Global Research

Less than two weeks after an abortive mercenary invasion aimed at overthrowing Venezuela’s government and murdering its president that was hatched by the Trump White House, the US State Department on Wednesday renewed it classification of the country as “not fully cooperating” with Washington’s global war on terrorism.

Also added to the list was Cuba, whose embassy in Washington was targeted by a gunman armed with an automatic weapon on April 30, an act that elicited not a word of condemnation from the Trump administration.

This marked the first time that Cuba has been placed on the list since 2015, when it was removed as part of negotiations between US President Barack Obama and Cuba’s Raul Castro on the normalization of relations between the two countries. That move was backed by major American financial and corporate interests seeking to compete with the Chinese and Europeans in and for the Cuban market.

Prior to that, Cuba had been classified for 33 years as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” The designation stemmed from Havana’s support for both Nicaragua, at the time under siege by the terrorist “contra” army organized by the CIA, and El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), carrying out an armed revolt against the murderous US-backed juntas that ruled El Salvador. Both the Sandinistas and the FMLN have since transformed themselves into bourgeois parties, leading right-wing governments in their respective countries.

The hypocrisy of Washington branding Venezuela and Cuba as complicit in terrorism is as brazen as it is boundless.

On the same day that the State Department released its list, Venezuela’s delegation to the United Nations filed formal charges with the Security Council and the Secretary General over the armed terrorist attacks carried out on the country’s northern coast on May 3 and 4 by mercenaries organized, trained and financed by the governments of the US and Colombia.

The Venezuelan government reported capturing 39 more armed men on its border with Colombia Thursday, bringing the number detained since the landings in the coastal towns of Macuto and Chuao in the north of Venezuela to 91.

Among those detained are two ex-US special forces operatives, Luke Alexander Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, who have been formally charged with terrorism, facing sentences of between 25 and 30 years in prison.

The two ex-US soldiers were recruited for the operation by a US security contractor, Silvercorp, Inc., run by a former Green Beret, Jordan Goudreau, who was put into contact with Washington’s puppet and self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó by Trump’s longtime security chief.

A contract signed between the two of them, along with other members of Guaidó’s entourage, has been posted online, revealing that the US puppet had agreed to pay $212 million for an armed operation that, if successful, would have led to either the capture or murder of President Maduro, along with the killing of an unknown number of other Venezuelans, both civilian and military. Guaidó was named in the contract as the “commander in chief” of the mercenary operation.

While branding Caracas as “uncooperative” in the US war on terror, the Trump administration has shown no inclination to extradite Goudreau to face charges of terrorism in Venezuela. On the contrary, it has vowed to use “all tools” at its disposal to free the two US mercenaries caught red-handed on the beaches of Venezuela.

US terrorism against Venezuela did not begin with the landings on its northern coast earlier this month, but rather has been sustained through a “maximum pressure” regime of economic sanctions tantamount to a state of war, preventing the country from importing food and vital medical supplies in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Washington’s claim that Caracas is “uncooperative” in the so-called US war on terrorism is based on the claim that Maduro and other members of the Venezuelan government are involved in “narco-terrorism.” The Pentagon has deployed warships off the Venezuelan coast on this pretext, even as US intelligence officials acknowledge that the vast majority of drugs coming into the United States are passing through the territories of Washington’s closest allies in Colombia and Central America.

In Cuba’s case, the cynicism of the US decree is equally blatant. Its principal charge is that Havana failed to accede to the demands of Colombia’s right-wing President Iván Duque to extradite representatives of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group, who had come to the Cuban capital as part of a series of peace negotiations that resulted in a settlement between the main guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government.

For its part, Cuba has recorded the deaths of 3,478 of its citizens and the wounding of 2,099 as a result of terrorist operations launched from the US and with the aid and complicity of the US government.

Also included on the list of those not “cooperating fully” with Washington’s war on terror were Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Iran responded with a statement from Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi, who said,

“With a history of founding, funding & arming different terrorist groups, a record of state terrorism, and its outright support for another terrorist regime [Israel], US is not a good yardstick for measuring anti-terrorism efforts.”

In January of this year, Washington carried out an act of flagrant state terrorism with the drone missile assassination of one of Iran’s senior state officials, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, as he was making a state visit to Iraq for talks with the country’s prime minister.

As for Syria, the country has been the victim for nearly a decade of a US-organized war for regime change that has utilized Al Qaeda-linked militias as its main proxy ground troops.

US officials have told the media that Washington is preparing to return Cuba to its list of state sponsors of terrorism and to brand various elements of Venezuela’s security forces as terrorist entities. These measures would pave the way for redoubled US aggression against both countries.

While both the Maduro government in Venezuela and that headed by President Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba have sought to accommodate themselves to the interests of US and world imperialism, Washington has shown no inclination to compromise. The Trump administration, while currying favor with the right-wing Cuban and Venezuelan exile groups in Florida in advance of the 2020 election, is basing its policy on the drive by American imperialism to roll back the influence of Russia and China in the Western Hemisphere. The charges of failure to cooperate with the “war on terrorism” are being leveled to prepare for a global war that entails unimaginable terror for the population of the entire planet.

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The US White House has appointed a coronavirus “Vaccine Czar” from Big Pharma to oversee something dubbed Operation Warp Speed. The goal is to create and produce 300 million doses of a new vaccine to supposedly immunize the entire US population by year-end against COVID-19. To be sure that Big Pharma companies give their all to the medical Manhattan Project, they have been fully indemnified by the US government against liabilities should vaccine recipients die or develop serious disease as a result of the rushed vaccine. The FDA and NIH have waived standard pre-testing on animals in the situation. The US military, according to recent remarks by the US President, is being trained to administer the yet-to-be unveiled vaccine in record time. Surely nothing could go wrong here?

Warp speed is a term out of the sci-fi Star Trek media, defined as a speed faster than the speed of light. In recent weeks billions of dollars have been pledged from governments, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others to fast-track a vaccine as well as test medical treatments to combat the VODIV19 illness said to originate from a novel coronavirus first discovered late 2019 in Wuhan China. This rush to create a “miracle” vaccine is ominous and suggests some hidden agenda.

The Conflicted Czar

Washington’s Operation Warp Speed is reportedly the brainchild of Presidential Adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. It is being formally run by the Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper who will work with a new Vaccine Czar. The Vaccine Czar selected for Kushner’s Operation Warp Speed is former GlaxoSmithKline Chairman of its Vaccines Division, Morrocan-born US citizen, Dr. Moncef Slaoui. From 2006 through 2017 Slaoui was Chairman of Global R&D and Vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline and sat on the company’s Executive team and Board of Directors.

While at GSK Slaoui headed the development of Cervarix. Its Cervarix HPV cervical cancer vaccine was reported tied to multiple deaths or severe crippling effects in many recipients. A 2017 WHO monitoring report revealed that serious adverse effects from Moncef Slaoui’s HPV vaccine included complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) that “exceeds any other vaccine.” That is not reassuring in terms of the new Czar of a rushed coronavirus vaccine.

In 2015 the Indian Supreme Court investigated charges that young Indian village girls died after being given Cervarix from Slaoui’s GSK. It was done in illegal vaccine “human guinea pig” tests of the HPV vaccine where neither the girls nor their parents were told what it was. The study was reportedly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2012 while Slaoui headed GSK global R&D and vaccine development, and sat on the GSK board, the company was fined $3 billion by the US Department of Justice, the largest ever fine against a pharmaceutical company. Among the charges was that GlaxoSmithKline deliberately withheld alarming safety data for its major-selling diabetes drug, Advandia, from the US FDA. After Advandia quietly vanished from the product list of GSK.

Slaoui also has ties to the projects of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He sat on the board of the Gates-funded International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. The IAVI was initiated in 1994 at a Rockefeller Foundation conference and is backed among others by the Gates Foundation, by the US Department of Defense and by Tony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

At a May 15 White House press conference where the President introduced Slaoui as the head of the crash vaccine project, Slaoui stated,

“Mr. President, I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine. These data make me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020.”

Though he did not say, he was clearly referring to Moderna and its mRNA gene-edited vaccine, the first US vaccine authorized to enter Phase I human trials after the US government gave the company a staggering $483 million of funding to fast-track the COVID-19 vaccine.

Vaccine Czar Slaoui is well-placed with regard to Moderna. After leaving GSK from 2017 until he joined the Trump Operation Warp Speed, Slaoui was on the Moderna Board of Directors. He also still holds $10 million worth of Moderna stock options, options likely to soar in value as the Warp Speed zooms forward. This would suggest a glaring conflict of interest with Czar Slaoui, but that’s only the start of this saga, where millions of lives are potentially at threat from a novel inadequately-tested or proven genetically edited vaccine.

Moderna and Slaoui

At this point the leading US Government candidate for winning the “warp speed” race to roll out a COVID-19 vaccine is Slaoui’s Moderna Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That’s surely a coincidence?

Moderna claims that between January 11, when they got the DNA sequence of the virus from China, and January 13–in just two days–working together with Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of NIH, they managed to finalize the sequence for mRNA1273 vaccine against the novel coronavirus. At that point Fauci announced unprecedented plans to run human Phase I trials of the vaccine without prior animal studies. The FDA waived animal pretest requirements. The Moderna mRNA1273 tests were funded by the Gates Foundation-funded Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

The focus by Fauci on Moderna’s mRNA experimental COVID-19 vaccine while Slaoui was heading its development at Moderna is impressive to say the least. The company states that on April 16, Moderna got an award from US government agency BARDA for $483 million to accelerate development of mRNA-1273. This award will fund the development of mRNA-1273 to FDA licensure and manufacturing process scale-up to enable large-scale production in 2020 for pandemic response. At that point the stock value of Slaoui’s Moderna stock options jumped 184%. Then, on May 1, Moderna and Lonza Group announced a worldwide strategic collaboration to manufacture mRNA-1273 at a planned 1 billion doses per year. This is no small deal.

On May 6, Moderna filed a Current Report on Form 8-K with the SEC, which included an interview published by National Geographic with Anthony S. Fauci, Director of NIAID, which described his assessment of the results of testing related to the ongoing Phase 1 clinical study of mRNA-1273. It was quite positive.

So, between January 13 and March 25, Slaoui and his team at Moderna were able to design the vaccine, and to produce it in such a way that it can be injected in humans, Slaoui told a Moroccan magazine, L’Economiste. While with Moderna, Slaoui was fully involved in the development of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

On May 7 just days before Slaoui became the Trump Vaccine Czar, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the gene-edited messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, mRNA1273, to go into a Phase II human trial in the summer. On May 12, the FDA gave Fast Track Designation for Moderna’s mRNA Vaccine. Warp Speed, you know.

The FDA with the backing of Tony Fauci’s NIAID in the NIH, granted unprecedented Phase I human trials of the never-before approved mRNA vaccine on April 27. They skipped normal animal, usually rat, testing, to go directly to human guinea pig tests. Moderna says Phase II trial will assess the safety, reactogenicity, and immunogenicity of two vaccinations of mRNA-1273 given 28 days apart. They will enroll 600 healthy adults for the experiment and supposedly follow their health for 12 months after the second vaccination. The plan is to begin human vaccinations by year end.

Dangers of mRNA?

All this, despite the evidence of extreme conflicts of interest between NIAID and other agencies of the US Government with Moderna and now-Vaccine Czar and former Moderna director Slaoui, might be treated more lightly, were it not for the fact that Moderna’s mRNA gene-edited vaccine technology is entirely experimental and never before approved for use as a vaccine. The company itself admits as much. It says, “mRNA is an emerging platform… we are still early in the story. Our most advanced vaccine program (CMV) is in Phase 2 clinical testing and we have no approved drugs to date.”

Moderna and others working with the experimental gene-edited mRNA vaccines claim they are safer than the admittedly unpredictable gene-edited DNA vaccines. DNA vaccine research is thirty years old but to date, has failed to produce a single licensed DNA vaccine. Moderna is only 11 years old and the CRISPR gene-editing technology it uses is barely 5 years old. We are told mRNA is completely different and safe.

However, numerous scientists warn that once inside the cell nucleus, mRNA vaccines have a risk of permanently changing a person’s DNA in unpredictable ways. Tony Faudi’s own NIH published a scientific paper regarding the new mRNA vaccine prospects. It read in part, “innate immune sensing of mRNA has also been associated with the inhibition of antigen expression and may negatively affect the immune response. Although the paradoxical effects of innate immune sensing on different formats of mRNA vaccines are incompletely understood, some progress has been made in recent years in elucidating these phenomena.” This is highly experimental science.

Another scientific paper funded by several Chinese universities and republished by the NIH in 2019, reviewing the development of the new messenger RNA technique for vaccines sounded some sober warnings. It noted that there were “Concerns with instability and low immunogenicity.” Further that, “mRNA vaccines are efficient at antigen expression, but sequence and secondary structures formed by mRNAs are recognized by a number of innate immune receptors, and this recognition can inhibit protein translation.” Not only that, but “…several of these delivery vehicles demonstrated toxicity in vivo, which may limit their use in humans.”(emphasis added). The authors concluded that “The immune response mechanism instigated by mRNA remains to be elucidated. The process of mRNA vaccine recognition by cellular sensors and the mechanism of sensor activation are still not clear.”

The US government, in a tight-knit circle all tied to Tony Fauci’s NIAID, the Gates Foundation, WHO are moving with not warp, but rather warped human priorities to deliver us a vaccine that no one can assure is in any way safe. Were Moderna so certain it is safe, they should offer to be legally liable for any mRNA damage. They don’t, nor do any vaccine companies. We need to decide if the scale of the worldwide deaths, inflated or not, alleged to be of COVID-19, warrant such a human experiment that could alter our genetics in unpredictable and possibly toxic ways.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, stating in January 2017 that there will be a “surprise outbreak” the coming administration will face.

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Apparently, Washington is helping to increase the violence in the Donbass. In the midst of a pandemic and the civil war at a softer stage, Kiev is promoting a gradual increase in the actions of pro-Maidan paramilitary groups in the region and receiving international support for this.

The United States has delivered more than $ 25 million worth of night vision devices, thermal cameras, portable communicators and medical equipment to Ukraine for use in the combat zone in Donbas, the US Embassy in Kiev reported.

