

*

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.

Support South Front in its endeavors. If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Our good friend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom we affectionately call “Bobby,” was invited by Minister Louis Farrakhan to speak at the Million Man March Anniversary in October 2015. This is a clip of his complete message warning us of the corruption that is running rampant in the vaccine industry.

There are videos that have been circulated that have edited this video to mischaracterize Bobby’s position on vaccines and even his stance on race relations. Watch this entire video to set the record straight.

Following the court decision in the US to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson (exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer and its active ingredient, glyphosate, caused Johnson to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma), attorney Robert Kennedy Jr said at the post-trial press conference:

“The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers… Monsanto… has used those strategies…”

Johnson’s lawyers argued over the course of the month-long trial in 2018 that Monsanto had “fought science” for years and targeted academics who spoke up about possible health risks of the herbicide product. Long before the Johnson case, critics of Monsanto were already aware of the practices the company had engaged in for decades to undermine science. At the same time, Monsanto and its lobbyists had called anyone who questioned the company’s ‘science’ as engaging in pseudoscience and labelled them ‘anti-science’.

We need look no further than the current coronavirus issue to understand how vested interests are set to profit by spinning the crisis a certain way and how questionable science is again being used to pursue policies that are essentially ‘unscientific’ – governments, the police and the corporate media have become the arbiters of ‘truth’. We also see anyone challenging the policies and the ‘science’ being censored on social media or not being given a platform on TV and accused of engaging in ‘misinformation’. It’s the same old playbook.

The case-fatality ratio for COVID-19 is so low as to make the lockdown response wholly disproportionate. Yet we are asked to blindly accept government narratives and the policies based on them.

Making an entire country go home and stay home has immense, incalculable costs in terms of well-being and livelihoods. This itself has created a pervasive sense of panic and crisis and is largely a result of the measures taken against the ‘pandemic’ and not of the virus itself. Certain epidemiologists have said there is very little sturdy evidence to base lockdown policies on, but this has not prevented politicians from acting as if everything they say or do is based on solid science.

The lockdown would not be merited if we were to genuinely adopt a knowledge-based approach. If we look at early projections by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in the UK, he had grossly overstated the number of possible deaths resulting from the coronavirus and has now backtracked substantially. Ferguson has a chequered track record, which led UK newspaper The Telegraph to run a piece entitled ‘How accurate was the science that led to lockdown?’ The article outlines Ferguson’s previous flawed predictions about infectious diseases and a number of experts raise serious questions about the modelling that led to lockdown in the UK.

Ferguson’s previous modelling for the spread of epidemics was so off the mark that it may beggar believe that anyone could have faith in anything he says, yet he remains part of the UK government’s scientific advisory group. Officials are now talking of ‘easing’ lockdowns, but Ferguson warns that lockdown in the UK will only be lifted once a vaccine for COVID-19 has been found.

It raises the question: when will Ferguson be held to account for his current and previously flawed work and his exaggerated predictions? Because, on the basis of his modelling, the UK has been in lockdown for many weeks, the results of which are taking a toll on the livelihoods and well-being of the population which are and will continue to far outweigh the effects of COVID-19.

According to a 1982 academic study, a 1% increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths [including 20,000 heart attacks], 920 suicides, 650 homicides, 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions. Consider that by 30 April, in the US alone, 30 million had filed for unemployment benefit since the lockdown began. Between 23 and 30 April, some 3.8 million filed for unemployment benefit. Prior to the current crisis, the unemployment rate was 3.5%. Some predict it could eventually reach 30%.

Ferguson – whose model was the basis for policies elsewhere in addition to the UK – is as much to blame as anyone for the current situation. And it is a situation that has been fuelled by a government and media promoted fear narrative that has had members of the public so afraid of the virus that many have been demanding further restrictions of their liberty by the state in order to ‘save’ them. Even with the promise of easing the lockdown, people seem to be fearful of venturing out in the near future thanks to the fear campaign they have been subjected to.

Instead of encouraging more diverse, informed and objective opinions in the mainstream, we too often see money and power forcing the issue, not least in the form of Bill Gates who tells the world ‘normality’ may not return for another 18 months – until he and his close associates in the pharmaceuticals industry find a vaccine and we are all vaccinated.

In the UK, the population is constantly subjected via their TV screens to clap for NHS workers, support the NHS and to stay home and save lives on the basis of questionable data and policies. Emotive stuff taking place under a ruling Conservative Party that has cut thousands of hospital beds, frozen staff pay, placed workers on zero-hour contracts and demonised junior doctors. It is also using the current crisis to accelerate the privatisation of state health care. In recent weeks, ministers have used special powers to bypass normal tendering and award a string of contracts to private companies and management consultants without open competition.

But if cheap propaganda stunts do not secure the compliance, open threats will suffice. For instance, in the US, city mayors and local politicians have threatened to ‘hunt down’, monitor social media and jail those who break lockdown rules.

Prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson asks who gave these people the authority to tear up the US constitution; what gives them the right to threaten voters while they themselves or their families have been exposed as having little regard for lockdown norms. As overhead drones bark out orders to residents, Carlson wonders how the US – almost overnight – transformed into a totalitarian state.

With a compliant media failing to hold tyrannical officials to account, Carlson’s concerns mirror those of Lionel Shriver in the UK, writing in The Spectator, who declares that the supine capitulation of Britain to a de facto police state has been one of the most depressing spectacles he has ever witnessed.

Under the pretext of tracking and tracing the spread of the virus, the UK government is rolling out an app which will let the likes of Apple and Google monitor a person’s every location visited and every physical contact. There seems to be little oversight in terms of privacy. The contact-tracing app has opted for a centralised model of data collection: all the contact-tracing data is not to be deleted but anonymized and kept under one roof in one central government database for ‘research purposes’.

We may think back to Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of Facebook data to appreciate the potential for data misuse. But privacy is the least concern for governments and the global tech giants  in an age where ‘data’ has become monetized as a saleable commodity, with the UK data market the second biggest in the world and valued at over a billion pounds in 2018.  

Paranoia is usually the ever-present bedfellow of fear and many people have been very keen to inform the authorities that their neighbours may have been breaking social distancing rules. Moreover, although any such opinion poll cannot be taken at face value and could be regarded as part of the mainstream fear narrative itself, a recent survey suggests that only 20% of Britons are in favour of reopening restaurants, schools, pubs and stadiums.

Is this to be the new ‘normal’, whereby fear, mistrust, division and suspicion are internalized throughout society?  In an age of fear and paranoia, are we all to be ‘contact traced’ and regarded by others as a ‘risk’ until we prove ourselves by wearing face masks and by voluntarily subjecting ourselves to virus tests at the entrances to stores or in airports? And if we refuse or test positive, are we to be shamed, isolated and forced to comply by being ‘medicated’ (vaccinated and chipped)?

Is this the type of world that’s soon to be regarded as ‘normal’? A world in which liberty and fundamental rights mean nothing. A world dominated by shaming and spurious notions of personal responsibility that are little more than ideological constructs of a hegemonic narrative which labels rational thinking people as ‘anti-science’ – a world in which the scourge of authoritarianism reigns supreme.

*

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.

Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Hezbollah and The Government of Lebanon

May 4th, 2020 by Elijah J. Magnier

The current government in Lebanon is challenging its politicians with the accusation of having supported the corrupt political and financial system for at least three decades. These politicians accuse Hezbollah, claiming that it is responsible for this corruption. And indeed, Hezbollah is repeatedly accused of supporting street campaigns to eliminate political opponents or to control the country. Accordingly, Hezbollah has become in the eyes of some establishment figures the “great Satan” whose leadership seems able to get its hands on all the critical positions in Lebanon’s politics and administration. Members of Parliament sought, but failed to obtain, a majority of votes so as to allow the justice system to question any former or active minister responsible from 1990 to date. But even Hezbollah’s closest allies failed to support the resolution, indicating limitations operating within the Lebanese constitutional system. Hezbollah’s overwhelming military power, decades of fighting experience and precision missiles were all useless for confronting and combating the corruption deeply rooted in the country.

Hezbollah is repeatedly accused of controlling nominations and appointments in the present Lebanese government- to the point where many politicians and analysts call it the government of Hezbollah. However, the selection of current Prime Minister Hassan Diab was agreed to by the former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who refused to assume responsibility for leading the country, notwithstanding the pleading even of his political opponents. Hariri, leading a political party, wanted to select technocrats without consulting the majority ruling parliament, an unconstitutional request that was dismissed by the majority of members of parliament. Moreover, it was logical for Hariri to avoid being nominated as Prime Minister when he has never acted as one and was, along with his father the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, responsible for decades of corruption and mismanagement of the country.

It is to Hezbollah’s advantage to see a prosperous country because its Shia leadership and members are part of more than 30% of the total population, a section of society considered to be among the poorest in the country. A significant number of these people have no means to travel abroad, and even many of the richest members of Shia society are hunted by the US or on its list of terrorists. The US administration wrongly believes it can curb or isolate Hezbollah’s capability by turning its society against it. It is never apparently enough to remind the US that the majority of Shia society is either part of Hezbollah or supports it; it is therefore impossible to create a split.

Hezbollah has succeeded in defending the Shia southern part of the country from Israeli aspirations to extend its jurisdiction over the whole country, beyond occupied Palestine. This Shia organisation was the only entity capable of defeating Israel, forcing its strong army to end its occupation and leave Lebanon and impose an equation of deterrence to prevent further aggression. It has also protected the country from the Takfiri (ISIS and al-Qaeda) who aimed, even before the war in Syria in 2011, to expand their “Islamic State” to the entire Levant.

However, although Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has promised to uproot corruption, his weapons seem unequal to this task. He must face a certain reality: his closest allies have been, and still are, an integral a part of the corrupt system, along with other political leaders in the opposition camp.

Hezbollah is far from being in a position to confront its allies, particularly the Speaker Nabih Berri, the Leader of “AMAL” movement. He is one of the main protagonists of Rafic Hariri’s team of the corrupt politicians he has surrounded himself with for decades right up to his assassination in 2005. The Speaker is particularly feared for the energy with which he protects his businesses and his family’s accumulated wealth since he reached power in Lebanon. Because Berri stood against Hezbollah and fought against it in the 80s, Hezbollah is not willing to face again the same risk of intra-Shiite confrontation.

The governor of the Central Bank, Riyad Salame, was accused by Prime Minister Diab of being responsible for the deterioration of the local currency and for acting against the interests of the country and contrary to the financial policy of the government. To protect himself, Salame told the New York Times that Hezbollah had attacked him: “I worked very hard to put in place a special investigation commission to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, and I never compromised on this. Those who suffered from my decisions are now trying to drag me down with accusations of corruption”.

The Central Bank Governor is of course protected by the US administration, supported by the US embassy in Beirut and therefore considered “untouchable”. And even Hezbollah’s closest allies offered several names to the US Ambassador in Beirut (notwithstanding the slogan “government of Hezbollah”) – candidates they could approve as potential replacements for Salame when the time comes.

What is most surprising is the fact that the Maronite Patriarch stood fully behind the Central Bank Governor Riyad Salamé, as well as the Sunni ex-minister Nuhad Mashnouq and the Shia Speaker and his two cabinet ministers, to protect Salamé: all stood against Hezbollah. Even the depositors who couldn’t access their savings for months were unable to bring for trial Salamé and those politicians accused of corruption.

Prime Minister Hasan Diab has decided to change the “Lebanese business as usual” conduct of almost every Prime Minister and cabinet who have ruled the country in the last decades. Mr Diab, a professor at the American University of Beirut, is a technocrat who formed a government of experts. However, these experts were appointed by politicians, including Hezbollah, who have representation in the Lebanese parliament. The Prime Minister is accused of “vindictive” behaviour by the current politicians (who ruled and continue to rule the country) because he is willing to try to claw back billions of dollars transferred by them from Lebanon to foreign accounts outside the state, and this amid the harshest economic crisis the country has faced, with over $87 billion deficit.

The Druse Leader, Walid Jumblat, also accused the “great Satan” Hezbollah, of managing the government’s decision through “black operational rooms to control what remains of Lebanon”. One of Hezbollah’s closest allies responded: “Give Jumblat something to satisfy him, and he will cease his accusations. You know how things go”.

Politicians want Mr Diab to stop digging up ancient corruption files, and to keep things as they were. The opposition – supported by the Shia Speaker Nabih Berri, the Sunni former PM Saad Hariri, the Druse Leader Walid Jumblat and the Maronite “Lebanese Forces” Leader Samir Geagea – are challenging Prime Minister Diab. They are trying to prevent him from reaching his objectives. These objectives are not limited to claiming back the funds transferred, they also aim to remove the governor of the Central Bank in a bid to avoid a bankrupt state. And the government as a whole is facing the unprecedented challenge of the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences for a country already in severe financial difficulty whose infrastructure has been eroded by previous governments’ corruption and mismanagement.

The Speaker, who has occasionally been accused of being the protector of Hezbollah, is considered today the “guarantor of Lebanon”. The political cards are being reshuffled, and although Hezbollah’s strategic allies are still defined as such, they no longer act accordingly, nor in harmony with Hezbollah’s declared objective to fight corruption. The justice system will remain at the mercy of these “angelic” politicians – directly accused of corruption by the people – because they are the ones who select the judges. They are fighting today for their self-protection from any government attempt to examine their long-term theft of the country’s wealth. Hezbollah is isolated and, in the eyes of these corrupt “angels”, has become the “great Satan”.

Hezbollah supported a Prime Minister and a cabinet all friendly to the US, so that Diab could run a country itself in severe crisis, and benefit from the support of the international community. However, the continuous unrest shows that Diab is not being allowed to govern. This indicates that the pro-US Lebanese politicians’ objective is to bring down the government, forcing it to resign. If this happens, and the government resigns, there are strong indications that the situation will turn against the confessionalism ruling system in Lebanon- and the al-Taef agreement will be on the table. In this case, whichever group holds the most power may select a government, and leaders of the country, which favour itself at the expense of all other groups.

*

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.

Featured image is from the author

Trump’s Virtual Town Hall: A Vehicle for Deception, Finger-Pointing and Threats

By Stephen Lendman, May 04 2020

On Sunday, Trump was his usual congenital lying self, falsely boasting to viewers that he’s “done more than any other president in the history of our country.” At a time when the nation faces a public health crisis and economic collapse, he falsely claimed things are “all working out. You know, the numbers are heading in the right direction.”

 

If We Want to Return to Normal, We Have to Fix the Policy

By Mike Whitney, May 04 2020

Most of the United States is still under lockdown, but why? What is the purpose of the policy?We’ve had the “flatten the curve” meme pounded into our brains for so long, that most people think it’s the objective of the policy, but is it? Flattening the curve is a worthy goal, but preventing the health care system from being overwhelmed should not be our highest priority. True, it is critical, I don’t dispute that, I just think there are other goals that are more important. But what would those be?

 

The Deeper Historical Roots of Chinese Demonization

By Pepe Escobar, May 04 2020

The new normal tactic of non-stop China demonization is deployed not only by crude functionaries of the industrial-military-surveillance-media complex. We need to dig much deeper to discover how these attitudes are deeply embedded in Western thinking – and later migrated to the “end of history” United States. 

 

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and Civil Actions as a Social Movement

By Prof. Paul Jobin, May 04 2020

Like the many industrial disasters that have marked the history of modern and contemporary Japan, the nuclear disaster of March 2011 resulted in much litigation. By the ninth anniversary of the catastrophe in 2020, nearly four hundred individual civil actions, and at least thirty known cases of collective civil actions, along with two collective administrative lawsuits, have been launched across the country. The total number of plaintiffs exceeds twelve thousand. Thirteen district courts have already handed down judgments, a large majority of them in favor of the plaintiffs against the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the Japanese state. The cases are now pending in appeal.

 

Crushing the States, Saving the Banks: The Fed’s Generous New Rules

By Ellen Brown, May 04 2020

Congress seems to be at war with the states. Only $150 billion of its nearly $3 trillion coronavirus relief package – a mere 5% – has been allocated to the 50 states; and they are not allowed to use it where they need it most, to plug the holes in their budgets caused by the mandatory shutdown. On April 22, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was opposed to additional federal aid to the states, and that his preference was to allow states to go bankrupt. No such threat looms over the banks, which have made out extremely well in this crisis.

 

No, the US Isn’t Going to Dump India over Its Atrocious Treatment of Minorities

By Andrew Korybko, May 04 2020

There’s been a lot of speculation that the US might be preparing to dump India over its atrocious treatment of minorities after the official White House Twitter account stopped following several Indian government ones including Prime Minister Modi’s and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended blacklisting the South Asian state, but that scenario is extremely unlikely since America envisages its new junior partner functioning as a long-term counterweight to China in both the military and economic domains, which certainly takes strategic precedence over punishing the country for its human rights abuses.

 

The Impact of COVID-19 on Africa. The Case of Somalia

By Dr. Bischara A. Egal, May 04 2020

Since early April, Somalia has been on lockdown. Daily life has come to a halt. Movement is restricted. Public gatherings are suspended. All but a small number of essential businesses are closed. Every one of the country’s 19 million people has been affected by these restrictions, but – as ever – the most vulnerable have been hit the hardest. In Somalia, only a small minority are formally employed. Everyone else who earns a living works in the informal economy with no employer-provided benefits, few alternative livelihood options, and only the most meagre social safety net to fall back on.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: If We Want to Return to Normal, We Have to Fix the Policy

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above  

The following text was published by Global Research 15 years ago. The text below is a version of Frank Morales’s award winning article “The Pentagon wages War on America”, which received a 2003 Project Censored Award.

Morales’s article was ranked No. 2 out of the “25 Most Censored Stories.”

Morales analysed in 2003 with foresight the unfolding militarization of America and clutch of the Pentagon on civil society.

***

To further prepare for new “law enforcement” missions for the military within America, overseen by the Northern Command, the Center for Law and Military Operations, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, recently published the legal rationale for these developments.

Entitled, Domestic Operational Law Handbook for Judge Advocates, the document reflects the growing momentum towards the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act. Virtually unreported in any media, and published prior to 911, the document states that although “the Founding Fathers’ hesitancy to raise a standing army and their desire to render the military subordinate to civilian authority” is “rooted in the Constitution,” “exceptions to the restrictions on employment of federal armed forces to assist state and local civil authorities are also grounded in the Constitution, which provides the basis for federal legislation allowing military assistance for civil disturbances.” (See Domestic Operational Law Handbook for Judge Advocates)

The JAG handbook attempts to solidify, from a legal standpoint, Pentagon penetration of America and it’s “operations other than war,” essentially providing the U.S. corporate elite with lawful justification for its class war against the American people, specifically those that resist the “new world law and order” agenda.

The handbook notes that

“the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan, named GARDEN PLOT, provides guidance and direction for planning, coordination, and executing military operations during domestic civil disturbances.”

Operation Garden Plot, originating in 1968 and continually updated, is according to the JAG handbook, tasked with the mission of conducting “civil disturbance operations throughout the United States,” providing “wide latitude to a commander to use federal forces to assist civil law enforcement in restoring law and order.” And it’s exactly this type of “wide latitude” that we’ve witnessed at recent protests in NYC and Oakland.

United States Army Field Manual 19-15, entitled Civil Disturbances, issued in 1985, is designed to equip soldiers with the “tactics, techniques and procedures” necessary to suppress dissent. The manual states that “crowd control formations may be employed to disperse, contain, or block a crowd. When employed to disperse a crowd, they are particularly effective in urban areas because they enable the control force to split a crowd into smaller segments.” (See this)

Sound familiar? If you were at the February 15 NYC Peace Rally it certainly does. The manual goes on to state that “if the crowd refuses to move, the control force may have to employ other techniques, such as riot control agents or apprehensions…”

The Army “civil disturbance” manual, correlated to present day realities, also makes the point that “civil disturbances include acts of terrorism,” which “may be organized by disaffected groups,” who hope to “embarrass the government,” and who may in fact “demonstrate as a cover for terrorism.”

The sophistry involved in turning a peace rally into a pro-al Qaeda rally is precisely the logic that is operative within Pentagon driven civil disturbance planning situated within the broader context of so-called “homeland defense.” In fact, rather than protest being the occasion of “terrorism,” the “war on terrorism” is the cover for the war on dissent. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center spokesman Mike Van Winkle had to say recently to the Oakland Tribune (5/18/03):

“You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest…You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.” (See this)

The ‘White Makes Right’ Continuance

May 4th, 2020 by Philip A Farruggio

In September of 1962 James Meredith, a 28 Year old Air Force veteran, and proud black man, enrolled in the segregated University of Mississippi. All hell literally broke loose. In David Talbot’s great look at the Kennedy years, aptly entitled Brothers (2007), we see how JFK and RFK had to deal with a revise of a Civil War era insurrection. He reports that whites from all over the country ascended upon Oxford, Mississippi to violently reject Meredith’s right to a college education. A group of perhaps a few hundred federal marshals and hastily deputized prison guards, border patrolmen and ATF agents were under siege in the Lyceum, and old administration building. They were under physical threat by 2500 white students, Klansmen, squirrel hunters and even off duty cops, armed with bricks, metal pipes, gas filled Coke bottles and shotguns. The tear gas the marshals had was running out, and things got ominous. Death was in the air. Marshalls and other deputies were shot at, beaten and left for dead. One marshal said “It’s like the Alamo!” Talbot relates how the US Army proved to be so incompetent in getting federal troops to the rescue. Finally, the rescue succeeded, with an army of broken and bloody bodies.

When RFK ordered an investigation into this disgraceful replay of ‘The war between the states’, he was aghast at what was reported. There had been leaflets flooding the area, as Talbot states, of ‘Underlying sexual panic behind the Anti Meredith furor- the fear that incoming male black students would defile the pure white magnolia of Southern womanhood’. Leaflets showed cartoons of fresh scrubbed blonde coeds in the arms of grossly caricatured black ‘coons’.

A student newspaper, The Rebel Underground, attacked the Kennedy brothers as the ‘KKK- Kennedy Koon Keepers’. A new book had come out a few months earlier, Seven Days in May, which told of a fictitious planned Coup de tat by far right wing players, because the president was ‘Too soft on the communist Soviet Union. Well, the book may have been fiction (or a pretext to November, 1963) but in 1962 large swatches of this country were filled with such rhetoric. Leaflets given out to white soldiers at the campus stated “Do not be tricked into fighting your fellow Americans… Kennedy is out to destroy America because he is sick, sick Communist… together with all other good Americans we will remove RED JACK KENNEDY and all the other Communist Party politicians from office, and go on from there to wipe the Hell- Spawned Filth of Communism from the face of the earth!!”

Charlottesville white supremacist march (Source: Shutterstock)

Is all of the above any different from that infamous Charlottesville white supremacist march in August of 2017? You know, the one that had those fine and decent mostly young students and friends carrying torches and exclaiming ‘Blood and Soil’ and ‘Jews will NOT replace us!’ The president of the United States, and all the Jewish people in his administration, and of course Israel’s Netanyahu and followers, did not flood the airwaves with shouts of disgust. No, Trump et al used the fact that Anti Fascist demonstrators mixed it up with the white supremacists the following day (with one Anti Fascist demonstrator being run over and killed), saying ‘There are fine people on both sides’. The tone was set. One year or so later, in October of 2018, a crazed gunman shot and murdered eleven worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Can anyone ‘connect the dots’ as to a president and his Jewish supporters who do not come down hard on such truly Anti Semitic rhetoric and actions in August of 2017? Folks, we are living, sad to say, in a totally ‘Dumbed Down’ nation… for generations! Too many of our fellow citizens, like those Germans in the late 1920s- early 30s, just choose to ignore the coming ‘Pandemic of evil’. Well, when the ‘Shit hits the fan’, as in Germany circa 1932, you get just that: Fascism disguised as Nationalism or Nazism. It is coming, perhaps as a sequel to this virus pandemic, but it is coming children!