In its account on a social network, the American Embassy to Kiev published the following note in English and Ukrainian:

“Despite COVID-19, our security assistance to Ukraine continues! This week, the Office of Defense Cooperation received more than $ 25 million in night vision devices, thermals, radios, and medical equipment for Ukraine to use in the JFO zone. The United States stands strongly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression”.

The US, according to the note, supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. As we know, since April 2014, Ukraine has carried out an operation against militias in the east of the country – Donbas region – where the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were proclaimed in response to the violent change of government that took place in Kiev in February of the same year. However, the Minsk agreements, signed in September 2014 and February 2015, laid the foundation for a political solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, so far they have not led to a definitive cessation of violence, the outcome of which the UN estimates at around 13,000 deaths.

Despite not putting a real end to the confrontation, the Minsk agreements managed to establish some bases for a peaceful future, so that, since then, the war has reduced the intensity of the fighting and presented a drop in the number of victims. But, since then, Kiev has been constantly denounced for tightening its policies in the region again and promoting an escalation of violence, not only through direct confrontation with separatists, but also through terrorist attacks, secret missions and intelligence operations. In a sense, the Accords have changed the face of war, from being a direct confrontation conflict to becoming a scene of constant tensions and intermittent fighting.

A few weeks ago, the Ukrainian government announced that it will build a naval base in the Sea of Azov. Shortly before, a series of murders had been reported in the regions of the autonomous republics, including the systematic killing of several civil people not involved in the conflicts. Now, everything indicates that the situation will worsen and there will be, possibly, a return to direct war.

The timing of the announcement of the acquisition of new US equipment by Ukrainian forces is extremely strategic; after all, in the midst of a global pandemic that increasingly erodes the foundations of the capitalist system, who will care about an apparently “regional and peripheral” conflict like the Civil War in Donbass? However, we must divide our focus and pay more and more attention to the increase in violence and insecurity anywhere in the world.

In fact, the acquisition of this equipment by Ukraine indicates that Kiev plans to resume direct combat and, most likely, policies of political and ethnic persecution against Russian minorities and political groups opposing the regime established during the Euromaidan in 2014. Without drawing the attention of international society, the Ukrainian government, in international cooperation with the USA, plans a total war. Most likely, the United Nations will not comment on the case until something more serious happens – when, certainly, it will be too late.

It is worth remembering that, in February, the United States delivered tents worth US $ 1.5 million to Ukraine. In the meantime, attacks through explosions, shootings and systematic killings in the vicinity of Lugansk and Donetsk have become increasingly frequent and brutal. With the recent donation of equipment, American investments in the war have increased by tens of millions of dollars; so what’s next now? An even greater aggravation of the conflict with even more frequent attacks and murders of greater magnitude?

Ukraine expects a stance on the part of the rebels, which certainly will not happen. The greater Kiev’s aggression, the greater the rebellious response, with an increasingly strong resistance front. However, the rebel militias do not have much international support and world powers financing their actions and providing ultra-advanced war equipment, which means that, however much the rebel resistance strengthens, it is possible that there will be a major massacre in the Donbass. The faster the international society’s express condemnation to this escalation of violence, the lower the risk of genocide in eastern Ukraine. Coronavirus cannot be used as a smokescreen for international attacks.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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For many years, the situation of the South American integration project has been moving slowly and with strong signs of decay. The various political, economic and social changes that have taken place in recent years – marked by a strong neoliberal shift in South America – have contributed to the weakening of the bloc.

South American countries face enormous difficulties in several areas, such as health, security and the economy – especially now, with the global pandemic of the new coronavirus. The Mercosur Parliament seeks to find integrated solutions to the current problems, but internal differences can compromise not only the negotiations, but the very existence of the bloc.

The board of directors of the Mercosur Parliament met on May 12, even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the integration of South American countries to combat COVID-19 and economic recovery being extremely important, the contradictions between the countries of the bloc threaten the future of all members, which is why the meeting was necessary. However, its result was not very promising, and the answers to the continent’s current demands were not found.

International Relations professor at ESPM-SP, Denilde Holzhacker, who is a specialist in politics in the Americas, explained that the recent meetings that have been held to expand democratic dialogue between members are insufficient, so it is “difficult to think about this moment that Parlasul can act in order to increase cooperation”. These are her words: “On the one hand, we have the weakening of cooperation instruments with Argentina’s decision to leave the negotiations in progress […], on the other hand, Parlasul itself has not yet had the nominations of parliaments from two countries. Last year there was a change in the form and nomination of parliamentarians and at that moment there are no representatives from Argentina and Uruguay”.

According to Holzhacker, the continuity of the bloc’s existence is currently uncertain. Argentina announced that it will renounce the bloc’s negotiations to focus on the recovery of its national economy, which makes the country an inactive member of Mercosur, making it even more difficult to resume cooperation that was practically paralyzed. For the specialist, there are clear signs that the bloc may have its activities officially closed.

“One of the actions discussed was the cooperation action, using one of the Mercosur funds to allocate to joint research, for actions aimed at raising awareness, working in the health area. So, they have some initiatives. Even so, they have low effectiveness, given the issues I raised earlier”.

The growing distance between Brazil and Argentina affects the attempt at integration and the cooperative dialogue between countries. This is a situation already well known, however, as highlighted by the expert:

“It comes from a process of distancing since the election of Alberto Fernández and that becomes even more acute at a time of differences between countries. Distancing not only in dialogue, but about a series of issues. (…) We have a situation of distancing between the two central countries in the region, which makes it more difficult to dialogue and build joint actions at this time”.

In fact, the future of the bloc is, like that of all countries, subordinated to the uncertainties of the pandemic. The speeches of the member countries, mainly Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, emphasize the progress of the trade agreements that were already under negotiation, but also seek to defend their domestic markets. In the case of Argentina, there is great concern in negotiating its foreign debt, “with a strong protectionist bias”. The pandemic came to hit these countries in a period of great fragility and economic crisis, which further hindered the negotiations and the possibility of Mercosur’s rebuilding.

Denilde Holzhacker does not believe that there will be an environment for commercial cooperation in Mercosur, considering the behavior of the member countries seen so far: “From what we have seen and observed in terms of the countries’ discourse, the emphasis is on domestic markets, building processes protection of their industries and markets, which makes it more difficult to advance these trade agreements “.

Everything seems to be heading towards a substantial decline in the development agenda of the South American States. The Argentine decision, however, is not reprehensible; on the contrary, it is the most sovereign decision ever made, prioritizing saving its own economy. However, this is not the case for all members and much less for other countries on the continent that relate to the bloc. South America is heading towards total poverty and towards the structural crisis of national economies. Brazil continues with a serious process of deindustrialization and strides towards social, political and economic chaos. The other countries are unable to play a decisive role in the bloc – which, at the mercy of Brazil and Argentina, is rapidly sinking.

The fall of Mercosur will be a political, economic and geopolitical tragedy; a real delay in the struggle for a multipolar world. However, it will be an opportunity to restart a stronger and more coherent project for the integration of the peoples of the South.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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Aided by establishment media fear-mongering, the public mind is being manipulated to support COVID-19 mass vaxxing as a way to protect against coronavirus infections.

Unmentioned is that all vaccines are toxic and hazardous to human health.

Taking them risks contracting the disease they’re supposed to protect against, along with developing other serious diseases later in life.

In other words, the promoted cure can be worse than the disease.

Rushing development of COVID-19 vaccines for mass vaxxing amounts to playing Russian roulette with human health.

Instead of warning the public of the dangers, establishment media are complicit in ignoring them.

On Tuesday, the NYT touted limited phase one tests of biotech company Moderna’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine, claiming results showed it was “safe and provoked a strong immune response.”

Eight test subjects were vaxxed, given two low doses in a test for “safety.”

Ignored by the Times and other media reports were potential longer-term adverse reactions and known hazards of all vaccines. Little is learned about experimental ones based on short-term results with a handful of subjects.

News about Moderna’s drug sent its stock price soaring about 25% on Monday.

After the market closed, the company announced a $1.25 billion public offering of its common shares. Their valuation slumped in after-hours trading.

Reportedly its CEO Stephane Bancel has been dumping large numbers of shares.

Moderna’s largest shareholder Flagship Pioneer has been doing the same thing — cashing in while the stock is hot, notably before it may cool down or crash if later experimental vaccine tests show negative results.

The Times also promoted the false promise of a “return to normal” ahead, claiming Monday’s strong market rally reflected the “prospect,” adding:

“Vaccines are now seen as the best and perhaps only hope of stopping or even slowing” COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths.

Monday’s rally was more about market manipulation than the prospect of restoration of economic health.

On the same day, Tass reported over “93,000 confirmed” COVID-19 cases worldwide in the last 24 hours, around 4,500 more deaths — showing no letup in the global public health problem.

Are vaccines to the rescue the solution? Despite years of research, no successful coronavirus vaccines were ever developed.

Is it likely that a never before achieved breakthrough will change things by yearend?

Is a miracle vaccine coming in the months ahead?

Weeks earlier, Nature magazine and other scientific journals explained warnings by researchers that rushing COVID-19 vaccine development for widespread use in the coming months could increase the risk of infection rather than protect against it.

Earlier research on coronavirus vaccines showed they risk vaccine enhancement, worsening infection if gotten, not protecting vaxxed individuals.

How this happens is yet to be understood. It’s a major stumbling block to developing coronavirus vaccines — what may never be achieved, notably because the virus mutates into many new forms, each different from others in characteristics.

On Tuesday, Thailand Medical News (TMN) reported that University of Hong Kong researchers found the following:

“(A)lthough individuals infected with either severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) or SARS-CoV-2 (that causes COVID-19) produce antibodies that bind to the other coronavirus, the cross-reactive antibodies are not cross protective, at least in cell-culture experiments.”

It suggests that developing coronavirus vaccines may not be possible — at least not unless or until there are research breakthroughs never achieved before.

According to Hong Kong University researcher Dr. Chris Mok:

“Since coronavirus outbreaks are likely to continue to pose global health risks in the future, the possibility of developing a cross-protective vaccine against multiple coronaviruses has been considered.”

“Our findings, albeit limited at present, would suggest that broadly cross-neutralizing antibodies to coronaviruses might not be commonly produced by the human immune repertoire.”

“Moving forward, monoclonal antibody discovery and characterization will be crucial to the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in the short-term, as well as a cross-protective coronavirus vaccine in the long term.”

No breakthroughs exist toward achieving these objectives — nor in developing a miracle COVID-19 cure.

The virus is likely to be around for a long time, maybe forever like season flu that results in millions of infections, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, and tens of thousands of deaths in the US annually.

It’s a forever epidemic and pandemic — unaccompanied by establishment media fear-mongering headlines, despite the global harm to countless millions annually like clockwork.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On Friday, Trump sacked State Department Inspector General Steve Linick — reportedly for launching an investigation into how Pompeo runs things.

A White House statement said Pompeo “recommended the move” — to quash an inquiry into his management of the department not explained.

Pompeo has 2024 presidential ambitions. He wants no potential dirty linen airing that could harm his chance to become a future GOP standard bearer.

The possibility should terrify everyone. His extremism makes Trump almost look mild by comparison.

According to Politico, Pompeo’s policies at State above all are “designed to bolster his…standing with the GOP base.”

Linick began investigating improper actions by him and his wife.

In response to his sacking, House Dems indicated they’ll open their own investigation into the issue.

By letter to the White House and State Department, they requested documents related to Linick’s sacking.

According to the US Hatch Act (1939), executive branch officials are prohibited from engaging in certain forms of political activity — the president, vice president, and designated members of their staff excluded.

Critics accused Pompeo of numerous violations, including involvement in partisan events.

In February, he addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference, a must venue for Republicans with presidential aspirations.

Like Mike Pence, Pompeo is an evangelical Christian. Time and again, both figures unacceptably cross the line between church and state by their rhetoric and actions.

Appointed State Department inspector general by Obama in 2013, Linick’s justifiable criticism of Hillary’s use of her private server for Foggy Bottom business aroused the ire of Dems.

In 2019, he criticized mistreatment of State Department staffers under Pompeo and his subordinates.

By letter to congressional leaders, Trump failed to state reasons for sacking Linick, saying only that he “no longer (has the) fullest confidence” in the inspector general.

He was involved in impeaching Trump by House Dems — by providing them with documents, not by testifying.

Other officials involved in the process were sacked by Trump.

They included former intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson, former Trump regime envoy to the UK Gordon Sondland, former National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and war department IG Glenn Fine.

Separately in early May, Trump nominated a replacement for HHS deputy inspector general Christi Grimm in response to her criticism of his mishandled COVID-19 outbreak response.

The surest way to be sacked by him is to serve the public interest responsibly over political interests.

Former White House director of government ethics Walter Shaub (2013 – 2017) called mass Trump regime IG firings a sign of “corruption-driven authoritarianism (and a) collapsing republic.”

State Department office of foreign missions head Stephen Akard is replacing Linick as department inspector general in June.

He formerly served as Indiana Economic Development Corporation chief of staff when Pence was governor.

According to the State Department, the office of inspector general is a nonpartisan position involved in “determin(ing) whether policy goals are being achieved and whether the interests of the United States are being represented and advanced effectively.”

The office is also mandated to investigate “instances of fraud, waste, and mismanagement that may constitute either criminal wrongdoing or violation of Department and USAGM (US Agency for Global Media) regulations.”

A politicized House Dem probe into Linick’s sacking will be conducted in the coming weeks.

It’s at a time when both wings of the one-party state should focus like a laser on improving public health, reviving the economy, and aiding growing millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans in need.

A Final Comment

Thomas Jefferson believed America’s founding document couldn’t stand the test of time.

He urged a new convention every 20 years to fix problems and make the Constitution relevant to the times.

Most important is obeying the core law of the land, its statutes, and international law — clearly not how its ruling authorities and lawmakers operate.

America’s deplorable state reflects Benjamin Franklin’s warning about “(a newly formed) republic, if you can keep it.”

He understood significant challenges ahead, likely never imagining how bad things would get.

The nation is on a slippery slope toward full-blown tyranny — compounded by its forever wars, at the expense of vital homeland needs gone begging.

It’s why the hardest of hard times in US history are unfolding in real time — a protracted public health crisis compounded by economic collapse, a perfect storm.

There’s a war going on by the nation’s ruling class against the vast majority of the people.

The extent of human pain and suffering will best be understood in the fullness of time.

No matter which right wing of the one-party state runs things, the nation’s privileged class benefits exclusively by exploiting most others at home and abroad.