*

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.

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].

There is no doubting to the observant, that the government of Britain has been negligent in its approach to the coronavirus threat. It is a matter of public record that they have failed in their primary duty to protect us all. Cemeteries and unemployment will be a stark reminder of this abject failure in the near future. Frankly, if the government was a company it would be facing corporate manslaughter charges and class-action lawsuits from the bereaved (which is already being threatened).

And yet, according to YouGov, the government is supported by well over 50 per cent of the voting population in its handling of the crisis. I suspect though that has a lot to do with the measures put in place to protect  jobs and the economy. In this, the government appears paternal, albeit it is struggling to manage its own promises. However, I feel quite strongly that as the COVID-19 threat subsides and the scale of damage to the economy is unveiled and millions start to queue at job centres, this sentiment will quickly fade.

The corporate media in Britain have been, on balance, more subservient to the right-wing cause than doing their jobs in this crisis. I suspect this also has something to do with the PM’s current hold on popularity.

Robert Peston asks a salient question without somehow realising what response he might garner from it – ”Having babies change us. Near-death experiences change us – Boris Johnson has the full set. So will he become a very different PM from the one the UK voted for in December?” One of the very many answers he got went along these lines – “He has 6, 7 or 8 children as far as I can tell. We don’t know how many. He left his wife while (she was) being treated for cancer for what was his girlfriend although she became his fiancé when he was still married if I recall right. Near-death? He is a selfish person, I doubt it.”

It is here where we find ourselves in a quite unique position as a country. Moral authority necessitates the existence of and adherence to truth. In Boris Johnson, morality is literally non-existent. He demonstrates many characteristics of leadership a modern democratic country should not have in a PM. It is true to say we have a High Court certified liar at the helm who has also appointed a sociopath as his chief advisor. In a viral driven pandemic, being a sociopath is both pernicious in theory and deadly in reality.

This has been confirmed as it becomes increasingly clear that the reason the NHS was not completely overwhelmed was simple – people were left to die in their thousands, without medical intervention, in care homes and at their own homes. This was a deliberate, calculated policy of their own admission – called  ‘herd-immunity.’ It was the preferred strategy to deal with the coming pandemic, which lays waste to those who are old, frail and ill. Sociopaths view them as a cost to society, not members of our families, our community and the country they served and contributed to. It was Dominic Cummings himself who publicly pronounced with this strategy – “if a few pensioners die – so be it.”

It is also true to say that Boris Johnson got into power by fronting a campaign fined for its illegal use of funding, of breaking democratic laws and brazenly lying. He aligned himself to those with extreme right-wing views and promoted racism, division and hatred in our country.

Since arriving in Downing Street, the PM’s closest team has lashed out at the free-press, censored the news and threatened the public service broadcaster with oblivion. Boris Johnson himself has attacked democracy, and dished out unprecedented powers to himself and those who surround him.

The COVID crisis has provided a convenient shield against the pressure that was building over the scandal of the Russia Report, the Arcuri affair and blatant abuse of public office and matters surrounding conflict of interest.

The proroguing of parliament, bending the truth to the Queen and other anti-democractic incidents seem a distant memory – but they were just months ago.

We should not forget that Boris Johnson’s life is characterised by little more than theatrical events that endeared himself to a nation hooked on soap operas and so-called reality shows. And it is here we see how his life is unfolding before us. Aside from undisclosed and lavish freebie holidays from donors at the beginning of this year, in the space of just six months, he has got divorced, engaged, had a rather ambiguous brush with death, become father (again) while trying to steer the country through its worst crisis since the end of World War 2.

But what does Britain really need in its leader in a time of crisis? Honesty, integrity, commitment, accountability and the ability to be truly inspirational to help guide us all through these dangerous times would be desirable. Do you see any of those characteristics readily applicable in our Prime Minister? No, nor do I.

The Prime Minister is now supposedly anchoring the daily afternoon press conference but those expecting him to deliver some sort of road map for the way out of the lockdown and the catastrophe we find ourselves in will probably find themselves very disappointed.

As Dominic Raab announced on Wednesday, there will be no major decision on easing the restrictions before May 7. Now the government finds itself in a position where it has to over-compensate to prove it is not negligent. Its as if they are going to shoot the horse before it bolts just to be certain.

The Tories now find themselves trapped in another dilemma. The party is funded by corporate donors and those donors are seeing their investment evaporate amid the crisis. Over 80 per cent of Tory funding – and therefore their political existence relies on this cash and not member donations – and this may well force them to act in their interests and not that of the nation. It’s the same in America, another unfolding human disaster.

Ministers have been unnerved by the experience of Germany which saw a rise in infection rates immediately after an easing of some restrictions and the Government is rightly fearful of moving too early. But it is just as fearful of being threatened by the withdrawal of its funding.

It has even been suggested that the decision to give figures for the daily death rates in care homes as well as those in hospitals was to done to underline the need to keep the lockdown in place. It may well also be yet another tactic to dumb-down the numbers. The FT (not a paper associated with salacious headlines and fake news) analysed total deaths and found a spike that correlated with COVID-19 being responsible not for 20,000 deaths – but double that.

The other problem Britain has is that Johnson sees his task, based on his personal experience, as being the nation’s cheerleader in chief. And that’s fine in a Brexit induced recession but not when real leadership and crisis management skills are required.

What is now needed are the best brains, those without any other incentive other than to help Britain get out of this very deep hole. But this government ridiculed the experts, so they can’t now call upon them and this is a huge problem. Even SAGE has been found to be influenced by government strategy meaning we can no longer believe what they are saying either.

When this crisis comes to some sort of manageable end, when the calls for an enquiry are made and when lawsuits against the government and NHS mount – we’ll see yet more lies, misrepresentation of the facts and all manner of concoctions. It takes strength and courage to admit the truth and to do your duty. Unfortunately, this is the era of populism and with Boris Johnson at the helm, there is an inevitability about what the future looks like.

*

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.

As countries have openly begun to utilize their military structures in fighting the coronavirus in programs intended to guard against biological warfare, Chinese authorities have come out in support the official position of Russia and considers it dangerous that there is a continued existence of U.S biological laboratories in the territory of individual states. These are countries which were formerly republics of the Soviet Union, but came under the influence of NATO and the Deep State.

This was stated by the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China Geng Shuang.

“We drew attention to the statement of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova. The US has created many biological laboratories in the territory of the former Soviet Union, which causes serious concern among the people of the respective states and neighboring countries, ” he stressed at a regular briefing. – The local community insists on closing these facilities. We hope that the American side will take a responsible position, take into account the official concern of the world community … and take real steps to eliminate such concerns. “

According to the Chinese diplomat, Washington should pay special attention to issues that are directly related to the health and well-being of the population of the countries in which American laboratories are located.

On April 17, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in relation to the coronavirus pandemic, that the development of causative agents of dangerous diseases could be carried out in American biological laboratories located abroad. The Russian Foreign Ministry drew attention to the strengthening of the American biological presence outside the United States, in particular in the former Soviet republics. Zakharova stressed that Moscow cannot ignore the fact that the infrastructure with dangerous biological potential is being formed by the Americans in close proximity to Russian borders.

Laboratories modernized with US money, which conduct biological research, study viruses and strains, operate in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Kazakhstan.

*

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.

For two decades now, following U.S. invasions of Afghanistan, then Iraq, and as we approach ten years of upheaval in Syria and five in Yemen, interpretation of these wars has been the domain of western observers— journalists, occupying soldiers, and politicians. With others, I pored over and reviewed dozens what regrettably becomes those nations’ modern history.

Now, a new generation of citizens in these besieged lands may overturn what essentially constituted a colonialist record of their lives.

Many writers, mainly Arab and Iranian women (including an active Palestinian literary community) who fled their homelands in the wake of ethnic clashes, devastation and hopelessness, contribute to a growing archive of their national histories. Powerful new film productions (again with women in the forefront, e.g. Mai Masri, Nadine Labaki, and Cherien Debis) join our rich library of published memoirs.

For Sama, the award-winning chronicle a Syrian filmmaker’s young family, is joined by a second remarkable although less celebrated citizen-journalist’ biopic:—Midnight Traveler. This Afghan production, an equally compelling story, is extraordinary for being originally recorded on iphones only. (That may also account for the degree of intimacy it captures.)

Midnight Traveler and For Sama are both autobiographical family dramas by individuals, themselves the main characters in these war chronicles. Both are in real time, not recollections retold at a safe distance. Our storytellers do not speak to the camera; the camera hears and sees them in their intimate, vulnerable, endearing moments:–under siege, in hiding, learning the fate of friends left behind, quietly sharing a meal uncertain what tomorrow might offer, then fleeing onwards to they-don’t-know-where.

Midnight Traveler is a record of a capricious 3,500 mile journey by Fatima Hossaini and husband Hassan Fazili (both artists, with Fazili credited as director), and their daughters Nargis (about 7 when the journey begins) and Zahra (aged 4 or 5).

From Tajikistan where their asylum applications to Australia and elsewhere are unsuccessful, they return to Afghanistan to attempt another escape route– a costly, illegal overland trek to Western Europe. Their handlers seem to be a humane lot, neither unkind nor ruthless; but this is not a story about the smuggling business or threats from the Taliban who forced this flight.

The film’s focus is this small family ‘being together’—always. We witness casual, endearing moments between husband and wife, shared silences, candid exchanges, and vignettes of Nargis and Zahra that highlight the vicissitudes of a long, uncertain but determined journey. Those quiet exchanges are threaded with reminders that they are, in fact, fugitives:– scurrying across a border, sleeping in forests, confronting hostile townspeople, and waiting idly in one camp after another until they receive permission to proceed.

The story is not a portrayal of victims however. Intimacy and solidarity dominate this family’s narrative. Nargis emerges as the enchanting hero: indefatigable, companionless, in her private reverie dancing to Michael Jackson, shedding tears of boredom, shyly confessing her cold feet during a sleepless night in a wet field, and her poetic encounter with splashing waves on a rocky seafront in Turkey.

Endless columns of refugees making their way by foot –from Afghanistan and Syria, Egypt, Somalia, and Pakistan through Turkey and Greece to Western Europe– became a daily news spectacle and a documentary film by artist Ai Weiwei.

One might argue that the Fazili family’s account ignores Taliban excesses that drove them from their homeland. But whatever references the filmmakers include are convincing enough of the risks they faced there.

This 90-minute film, a small fraction of three years of cell-camera footage, is what the Fazili family chose to share with us. Their multilayered account from the frontline, Midnight Travelers, can stand alone.

*

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.