That’s the disturbing truth about the dismal state of the nation with no prospect for relief ahead for the vast majority of Americans.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

In an interview with Mehr News Agency, Rabbi Weiss said the Israeli regime was established in Palestine by committing all kinds of crimes against its people, which is a violation of Jewish religious laws towards fellow human beings, adding that the anti-Zionist Jews support “the return of the entire land to the Palestinian people”

His interview was conducted on the occasion of the Nakba Day (the Day of Catastrophe) and on the eve of Quds Day when back in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homeland and Israel proclaimed existence. The refugees were forced to seek refuge in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, often without citizenship being granted.

Here is the full text of his interview:

Morteza Rahmani: 72 years have passed since the Israeli regime’s occupation of the Palestinian lands; where is the regime standing today in terms of identity as well as the political and social status?

Rabbi Weiss: Before I answer the question I’d like to state our viewpoint as traditionally Orthodox Jews. We oppose Zionism because it is an anti-Jewish philosophy of building a sovereign homeland for Jews while in a divinely decreed exile, which is forbidden by the Jewish religion. Also, this homeland was established in Palestine by committing all kinds of crimes against its people, which is a violation of Jewish religious laws towards fellow human beings.  We don’t support “two states for two peoples”; we support the return of the entire land to the Palestinian people. We believe that peaceful non-militant Jews will be able to live under a Palestinian state in peace.

During the 72 years of occupation, there have been different phases, from wars with neighboring countries to negotiations with Palestinians with the goal of a two-state solution (of course these negotiations were never meant to lead anywhere, and at the same time the Zionists built more and more settlements). With the future of two states completely undermined, we will be seeing more of a push for one democratic state, in which Jews will soon be a minority. The Israelis know this and that is why Netanyahu and his party have been passing laws to declare Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people. Of course, this is ridiculous because he can’t claim to represent Judaism or the Jewish people, whether they reside in or out of their state.

MR: What do the current political crises and rifts among the Israeli authorities, as well as the regime’s undermined security, suggest?

RW: First let’s not forget what the Almighty states in the holy Torah: “Why do you transgress the word of the Almighty? It will not be successful!” (Numbers 14:41). Going against the Torah’s command by forming a Jewish state and/or oppressing others, will not succeed in the end.

Part of the rift in politics is over the drafting of religious Jews into the army. All the secular parties are determined to draft the religious; their dispute is over whether to do it by force or to “accustom” them to it slowly. The religious have always refused to serve in the army because they are opposed to the state and its wars.  There have been constant protests over this subject, and we have appealed to the UN.

As I said earlier, the Torah view is opposed to all the Israeli political parties and to the state as a whole. Our communities living in the Holy Land refuse to take any part in the State of Israel and constantly protest its illegal existence and the crimes it commits. We promote that the illegal occupation should be speedily and peacefully dismantled in its entirety.

MR: Based on the available data on the US and Britain’s arms and financial support to the Israelis, how do you see the role of Washington and London in the formation and realization of the Zionist regime?

RW: Unfortunately, the Zionists have succeeded in getting many countries to support them. They misused the Holocaust and the long history of anti-Jewish persecution to convince people that Jews need their own state. This is what gave them the ability to establish their state and keep it going with world support to this day while ignoring the position of authentic religious Jews in the Holy Land and around the world. We hope that this false narrative won’t be accepted much longer, but rather the world will see the truth and end the support for this unacceptable criminal State. This, with the help of the Almighty, will certainly help and accelerate the end of the occupation, speedily and peacefully.

MR: The Israeli regime has been struggling to repel the Palestinians’ and Lebanese’ resistance movement in the past years; have the Zionists been successful in this regard? And will these efforts help Tel Aviv survive?

RW: They have been unfortunately partially successful militarily, so to say, inflicting terrible casualties and damage. But they will never be able to stop the liberation of the Palestinian people and enjoy a truly successful occupation. They will never reach true success in their rebellion against the Almighty, as mentioned above.

Let us look at the recent history of the Palestinian people. What other people have been exiled for so long and still maintains refugee status, and (on the whole) refuses to accept citizenship or a comfortable life anywhere else? From a religious Jewish point of view, seeing the hand of the Almighty in world events, the Palestinian’s steadfast resolve shows that the Almighty is not letting the Zionists succeed. This is because of the same verse in the Torah I quoted earlier (question 2): rebellion against the Almighty will not succeed.

MR: The normalization process of Arab-Israeli ties has been accelerated in recent years, and they are not hiding it anymore; what are the main reasons behind such measures by the Israeli regime?

RW: We can’t comment, nor do we know, the Zionist political motives. But it is clear that one benefit to them is to make peace with one part of the Arab and Muslim world at a time so that they don’t have everyone against them at once.

MR: The US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds in 2017; how much did this measure favor the legalization process of the Zionist regime?

RW: We feel that the moving of the embassy was a tragic move. It does give the Zionist regime a feeling of impunity that it can now proceed to annex more and more land and get the American rubber stamp. But many Americans are not happy with this and it can eventually be reversed if enough Americans become aware of the injustice.

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Featured image is from MNA

Fear and uncertainty have dominated the media coverage of the Covid-19 epidemic.

The novel coronavirus is depicted not as a pedestrian pathogen certain to be beaten into submission by the miracles of modern science any day now, but as an invisible evil lurking everywhere, formidable enough to inspire a respectful terror even in the leading lights of the medical establishment.

And in case Americans had any doubt about how they were supposed to regard this new viral threat, the establishment talking heads many rely upon for the self-assured delivery of their news have swapped their usual swagger for apprehension. Amid this ‘confidence vacuum,’ the popular response to the pandemic has taken on a religious cast. Protective measures like masks have taken on a talismanic quality, hand-washing has been elevated to a ritual performance, and a cult built on naming and shaming ‘heretics’ has seized the minds of many – while their rights are quietly stripped away and a paternalistic police state substituted in their place.

Unable to see the microscopic “enemy” they are told threatens the lives of them and their family and deprived of a scientifically proven cure, individuals seeking deliverance from Covid-19 are left with only their faith that the protective measures prescribed by health experts –our scientific priest class– can keep it at bay. If it ended there, the Corona Cult would merely be a curiosity – humans have turned to religion in troubled times since before written history began. But its dark side has already reared its ugly head – those who buck the new orthodoxy are already being blamed for the plague.

We’ve been here before. In the Middle Ages, pious peasants were kept in line by priests who told them God was watching their every move. When a plague appeared, it was interpreted as divine punishment, the wrath of God visited upon a sinful population. Those who wished to stand out as especially devout whipped themselves in public, or wore painful garments called “hair shirts” – in both cases with the aim of ‘mortifying the flesh,’ literally ‘putting to death’ their sinful natures.

It’s no coincidence that self-flagellation reached its height of popularity during the Black Plague. It was assumed by its practitioners that if they underwent penance by inflicting pain on themselves, they would be spared the God-given pain of the plague. Those who publicly refused to participate in the religious rituals of the day were called out as infidels, heretics, witches or other servants of the devil. They might be chased out of town; many were tortured and even killed, often in shockingly gruesome ways, as the centuries progressed and the Inquisition rose to power. The pious were regularly told their misfortunes were due to the presence of a satanic influence among them, with complex problems declared to be solved by simply casting out the offending presence.

While western society may tell itself it has left those Dark Ages far behind, the lure of simplistic explanations is as potent as ever.

Mask of the red death

Face masks have become both the visual symbol of the Covid-19 epidemic and the dominant religious fetish for the Cult of Corona. While cities from New York to Laredo, Texas have adopted regulations mandating them in public places and chain stores like Costco have barred unmasked customers from their premises, it’s hard not to notice those individuals so devoted to the mask-wearing ritual that they sport the face-coverings in their own cars (with the windows rolled up) and when running down epidemic-emptied streets. Poor messaging is partly to blame – the Centers for Disease Control has repeatedly changed its narrative on who should wear masks, from “sick people” to “only healthcare workers” to “everyone.” However, the Cult of Corona’s devotion to the mask extends far beyond following the recommendations of a mere public health agency.

The mask has taken on a supernatural significance that far outweighs its utility in disease protection. Even the N-95 masks health authorities have recommended to protect society from virus-positive individuals have been found largely ineffective in protecting the uninfected from carriers in their surroundings, and the flimsy surgical masks that have become ubiquitous for sale on American street corners are next to worthless in stopping virus transmission. Indeed, some doctors have even warned that wearing a mask is counterproductive due to the false sense of security it creates. Yet it’s impossible to walk into a supermarket in many cities without something covering the mouth – even as one’s eyes remain unprotected and ready to receive whatever viral particles are lingering in the air. Mask requirements thus have nothing to do with health and everything to do with religious faith. They provide a way for the faithful to telegraph their virtue at a distance and recognize one another instantly, while flagging the non-compliant as infidels to be avoided.

In the same way that garlic and a cross were supposed to ward off vampires in times past, the face mask is supposed to fend off the “invisible enemy” lurking everywhere at once. One might feel a little silly driving around with a mask on (or stringing a clove of garlic above one’s window), but better safe than sorry – and if you haven’t been infected, or had any vampires show up at your bedside, who’s to say it isn’t working?

Ritual, snitchual

A bevy of rituals has sprung up among Corona Cultists, from the benign if eccentric (swabbing all exposed surfaces with Lysol wipes) to the sinister (reporting neighbors for perceived violations). Even the simplest, most scientifically-sound measures like hand-washing have taken on a ritualistic cast, as the virus-fearing infuse them with a terrified zeal. How else to explain the popularity of the dozens of “hand-washing apps” available for smartphones but that the shock of the epidemic has caused us to question that which we once took for granted? Just as peasants of a previous era might have been spooked into regular church attendance by the specter of the Black Death, their descendants pore over videos of hand-washing on YouTube, determined to live a “cleaner” life.

But another holdover from the Dark Ages has risen its ugly head. While our ancestors might have turned in their oddball neighbor as a “witch,” claiming to have seen the merry old spinster cavorting with Satan under the full moon, modern-day snitches are picking up their smartphones and dialing specially-designated lines to report violations of social distancing orders. These services are disturbingly popular – New Zealand’s snitch site crashed repeatedly within its first week in late March as over 4,000 people scrambled to turn in their neighbors for violating that nation’s harsh lockdown regulations, which separated people into “bubbles” based on their living arrangements and forbid them from interacting with those outside their “bubble.”

Snitches come in several stripes.

There have always been busybodies who call the police when their neighbor’s music is too loud rather than knocking on their door and politely asking to turn it down. But in the Cult of Corona, these miscreants are joined by those driven half-crazy with fear, convinced that the act of turning in rule breakers will somehow protect them from contracting the virus. They’d never say such a preposterous thing out loud, of course – if asked, they merely claim to be concerned for the community, or worried their victim’s irresponsible behavior is spreading Covid-19 willy-nilly, perhaps even stating that their decision to turn their neighbor in was “for their own good.” Just as the Inquisitor’s concern for those they tortured on the rack was supposedly for their victim’s “immortal soul,” so does the modern snitch rationalize their betrayal of their neighbors by reasoning that the virus police are concerned only for the health of the heretics they rat out – while secretly breathing a sigh of relief that they aren’t the ones being tortured (or placed on a ventilator), this time. Following orders becomes a source of comfort for the snitch deprived of life’s normal pleasures by the lockdown – providing an avenue for transformation from victim to hero.

Fueling this schadenfreudisch frenzy are media headlines celebrating the karmic punishment of lockdown violators. Whether it’s spring-breakers testing positive for Covid-19 after throwing caution to the wind and partying down on the beach or social-media showoffs boasting about refusing to social-distance, the public smiting of heretics has been a popular topic among Corona Cultists isolated in their homes. John McDaniel, an Ohio man who criticized his governor for shutting down the state, reportedly died in April of coronavirus only for social media mobs to dance on his grave and use his death to attack other “doubters” (including Donald Trump, whose insufficient reverence at the altar of the virus continues to set zealots frothing with rage). CNN’s Jake Tapper claimed that “practically every day” he read about a corona doubter succumbing to the virus, blaming conservative media and politicians for their deaths – heresy, apparently, is as contagious as the virus. The New York Post, which ran a moralizing story free of any identifying details about a nameless Kingston, New York barber who’d caught the virus after supposedly flouting lockdown for several weeks to cut hair, also rushed to connect a spike in coronavirus cases in Kentucky with an anti-lockdown protest a few days earlier – even though the virus’ lengthy latency period (and the fact that a significant chunk of the new cases were in nursing homes) made it next to impossible the two events were linked. And Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of the most fanatical government figures in the US’ corona cult, implied in a press conference that protests were more likely to contribute to the spread of the virus than other forms of “congregating.”

UK PM Boris Johnson was perhaps the most public example of the “divine punishment” phenomenon – his conversion to the Corona Cult (after a few days of timidly suggesting herd immunity might be a better path to public health) came too late to keep him out of intensive care at the hands of the NHS his party has so ruthlessly sought to privatize. When actress Miriam Margolyes declared following his recovery that she had wanted to see BoJo dead, some in the media appeared to agree with her – while making a point of casting such agreement as gleefully subversive. Not only do Corona Cultists find a commonality in rooting for the virus against the dissidents who challenge their worldview, but their own adherence to an exhaustingly cognitively-dissonant dogma is affirmed as the correct path by the heretics’ misfortune. Enforced austerity tends to be unpopular with its victims, but when that privation is reframed as a noble sacrifice made by all [except the wealthy] for the common good, it becomes easier to bear the suffering – and much more difficult to tolerate those who refuse to go along.

The real danger comes when zealots feel compelled to “help” the virus smite the heretics (sure, I could wait for God to punish this evildoer in the afterlife, but why not take some of that work off His hands?). The Daily Mail cheered on an elderly woman who threatened to “kick the ass” of a stranger for merely calling the pandemic a “hoax.” A Brooklyn couple attempted to discipline a trio of Hasidic Jewish men for failure to maintain social distancing, supposedly blaming them for the spread of the virus – but instead of moving further apart, the men and their neighbors beat the couple up, sending them to the hospital (and slapping them with a hate-crime charge as insult added to injury). The violence need not be physical – a British woman told SkyNews she was “named and shamed” by neighbors on Facebook when she accidentally slept through her town’s weekly “clap for the NHS” ritual, in which participants lean out their windows and applaud at a fixed time every week in a choreographed celebration of the healthcare workers they believe protect them from the virus. Even viral videos of police abuses, which have been a dime a dozen during lockdowns that embolden the worst elements on the force, have been deluged with comments in support of the cops, charging the unarmed man/woman/child being arrested or brutalized “deserved it” because they were out without a mask/protesting/not standing 6 feet away from the nearest human. Never mind that the cops in the videos are almost never masked themselves, or that it’s impossible to maintain six feet of distance while making an arrest – certainly never mind the Kafkaesque paradox of arresting someone for not social-distancing, only to throw them in a jail cell with several other humans per square foot – these poor souls have sinned, and they must be punished. Don’t agree? You might end up in there with them.

Gotta have faith

For those whose faith is flagging after two months of lockdowns sapping both their bank accounts and health, polls are being churned out confirming upwards of 80% of Americans and nearly 9 out of 10 Britons support continuing the lockdowns, which combined with social media’s growing censorship of anti-lockdown speech gives the false impression of a universal public consensus that government policies are both popular and lifesaving. Fanatical religious adherence is required to enforce belief in such absurdity, given the appalling track records of the High Priests of Lockdown. Imperial College corona czar Neil Ferguson was caught gallivanting with his mistress in defiance of his own policies after two months lecturing Brits about the importance of staying home, but his wildly irresponsible disease model – produced using a defective computer program that was more glitch than code – lives on, haunting the minds of lockdown-lovers who screech BoJo is letting Brits leave home too soon. Indeed, based on his resumé, Ferguson never should have been allowed near public policy. His terrible miscalculations regarding foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 led to the unnecessary destruction of over 6.5 million livestock, decimating the nation’s farming industry, while a similar but fortunately unheeded prediction in 2002 that mad cow disease would kill as many as 150,000 Britons was shown up by the reality of 178 killed. As the years went on, his apocalyptic visions only intensified – in 2005, he declared bird flu would kill some 200 million people worldwide – when reality saw some 455 people, total, killed over the past 15 years according to the WHO. His hysterical 2009 prediction that 65,000 Brits would die of swine flu encouraged the government to embrace GlaxoSmithKline’s unsafe Pandemrix vaccine, which caused permanent brain damage in thousands of people (mostly children, plus a good deal of NHS workers conned into taking the jab with false claims of its safety and effectiveness) – quite a bit more than the 283 killed by the actual swine flu.

Not that the UK is alone in embracing faith-based “science” as health policy. Trump even appointed the man who led GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division during the Pandemrix debacle to lead “Operation Warp Speed,” his unhinged program to develop a vaccine by the end of 2020 (a process that normally takes five years being crammed into eight months). Like Ferguson, Anthony Fauci – the face of the US’ pandemic response – has decades of epidemic failures under his belt at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Starting with the thousands of otherwise-healthy HIV positive people who died in the 1980s thanks to Fauci’s shameless advocacy for AZT, which refashioned the toxic drug (too poisonous for terminal cancer patients) into a miracle pill for AIDS, and passing through at least one episode of perjury that saw him deny the existence of encephalitis as a possible side effect of the MMR vaccine (before remembering he was under oath and acknowledging it was “rare”), Fauci has displayed such breathtaking avarice and incompetence at the helm of the NIAID that the US life expectancy has actually declined noticeably under his watch for the first time in history. Yet like the followers of an end-times cult leader who remain loyal even as the appointed date for the end of the world comes and goes, devotees of these public health priests have not dared to learn their lesson. Instead, they ramp up their predictions of doom for heretical countries like Sweden and Belarus that have refused to fall in line with the universal lockdown doctrine.

One level above the public health priesthood is Microsoft billionaire and Pandemic Pope Bill Gates, whose lack of medical credentials or even a college diploma have not stopped the world from hailing him as a prophet based on his “prediction” of a pandemic in 2015 – and his claim to have both the answers and the ability to pay for them. Gates’ deep pockets – he’s the number-one funder of the WHO, ever since Trump pulled US support – have given him the power to almost singlehandedly direct global health policy, steering it into a pharmaceutical iceberg even as real doctors protest his many conflicts of interest. Since diving into the money-pit of “philanthropy,” Gates has more than doubled his fortune; his foundation is heavily invested in the drug companies that make the vaccines that other groups he funds purchase for poor countries. He’s also very, very generous with the media, buying the silence of establishment outlets around the world – big names like the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, and National Public Radio – so their journalists don’t recoil when he can barely keep from gibbering and squealing while discussing the economic hurt his lockdown policies are inflicting on hapless populations – or research the trail of suffering his foundation has left through the Global South.

Yet even the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the pharmaceutical-industrial complex – vaccine advocates like Peter Hotez, the bowtie-sporting tropical disease specialist who was ubiquitous on TV during the 2018 “measles epidemic” attacking so-called “anti-vaxxers” – have expressed alarm at the decision to scrap the animal-testing phase for the Covid-19 vaccine that is supposed to save the world, noting that “there is a risk of immune enhancement” with vaccines for any coronavirus. During animal trials for an aborted SARS vaccine, mice who got the shot developed a severe version of the virus when exposed to it after they were inoculated, while ferrets similarly challenged post-vaccination with the virus suffered “enhanced liver damage.” Perhaps trying to get around these roadblocks, Moderna, the drugmaker currently leading the vaccine pack, is banking on a totally new kind of vaccine, one which, rather than lob a softball at the immune system in the form of a dead or weakened form of the virus, will attempt to reprogram our genetic material to create the pieces of the virus, so that the immune system can learn to fight them off. That’s how Gates himself describes this “promising” method, at least. Did we mention Moderna has never brought a vaccine to market before? What’s the matter – where’s your faith?

We may not be turning our eyes heavenward and praying for deliverance, but the leaders of the western world have declared society cannot fully return to normal until a magical perfect vaccine arrives from on high, an absurd one-stop solution that carries echoes of the “duck and cover”-type prescriptions for surviving a nuclear blast, drilled into people’s heads during the Cold War. The effect of instilling a powerful capacity for cognitive dissonance – teaching children to hide under their desks even as they were taught the laws of physics, i.e. an understanding that their desks couldn’t protect them – turned Americans into gold medalists in cognitive dissonance. Were it an Olympic sport, no one would even come close.

To be continued…

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Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. Her work has appeared on RT, Global Research, Activist Post, Ghion Journal, and Progressive Radio Network. Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://helenofdestroy.com or follow her on Twitter at @velocirapture23. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

The ongoing global systemic transition is transforming international relations from its erstwhile unipolarity to what experts agree is either multipolarity or, less popularly, bipolarity. However one chooses to describe the present world order, it’s clear that the US and China are the main global players, which places Russia and India – decades-long strategic partners – in a junior position vis-a-vis both of them, especially their mutual Chinese neighbor with whom they share membership in BRICS and the SCO. The neorealist school of International Relations Theory preaches the need to pursue national interests, which sometimes align with others’, and it is argued in the article that it is with this idea in mind that both countries have a motivation to jointly improve their strategic positions relative to the People’s Republic, albeit in a non-hostile manner that avoids the risk of inadvertently triggering a security dilemma and reversing the recent gains made in Eurasian integration.

Two articles published by Russia’s Valdai Club in 2019 indicated the possibility of creating a new Non-Aligned Movement, with the most recent one proposing that it be jointly led by Russia and India in order to advance the aforementioned neo-realist objective of balancing China. This suggestion is very intriguing and deserves some further elaboration, to which end the present research was conducted in order to place the new Non-Aligned Movement proposal in a strategic context relevant to the ongoing global systemic transition. Nearly a dozen articles and reports by Russian experts were analyzed, resulting in the conclusion that the proposal is a promising one but requires much more research into its challenges and opportunities in order to become more than just a proposed concept. In the event that any tangible progress is made on it, however, it must be done so extremely carefully in order for China not to misunderstand its intentions.

Click here to read the full text.

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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.

If you cannot discover or create something, best steal it.  It has been the operating principle for everything from wealth to technology.  With the efforts to discover a vaccine to the novel coronavirus being all but bound by solidarity, the race on plundering secrets has already begun in earnest.  No one party can claim particular innocence in this endeavour.  All states engage in economic espionage and old-fashioned secret pinching to advance their interests.  Finding the building blocks for a COVID-19 vaccine is proving no different. 

As with such accusations, the cloak is procured with the dagger.  The case is probable, and plausible enough, but confirmation tends to come in rations.  In the business of hacking, what is acceptable in torrid love and hideous war tends to be a hard one to pin down. 

In 2015, the US and China reached an accord to, in the words of President Barack Obama, refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting “cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage.”  At the time, an assessment by Wired came to the conclusion that the agreement did not prevent traditional, full blown espionage, focusing, instead, on such efforts as those to pinch company source codes for competitive advantage.  

In addition to Obama’s main point, Beijing and Washington agreed to furnish timely responses to requests for information and assistance dealing with malicious cyber activities; engage in “efforts to further identify and promote appropriate norms of state behaviour in cyberspace” and “establish a high-level joint dialogue mechanism on fighting cybercrime and related issues.”

In 2018, the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre (NCSC) reported that “the Intelligence Community and private sector security experts continue to identify ongoing Chinese cyber activity, although at lower volumes than existed before the bilateral September 2015 US-China cyber commitments.”  Not all bad then, especially given that cyber activity designed to pilfer intellectual property for other non-competitive purposes continued to be de rigueur.

During the pandemic crisis, the niggles and pinches caused by cyberactivity have reportedly increased in number.  Academic and research programs are being scrutinised.  The US Justice Department has taken a particular interest in the PRC-sponsored Thousand Talents program.  One of their latest targets is University of Arkansas’ professor of engineering, Simon Saw-Teong Ang, accused of concealing his ties to the Chinese government and universities while he worked on projects with NASA funding. 

The United States, while not exactly leading in its response to dealing with COVID-19, now claims that its efforts to identify treatments and a vaccines are being targeted by others, with the PRC leading (naturally), the keen pack.  “The PRC’s behaviour in cyberspace,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued in a statement last Thursday, “is an extension of its counterproductive actions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”  Senator Marco Rubio, one of the noisiest of China hawks, has also been squawking on what he claims is an adjustment in Chinese tactics.  “Beijing has shifted its recruitment efforts for the Thousand Talents Program online, and it has increased efforts to hack US medical research institutes for COVID-19 information.”

On May 13, a joint statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was published.  It alleged “the compromise of US organizations conducting COVID-19-related research by PRC-affiliated cyber actors and non-traditional collectors.”  Allegedly, such actors had “been observed attempting to identify and illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property (IP) and public health data related to vaccines, treatments, and testing from networks and personnel affiliated with COVID-19-related research.” 

The statement warned that organisations “conducting research in these areas” should “maintain dedicated cybersecurity and insider threat practices to prevent surreptitious review or theft of COVID-19-related material.”  Systems should be patched for “critical vulnerabilities”; web applications for authorised access should be actively sought out.  Users “exhibiting unusual activity” should be suspended.

The warning is skimpy in details, notably on the issue of how treatments will be hampered. Nor are many researchers blind about similar pinching efforts from the US side of the fence.  Jason Healey, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs makes a few valid points on this.  “If the US is wanting to argue for norms, I look forward to us doing it directly and saying here’s what we think the playing field lies, because certainly we’re being active in many of these areas as well.”

China has also been the subject of cyber interest in this particularly busy playing field.  In April, a Vietnamese hacking group known as APT32 is said to have taken interest in the PRC’s Ministry of Emergency Management and the government of Wuhan.  According to Ben Read of the cybersecurity firm FireEye, “These attacks speak to the virus being an intelligence priority – everyone is throwing everything they’ve got at it, and APT32 is what Vietnam has.”  Not a good time, it seems, to find a vaccine in solidarity.

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

Coercion: the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of threats or force.

Over the course of the Covid-19 ‘crisis’, scientific advice to the UK Government has been co-ordinated by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). SAGE is co-chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance (the Government Chief Science Advisor) and Professor Chris Whitty (the Chief Medical Officer).

We have already seen how SAGE has used external advisors to help direct the medical and social response. But the UK government also claims that “many issues around the coronavirus response relate to behaviour”.

SPI-B

During the 2009/10 ‘swine flu’ pandemic, SAGE received advice from a subgroup called the Scientific Pandemic Influenza group on Behaviour and Communications (SPI-B&C).

That group was reconvened on 13 February this year. This time, its remit was limited to behaviour and it was renamed the Scientific Pandemic Influenza group on Behaviour, or SPI-B.

SPI-B takes no part in discussion about which interventions are effective in dealing with the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’, or their timing. The group is tasked with providing advice on how to ‘help’ people to adhere to the interventions which government demands.

By the beginning of March, there had been three meetings of SPI-B to discuss specific topics requested by SAGE: the risk of public disorder; the use of behavioural and social interventions; and how to give guidance to people who are asked to self-isolate.

Increasing the Public’s Compliance with Social Distancing

On 22 March, in preparation for a SAGE meeting to be held the following day, SPI-B published a document (pdf, mirrored here) entitled Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures.

“What are the options for increasing adherence to the social distancing measures?”, it asks.

It considers the two social distancing measure seen to be most important at that time: general social distancing by everyone, and shielding of vulnerable people for at least 12 weeks.

There are nine “broad ways” of achieving behaviour change, they write: Education, Persuasion, Incentivisation, Coercion, Enablement, Training, Restriction, Environmental restructuring, and Modelling.

Persuasion and Coercion

The advice given by SPI-B is immediately aggressive. “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened,” they write. “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”

In other words, SPI-B recommended to SAGE that levels of fear needed to be increased in order to bring levels of compliance with so-called ‘lockdown’ up to desirable levels.

“To be effective,” they continue, “this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

Here, SPI-B is making it clear that it can’t be left to individuals to decide which actions are appropriate; they have to be told.

Another option for managing behaviour which SPI-B recommends is the harnessing of “social disapproval”.

“Social disapproval from one’s community,” they write, “can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour. However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism. It needs to be accompanied by clear messaging and promotion of strong collective identity. Consideration should be given to use of social disapproval but with a strong caveat around unwanted negative consequences.”

There is a recognition here that following this approach could result in physical harm to individuals in a community who aren’t following the same behaviours as the community as a whole.

But it should be recognised that in order to make use of disapproval, government has to get into the community in question to stir up that disapproval.