B. Nimri Aziz is an anthropologist and journalist who’s worked in Nepal since 1970, and published widely on peoples of the Himalayas. A new book on Nepali rebel women is forthcoming.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on America’s Long War… Family Stories from Ground Zero, by a New Generation of Filmmakers
  • Tags: , ,

Today, the tourism industry is considered as one of the important sources of the soft power of countries in promoting and disseminating its material and spiritual attractions to attract other nations of the world. Saudi Arabia is known as a country with the soft power of religious tourism due to its Islamic richness and Muslim holy sites. Despite high economic income from oil sales, Saudi Arabia is seeking to expand its tourism industry and tourism for pilgrim’s day by day due to the presence of Mecca and Medina, to spread its culture and achieve its political goals by bringing pilgrims from different parts of the world. Get an outsider. But in late February, Saudi Arabia abruptly suspended all visas for Umrah and pilgrimage to the holiest Muslim city. A city with about thirteen million visitors a year. Today, the two holy cities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mecca and Medina, are fully involved in the spread of the coronavirus. Even Saudi citizens are barred from traveling to the two cities as pilgrims. Saudi officials are likely to cancel the Hajj this year, in late July, for the first time in two centuries. In this memo, seeks to address the consequences of the suspension of Hajj on Saudi policies.

Although the suspension or cancellation of this year’s Hajj has not yet been officially announced, the Saudi Minister of Hajj has called on the public to abandon plans for their pre-booked trips, which may indicate a formal and imminent suspension. This year’s Hajj ceremony. However, the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has not yet commented on the official announcement of the cancellation of this year’s Hajj. Riyadh has acted faster than most other Muslim states and religious institutions in response to the spread of Kuwait-19. Al-Azhar University in Egypt was hesitant to cancel Friday prayers until late March. Other Muslim countries, such as Malaysia and Morocco, have been slow to close their mosques.

Despite the obvious benefits of suspending Umrah and Hajj in preventing the spread of coronavirus and public health, Saudi Arabia will pay a heavy price for its precautionary measures. Pilgrims bring billions of dollars into the country each year, so the Saudi economy will suffer severely as the crisis continues. The Times of India writes about the kingdom’s huge revenue from Hajj: “After oil and gas, the tourism industry is the most important industry in Saudi Arabia.” Seven percent of Saudi Arabia’s total non-oil GDP comes from Hajj. Many luxury hotels in Mecca cost around $ 5,800 a night to stay in hotels overlooking the Kaaba. In 2016, the country earned $ 76 billion from the tourism industry. This year, Saudi Arabia’s only domestic tourism sector, including pilgrims and tourists from historical and tourist areas, made a profit of nearly $ 48 billion, and the total number of trips by foreign tourists to Saudi Arabia is reported to be 13 million. Therefore, the sustainability and development of the tourism industry from the perspective of Saudi Arabia is an important strategy in the field of soft power to improve its position in the eyes of the world’s Muslim public opinion and by investing in it, it produces attractiveness and enhances its soft power. The paper cites the pilgrimage as a “new oil” in Saudi Arabia and continues: The 2030 Vision Document, compiled by Saudi Crown Prince Bin Muslim to develop the non-oil sector of the economy, focuses on pilgrimage. The country has developed plans to develop businesses in Mecca and plans to build 115 new buildings, 7,000 hotels, and 9,000 homes. These programs create 1.5 million jobs.

Apart from the economic importance of Hajj, pilgrimage is one of the most important tools of the soft power of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has endangered the public image of the country with the outbreak of the coronavirus. By cutting off this powerful transnational current, the Coronavirus reveals Saudi Arabia’s turmoil in the Islamic world. The Associated Press writes that the Hajj has never been separate from politics in Saudi Arabia; in fact, since 100 years ago when Al-Saud took control of the country’s political and religious foundations, the Hajj has played a major role as the main tool for power and legitimacy for the Saudi regime. It has a determinant. It has also used the Islamic ritual of Hajj to put pressure on rival countries such as Iran, Syria, and Qatar. Although Saudi rulers have always claimed that they do not use Hajj politically, the fact is that anyone who controls the Hajj will have soft and very strong power.

Saudi Arabia, as the center of the emergence of Islam and the host of the “House of God”, “Masjid al-Haram”, holy places and other religious symbols reminiscent of the early history of Islam and the Holy Prophet (PBUH), has always attracted the attention of Muslims around the world. It is transnational. The leaders of Saudi Arabia have taken full advantage of this capacity to inspire the Muslim nations of the world, and in a dynamic process, have deepened their influence with a rich cultural-cultural richness. It is safe to say that the a primary and fundamental pillar of Saudi influence and insight, along with the respect of millions of Muslims in the land stems from its religious position and as a non-structural component of soft power and an invaluable source of propaganda, The Saudis have played abroad.

Saudi Arabia’s religious geopolitics has enabled Saudi officials to establish themselves as religious and spiritual leaders among Muslim nations and increase their motivation to establish political, economic, and cultural institutions under the pretext of Islamic solidarity. Annual hosting of the pilgrims of the Sacred House of God, construction and equipping of mosques and large schools in Islamic countries, production of books with propaganda content, sending missionaries, attracting and training the youth of Islamic countries based on Wahhabi teachings are among the measures taken as a fixed procedure by Saudi officials have been pursued, and in a way, they have consolidated the dignity and position of the the leadership of the Saudi rulers. Aware of this issue, Saudi leaders and rulers have worked to create and strengthen their media and press in the Islamic-Arab world and these media and press have acted in various regional and international challenges and crises as their propaganda showcase. These media outlets have been instrumental in the disputes of the 1960s and 1970s, especially after Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait and the subsequent disputes between it and Saudi Arabia. Saudi diplomacy, with its behind-the-scenes consultations and steadfastness in pursuing regional and international interests owe much of its success to religious dignity and its inspiration among Muslims. In their meetings and relations with Western countries, Saudi officials have also tried to use their patriarchal brand in most of the Islamic countries and increase their respect for Western officials. Saudi Arabia’s covert diplomacy is such that even media outlets close to it are confused and frustrated at understanding why diplomatic trips, their goals, and how far they have come.

The twentieth century and beyond should be seen as the beginning of the formation of the process of identification and use of soft power resources by governments. Soft power resources rely on software-oriented values ​​and norms that help countries achieve the desired goals without the use of force, coercion, and violence, which are the main sources of hard power. The soft power of action is based on the attraction and the desire to direct thoughts and actions to achieve the preferences of a state and achieve the desired results. Nye believes that soft power is rooted in cultural resources, political values​​, and foreign policy.

Over the past decades, the Saudi government has cleverly used the two cities of Mecca and Medina, these two sources of soft power, to protect itself and the Al-Saud family and to make the most of this powerful resource. By establishing a discourse link between the government’s monopoly in the hands of the Al-Saud dynasty and the protection of the safe sanctuary, the government has strengthened its basic strategies for producing attractiveness and gaining religious and political legitimacy. A strategy that could be severely damaged as the Coronavirus virus continues to spread, and the possibility of continuing to suspend and even cancel this year’s Hajj rite continues.

*

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.

Officials with the Virginia Department of Health abruptly announced Friday that they were changing their methodology for reporting the number of COVID-19 tests conducted in Virginia.

The announcement came after data on the state’s coronavirus surveillance page appeared to show a dramatic one-day increase in test results, from 90,843 on Thursday to 105,648 on Friday.

Alena Yarmosky, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ralph Northam, said that roughly 5,800 of those results were new tests — a record for the state. But the other roughly 9,000 were older tests that the state retroactively included in its cumulative daily results.

Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver said the old methodology counted the total number of people tested rather than the total number of tests conducted. Previously, if a single patient was tested four different times over the course of the illness, VDH reported that as one result.

“What we’re doing now is, we’re counting all four tests,” he said. “That’s the difference.”

About 10 percent of the state’s previous results were patients who had been tested for COVID-19 multiple times, he added after the press briefing. So, while the state’s surveillance page still includes a section for “Number of People Tested,” Friday’s numbers now reflect the total number of tests conducted in the state.

Oliver said that the new methodology will make it easier for the state to calculate the total percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive. That metric is considered important in evaluating the severity of outbreaks in different areas and — once more widespread testing is available — whether the virus appears to be accelerating or abating.

But the sudden change in methodology also makes it impossible to evaluate how the number of tests in Virginia has increased compared to past data, unless VDH continues to release the total number of people tested. Oliver said he wasn’t sure if that statistic will be added back to the surveillance page.

The total number of tests also doesn’t necessarily reflect whether most Virginians are able to be screened for the virus. Testing capacity at the state lab in Richmond is still directed to high-risk groups such as symptomatic residents in nursing homes. And primary care providers say there are still significant shortages in the swabs, transport media and personal protective equipment that make it possible to widely test patients.

While one resident tested four times for COVID-19 might reflect an overall increase in resources, it doesn’t indicate how many of the state’s 8.5 million residents have been tested — surveillance that’s been cited as an important step in reopening the state and controlling future cases.

“We have slowed the spread, but we are not out of the woods yet,” Northam said during the briefing. “We must continue to move forward carefully. Testing is key to that.”

Even with the change in reporting, Virginia appears to be lagging behind nearby states in testing numbers. North Carolina, for instance, which also reports the total number of tests, had 133,832 results as of Friday. Tennessee reports the total number of people tested, and still had an additional 80,484 results more than Virginia.

Dr. Karen Remley, a former health commissioner brought on as co-director of the governor’s COVID-19 task force, said the state was continuing to focus on increasing its testing rates. She announced Friday that the state has contracted with two private laboratories in Virginia and one in North Carolina to boost capacity by 3,000 tests per day.

State officials also plan to launch a public information campaign encouraging doctors to test all symptomatic patients as the turnaround time for results at large commercial labs, such as Quest and LabCorp, continues to decrease.

It’s still unclear whether Northam will follow through on his initial plan to reopen businesses by May 8 — and whether the state’s increasing testing and tracing capacity is enough to accommodate an anticipated rise in cases when they do.

Another key tool in reopening is contact tracing, in which health workers identify the contacts of patients with COVID-19, test those people, and isolate any who test positive. Oliver said he hopes to increase Virginia’s tracing workforce to 1,500, but couldn’t provide the current number of personnel.

“It’s true that we don’t have a central roster of all our contact tracers,” he added. “Our local health departments do that work — I don’t know the exact number, but it’s in the hundreds.”

*

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.

Kate grew up in Northern Virginia before moving to the Midwest, earning her degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. She spent a year covering gun violence and public health for The Trace in Boston before joining The Frederick News-Post in Frederick County, Md. While at the News-Post, she won awards in feature writing and breaking news from the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association, including a best in show for her coverage of the local opioid epidemic. Most recently, she covered state and county politics for the Bethesda Beat in Montgomery County, Md.

Featured image is from Mark Taliano

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Unreliable COVID-19 “Estimates”in Virginia: Increase in “Testing Numbers” Attributable to Change in “Counting Methodology”: Health Officials
  • Tags: , ,

The US State Department’s case for tactical nuclear weapons is a case study in psychological projection not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War and its ever-present threat of world-ending atomic holocaust.

Back in February, the Pentagon announced the US Navy has fielded the first batch of W76-2 low-yield submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads. A paper by the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, published last week, aimed to explain the reasoning  behind this move and “debunk” the critics. The 10-page document was endorsed by the acting Under Secretary for arms control Christopher Ford, who hailed the missiles as “reducing net nuclear risks.”

On Wednesday, however, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the move “a deliberate blurring of the lines between non-strategic and strategic nuclear weapons” that “inevitably leads to a lowering of the nuclear threshold and an increase in the threat of nuclear conflict.”

Everyone who wants to do this should understand that according to the Russian military doctrine, such actions will be considered the basis for the reciprocal use of nuclear weapons by Russia

At the root of this discrepancy is a fundamental misunderstanding. Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon are basing their arguments not on the actual Russian doctrine or behavior, but on their belief as to what those might be.

For example, there is an unquestioned assumption in US policy circles that Russia has a nuclear doctrine described as “escalate to de-escalate” – which “purportedly seeks to deescalate a conventional conflict through coercive threats, including limited nuclear use,” according to a 2015 congressional testimony of then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.