This type of cynical breaking-up of communities is not a new technique to the UK government.

During the Foot and Mouth Disease ‘epidemic’ in 2001, when the UK government slaughtered millions of farm animals unnecessarily, it made sure to minimise any organised community opposition to the “slaughtered on suspicion” policy by only compensating some of the farmers in any community. This resulted in bitterness and envy within communities, and did permanent damage.

A free media is essential

Various government ministers have expressed the view that a free media is essential. A question which immediately springs to mind is, free to do what?

In this case, what ministers evidently mean is freedom to act as a conduit for government propaganda.

In an appendix to their main recommendation, SPI-B produced a table which they entitled APEASE (Acceptability, Practicability, Effectiveness, Affordability, Spill-over effects, Equity). They describe it as an “evaluation grid for options to rapidly increase general social distancing.”

Here, they make clear how they see the role of the media: not to hold government to account, but to act as a conduit for the ‘behavioural’ message (propaganda).

They recommend that the media is used:

• to increase sense of personal threat
• to increase sense of responsibility to others
• to promote positive messaging around actions

Everyone following mainstream media since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak must surely have noticed the inflammatory language used in the mainstream press, which can have only increased the sense of personal threat felt by the general public.

Articles from the BBC, such as To snitch or not to snitch — a discussion on the pros and cons of reporting your neighbour for breaking Covid-19 guidelines — fulfil that need to “increase a sense of responsibility to others”, otherwise known as ‘social disapproval’.

It is clear, therefore, that this SAGE advice has been taken.

Why would the media cooperate in this way?

It was announced on 17 April this year that the Government and the newspaper industry have formed a three-month advertising partnership called All in, all together to help “keep the public safe and the nation united” throughout the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’.

So news media have a commercial interest in providing a propaganda service to the UK government. Indeed, it has been noticed that the government is becoming the UK media’s most important client.

SPI-B methodology

The SPI-B report was “drafted by two members of the SPI-B panel and nine further members commented, following which the report was revised.”

They offer a caveat to that:

Much of the evidence that has been drawn on is very recent and has not been subject to peer review. In some cases, the source is a SPI-B paper that involves expert opinion. This report has been put together rapidly and been subject to limited scrutiny and review.

As a result of this level of work, the population of the UK has been kept in their homes and the whole of UK industry has been shut down, resulting in the worst economic decline in 300 years.

It is extremely difficult to see how this can be viewed as anything other than a direct psychological attack on the UK population. In light of clear signs of increasing mental illness, resulting in suicide and failure to seek timely medical help, it is also difficult to see how this attack can be anything other than criminal.

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Featured image is from UK Column

This article was originally published by The Aspen Times in 2011.

Eisenhower’s legendary warning that the industrial-military complex could engender a “disastrous rise of misplaced power” has obviously come true. Notably, in the same speech, Eisenhower also advised of “equal and opposite danger.” Back in the 1960s, Ike insisted “that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” However, his second warning was hushed by the deafening silence of the mainstream media.

The following was spoken by David Rockefeller at the Bilderberger Meeting, Baden Germany, June 1991. Rockefeller has devoted his life to one world government, i.e. the New World Order (NWO). He founded the Trilateral Commission and is integral to the Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. … It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”

Later, he notes:

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure, one world if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

The primary obstacle blocking the “sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers” is a strong, democratic, sovereign America. Both cannot exist simultaneously. Therefore, our mortal enemy has been decimating America for decades, the battlefield littered with the middle class, dazed soldiers wandering in despair, jobs lost, pockets empty, homes foreclosed, dreams crushed and forced to bow to their oppressors if they travel by air. America is on the verge of losing our battle for freedom and has not yet even identified who the real enemy is.

The age-old dream of world domination is alive and well. Our real enemy are the globalists, scientific-technological elites who, as Eisenhower warned, are attempting to establish the NWO. Their primary weapons are perpetual war and central banks, i.e. the Fed which is a cartel of international bankers, including Rockefeller, who control our economy and, astoundingly, have not been audited during the 98 years they have systematically destroyed the dollar while becoming inconceivably powerful. Jefferson, Lincoln, Andrew Jackson – the list is long and distinguished – all scream as to the lethal danger of a central bank.

Never audited, until a few weeks ago, when a partial audit finally revealed some of their treachery. While America was held hostage by a phony debt ceiling debate that pretended to help resolve our annual $1.7 trillion deficit, we learned that the Fed secretly bestowed more than $16 trillion to American and foreign banks over the past three years. Two trillion dollars, more than our annual deficit, was dumped into the vaults of the Bank of America.

Ron Paul forced the audit and is the only presidential candidate campaigning against the Fed, international bankers and the NWO. Against those who are swiftly establishing and would be masters of “one world if you will.”

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The current pandemic is wreaking havoc with the US and global economy, accelerating and deepening the general economic crisis–and threatening to provoke a global financial crisis that will exacerbate the decline and usher in a great depression no doubt even worse than the 1930s. We are now somewhere between the Great Recession of 2008-09 and the depression in the 1930s in depth of contraction and duration. Today’s Great Recession 2.0 is no doubt already worse than 2008-09 and approaching (and in some already exceeding) the depression of the 1930s.

As 40 million plus of US workers find themselves unemployed and barely able to cover their rents, food and other bills, their ability to afford or even secure fundamental health care services is a growing problem. Most of the 40 million will lose their employer health insurance coverage. Millions more will be unable to afford it, or to acquire even minimal ACA or Medicaid health services.

This writer was asked the following questions by an International News Agency about what happens to health care services in the near future, given not only the health but the economic crisis.

Here’s the questions, followed by my commentary and analysis where US health care is likely going in the foreseeable future:

Question

“We’re discussing the US health insurance crisis. Millions of Americans have been hit by a double blow, being out of work and without health insurance if they get sick. Prior to the pandemic, 160 million Americans received their medical insurance through their job. The wave of layoffs triggered by quarantine measures now threatens that coverage for millions. Up to 7 million of those people are unlikely to find new insurance as poor economic conditions drag on, researchers at the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation think tanks predict. Such enormous insurance losses could dramatically alter America’s healthcare landscape, and will probably result in more deaths as people avoid unaffordable healthcare.

In this respect, we’d be happy if you could share your opinion in a short commentary on the pros and cons of Obamacare: 1. why the system failed to cope with multiple healthcare issues, 2. what prevented it from being as successful as was expected and 3. what do you think could have been an alternative, especially now, when the pandemic is ruining the already fragile healthcare system.”

My reply and commentary

Obamacare should be understood as a program that attempted to resolve the decades-long growing health care system crisis in America by means of privatization. In the early 1990s Bill Clinton’s effort to pass legislation to correct a national insurance program was defeated by massive lobbying by the healthcare industry (insurance companies, hospital chains, clinics, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, etc.). Clinton’s response was to pass what was called Health Maintenance organizations, or HMOs. But also part of his market solution was to allow insurance companies to merge with other financial institutions (previously prevented) and allow hospitals to acquire each other without anti-trust liabilities, which were exempted in this industry. A concentration of insurance and hospital chains followed. Concentration led to oligopoly and higher prices. In order to buy up each other, hospitals and insurers went to Wall St. for financing of the deals. Wall St. demanded higher profit margins, at least 22% of revenues, in order to provide the merger financing. That led to still further price increases after the mid-1990s, and insurers dropping from coverage households with pre-existing conditions. Prices rose and coverage (costs) fell. As insurance prices rose, companies providing health insurance shifted more and more of the rising cost burden to its workers in the form of higher monthly premiums, more co-pays, more deductibles. Big companies that used to provide retirement health care benefits to their workers (e.g. AT&T, IBM, etc.) began dropping those benefits. The courts supported them. Millions of retirees lost benefits, while for the still employed prices rose, as insurers expanded price increases while reducing coverage. BY 2000, 50m workers were without health insurance coverage; and those that still had it were paying higher prices for less coverage. In 2000, Clinton arbitrarily redefined what it meant to not have insurance coverage, reducing the total without health insurance from 50m to 40m. This was a repeat of what he had done to reduce poverty: he simply defined it lower, if not away.

The dynamic of health insurers and hospital chain concentration—driving oligopoly and inflation higher as coverage declined—continued in the 2000s decade under George W. Bush. More and more were dropped from coverage by insurance companies for dubious reasons like pre-existing conditions, in order to satisfy Wall St. they were attaining 22% margins as a qualification for getting loans to buy up their competitors. As insurers gouged the public and got away with it, other sectors of the health industry followed suit “to get their share” as they said. Hospitals raised prices. So then did doctors and clinics and medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies.

In 2005 the big pharma companies got a second boost from government policy. George W. Bush passed the addition to Medicare called ‘Part D’ that meant the government provided drug prescriptions in part to seniors on Medicare. The problem, however, was that the politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, did not pass any funding for Part D. The cost of the program was paid out of general tax revenues, not a specific addition to the payroll tax earmarked just for Part D. That would add $50b a year to the US budget deficit and debt every year thereafter. Big Pharma got $50B a year more customers. Big Pharma and health insurance companies are among the top 3 or 4 biggest campaign contributors and lobbyist spenders in Washington. Part D became a big subsidy program to the industry.

The economic crash of 2008-09 then exacerbated the problem of ever escalating health care costs amid falling affordability by households. On top the above secular trends driving up prices and the uninsured, cyclical collapse of the economy drove tens of millions more households into the ranks of the uninsured. A major healthcare reform package was proposed in 2010 to try to rectify this. It was called Obamacare, or officially the Affordable Care Act, or ACA.

It should be noted that the historic Democrat Party proposal for health care reform and accessibility to all since the 1930s, which was called Medicare, was not allowed even for discussion in the then Democrat controlled US House of Representatives and Senate. Medicare for seniors was passed in 1965 and the party’s platform always called for extending it to all,but when the opportunity came in 2010, Obama and his business advisers prevented it from even being discussed. Instead, Obama offered what was called the ‘public option’ in lieu of Medicare for All. The public option was simply to have the federal government offer its own competing health insurance to the private insurance companies. But the private insurance industry demanded Obama pull it from proposed legislation as a condition for their support for the legislation. Obama quickly then pulled the public option. There would be no government competitive offering—even if in the form of an insurance solution and not a Medicare for All solution. What resulted was an ACA (Obamacare) that was in effect a proposal to subsidize the health insurance industry to the tune of nearly $1 trillion a year more revenue by having the US government and states manage private health insurance offerings with certain restrictions concerning price changes and health coverage minima and guarantees. Under the ACA, pre-existing conditions requirements were ended. Students up to age 26 could now also get coverage under parents’ insurance plans. The big improvement under the ACA was expanded coverage for the working and non-working poor under the Medicaid (not Medicare) program. This is a bare bones minimal doctor and hospital access provided to the poor who could not afford an insurance plan. There are few doctors who will provide services to Medicaid patients (who are mostly single mothers with children, minorities households earning less than $20k a year, and homeless, and some students). Typically only one hospital in a county accepts Medicaid patients. But it was better than nothing. However, more than a dozen states, run by Republican governors or legislatures, refused to participate in the expansion of Medicaid benefits to the poor, mostly for ideological reasons. These were Trump ‘red states’ predominantly.

In terms of uninsured, the ACA was able to add fewer than 17m to the health coverage rolls, out of the 50 million previously uninsured. It cost the government $900B a year to add these. Not a very cost efficient solution, but one which the health insurance companies liked. As one nurse I spoke to described it, the ACA was not a health insurance reform program; it was a health insurance industry subsidy program.

The ACA was financed by an amalgam of measures that raised the money for the $900b. Among these included a tax on medical devices, a tax on private high cost and often union-negotiated health insurance plans with their employers, a 3.8% surtax on investors income, a mandate that non-insurance companies had to buy into the program if they didn’t have equivalent coverage already, a mandate that individuals had to buy into the government managed plans if they didn’t have employer coverage, and dozens of other money raising measures. Immediately, business interests opposed the taxation and mandates and organized against the ACA, not just lobbying but directly as well, including in the streets demonstrations, protests, etc. The growing right wing media, led by Fox News and right wing social media, launched a constant attack against the ACA. This was encouraged by the fact that Obama and the Democrats allowed four years of ‘commentary’ before the ACA actually took effect. Passed in 2010, the law would not become effective until 2014. In the meantime, a window was allowed for opposition to grow. Lobbyists also picked away and reduced the law as well. Over time, even after 2014, court challenges chipped away at the funding and financing of the ACA. Mandates disappeared, taxes were reduced or eliminated, and only half or so of the states actually joined up.

By the time Trump entered office, Obamacare was a shell of its even limited intent. Without a public option, private insurers could, and did, ‘game the system’. Health care coverage was reduced and, most importantly, the costs of monthly premia, co-pays, and deductibles were allowed to rise significantly. What exists today is high unaffordable private industry offerings, with extremely high deductibles. It amounts for most to only extreme disaster insurance. Those covered amount to no more than 10-15 million at best who were previously uninsured. There therefore remain at least 30 million still uninsured in the US, while the health insurance companies continue to reap at least a half trillion dollars in new revenues a year from the program.

The big failure of the ACA, as this writer forewarned back in 2010-11, was it would fail to control health care rising costs and declining coverage. And that is true as well to this day. The other problem was the willingness of Obama and corporate Democrats to scuttle the public option, and prevent any discussion of Medicare for All being far more cost efficient and beneficial to households.

Now in the wake of the near collapse and deep failure of Obamacare—which repeated the failure of all prior health care privatization solutions—overlaid on the US health care affordability and coverage (and quality of health care for most) crises is the Covid-19 health crisis. Now tens of millions more are losing their health coverage, as poor as it has proven. Mass industry layoffs will result in mass decline in health care services. And re-employment will not occur rapidly, as Trump and other media declare a V-Shape quick recovery. Job losses will continue for years. Only some will come back in 2020-21. Most won’t. Health coverage crisis will continue.

The left wing of the Democrat party has been proposing Medicare for All as the only cost effective and moral alternative solution. But corporate wing Democrats refuse to consider it. And Trumpublicans consider Medicare for All anathema and will vigorously oppose it, labeling all you advocate it as ‘socialists’. And soon the massive budget deficits now being run up to bail out businesses and investors ($3.7T this year and another $2.2T in i2021) will no doubt result after the November 2020 elections in a major drive b y business interests to cut Medicare and Medicaid in order to reduce the deficits caused by business bail outs and America’s current 2nd Great Recession underway at present.