As former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter pointed out, Work’s own words reveal that this is not the actual Russian doctrine, but the impression of it by some US analysts. Whoever originated this utter fantasy is irrelevant; it ranks right alongside Molly McKew’s“expertise” on Russian nuclear posture or the likewise widespread acceptance of the nonexistent “Gerasimov Doctrine.”

The State Department’s paper is indeed based on Work’s assumptions about Russia, as it literally talks about the US “deterrence objective of undermining Russian confidence that it can control escalation in a nuclear war.”

In struggling to understand where this notion may have come from, I remembered a 1978 fiction book about World War III by Sir John Hackett, a British general. Hackett envisioned a Soviet nuclear strike on a European NATO capital after the conventional war started going badly for the USSR. In the book, NATO responds with a nuclear strike on Minsk, and the war ends with a coup in Moscow by Ukrainian nationalists (stop me if you’ve heard that one before!). It may sound insane that a 42-year-old fantasy appears to be the basis of US thinking about current Russian strategy, yet here we are.

The other thing that’s downright alarming about the State Department paper is its talk of a “limited response to demonstrate resolve.” Considering that the US is the only country in the world to ever use nuclear weapons in combat – against primarily civilian targets, no less – there is no reason for anyone to doubt Washington’s “resolve.” Go read their argument; it seems to be one giant straw man, composed of wishful thinking, projection and mirror imaging – textbook mistakes its authors should have known better than to make.

Which gets us to the fundamental misunderstanding at work here. Over the course of its 244-year history, almost every US war has been fought abroad and by choice. By contrast, Russian wars tend to be fought at home and against foreign invaders. Russians do not think of war in terms of posturing, but in terms of life and death. They don’t need to “demonstrate resolve” – not after countless documented acts of bravery against overwhelming odds.

Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin literally spelled out his country’s nuclear doctrine back in 2018, on two separate occasions. “Why would we want a world without Russia?” he said in March, illustrating the notion that Moscow is willing to use atomic weapons if the survival of Russia was endangered, even if by conventional means. Several months later, in October, he was even more graphic.

Any aggressor should know that retribution will be inevitable and he will be destroyed. And since we will be the victims of his aggression, we will be going to heaven as martyrs. They will simply drop dead, won’t even have time to repent.

Yet here are the Pentagon and the State Department, ignoring this observable reality in favor of their own wishful thinking that may well be based on decades-old fantasies from a world long since gone. As Zakharova correctly points out, that’s not making the world safer – not even a tiny bit.

*

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.

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Push for “Low-yield Nukes” Makes Nuclear War More Likely as Russia Will Retaliate with Full Force, Moscow Says
  • Tags: , ,

United States president Donald Trump is proud of the US effort against COVID-19. In his 1 May remarks on protecting America’s seniors, he said,

Through aggressive actions and the devotion of our doctors and nurses, however, we have held our fatality rate far below hard-hit other countries such as Spain and Italy and United Kingdom and Sweden. We’re way below other countries.

Trump employs the logical fallacy of the confirmation bias. In this case, he selectively chooses from among the most ravaged world nations suffering from COVID-19 to compare the US. There are 190 or so other countries where the US does not fare so well in comparison. Why doesn’t Trump compare the US to his designated enemies of the US? Why not compare the US to Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and especially China? Maybe Trump won’t do that, but the rest of us can look at the data and compare.

One should regard the data with some skepticism. There may well be underreporting or misreporting of the number of cases. There may be misdiagnoses. Countries may also be in different stages of fighting the pandemic. Nonetheless, what jumps out from the data is that the US is being ravaged by the coronavirus far worse than Trump’s designated adversaries.

Trump reversed the normalization of ties, began under president Barack Obama, between Cuba and the US. Instead, Cuba has been targeted by the Trump administration policy of “maximum pressure.” This pressure included the US blocking of 100,000 face masks, 10 COVID-19 diagnostic kits, and other aid such as ventilators and gloves donated by Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma. Nonetheless, Cuba and its socialized medicine have a far lower fatality rate than the US. Cuba to its good reputation has sent medical personnel abroad to help fight COVID-19, and it has even been so magnanimous to offer aid to the US. Venezuela, another socialist nation, has been targeted for sanctions by the anti-socialist Trump. Venezuela also fares statistically better than the US with 0.4 deaths per 1 million people compared to the US’s 199 per 1 million people. The US’s weaponization of the pandemic is also being used to try and topple the goverment of Iran. These actions clearly evince that the US has little regard for the populace of the countries. Yet, even though hard hit, Iran fares much better than the US. Russia is fighting COVID-19, but the situation up to now is much less lethal than in the US.

China, being where the pandemic broke out, had to identify the virus, treat the people, and strategize how to contain COVID-19. Its tackling COVID-19 has been sterling in comparison to the US, especially given the many weeks the US had to prepare for the pandemic to hit US shores; knowing what the pathogen was; knowing the genetic profile, thanks to China; and knowing how China has been dealing with the contagion.

Trump boasts: “And other countries are asking us for help, and we’re helping other countries: allies and some that aren’t necessarily allies, but they’re in big trouble.”

A group of prominent economists maintain that the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration are “feeding the COVID-19 epidemic.” Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said,

This policy is unconscionable and flagrantly against international law. It is imperative that the U.S. lift these immoral and illegal sanctions to enable Iran and Venezuela to confront the epidemic as effectively and rapidly as possible.

Trump, notorious for his lack of diplomatic verve, threatens others in the time of a pandemic. Any iota of decorum should tell Trump not to kick an opponent when he is down. And, referring to the fatality table above, it is clear that the US is also in “big trouble.”

Polling neck-in-neck with a cognitively impaired presidential challenger, COVID-19 not abating, unemployment shooting upwards, the US economy sinking, Trump continues to deflect. He is quick to take credit when he considers the economy to be strong, but when the economy turns for the worse, he is quick to look elsewhere and point a finger:

It’s horrible that — what this country [the US] has gone through and what the world has gone through, frankly.  This is something — it could have been contained at the original location, and I think it could have been contained relatively easily.  China is a very sophisticated country, and they could have contained it.  They were either unable to or they chose not to, and the world has suffered greatly.

As CGTN made clear:

China was the first to confront COVID-19, which has made its challenge much greater. But the point about China is that it’s not a talker, it’s a doer, and when it got hold of the problem, it gave an impressive performance!

Trump just can’t let up on deflecting blame from his government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic:

“The virus situation is just not acceptable…”

“It came out of China, and it could have been stopped, and I wish they stopped it. And so does the whole world — wish they stopped it….”

“But they could have stopped it. They are a very brilliant nation — scientifically and otherwise. It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it. They could have stopped it. But they didn’t.”

This prompted a media person to ask:

You praised China in the past, so what’s changed? When you tweeted, ‘China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The [U.S.] greatly appreciates their efforts on transparency. It will all work out well…’ What has changed between then, when you were saying these things about China, and now?

Trump:

Well, what’s changed is the following: We did a trade deal and everybody was very happy. There’s nobody ever been tough on China like I’ve been tough on China. I got elected, at least partially, because of borders and military and different things, but one of the things I’d say is how China and other countries are ripping us off.

So recently, we signed a trade deal with China, a number of months ago. China is buying billions of dollars’ worth of our product, our farm product and other product, manufacturing product, and it’s been a great deal. But then, we noticed a virus. And it’s not acceptable what happened. It came out of China, and it’s not acceptable what happened.

And now what we’re doing, Jim, is we’re finding out how it came out. Different forms — you know, you’ve heard all different things. You’ve heard three or four different concepts as to how it came out.  We should have the answer to that in the not-too-distant future, and that will determine a lot how I feel about China.

The answer was a classic non sequitur. China while dealing with the early stages of a contagion still negotiated a trade deal with the US. A less callous trade partner might have insisted: let’s put things on hold while you deal with this epidemic. Still Trump’s reply is puzzling: how does a trade deal logically connect to Trump’s changed opinion of China’s handling of COVID-19? Moreover, who out there is saying the pandemic is acceptable?

A better question would have been: Mr President, you say China “could have stopped it” being “a very brilliant nation — scientifically and otherwise…. They could have stopped it. But they didn’t.” So you are

1) implying that China did this intentionally, that they exposed themselves to the virus and the shutting down of their economy; and

2) you also imply that America is not so brilliant because Americans have not stopped the pandemic within their borders. Even worse, given the time lag that the US had to prepare for the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 and given the far more deleterious impact on American lives and health as well as the vibrancy of economy, brilliance is not an apt adjective.

Nothing about this pandemic in the US points to America becoming great again.

*

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.

Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

Featured image is from Morning Star

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Does Weaponizing a Pandemic and Blaming China “Make America Great Again”?
  • Tags: ,

The Impact of COVID-19 on Africa. The Case of Somalia

May 4th, 2020 by Dr. Bischara A. Egal

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy”. – Chris Hedges 

The Coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic has hit really hard to African continent and Somalia in particularly.In this article I will discuss and reflect on the capabilities of different countries to respond to the crisis and contemplating the necessary actions in order to safeguard the public both health wise and economically.

For a nation with a population of 19 million (2017)  there is less than 50 intensive care (ICU) beds in the country, besides lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies such as face masks, gloves and goggles as well as thermal temperature guns;  and qualified Medical  virologist and intensive care medical gear such as ventilators and quarantine units.

A pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan, China was first reported to the WHO Country Office in China on 31 December 2019 and the outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020. Subsequently on Feb. 11, 2020 it was named Covid-19 by the WHO.

In Somalia, the first positive case was announced on 16 March, with the first fatality reported on 9 April 2020. On 23 April, the Ministry of Health reported 42 new cases in just one day.

Initially COVID-19 cases in Somalia were unknown and the federal government took the initiative of full preparedness with support of WHO, and the international community. The Government of Somalia continues to implement a range of preventive measures. This includes a curfew from 7 pm to 6 am, a ban on travel between regions, with some exemptions, such as emergency, humanitarian and essential services. All international air travel suspended.

All nonessential services remain closed, and public sector offices remain on reduced working hours. Schools, Universities, and public gatherings of more than 5 person totally discouraged.

“As of 6 April, the government has officially reported 7 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19, 2 of these cases were reported from Somaliland. While 6 of these reported cases have travel history before they became sick or were quarantined, the investigation on the remaining case suggests that the case might have been locally acquired as the case has no travel history. This clearly shows that the country is now entering into a different transmission phase where further human-to-human transmission from COVID-19 can be expected. Given the fragility of the health systems, security situation in the country, weak surveillance system and insufficient number of skilled health workforce in the country, there are heightened risk that cases may go undetected or undiagnosed if community transmission begins as a result of wide-spread of the virus” [1]

Since early April, Somalia has been on lockdown. Daily life has come to a halt. Movement is restricted. Public gatherings are suspended. All but a small number of essential businesses are closed.

Every one of the country’s 19 million people has been affected by these restrictions, but – as ever – the most vulnerable have been hit the hardest. In Somalia, only a small minority are formally employed. Everyone else who earns a living works in the informal economy with no employer-provided benefits, few alternative livelihood options, and only the most meager social safety net to fall back on.

The world is in the midst of a value shift that could potentially define the fourth revolution. We are witnessing a dynamic transition from maximizing growth to maximizing people’s wellbeing and welfare. This has been marked through the increased awareness to combat the Covid-19 pandemics and now, to protect the population during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa: 30,367
  • Recovered: 9,107
  • Confirmed coronavirus deaths: 1,378
  • Confirmed coronavirus cases in Somalia: 480
  • Recovered: 26
  • Confirmed deaths: 14

“Since 13 April, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Somalia has spiked rapidly from 25 to 390 (286 male, 104 female) as of 25 April. Eighteen people have died and 10 others recovered. Those affected include 15 health workers. After a handful of initial cases related to travel, community transmission now accounts for the vast majority of cases. Concerns remain over the possible spread of the virus to some 2,000 congested IDP settlements where social distancing is impossible and adherence to infection prevention control measures is challenging.

Banadir region is the most affected with 380 confirmed cases. Six cases have been reported in Somaliland – the first two in Berbera and Burao; one in Galmudug, one in Puntland and three in Jubaland. Apart from Mogadishu, Hargeisa and Garowe, there is no testing capacity, and there is a lack of isolation and treatment facilities, thus limiting the capacity to contact trace and test cases. All states have, however, announced various control measures such as closing borders, suspending flights, closing schools and banning large gatherings. The ability and willingness of the population to adhere to these directives remain mixed and the spread of community transmission is increasing. [2]

The economic impact of Covid-19 on the African continent+ Somalia in particularly is huge

Those in the informal economy are particularly hard hit by responses to the pandemic. This isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of political decisions.The government of Uganda has presented its coronavirus response as a necessary set of measures to deal with the pandemic. A crisis is, apparently, not the time for politics. But those in the informal economy know that politics and policy always go hand in hand. Their added vulnerability is not the inevitable and unavoidable result of technocratic decision-making. It is the outcome of political decisions. The situation facing the poorest in Uganda today is not a departure from routine politics, but their continuation under exceptional circumstances.

Lockdown restrictions appear to be fuelling a wave of repression against street vendors and motorcycle taxi drivers. Road side Tea-cafes, restaurants and all gathering places are severely effected by the lockdown. But this is far from new. Traders in Mogadishu main markets i.e. (Bakara, Xamer Weyne) also have reasons to worry that the response to the pandemic will put their livelihoods under threat. This is particularly true for those who sell live and dead animals.

Even primary health interventions against the virus such as washing hands, can be difficult to follow if there’s a lack of access to clean water. Social distancing measures can be impractical in countries that rely on agriculture as the leading source of income, a disruption in which can substantiate food insecurity issues. As Covid-19 spreads amongst the settings of the most vulnerable, it will place extra pressure on crowded hospitals, with poor sanitation and medical appliances, poor surveillance and poor health care services.

Conclusion

“Somalia is going to be crucial in the country’s fight against COVID-19. But in a complex context with a chequered history of international assistance, efforts to save lives must guard against inadvertently causing harm and build on existing Somali-led efforts for long-term peace.”

As of 13 April Somalia had 60 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). In the context of a weak healthcare system, ongoing insecurity, major flooding and an expected return of locust swarms, COVID-19 could be catastrophic to the 3.7 million people living in the densely packed capital Mogadishu and half a million internally displaced people in crowded camps around the city.

If wealthy countries with strong health systems are buckling under the pressure (Italy, France, Spain, UK, & US) of COVID-19 outbreaks, imagine what will happen in countries in the midst of deep humanitarian crises caused by war, natural disasters and climate change.

If we leave coronavirus to spread freely in Africa and Somalia in particularly, we would be placing millions at high risk, whole regions will be tipped into chaos and the virus will have the opportunity to circle back around the globe. [3]

With the support of WHO, the Federal Ministry of Health received testing equipment and has, as of 26 April. Conducted 692 tests, Including 11 in Garow.Testing is being done in Mogadishou and Garow and testing laboratory in Somaliland is expected to begin testing this week.Efforts are also underway to increase the number of ICU’s and isolation centers, and ensure sufficient services are provided within them.

The procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE), Generators and Ventilators is being expedited to boost response capacity in Mogadishu and the country. The overall Covid-19 preparedness and response is coordinated through the office of the Prime Minister (PMO) and Ministry of Health and Human Services.

*

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.

Notes

  1. http://www.emro.who.int/som/somalia-news/as-cases-of-covid-19-increase-rapidly-in-somalia-operational-readiness-also-scaled-up-to-early-detect-and-respond-to-community-transmission.html
  2. https://africanarguments.org/2020/04/26/coronavirus-in-africa-tracker-how-many-cases-and-where-latest/ (accessed April 18th 2020)
  3. https://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/somalia-covid-19-impact-update-no-3-26-april-2020-enso
  4. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen (Accessed on april 18th, 2020)
  5. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/somalia/
  6. https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/somalia/document/national-contingency-plan-preparedness-and-response-coronavirus-covid-19
  7. https://africanarguments.org/2020/04/28/coronavirus-in-africa-tracker-how-many-cases-and-where-latest/
  8. https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/national_contingency_plan_for_preparedness_and_response_to_coronavirus_covid-19-_somalia.pdf
  9. https://www.devex.com/news/covid-19-a-timeline-of-the-coronavirus-outbreak-96396
  10. https://mondediplo.com/2013/07/10health(accessedapril28,2020)
  11. https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/news-and-analysis/post/866-covid-19-in-somalia-a-conflict-sensitive-response-to-overlapping-crises (accessed april 28, 2020)
  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Impact of COVID-19 on Africa. The Case of Somalia

They live below the poverty level. They are prison inmates in large numbers. They are most likely to be killed by the police, a longstanding grievance that originated the Black Lives Matter (BTM) movement to protest against police killing and wider issues such as racial profiling, police brutality and racial inequality in the US criminal justice system.

In addition, they are comparatively much less paid. They suffer excessively from job loss and underemployment. They are “essential workers” in service industries, exposing themselves to a range of infections. They are “last hired and first fired.” They face higher death rates and higher prevalence rates of chronic illnesses.

They are African Americans living in the United States of America.

As the Covid-19 subverts the states of the world’s biggest economy, the number of black deaths in the US due to the novel coronavirus is unprecedentedly and disproportionately high and they are dying of the disease in throngs.

Conceding the worst impact of the disease on the ethnic US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said last week that the existing data [which is twisted and unreliable] suggested lopsided burden of the Covid-19 and deaths among the racial and ethnic minority groups, American African being the largest.

Even though the black Americans account for only about 14% of the country’s population, almost 30% of them are affected by the killer bug. Their fatality rate is even higher as nearly one-third of the total deaths attributed to the Covid-19 were of African Americans.

Some of the states represent much bluer picture. In Louisiana and Michigan, more than 58% and 41% of those who died of the highly contagious disease were black, although they make only 32.7% and 14.1% respectively.

Likewise in New York City, the death rate of black/African American persons is 92.3 deaths per 100,000 population – which is more than double to that of white. In Chicago, black’s deaths, at 56.5% of the total, were roughly four-times that of white’s.

A pictorial illustration by the National Geographic showed that they are overrepresented when compared to their proportion in the total population. It plainly expressed that the disproportionate death rate has spread throughout the country and was not confined to specific states.

Looking at the shocking black mortality rate, the leaders and health professionals urged the Trump administration to release comprehensive racial demographic data of American Covid-19 victims and devise clear strategies to blunt the devastation on the African Americans.

The statistics may not be surprising given the social determinants of health are widely missing in the US communities of color persons. Coupled with underlying conditions such as diabetes and hypertension – the lack of access to healthcare and poverty has pushed the most vulnerable African Americans to the brink of despondency.

An organization campaigning for inequities confronted by the African Americans and other ethnic and racial minorities – Layer’s committee for Civil Rights Under Law – in its letters to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on April 6 and April 24 called for transparency in the racial deaths but didn’t get any response.

The chilly HHS response raised fears about the growing ethnic intolerance and ambivalence in the US federal government and its tenacious reluctance to safeguard the health and life of its black people, cuing that the country is being divided on xenophobic grounds.

It further sheds light on the excruciating truth that the systemic racism is being implemented nationwide and expounds how African Americans have been subjugated by structural racism, political exploitation and economic exclusion.

Trump administration‘s unwillingness to release the racial breakdown of the Covid-19 cases pressed the Senator Elizabeth Warren to decry its bigotry attitude towards black communities.

“Because of government-sponsored discrimination and systematic racism, communities of color are on the fronlines of this pandemic,” Massachusetts Congresswomen said in a statement.

She teamed up with other Democrats to introduce the bicameral Equitable Date Collection and Disclosure on Covid-19 Act earlier this month and demanded “comprehensive national data,” citing stark racial disparities in the coronavirus cases and fatalities.

The White House deliberately overlooked the humungous threat to the African Americans although the Office of Minority Health at HHS had clear information that the death rate in black Americans has been generally higher than whites for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza and pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and homicide.

So well before the Covid-19 spate, the American government knew that the blacks, living with the chronic illnesses, were prone to the disease. It had the idea that people with these ailments could have the greater risk of hospitalization and death; still it ignored the forewarnings by the health professionals.

Dr. Ebony Hilton, Associate Professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the University of Virginia, said “I knew that the coronavirus would leave a higher rate of death in the African-American community,” “I knew we would be in an uphill battle. I could see the storm coming.”

Racism isn’t restricted to health and social issues being faced by the black Americans; it is bluntly visible in the middle of the US economic downslide and labor market crisis, which is spraining their already flabbergasted economies.

By dint of this racist bend, the African Americans are expected to feature disproportionately in 26 million US jobless claims. As the critical workers have the lowest median net worth, slowest wage growth and bottommost home ownership – the least likelihood of them to be insured and get paid sick leaves make them the most vulnerable community in the US.

Way the varied disparities is persecuting the African American communities in the US, it illuminates that the reason of their compounded health, economic and social problems of is racism.

*

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.

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

Featured image is from Fibonacci Blue | Public Domain

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The COVID-19 Crisis Profoundly Exposes African Americans to the Scourge of Poverty and Racism
  • Tags: ,

Video: The Coronavirus Crisis: A Plea to Pause and Ponder

May 4th, 2020 by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

A Sharing by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Recorded on May 1, 2020

 

.

*

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Video: The Coronavirus Crisis: A Plea to Pause and Ponder

As President Trump has complained, the U.S. does not win wars anymore. In fact, since 1945, the only 4 wars it has won were over the small neocolonial outposts of Grenada, Panama, Kuwait and Kosovo. Americans across the political spectrum refer to the wars the U.S. has launched since 2001 as “endless” or “unwinnable” wars. We know by now that there is no elusive victory around the corner that will redeem the criminal futility of the U.S.’s opportunistic decision to use military force more aggressively and illegally after the end of the Cold War and the horrific crimes of September 11th. But all wars have to end one day, so how will these wars end?  

As President Trump nears the end of his first term, he knows that at least some Americans hold him responsible for his broken promises to bring U.S. troops home and wind down Bush’s and Obama’s wars. Trump’s own day-in-day-out war-making has gone largely unreported by the subservient, tweet-baited U.S. corporate media, but Trump has dropped at least 69,000 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, more than either Bush or Obama did in their first terms, including in Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Under cover of highly publicized redeployments of small numbers of troops from a few isolated bases in Syria and Iraq, Trump has actually expanded U.S. bases and deployed at least 14,000 more U.S. troops to the greater Middle East, even after the U.S. bombing and artillery campaigns that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria ended in 2017. Under the U.S. agreement with the Taliban, Trump has finally agreed to withdraw 4,400 troops from Afghanistan by July, still leaving at least 8,600 behind to conduct airstrikes, “kill or capture” raids and an even more isolated and beleaguered military occupation.

Now a compelling call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic has given Trump a chance to gracefully deescalate his unwinnable wars – if indeed he really wants to. Over 70 nations have expressed their support for the ceasefire. President Macron of France claimed on April 15th that he had persuaded Trump to join other world leaders supporting a UN Security Council resolution backing the Secretary General’s call. But within days it became clear that the U.S. was opposing the resolution, insisting that its own “counterterrorism” wars must go on, and that any resolution must condemn China as the source of the pandemic, a poison pill calculated to draw a swift Chinese veto.

So Trump has so far spurned this chance to make good on his promise to bring U.S. troops home, even as his lost wars and ill-defined global military occupation expose thousands of troops to the Covid-19 virus. The U.S. Navy has been plagued by the virus: as of mid-April 40 ships had confirmed cases, affecting 1,298 sailors.Training exercises, troop movements and travel have been cancelled for U.S.-based troops and their families. The military reported 7,145 cases as of May 1, with more falling sick every day.