In short, it is clear that US elites since Clinton have only envisioned private, market based solutions to the US growing and continuing health care affordability crisis. All such have failed to date, as will those that may come. Whomever wins in November—Trump or Biden—there will be no Medicare for All solution considered. (Biden, like Trump, has publicly rejected it). That means that tens of millions more American workers and families will be uninsured and do without fundamental health services as the pandemic continues in inevitable second and third waves in the coming months. Those disproportionately affected by loss of medical services, insured and not, are the working poor, single female heads of households, and black and Latino households. The ranks of the uninsured will almost certainly surge once again, and quickly, above 50m and most likely much higher. That means nothing has changed or improved for the last 25 years since Clinton’s abysmal failure at health care reform, through Obama’s failed ACA, through Trump’s virtual disregard for doing anything except to continue to ensure insurance companies are taken care of first and foremost.

Private market solutions to the healthcare crisis, past present and future, have not only failed. They are in effect a central cause of the crisis. The US spent more than $3.5 trillion a year on health care services even prior to the current pandemic. It’s now spending well over $4 trillion ! More than a $1 trillion a year was being paid to paper pushers and middlemen call the health insurance industry. Today at least $1.5T will be paid to the paper pushers who provide not one iota of health care services. The health insurance industry is giant rentier profits industry sucking money out of the economy on a massive scale. The big pharmaceuticals are a close second. They continue to do so because they continue to buy elected politicians and lobby them and the rest in between elections, in the era in America where Citizens United and other court decisions mean corporations are first class citizens and the rest of households are second class (and minority households third class). And nothing will change except for the worse after the November 2020 elections, regardless which candidate of either wing of the Corporate Party of America prevails in the election.

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The debate in the German Bundestag on the extension of the mandate of German Kosovo Force (KFOR) soldiers turned into a criticism of long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel and raised speculation that Berlin might adopt a different position on Kosovo. The opposition reminded Merkel that Germany participated in the war in Kosovo, and that KFOR, a multinational NATO “peacekeeping force” was on the same side as the terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army.” Is Germany preparing for a big turn on the issue of Kosovo?

The topic was raised by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Anton Frizen and was surprisingly joined by Alexander Neu of the leftists Die Linke. They highlighted that the idea of ​​solving the Kosovo problem through the exchange of territories was supported by the U.S.

It is significant when the most right political party in the Bundestag is finding common ground with the most left political party, as they can coordinate pressures that could change Berlin’s course on Kosovo. Any change in major foreign policy in Germany ultimately influences the EU’s position. The main challenge is that the ruling coalition of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) is dominant in the German parliament and they rule Germany in an alliance with the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The AfD is the third strongest party in the Bundestag, and Dei Linke is in fifth place.

Merkel, who has a firm position on Kosovo will soon leave office and it is not yet known who will succeed her, and whether they want to change course on this issue. However, the last debate in Germany is an indicator that there has been a reconsideration, which is even being reflected on the global level, of policy on Kosovo. It is obvious that the failure of the project for an independent Kosovo from Serbia, considered the cultural, historical and religious heartland of the Serbs, shows that political public opinion is not only changing in the U.S., but also in Europe. It also shows how problematic this kind of Kosovo is for those who created it. We now have new actors and forces on the German political scene and in the Bundestag, who are critical of Germany’s previous behavior on the issue of Kosovo and demand reconsideration.

Since Kosovo made its illegal declaration of independence in 2008, it has become a ‘smugglers paradise’ for heroin and a hub for human trafficking, organ harvesting and arms trafficking, all under the watchful eye of KFOR. As of today, 15 countries have withdrawn their recognition of Kosovo as an independent country, meaning only 50% of countries in the world recognize the illegal entity.

This event in Germany is extremely important because it is a leading country that stands on a firm position that nothing will change on the Kosovo issue and pushes for Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo with the promise of EU membership. This debate in Germany now will certainly have an impact on Berlin’s policy, but not immediately – at least not while this ruling coalition, led by Merkel, is in power. Germany will take over the presidency of the Council of the European Union in July for a 6-month period and we can see how Merkel might navigate Kosovo considering the political climate is changing.

What is worth noting however is that Germany’s leftist parties, that are usually anti-American, are now closer to Washington’s proposals for Kosovo rather than Berlin’s.  But criticism of the government from both the left and the right will raise eyebrows when the Bundestag debates whether the extension of German soldiers in KFOR is necessary.

Ruling in Berlin are the parties that were in power during the 1990’s and were direct participants in everything that happened in Kosovo and supported the destruction of Yugoslavia. Therefore, it is logical that they have not given up their position. But pressure from the fringes of German politics, but who still wield massive influence, will certainly force a debate in Berlin about changing policy on Kosovo, especially as the breakaway province continues to lose legitimacy globally.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Over 86,500 people have reportedly died in the United States from the Coronavirus, and the fear generated by those deaths is driving the public policy debate. But that number is a dramatic overcount. Our metrics include deaths that have nothing to do with the virus. The problem is even worse as the Centers for Disease Control over counts even some of these cases and the government has created financial incentives for this misreporting. Relying on these flawed numbers is destroying businesses and jobs and costing lives.

“The case definition is very simplistic,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, explains. “It means, at the time of death, it was a COVID positive diagnosis. That means, that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means, technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death.”

Medical examiners in Michigan use the same definition. In Macomb and Oakland Counties, where most of the deaths occurred, medical examiners classify any deaths as Coronavirus deaths when the postmortem test is positive. Even people who died in suicides and automobile accidents meet that definition.

Still, these broad definitions are not due to a few rogue public health officials. The rules direct them to do this. Unlike other countries,

“if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death,” as Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, recently noted.

Classifications go beyond even these broad categories. New York is classifying cases as Coronavirus deaths even when postmortem tests have been negative. Despite negative tests, classifications are based on symptoms, even though the symptoms are often very similar to those of the seasonal flu. The Centers for Disease Control guidance explicitly acknowledges the uncertainty that doctors can face. When Coronavirus cases are “suspected,” they advise doctors that “it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate.”

That isn’t just a theoretical issue. On April 21st, when New York City’s death toll rose above 10,000, the New York Times reported that the city included “3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive” – a more than 50 percent increase in the number of cases.

But the problem is worse than this broad definition implies. Birx and others believe that the CDC is over counting cases. The Washington Post reports they are concerned that the CDC’s “antiquated” accounting system is double counting cases and inflating mortality and case counts “by as much as 25 percent.”

There are additional reasons for concern. Some doctors feel pressure from hospitals to list deaths as due to the Coronavirus, even when they don’t believe that is the case, “to make it look a little bit worse than it is.” There are financial incentives that might make a difference for hospitals and doctors. The CARES Act adds a 20 percent premium for COVID-19 Medicare patients.

Incentives matter. When the government increased the disability compensation for air traffic controllers, a lot more controllers suddenly started claiming to be disabled. When unemployment insurance payments increase, more people become unemployed and stay unemployed for longer periods. When the government offers flood insurance that charges everyone the same insurance premium regardless of the risk level in their area, more people build homes in frequently flooded areas.

The Washington Post and others claim that we are undercounting the true number of deaths. They reach that conclusion by showing the total number of deaths from all causes is greater than we would normally expect from March through early May, and that this excess is actually due to deaths not being accurately labeled as due to the Coronavirus. But these are simply not normal times. Lots of people with heart and other problems aren’t going to the hospital for fear of the virus. Surgeries for many serious conditions are being put off. The stress of the situation is increasing suicides and other illnesses.

Deaths that have absolutely nothing to do with the Coronavirus count as virus deaths. Add to that claims that the CDC is double counting some of these improperly identified cases and the perverse financial incentives created by the government, and you have a real mess when crucial decisions are being made based in large part on this data.

Erroneous data unduly scare people about the risks of the disease. It keeps the country locked down longer than necessary, which destroys peoples’ lives and livelihoods in many other ways. Exaggerated fears of the virus endanger lives by keeping people from obtaining treatment for other medical problems.  It also makes it impossible to accurately compare policies across countries.

It is hard to believe that we are basing such crucial decisions on such flawed data.

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 John R. Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Dr.Timothy Craig Allen is a Governor of the College of American Pathologists and Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He is also on the Board of Directors and the Academic advisory board for the Crime Prevention Research Center. 

Featured image is from Flickr

Brexit is nothing if not exclusive and elitist. The government and Conservative party are united in contempt for the sovereignty of parliament, and the sovereignty of the people. The Remain campaign may have been one of the most vibrant and hopeful and articulate movements of recent political history but it has few friends in the establishment. And should Labour succeed in vetoing and tabling amendments to an erroneous and misguided agenda devised by the acolytes of May, the only thing we can look forward to with any certainty is that the country will be more bitterly and deeply polarised than before.

At risk of stating the obvious it is nevertheless worth reiterating that, whilst the public voted to give parliament a mandate to untether itself from the eu, nobody made an informed choice about on what terms and conditions this exit is to occur. One suspects that if all the truth were told beforehand, that the conservatives are pursuing a hard brexit that could penalise workers and small businesses, the margin of victory may have been smaller, nay, in favour of remain. Moreover, minds change. Opinion polls have repeatedly yielded results that prove people have changed their minds. People are beginning to realise a vote for brexit was not a vote against the establishment, it was only a vote of confidence in its lies.

The principle of sovereignty, in the context of parliamentary democracy, is that the government must be accountable to the representatives elected to serve the interests of the electorate. Which is precisely what is being jeopardised by the hackneyed manner in which brexit is being negotiated. As an intern for Unlock Democracy I came to understand that good policy is made when all relevant, affected parties are consulted on the content of the legislation. Bad policy is bludgeoned through before due scrutiny can be applied. Hard brexit is bad policy, and bad policy that hasn’t won a mandate in Parliament, and amongst the people.

The supreme court ruling that the government must have the approval of parliament to trigger article fifty has created an apoplectic, irrational rage from the right wing populist media, when in fact this ruling is what is needed to ensure we have a brexit that ensures people’s rights. Be not deceived in to thinking this is a transfer of power from the top down, the Conservatives will no doubt have a bonfire of legislation designed to protect workers, democracy and the environment, transferring more wealth and power upwards.

My tutor on constitutional politics replied to my observation that we aren’t a popular democracy by pointing out that people who think we are are definitely deluded. As much could be said of the press, who stoke the delusion that we are regaining popular sovereignty with Brexit. Parties may be keen to court public opinion and focus groups when they’re trying to look engaged to win a vote, but hard brexit is an exclusive, elitist brexit, which serves the establishment, and not the people.

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Have you experienced a sense of unease when witnessing a group of individuals wearing masks and/or keeping strictly two meters apart? If so, that’s good news, because it means you’re still sufficiently human to be able to respond to life’s deeper survival instincts. 

For those who don’t have an uneasy sense that something is wrong in this situation, I feel a genuine sense of concern and the strong hope that this will change – very soon. Here’s the reason why: you are being indoctrinated to allow a carefully constructed lie to direct your thinking, your behaviour and your individual powers of judgement.

For the purpose of this article, I am not going to repeat all the facts which make it quite plain to me  that the so called ‘pandemic’ given the name Coronavirus Covid-19, is most certainly not something to fear as a significant threat to health. And that the mask is a worse than useless piece of so called ‘protection’ which only serves to accentuate the fact that what it is supposed to protect against – doesn’t even exist in the form in which it is being described.

However, there is something about what this mask represents that should give rise to genuine alarm. That something, is the huge effort being made to turn what is essentially a corona virtual reality construction into a real life event. An event whose momentum is created by pressing down on the irrational fear button and keeping it down until the repetition of the preplanned indoctrination exercise has gone on long enough for the majority to believe that any other version of events must be ‘a conspiracy theory’.

This is basically where we are, ladies and gentlemen. Yet, in spite of the best efforts of our oppressors, the truth is coming out and awareness will follow-on not so far behind.  However, until such awareness forms the bedrock for a critical mass of humanity, we will go on witnessing the manifestation of the lie in all public places and in homes where individuals stick doggedly to the scripted formula they have been fed.

Here is where the uneasy feeling rises into something considerably more than just ‘uneasy’. Because what is on exhibit is an open admission of slavery to the unquestioned commands of ‘the leader of the day’; and what better symbol of such (typically unconscious) subservience than the wearing of the mask of the beast?

What better conformism to ‘the system’ is there than maintaining belief in the validity of ‘social distancing’ at two military paces from our collective brothers and sisters? What starker statement can one make concerning one’s loss of ability to recognise one is being deceived – than not to question being segmented into anti-humanitarian social isolation through a modern day act of apartheid?

If there is a pervasive sickness connected with the ‘grand covid pandemic’ it is this: the willingness of tens of millions of individuals to adopt that which is so far removed from the truth that not even those who are in charge of purveying it can make it sound like sense.

The British Prime Minister, recently attempting to explain the inexplicable rules he expects the population of Britain to conform to, sounded and looked like a man suffering from ‘cognitive dissonance’.

Think carefully about what this mask actually is. If it doesn’t have anything to do with health, what does it have something to do with?  If keeping two metres apart from fellow human beings also has nothing to do with health – and my research suggests that is indeed the case –  then what does ‘keeping distance’ actually stand for?

We know the answer, but perhaps as yet, not deeply enough to bring about the change that should result from such knowledge. So I am going to say it again, in the hopes that those who have not recognised the reality of the trick being perpetrated on us – hold onto this truth – and do not waver or fall due to the insidious levels of brainwashing being directed at dominating our psyches.

The mask is a statement. A statement of conformity. Conformity with a plan to destroy humanity – and by extension – the living environment and the overall aspiration to spiritual evolution which is innate in all life forms. Symbolically and actually, the covering of the nose and mouth with a mask is an expression of ‘secrecy’, ‘subversion’, ‘disguise’ and ‘undercover operations’.

The mass wearing of such masks (with the exception of doctors/medical practitioners) becomes a conformist identity symbol “I see, he/she is also wearing a mask, so they are one of us, we who agree to follow the regulations, to obey the rules and to behave in a politically correct manner. In this way we will be seen to be upstanding members of the community – and normal individuals.”

To be ‘normal’ is a treasured status within 21^st century urban/suburban communities and beyond. There is a terrible fear of being seen to be ‘different’ and thereby ‘not normal’.