The Pentagon has priority access to Covid testing, protective gear and other resources, so the catastrophic shortage of resources at civilian hospitals in New York and elsewhere are being exacerbated by shipping them all over the world to 800 military bases, many of which are already redundant, dangerous or counter-productive.

Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen were already suffering from the worst humanitarian crises and most compromised health systems in the world, making them exceptionally vulnerable to the pandemic. The U.S.’s defunding of the World Health Organization leaves them in even worse straits. Trump’s decision to keep U.S. troops fighting America’s long lost wars in Afghanistan and other war-zones only makes it more likely that his presidency may be tainted by indelible images of helicopters rescuing Americans from embassy rooftops. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was purposely and presciently built with a helipad on the ground to avoid duplicating the U.S.’s iconic humiliation in Saigon – now Ho Chi Minh City.

Meanwhile, nobody on Joe Biden’s staff seems to think the UN’s call for a global ceasefire is important enough to take a position on. While a credible accusation of sexual assault has sabotaged Biden’s main message that “I’m different from Trump,” his recent hawkish rhetoric on China likewise smacks of continuity, not contrast, with Trump’s attitudes and policies. So the UN’s call for a global ceasefire is a unique chance for Biden to gain the moral high ground and demonstrate the international leadership he likes to brag about but has yet to show off during this crisis.

For Trump or Biden, the choice between the UN ceasefire and forcing America’s virus-imperilled troops to keep fighting its long lost wars should be a no-brainer. After 18 years of war in Afghanistan, leaked documents have shown that the Pentagon never had a real plan to defeat the Taliban. The Iraqi parliament is trying to expel U.S. forces from Iraq for the second time in 10 years, as it resists getting dragged into a U.S. war on its neighbor Iran. The U.S.’s Saudi allies have begun UN-mediated peace negotiations with the Houthis in Yemen. The U.S. is no closer to defeating its enemies in Somalia than it was in 1992. Libya and Syria remain mired in civil war, 9 years after the U.S., along with its NATO and Arab monarchist allies, launched covert and proxy wars against them. The resulting chaos has spawned new wars in West Africa and a refugee crisis across three continents. And the U.S. still has no viable war plan to back up its illegal sanctions and threats against Iran or Venezuela.

The Pentagon’s latest plan to justify its obscene demands on our country’s resources is to recycle its Cold War against Russia and China. But the U.S.’s imperial or “expeditionary” military forces regularly lose their own simulated war games against formidable Russian or Chinese defense forces, while scientists warn that their new nuclear arms race has brought the world closer to Doomsday than at even the most terrifying moments of the Cold War.

Like a movie studio that’s run out of fresh ideas, the Pentagon has plumped for the politically safe option of a sequel to “The Cold War,” its last big money-spinner before “The War on Terror.” But there is nothing remotely safe about “Cold War II.” It could be the last movie this studio ever makes – but who will be left to hold it accountable?

Like his predecessors from Truman to Obama, Trump has been caught in the trap of America’s blind, deluded militarism. No president wants to be the one who “lost” Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq or any other country that has been politically sanctified with the blood of young Americans, even when the whole world knows they should not have been there in the first place. In the parallel universe of American politics, the popular myths of American power and exceptionalism that sustain the military occupation of the American mind dictate continuity and deference to the military-industrial complex as the politically safe choice, even when the results are catastrophic in the real world.

While we recognize these perverse constraints on Trump’s decision-making, we think that the confluence of the UN ceasefire call, the pandemic, anti-war public opinion, the presidential election and Trump’s glib promises to bring U.S. troops home may actually align with doing the right thing in this case.

If Trump was smart, he would seize this moment to embrace the UN’s global ceasefire with open arms; support a UN Security Council resolution to back up the ceasefire; start socially distancing U.S. troops from people trying to kill them and places where they are not welcome; and bring them home to the families and friends who love them.

If this is the only correct choice Donald Trump ever makes as President, he will finally be able to claim that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize more than Barack Obama did.

*

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.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK, and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Trump Must Choose Between a Global Ceasefire and America’s Long Lost Wars

Talk about creepy. The Georgia Department of Public Health has announced that it, the United Sates Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and county health boards are together sending teams of government agents to randomly selected homes in two Georgia counties. These teams of government agents are charged with asking questions, including about household members’ health, and extracting blood from all the people living in the homes. The reason given for the home visits is — you may have guessed it — coronavirus.

J. Scott Trubey writes at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the government agencies are seeking the blood to test for “antibodies to the novel coronavirus to pinpoint who might have had COVID-19 and estimate how widely the virus has traveled.”

People who live at the 420 randomly selected homes are free, Trubey writes, to refuse the questioning and blood drawing by the government inquisition and phlebotomy teams that show up at their front doors. But, in reality, people often find it hard to muster the courage to say “no” to government agents who accost them in person “asking” them to comply. People are intimidated. They think that even if they say “no” the requested action will still be taken anyway plus they will suffer additional consequences for resisting. That aids police efforts both to get people to say incriminating things and to obtain “permission” to search people and property, even from people who know evidence of a crime is likely to be found.

A CNN report by Dakin Andone shows that the government teams knocking on doors are employing some of the look of cops in their effort to obtain maximum voluntary compliance. Uniforms, government badges, official letters are all part of the process, just like when cops show up for a home search holding a warrant. Andone writes: “Health workers conducting the survey have CDC vests and badges, the news release said, and are carrying a letter from the CDC and the Georgia Department of Public Health.” Plus, the goal of the people running the program is that the maximum number of people comply. Andone quotes Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey putting it this way: “We encourage everyone who is visited by the teams to participate in this very important survey that can help public health officials assess how widespread Covid-19 is in certain areas.”

In a Tuesday Washington Times editorial, Cheryl Chumley discusses in detail the disturbing nature of the knock-and-draw-blood program. And she points out that a government that really was seeking volunteers, instead of seeking to pressure people to comply, would act differently. Chumley writes:

Government officials could just as easily put out a notification in the mailbox, or online, or via social media, or over the television and radio airwaves, asking for citizen volunteers to come down to the local health department clinics and donate blood for the purposes of tracking COVID-19 — for the purposes of helping the “investigation” into the spread of the virus.

Seeking volunteers through those methods puts the control in the hands of the citizens; those ways make clear the blood offerings are completely voluntary.

This looks like a program that could expand countrywide. In fact, it fits in well with moving into a forced vaccinations and “digital certificates” next phase of the coronavirus crackdown. Doing a test run in Georgia makes sense because the CDC headquarters is there.

So what’s your plan for when government agents come for your and your family’s blood? The government inquisition and phlebotomy teams are acting much like cops, seeking to pressure people into providing private information and even their blood. A generally sound course of action with cops is not to talk to them and not to give them permission to do anything. The same course of action can be employed when confronted by these new door-to-door blood suckers.

*

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.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Knock, Knock. We’re From the Government, and We Want Your Family’s Blood

There’s been a lot of speculation that the US might be preparing to dump India over its atrocious treatment of minorities after the official White House Twitter account stopped following several Indian government ones including Prime Minister Modi’s and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended blacklisting the South Asian state, but that scenario is extremely unlikely since America envisages its new junior partner functioning as a long-term counterweight to China in both the military and economic domains, which certainly takes strategic precedence over punishing the country for its human rights abuses.

Media-Driven Drama

Last week saw a surge of speculation concerning the future of the US-Indian Strategic Partnership after the official White House Twitter account stopped following several Indian government ones including Prime Minister Modi’s and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended blacklisting the South Asian state. “Wishful thinkers” all across the internet presented this as supposed proof that America might be preparing to dump India over its atrocious treatment of minorities, but that scenario is extremely unlikely since America envisages its new junior partner functioning as a long-term counterweight to China in both the military and economic domains. The Twitter incident was nothing more than media-driven drama after India’s Ministry of External Affairs confirmed that it’s protocol for the White House Twitter account to briefly follow some official accounts of the countries that Trump visits in order to share their content on that platform, though the USCIRF issue is admittedly a bit more complex and deserves a thorough explanation.

Helping India, Not Harming It

It’s true that the optics of a US government panel recommending the blacklisting of the country’s new military-strategic partner are unflattering and seemingly suggest that Washington is taking New Delhi’s human rights abuses against its Muslim minority (including the population of Indian-Occupied Kashmir) very seriously, but that doesn’t tell the full story. First off, the US government isn’t a monolithic mass in which each constituent unit perfectly coordinates with the other under the orders of some central authority (e.g. the President), but a gargantuan mess of oftentimes conflicting interests as proven by its ongoing “deep state” struggle between rival factions of its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies. Even with the possibility that an antagonistic faction of the “deep state” is trying to subvert the “comprehensive global strategic partnership” that Trump clinched with Modi during his first-ever official trip to the country last February, then such a move might ironically be counterproductive since it arguably helps their relationship more than it harms it.

Healing The Hybrid War Rifts

No objective observer would deny that India’s domestic fault lines are worse than they’ve ever been before, especially since “India’s Waging A State-On-Citizen Hybrid War To Build Modi’s Hindu Rashtra“. This asymmetrical war against one’s own people has directly led to the phenomenon of so-called “Modi Migrants“, the millions of day laborers (many of whom are Muslim) being forced to flee the cities that they migrated to in order to return to their rural hometowns in a desperate attempt to make ends meet after they could no longer make a living during the country’s clumsily decreed lockdown. In addition, “Hindu Extremists Ridiculously Believe That Muslims Are Responsible For World War C“, with even influential ruling party ideologues blaming this minority for supposedly spreading the coronavirus throughout the country. All of these factors have combined to create the “perfect storm” threatening India’s stability, and by extrapolation, the US’ long-term strategic interests in using the South Asian state as a counterweight against China.

It therefore follows that it’s in America’s enduring interests to ensure that India ceases its HybridWar on Muslims and other minorities (including Christians, Hindu Dalits, and the native people of the Northeastern “Seven Sisters”, among many others) so as to guarantee the viability of its envisaged century-long partnership with India that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke about in October 2017 and which the author analyzed in an article at the time titled “The Blueprint For The 100-Year-Long US-Indian Strategic Partnership“. With this in mind, one can therefore interpret the USCIRF’s blacklisting recommendation as a “gentle reminder” that India needs to reverse its discriminatory policies against minorities otherwise it risks everything that both governments are trying to build with one another vis-a-vis “containing” China, both in the military domain and also the economic one via their shared “economic nationalist” policies aimed at restructuring global supply chains away from the People’s Republic after World War C inevitably ends.

The Role Of “Economic Nationalism”

The author explained Trump’s vision of the post-World War C economic order in his recent piece about how “Trump’s COVID-19 Piracy Is A Revolutionary Act Of Economic Nationalism vs. Globalization“, after which he expanded upon this concept by analyzing its relevance to India in a follow-up piece about how “India’s Selective Embrace Of Economic Nationalism Has Anti-Chinese Motivations“. The insight shared in these pieces isn’t the author’s subjective theorizing, but his objective observations that were vindicated in the middle of last week during the height of speculation about the future of the US-Indian Strategic Partnership after Secretary of State Pompeo told a media conference that the two countries are actively working with one another and their Quad+ partners (Australia and Japan being the other two original members, with New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam being the three additional ones) to “restructure global supply chains“. This proves that the US isn’t about to dump India like some speculated, but is strengthening its strategic ties with it, especially economically.

Concluding Thoughts

While some might “wishfully” want to see serious strains emerging in the US-Indian Strategic Partnership, the reality is that no such scenario is unfolding. The supposed proof that’s presented in support of that observation is discredited by the fact that it’s protocol for the White House Twitter to only temporarily follow several official government accounts in the countries that Trump’s visiting, meaning that unfollowing the three Indian ones like it did earlier this week isn’t a sign of any developing disagreements between the two. Furthermore, the USCIRF’s recommendation to put India on a religious blacklist for its atrocious treatment of minorities (especially its Muslim one and including the people of Indian-Occupied Kashmir) doesn’t imply impending sanctions or any other meaningful pressure of the sort but is simply a “gentle reminder” that the country’s self-inflicted domestic destabilization endangers the viability of their shared strategic goals vis-a-vis China which drive their present partnership. Therefore, far from weakening, US-Indian ties continue to improve by the week.

*

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.

This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on No, the US Isn’t Going to Dump India over Its Atrocious Treatment of Minorities
  • Tags: ,

Exactly one year since his audacious coup attempt failed spectacularly, self-declared Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó is once again trying to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. “Today I speak to the patriotic soldiers of our Armed Forces who rebelled against hunger and destruction and sided with the constitution,” he announced on social media last night, “To the majority of patriotic soldiers who are still in each branch of the Armed Forces: today, more than ever, there are obvious reasons for them to act and support the formation of a National Emergency Government…we are going to liberate all of Venezuela.” In a separate video published today, Guaidó addressed Maduro directly: “Every political agreement to save Venezuela begins with your departure from power,” he said, demanding his immediate resignation.

Guaidó’s call for the military to come over to his side and for Maduro to step down comes precisely one year after his most notable coup attempt, which primarily consisted of him standing on an overpass near a military base, claiming to have taken it over and to lead a huge rebel army. This narrative was rudely interrupted when state media rushed there and filmed the base in a state of complete normalcy, soldiers and even commanders unaware of their supposed defeat. Guaidó continued to address the nation via social media, claiming the small group of people around him in non-matching military uniforms were actual defecting soldiers. The day, like his three other coup attempts that year, ended in embarrassing defeat. The government brushed off the action, labelling it a “small” coup attempt.

However, there are reasons why the U.S. might be able to force their candidate on Venezuela this time. For one, the Trump administration has frozen and transferred $342 million from the Central Bank of Venezuela’s Citibank account to Guaidó, who is using the Venezuelan people’s collective wealth to pay his supporters $5,000 per month, an enormous salary in Venezuela. He is also offering local medical workers a stipend during the coronavirus pandemic, hoping to increase his base of support. At a time of collapsing oil prices (the country’s major export) the United States has also sent warships to the region to tighten sanctions against the country, all under the guise of an anti-drug operation. Venezuela imports a great deal of food, and much of it is controlled by oligarchical corporations linked to the opposition. For example, over half of the country’s flour is controlled by Empresas Polar, (the country’s largest private company) whose CEO, Lorenzo Mendoza, considered standing as the opposition’s presidential candidate in 2018. Mendoza has regularly used his power to starve the country at times of political tension.

On the other hand, Guaidó is as unpopular as he has ever been inside the country, even among the opposition, who removed him from his post as head of the National Assembly in January. His own political party, Voluntad Popular, also expelled him from their ranks. Opposition presidential candidate in 2018, Henri Falcón recently attacked his credibility, asking if oil company CITGO is truly in his hands, why is there a gasoline shortage in the country. The most recent polls show he has a 10 percent approval and a 69 percent disapproval rating. He is even unpopular among his fellow coup-plotters; after a failed attempt in January 2019, his co-conspirators fled to the United States, thinking they would be given a hero’s welcome. Instead, they have spent over a year in an ICE concentration camp for crossing the border illegally. The highest ranking member of the group told reporters that they feel abandoned by Guaidó.

While Maduro is often disparaged in Western media because of his working class roots (he was a bus driver and union organizer before entering politics), Guaidó is constantly presented as the true humble man of the people. This, despite the fact his father was an international airline pilot, sending his son to private schools and a private university in Washington, D.C. It appears he is unable to travel freely around the country for fear of coming into contact with working class people. In February, for example, he touched down at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas, where enraged crowds of travelers and even airline employees began hectoring, jeering and manhandling him, dousing him in water and other, less sanitary liquids, shouting that he was a “traitor” and a “fascist.” The incident was unironically described across Western media as him being “greeted by a throng of cheering supporters.”

Thus, while the COVID-19 pandemic makes Venezuela more economically weak than ever, it appears unlikely that Guaidó’s latest action will result in the sudden overthrow of the Maduro government, in power since 2013.

*

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.

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in ReportingThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin MagazineCommon Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

The life of my partner, Julian Assange, is at severe risk. He is on remand at HMP Belmarsh, and Covid-19 is spreading within its walls.

Julian and I have two little boys. Since becoming a mother, I have been reflecting on my own childhood.

My parents are European, but when I was little we lived in Botswana, five miles from the border with Apartheid South Africa. Many of my parents’ friends came from across the border: writers, painters, conscientious objectors. It was an unlikely centre for artistic creativity and intellectual exchange.

The history books describe Apartheid as institutional segregation, but it was much more than that. Segregation occurred in broad daylight. The abductions, torture and killings occurred at night.

The foundations of the Apartheid system were precarious, so the regime met ideas of political reform with live ammunition. In June 1985, South African assassination squads crossed the border armed with machine guns, mortars and grenades. As soon as gunfire burst into the night, my parents wrapped me in a blanket. I slept as my parents raced the car to safety. The sound of explosions carried through the capital for the hour and a half that it took to kill twelve people.

The first person to be killed was a very close family friend, an exceptional painter. South Africa claimed the raid had targeted the armed wing of the ANC, but in reality most of the victims were innocent civilians and children killed as they lay sleeping in bed. We left Botswana within days.

I have absorbed my parents’ vivid memories of the raid. If that terrible night shaped my perspective of the world, the incarceration of the father of my children will surely mark theirs.

Forming a family with Julian under the circumstances was always going to be difficult, but our hopes eclipsed our fears. Initially, Julian and I managed to carve out a space for a private life. Our firstborn visited with the help of a friend. But when Gabriel was six months old, an embassy security contractor confessed to me that he had been told to steal the baby’s DNA through a nappy. Failing that they would take the baby’s pacifier. The whistleblower warned me Gabriel should not come into the embassy anymore. It was not safe. I realised that all the precautions I had taken, from piling layers on to disguise my bump to changing my name, would not protect us. We were totally exposed. These forces operated in a legal and ethical vacuum that engulfed us.

I could write volumes about what happened in the months that followed. By the time I was pregnant with Max the pressure and harassment had become unbearable and I feared that my pregnancy was at risk. When I was six months pregnant Julian and I decided I should stop going into the embassy. The next time I saw him was in Belmarsh prison.

The image of Julian being carried out of the embassy shocked many. It struck a blow to my chest, but it did not shock me. What happened that morning was an extension of what had been going on inside the embassy over an eighteen-month period.

After Julian was arrested a year ago, Spain’s High Court opened an investigation into the security company that had been operating inside the embassy. Several whistleblowers came forward and have informed law enforcement of unlawful activities against Julian and his lawyers, both inside and outside the embassy. They are cooperating with law enforcement and have provided investigators with large amounts of data.

The investigation has revealed that the company had been moonlighting for a US company closely associated with the current US administration and US intelligence agencies and that the increasingly disturbing instructions, such as following my mother or the baby DNA directive, had come from their US client, not Ecuador. Around the same time that I had been approached about the targeting of our baby, the company was thrashing out even more sinister plans concerning Julian’s life. Their alleged plots to poison or abduct Julian have been raised in UK extradition proceedings. A police raid at the security company director’s home turned up two handguns with their serial numbers filed off.

None of this information is surprising to me but as a parent I ponder how to manage it.

I want our children to grow up with the clarity of conviction that I had as a little girl. Peril lay beyond the South African border. I want them to believe that inequitable treatment is not tolerated in mature democracies. At university in Oxford, I was proud to be at the intellectual heart of the most mature democracy of them all.

It is not just our family who suffers from the infringement of Julian’s rights. If our family and Julian’s lawyers are not off-limits, then nothing is. The person responsible for allegedly ordering the theft of Gabriel’s DNA is Mike Pompeo, who last month threatened the family members of lawyers working at the International Criminal Court. Why? Because the court had had the temerity to investigate alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The same crimes that Julian exposed through WikiLeaks, and which the US wants to imprison him over.

Julian needs to be released now. For him, for our family, and for the society we all want our children to grow up in.

*

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.

Stella Moris is a lawyer and the sentimental partner of Julian Assange.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, America’s ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $282 billion in just 23 days. This is despite the fact that the economy is expected to contract by 40 percent this quarter. The report also noted that between 1980 and 2020 the tax obligations of America’s billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, decreased by 79 percent. In the last 30 years, U.S. billionaire wealth soared by over 1100 percent while median household wealth increased by barely five percent.

In 1990, the total wealth held by America’s billionaire class was $240 billion; today that number stands at $2.95 trillion. Thus, America’s billionaires accrued more wealth in just the past three weeks than they made in total prior to 1980. As a result, just three people – Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of all U.S. households combined.

The Institute for Policy Studies’ report paints a picture of a modern day oligarchy, where the super-rich have captured legislative and executive power, controlling what laws are passed. The report discusses what it labels a new “wealth defense industry” – where “billionaires are paying millions to dodge billions in taxes,” with teams of accountants, lawyers, lobbyists and asset managers helping them conceal their vast fortunes in tax havens and so-called charitable trusts. The result has been crippled social programs and a decrease in living standards and even a sustained drop in life expectancy – something rarely seen in history outside of major wars or famines. Few Americans believe their children will be better off than they were. Statistics suggest they are right.

Billionaires very theatrically donate a fraction of what they used to give back in taxes, making sure to generate maximum publicity for their actions. And they secure positive coverage of themselves by stepping in to keep influential news organizations afloat. A December investigation by MintPress found that Gates had donated over $9 million to The Guardian, over $3 million to NBC Universal, over $4.5 million to NPR, $1 million to Al-Jazeera, and a staggering $49 million to the BBC’s Media Action program. Some, like Bezos, prefer to simply outright purchase news organizations themselves, changing the editorial stance to unquestioning loyalty to their new owners.

The spike in billionaire wealth comes amid an unprecedented economic crash; 26.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the last five weeks, and that number is expected to continue to rise dramatically. While the super-rich are holed up in their mansions and yachts, the 49-62 million Americans designated as “essential workers” must continue to risk their lives to keep society functioning, even as many of them do not even earn as much as the $600 weekly increase in unemployment benefits the CARES act stipulates. Many low paid workers, such as grocery store employees, have already fallen sick and died. The mother of one 27-year-old Maryland worker who contracted COVID-19 and died received her daughter’s last paycheck. It amounted to $20.64.

Amazon staff, directly employed by Bezos, also risk their lives for measly pay. One third of all Amazon workers in Arizona, for example, are enrolled in the food stamps program, their wages so low that they cannot afford to pay for food. The vast contrast in the effect that COVID-19 has had on the super wealthy versus the rest of us has many concluding that billionaires’ wealth and the poverty of the rest of the world are two sides of the same coin: that the reason people working full-time still cannot afford a house or even to eat is the same reason people like Bezos control more wealth than many countries. Bezos’ solution to his employees’ hunger has been to set up a charity and ask for public donations to help his desperate workers.

The majority of millennials, most of them shut out from attaining the American dream, already prefer socialism to capitalism, taking a dim view of the latter. The latest news that the billionaire class is laughing all the way to the bank during a period of intense economic suffering is unlikely to improve their disposition.

*

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.

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Featured image: Bill Gates Bill Gates and Martina Navratilova at the French Open in Paris, France. Photo | NJO | STAR MAX | IPx

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on America’s Super-Rich See Their Wealth Rise by $282 Billion in Three Weeks of Pandemic