But to fear being different more than to fear being a slave, is a truly terrible sickness. Far worse than that being framed as Coronavirus. One for which the only cure may be a bang on the door by the stasi police who have come to remove such a ‘normal individual’  from his/her home – with worse to follow – if that person still fails to raise a finger of self defence for fear of ‘disobeying the law’.

We must break the chains of such paralysing conformity. A conformity historically epitomised by mass obeisance to the Nazi regime in World War Two Germany. Stand up – anyone who fails to recognise that such a time bears a sinister similarity to the in-your- face rampant top-down usurpation of power going-on today, under the excuse that it is ‘necessary’ to prevent the spread of some sort of fake pandemic.

At a time like this, we must make visible statements of our belief in fundamental life values. Where there are occasions being advertised in which peaceful collective assembly in stated places/locations is the objective – be at those events – and demonstrate ‘en masse’ that it is we the people who rightfully hold the destiny of this planet in our hands and NOT the control system which has usurped those powers. Then go home and continue to act on your freshly resurrected sense of self belief.

Anyone still passively allowing the state/corporate alliance to manufacture their lives for them at this point in time – is not worthy of the title ‘human’.

Dear friends, let us rebel from our own susceptibility to fall prey to indoctrination, of any kind. Let us refuse to allow ourselves to take the easy way out! Let us disabuse ourselves of obeisance to the absurd social distancing commandments emanating from The World Health Organisation and passed down to us by a cohort of puppet dictators styling themselves as bona fide representatives of the Ministry of Truth.

Anyone who has warmth in their heart knows instinctively that people need each other and need to be close to each other – especially in times of stress and hardship. They know that to impose ‘distancing’ has nothing to do with preserving the health of the nation – and everything to do with preserving the top down divide and conquer programme of the fascist dream. 

This is where civil disobedience becomes our primary and most effective tool of resistance. Let us not delay putting it into effect.

Over the next few weeks, months and years, we are going participate in one of the most moving uprisings this world has ever known. Literally millions of us are going to step out of our psychological imprisonment and declare ourselves sovereign independent human beings who do not consent to a life of squalid serfdom.

So uplifting will this great rising be that deluded enforcement bodies – attempting to exercise some form of illegal arrest or restraining coercion upon us – will shrink back into the night from whence they came – and quite simply fail to achieve their sickly mission.

This is the future I clearly see ahead – and because I see it I believe you do too – and if you do, I do and we all do,it will happen. All it takes is a sprinkling of courage and a pinch of passion – stirred well into the natural heart led instinct that favours life over death – and we’re away – unstoppable forces for the great emancipation of humanity!

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

US President Donald J. Trump took time from his domestic fight of battling COVID-19 single-handedly and with one arm tied behind his back to set fire to Syrian wheat fields in Hasakah governate. He performed the ritual of the double-war crime — torching farmland and illegal bombing of a foreign nation — on the Christian sabbath.

Deuteronomy 20:19 prohibits the destruction of that which yields food, even during times of war.

War against Syria has not been declared; Trump has engaged in a secular war crime and has spat upon a biblical commandment.

The Trump regime American illegals in the SAR dropped several incendiary bombs on the wheat farmlands “in the countryside of Shaddadi, south of Hasakah,” destroying more than 200 dunams (around 50 acres) of Syrian wheat crops, local sources told SANA reporter.

An illicit US Apache helicopter “flying close to the ground” dropped several thermal balloons onto the wheat fields. Despite its cute name, these are small bombs, equipped to function as large Molotov cocktails (those watching the success of Operation Mockingbird may notice that the joy of children playing with balloons has been put on the list of fun things to be expunged, because of environmental issues, yet those with their minds in chains do not notice demonic bombs used to destroy the sustenance of life — wheat fields — merrily get to use the word, “balloon.”

American Apache helicopter. Imagine a foreign military using their helicopters to destroy food. [Photo credit Tech. Sgt. Andy Dunaway.]

Trump illegals in their military aircraft have also engaged in psychological warfare operations against Syrian civilians and farmers in this region, sadistically and war criminally approaching people’s homes and farmlands, terrifying Syrian children, as part of a Satanic plot to ethnically cleanse this area of Syria, and replace indigenous Syrians with an assortment of Madman Erdogan mercenary terrorists, and Obama-created and Trump accelerated cannon fodder traitor separatists re-marketed as the SDF. The NATO klansmen running the United Nations — and their House Servants — are 100% on board with this ethnic cleansing, which is a war crime, using the coronavirus pandemic as “health terrorism” against the Syrian Arab Republic.

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Corporate media are laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check.

The Washington Post (4/23/20) ran an article by Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, the second sentence of which said, “The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that, to a great degree, our very health is in Chinese hands; from medicines to masks, we are at Beijing’s mercy.” America, in this conception, is under Chinese domination, a tyranny that’s evidently imposed not only by the Chinese government, but by Chinese people generally.

Details like the US having more than 21 times as many nuclear warheads as China, or the fact that it’s the US dollar and not the Chinese yuan that underpins the global financial system, do not enter into consideration. Instead, because the US imports a great many goods made in China, Romney urged readers to understand China as Americans’ oppressors, who implicitly must be resisted.

Romney warned his audience that China has a “grand strategy for economic, military and geopolitical domination” and thus “The West” must “respon[d]” with “a unified strategy among free nations to counter China’s trade predation and its corruption of our mutual security.”

He said China is conducting an “alarming military build-up.” Sure, the available evidence indicates that the US spends almost three times what China does on its war apparatus, but “Americans should not take comfort in our disproportionately large military budget,” Romney cautioned, because, supposedly, “China’s annual procurement of military hardware is nearly identical to ours,” though few know about this “outside classified settings.”

Then he revealed China’s supposed threat to America’s “security”: “Because our military has missions around the world, this means that in the Pacific, where China concentrates its firepower, it will have military superiority.” In other words, China is a danger because it “concentrates its firepower” in the ocean nearest to it, while the US’s divine right to empirerequires that its military saturate the globe.

The senator argued that “action should be applied in national security sectors” such as phone technology and medicine, and that “the free nations must collectively agree that we will buy these products only from other free nations” as part of a plan to “protect…our security.”

The idea that China is a threat to Americans’ security is baseless: China hasn’t threatened to attack America, while the US has a massive military presence in the Asia/Pacific region. The Pentagon, with bipartisan support, wants to engorge that menace with a $20 billion budget increase, and with offensive weaponry such as land-based Tomahawk cruise missiles that had been banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty until the US abrogated the deal. China, meanwhile, has no military installations anywhere close to the United States.

Romney repeatedly called on “free nations,” a grouping in which he included the US, to take on China. In doing so, he cast the potential conflict as a civilizational battle between freedom and dictatorship—that the US has the highest prison population per capita on Earth does not trouble the senator’s framework.

Romney also referred to China or its economic practices as a “predator,” “predatory,” or “predation” eight times, making the US and its allies the supposed prey. “Today,” Romney wrote, “Beijing’s weapon of choice is economic: The tip of its spear is global industrial predation.” China is “a predator, unbound by the rules followed by its competitors,” so “when the immediate health crisis has passed, the United States should convene like-minded nations to develop a common strategy aimed at dissuading China from pursuing its predatory path.” Romney is propagating a timeworn worldview in which deceitful, barbaric Orientals take advantage of innocent, rule-abiding Americans whose businesses never break laws or do anything that could be viewed as predatory.

The Washington Post’s George Will (4/29/20) likewise said that it’s necessary to “stand up to China,” advocating that the US adopt “a policy of national strength” toward the country. This is the language of war, suggesting that China presents a danger to the US that has to be met with American might.

Will encouraged presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to “practice what he preaches about bipartisanship by associating himself” with far-right Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s “measured but insistent support for an investigation into the possible role of a Wuhan, China, research laboratory in the coronavirus outbreak.” By endorsing the racist, warmongering senator’s proposed inquiry, Will is mainstreaming an extremely dubious conspiracy theory (Grayzone, 4/20/20) alleging that Covid-19 is a Chinese biological weapon unleashed, perhaps unintentionally, from a research lab in Wuhan.

Will also seemed to endorse Cotton’s

question[ing] of the visas for people from China to pursue postgraduate studies here in advanced science and technology fields: If Chinese students want to study “Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, that’s what they need to learn from America. They don’t need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America.”

At the very least, Will amplified and declined to question the notion that Chinese students doing graduate scientific research in America should be viewed with suspicion, implicitly because they might be engaged in piracy or espionage on behalf of the Chinese government, though no evidence is offered for this accusation. It’s a perspective that imagines that the wealthiest, most populous country on Earth might somehow be kept away from advanced technology—though in the long run, the US has more to gain from Chinese research than the other way around (CounterSpin, 5/24/19).

Canada’s Financial Post (5/4/20) went a step further, saying that “China Must Be Brought to Heel,” animalizing language that hearkens back to when Western powers actually did dominate China, and treated the nation to such delights as the Opium Wars (London Review of Books, 11/3/11).

A Fox News article (5/4/20) went full fire and brimstone, calling for the US “to avenge [the] deaths of hundreds of thousands” that have been caused by Covid-19. Another Fox article (5/4/20) said it’s necessary to “hold China accountable” for the harm the coronavirus has caused, applauding Missouri’s lawsuit against the country without noting one minor detail: US courts have no jurisdiction to sue China (Reuters, 4/21/20). Another notable barrier to US media revenge fantasies is that the US and China have the world’s largest bilateral trade relationship, something that the US is hardly in a position to break away from, with China’s economy mostly up and running and the US’s largely offline.

Similarly, the Boston Herald’s Joe Battenfeld (4/14/20) contended that “Trump[’s] Move to Hold China [and the] World Health Organization Accountable [Was] Long Overdue,” a reference to Trump suspending funding to the UN’s main infectious disease-fighting body. WHO gets 15% of its budget from the US; Battenfeld himself acknowledges that withdrawing this “could [incapacitate] the agency’s healthcare initiatives”; in other words, undermining global health during a worldwide pandemic is a good way to teach China a lesson.

The author also endorsed the US “impos[ing] sanctions on China for its role in the spread of the coronavirus,” the type of economic warfare the US is waging against several countries, causing untold death and misery (Jacobin, 3/26/20). Given the fact that China’s largely Covid-free economy is likely to be in far stronger shape than the US’s for the foreseeable future, however, it’s doubtful that Washington will be in any position to impose sanctions on Beijing.

Further problems abound with the idea that the Chinese bad guys have to be punished for Covid-19 by the American good guys. As historian Vijay Prashad (People’s Dispatch, 4/23/20) demonstrated, the narrative of a Chinese-WHO coronavirus cover-up is itself profoundly flawed. And it’s hard to see how China is to blame for the US’s dismal response to the pandemic, which has been characterized by moves like the rejection of a coronavirus test approved by the WHO in January in favor of a test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that wasn’t dispatched until February, and some of which didn’t work properly once they were (Washington Post, 4/18/20).

Corporate media distortions and bombast are priming the American public to see China as a treacherous villain that has to be forcefully confronted, perhaps with violence. Presenting China—and Chinese people—as a threat to the United States and its people is that much more reckless at a moment when there is an “alarming surge in anti-Asian racism related to Covid-19” (NBC, 4/16/20). But such considerations don’t trouble those who are in the business of ginning up the hatred necessary for a new cold war.

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Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

Featured image is from FAIR/WaPo

While Western and Europeans and Asians race to find vaccines for coronavirus, Africa can no longer wait for that scientific discovery that experts have said it would, most probably, be ready in a year or two. Some experts have argued that coronavirus would never disappear, but rather becomes endemic.

Indeed, the crisis has put the global science to practical test. Every individual country is busy fighting the pandemic in its own way, trying to make sure that it gains from the crisis. As the virus persistently sweeps across the world, southern African island of Madagascar seems desirous with an initiative to tap into its local herbal science to produce COVID-Organics to save human lives.

Madagascar, a southern African island in the Indian Ocean, has found an alternative to fight the fast spreading coronavirus, beginning on experimental basis and with a rudimentary approach at home. With increasing number of coronavirus, Madagascar is steadily depending on its natural resources to help Africa. As a result of the island’s isolation, Madagascar is home to various unexploited plants found nowhere else on Earth. Many native plant species are used as herbal remedies for a variety of afflictions.

On April 21, the President of Madagascar Andry Rajoelina officially launched a local herbal remedy claimed to prevent and cure the novel coronavirus. The drink is simply called COVID-Organics and is derived from Artemisia – a plant with proven efficacy in malaria treatment.

During an African Union meeting late last month, he stressed the importance of the herbal cure – a variant of which prevents the virus, while another cures it. Speaking to colleague heads of state with a bottle of COVID-Organics on his table, he reiterated the viability of the herbal cure.

“There are two treatment protocols (curative and preventive). The state of health of COVID-19 patients who took Tambavy CVO CovidOrganics improved after 7 days and fully recovered after 10 days. These patients have taken no other product than COVID-Organics,” Rajoelina said.

In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24 and RFI, Rajoelina defended his promotion of a controversial homegrown remedy for COVID-19, stressing that COVID-Organics works really well. He further claimed that if a European country had discovered the remedy, people would not be so skeptical.

“What if this remedy had been discovered by a European country, instead of Madagascar? Would people doubt it so much? I don’t think so,” the president told FRANCE 24’s Marc Perelman and RFI’s Christophe Boisbouvier.

“What is the problem with COVID-Organics, really? Could it be that this product comes from Africa? Could it be that it’s not OK for a country like Madagascar, which is the 63rd poorest country in the world… to have come up with (this formula) that can help save the world?” asked Rajoelina, who claims the infusion cures patients within ten days.

“No one will stop us from moving forward – not a country, not an organization,” Rajoelina said in response to the WHO’s concerns, and added the proof of the tonic’s efficacy was in the “healing” of “our patients”, calling it a “preventive and curative remedy,” according to the report.

In a similar argument, Dr. Charles Andrianjara, Malagasy Institute of Applied Research (IMRA) Director General pointed out straight “COVID-Organics will be used as prophylaxis that is for prevention, but clinical observations have shown a trend towards its effectiveness in curative treatment.”

In a response to an email media query, an official at the presidency wrote:

“We are committed to taking the traditional therapies through the same clinical trials as other medication. It’s about time to participate and not only observe. As the opportunity emerges, we have the resources to use as a remedy against coronavirus, and to save lives. We need to think how to use it productively and profitably now.”

The global scientific community has become curious. Scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute in Potsdam are among a group of researchers from Germany and Denmark collaborating with the United States company, ArtemiLife, to explore whether the Artemisia plant can really be used against the coronavirus. “It is the first study in which scientists are investigating the function of these plant substances in connection with COVID-19,” the Head of the Study Group, Peter Seeberger, said in an interview with DW.

On April 28, while in a video conference with Foreign Ministers from Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa, the Indian Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar noted that the pandemic not only poses a great risk to the health and well-being of humanity but also severely impacts on the global economy.

According to Jaishankar, India is providing pharma assistance to nearly 85 countries, including many countries in Africa, to support their response to the pandemic, and emphasized the need to provide support to businesses, especially small and medium scale enterprises, and the efficacy of traditional medicine systems.

Chinese are highly sensitive to opportunities, leverage indiscriminately to almost all sectors in Africa. Now China is showing interest in adopting and collaborating with Madagascar’s herbal initiative. China has already promised to scale up its assistance to Africa by creating a health care initiative that allow African countries to access funds to address challenges in the healthcare delivery. It plans to build the headquarters of the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

One area that presents the world with opportunity, and has be explored in the search for treatment is the field of herbal medicine. So far, many countries are adopting supportive care and non-specific treatment options to relieve patient symptoms. Chinese traditional medical practices in China and herbal preparation from Madagascar raise hopes for COVID-19. The potential here gives credence for consideration as traditional and herbal remedy for COVID- 19, argued Justice Ray Prah from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

Madagascar’s scientific initiative has drawn wide criticisms, instead of encouragement and support. The World Health Organization (WHO), established to monitor and tackle global health problems, research for innovative ways to ensure health of people, was rather the first to punch Madagascar. It warns on its website that there is “no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 can be prevented or treated with products made from Artemisia-based plant material.” The officials explained that the local African brew safety and effectiveness have not been assessed internationally, nor has any data from trials been published in peer-reviewed studies. Mainstream scientists have warned of the potential risk from consumption of untested herbal brews.

The African Union (AU), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have also made similar claims and said they would only support and endorse products that proved effective through scientific study. But, the African Union, all African Governments and Regional Organizations have to get committed to taking “traditional therapies” through the same clinical trials as any other medication. It is worth to say that it is necessary to make collective or continental efforts toward finding a remedy against coronavirus.

African leaders have to understand that an effective COVID-19 vaccine, if it ever arrives, has to be treated as a public good for the whole of the global society, but at a cost not as a humanitarian aid. Acknowledging that profit-motivated global monopolies and market speculators in the health sector will nevertheless use the chance to their advantage. The combination of national self-interest and pressure for the pharmaceutical industry to make a profit is already triggering a geopolitical bust up over who actually gets access to the vaccine first.

Several media reports said an increasing number of African countries are opting for the COVID-Organics. About 10 African leaders have, already ordered for it since its launch in April. The countries include Chad, Comoros Islands, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Togo and United Republic of Tanzania.

With COVID-19, Africa has to explore its own resources. African countries and the African Union (AU) have to reinforce scientific cooperation among its member states so that the continent can be ready for quick and concerted efforts to deal with unexpected health crises such as coronavirus, recently argued Dr Aminata Touré, former Prime Minister of Senegal and currently President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council in Dakar, Senegal.

It is certainly too soon to draw some lessons on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic since it continues to dramatically affect significant segments of the world population and still remains a puzzle, an enigma for the world scientific community. Some African governments, at different levels, have mobilized their resources and expertise, elaborated innovative strategies and carried out bold and strategies to contain the spread of the coronavirus, she explained.

“The African Union has to reinforce the scientific cooperation among its member states in order to ensure our common health sovereignty. This is urgent today, to put in place a genuine scientific partnership between our African universities so that we can identify anticipatory and preventive therapeutic and pharmaceutical solutions to human suffering. We must actively encourage the African scientific diaspora to build solid cooperation, exchange network systems with our counterparts from the continent in order to build African centers of research and laboratory excellence,” suggested Touré.

Touré explicitly concluded that only these would be capable of helping to inspire widely recognized African initiatives on the cutting edge of research and development for medicinal and vaccine cures. This is the true path to health sovereignty.

Nearly a quarter of a billion people across Africa will catch coronavirus during the first year of the pandemic, the World Health Organization has said in a new study published in the British Medical Journal. The study further warns that 190,000 Africans could die of COVID-19 in the first 12 months of the pandemic unless urgent action is taken.

According to the latest figures from the WHO, Africa has more than 60,000 cases of COVID-19, which implies that Africa has been spared the worst of the pandemic. Experts say that the low number of tests in Africa is certainly hiding the true scale of the crisis. The African countries most affected by the pandemic included South Africa and Maghreb countries of Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. Ghana and Nigeria have disturbing infected numbers in West Africa.

Thirty-five (35) African countries have each recorded less than a thousand cases. Eritrea is among a handful of African countries that have not recorded deaths as of May 15, others are Madagascar, Central Africa Republic, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Lesotho, Rwanda and Uganda. Mauritius declared total recoveries (332) from coronavirus infections (332) as of May 11.

Madagascar reported no deaths. Out 238 cases, it claimed 126 active and 112 have recovered. Madagascar’s natural resources include a variety of agricultural and mineral products. Its major health infrastructure, in poor conditions, similar to many African countries. Madagascar, located in southern Africa, has 26.3 million population and belongs to the group of least developed countries, according to the United Nations. It is a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union (AU).

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There’s a growing consensus among Russia’s leading experts that International Relations are increasingly characterized by what they’ve termed the “new bipolarity” that’s emerging out of World War C, and it’s within this global context that the continued improvement of Russian-Pakistani relations can ensure that Moscow is able to fulfill its grand strategy of becoming the supreme “balancing” force in Eurasia.

Even during a major public health crisis compounded by economic collapse — a domestic perfect storm — the Trump regime continues waging war on China by other means, including its blame game, wanting Beijing held responsible for its own failures.

There’s no end of what’s going on in prospect. The harsher unacceptable US policies become, the greater the negative blowback.

Last May, the Trump regime blacklisted Chinese tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates from the US market on the phony pretext of preventing the company from “potentially undermin(ing) US national security.”

At stake is the race to roll out 5G technology in Western and world markets, Huawei way ahead of competitors.

Trillions of dollars of economic value are up for grabs. The Trump regime wants imports of Chinese tech products restricted or blocked.

Trump also banned US companies from using information and communications technology from any source his regime calls a threat to US national security.

US tech companies Intel, Google, Qualcomm and others suspended sales to Huawei.

Last year, Beijing warned US tech companies they’ll face “dire consequences” if they comply with the Trump regime’s ban to cut Huawei out of the global supply chain.

On Friday, Trump’s Commerce Department imposed further restrictions on the company, banning sales of US software and technology used to develop and produce semiconductors.

The new move aims to prevent Huawei from obtaining US technology from domestic and offshore sources that incorporate technology from US firms, wanting Huawei cut off from US high tech products to produce its own and compete with corporate America effectively.

Separately, Trump’s Commerce Department said it’ll extend a temporary license that lets US tech companies sell certain non-critical products to Huawei for another 90 days through late August — for the last time.

At the same time, the Trump regime has been pressuring other countries to cut off normal business relations with Huawei with limited results at best.

Germany, Britain and other nations value access to Huawei’s technology.

In response to the Trump regime’s tightened restrictions, China’s Foreign Ministry denounced what it called the destruction of “global manufacturing, supply and value chains,” adding:

Beijing “firmly uphold(s) Chinese firms’ legitimate and legal rights and interests.”

“We urge the US side to immediately stop its unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises.”

The only language the US understands is toughness. Urging and diplomatic efforts accomplish nothing.

According to China’s Global Times, citing an unnamed government source, Beijing will target Apple, Qualcomm, Cisco and Boeing in retaliation against the latest hostile Trump regime action.

These and other US companies may be added to China’s “unreliable entity list,” their activities to be investigated, purchases of their products perhaps suspended, no action taken so far.

US war on China by other means risks rupturing relations if things go too far.

A far greater risk is direct confrontation between two nations able to smash each other destructively.

China seeks cooperative relations with other countries, confrontation with none.

If the US pushes things too far, Beijing will do whatever it takes to defend its sovereign rights and security.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from CGTN

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Guaido Was the ‘Commander in Chief’ of the Failed Mercenary Operation Against Venezuela

By Patricio Zamorano, May 18, 2020

This more complete document confirms what the mercenary and head of SilverCorp, Inc., Jordan Goudreau, had already revealed to the media: the agreement was aimed at “planning and executing an operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro (heretoafter “Primary Objective”) remove the current Regime and install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaido.”

Britain Warned Against ‘Coup-mongering’ in Venezuela After Embassy Discovery

By Steve Sweeney, May 18, 2020

Venezuela has warned Britain against “coup-mongering” after the discovery of a “Venezuelan reconstruction unit” in the Foreign Office.

Demanding an urgent explanation, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreeazalodged a formal complaint with ambassador Duncan Hill, who the minister said confirmed the existence of the unit and “tried to justify the unjustifiable.”

Ottawa’s Ties with Far Right Colombian President Undermines Human Rights Rhetoric Regarding Venezuela

By Yves Engler, May 18, 2020

Still, the leader of the invasion Jordan Goudreau, a veteran of the Canadian military and US special forces, has been remarkably forthright about the involvement of opposition figure Juan Guaidó. A leaked contract between Guaidó’s representative in Florida and Goudreau’s Silvercorp USA describes plans for a multi month occupation force, which after ousting Maduro would “convert to a National Asset Unit that will act under the direction of the [Guaidó] Administration to counter threats to government stability, terror threats and work closely” with other armed forces. Apparently, Goudreau was hoping for a big payday from Venezuela’s opposition. He also had his eyes on the $15 millionbounty Washington put up in March for Maduro’s capture as well as tens of millions dollars for other members of the government.

Canadians Must Ask Questions About the Mercenary Raid on Venezuela

By Nino Pagliccia, May 15, 2020

Details of the failed armed mercenary incursion on Venezuela are surfacing daily thanks to the prompt public information system from Venezuela and scant corporate media reports. The so-called Operation Gideon took off from Colombia on May 3 and was effectively disbanded a few hours later by the prompt action of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) and the Bolivarian National Police’s Special Actions Force (FAES) with substantial help from the civilian population that helped in the capture of mercenaries. At this point about 46 mercenaries, out of an estimated total of 60, have been captured. The search for the others is ongoing.

Revealed: Secretive British Unit Planning for ‘Reconstruction’ of Venezuela

By John McEvoy, May 14, 2020

Over the past 16 months, the UK government has consistently supported Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó’s attempts to topple the elected government of president Nicolás Maduro.

In late January 2019, for example, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) urged the Bank of England to grant Guaidó access to £1.2bn of Venezuelan gold reserves.

The Department for International Development (DFID) has also pledged some £40m of ‘humanitarian assistance’ to Venezuela, but it has refused to reveal where this assistance is going.

US Imperialism’s Decomposition Accelerates: Outsourcing ‘Regime Change’. Mercenary Incursions into Venezuela

By Francisco Dominguez, May 14, 2020

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

Canada and the Coup Attempt Against Venezuela

By Arnold August, May 14, 2020

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

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The misnamed Federal Reserve isn’t federal. It’s owned and controlled by major Wall Street banks.

It serves their interests at the expense of sound economic policy, ignoring its congressional mandate to “promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, (low inflation), and moderate long term interest rates.”

The Fed transformed monetary policy into a tool for elevating stock prices to more greatly enrich America’s privileged class at the expense of protracted Depression conditions, high unemployment, and far greater underemployment throughout most of the new millennium.

Its mismanagement is greatly exacerbated by the current economic collapse, a likely protracted economic death cycle for most Americans.

Tens of millions are unemployed. Millions with jobs are working reduced hours for poverty-level pay and few or no benefits.

Countless millions lost healthcare coverage at a time when it’s most needed.

GDP, retail sales, industrial production, unemployment, and other economic data plunged to record low levels while food prices are surging — risking a 2nd epidemic of hunger and malnutrition.

Real unemployment isn’t the phony Labor Department’s 14.7%.

When calculated according to its pre-1990 model, it’s 39.6% and rising, according to economist John Williams.

By comparison, unemployment during the depths of the Great Depression was around 25%.

Noted Wall Street analyst Jeremy Grantham earlier slammed what he called “ruinous” Fed policymaking, saying:

“If I were a benevolent dictator, I would strip the Fed of its” wrongheaded policymaking, “limit(ing) its meddling to attempting to manage inflation,” adding:

“I would limit (Fed) activities to making sure that the economy had a suitable amount of liquidity to function normally – a Goldilocks formula, not too hot, not too cold, just right.”

“I would force it to swear off manipulating asset prices through artificially low rates and asymmetric promises of help in tough times” — the so-called Fed put, believing its policymaking will  reverse stock prices if fall too far.

The so-called Reagan era-established Plunge Protection Team operates by manipulating stock, bond, commodity, and currency markets.

There’s nothing random about market movements, one of many Wall Street myths.

Grantham also explained that abnormally low interest rates for protracted periods encourage destabilizing speculation, adding:

Fed governors know that “low rates and moral hazard encourage higher asset prices and increased speculation, heading, when unchecked, to bad endings,” small investors and ordinary people hurt most.

Policies of Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and now Powell elevated markets to unsustainable bubble levels.

Artificially low interest rates like now also transfer wealth from savers and retirees to corporate America and high-net-worth individuals.

Quantitative easing has nothing to do with reviving economic growth — everything to do with providing investors with low-cost or near-free money for speculation.

It lets corporations buy back shares to artificially elevate their valuations.

Despite decades of Fed policy errors, it failed to learn from its mistakes and correct them.

It’s more off-the-rails under Powell than his predecessors, handing trillions of dollars of virtual free money to Wall Street banks and other corporate favorites at a time when policymaking should focus like a laser on helping ordinary Americans by creating jobs and reviving economic growth.

Instead, neoliberal slow-motion train wreck Fed, White House, and congressional policies keep worsening conditions at a time when vital aid is needed for most Americans.

Instead of contributing to the solution, the Fed is a key part of the problem.

Even the late free market economist Milton Friedman called for abolishing the Fed, saying:

It has a “very poor record, and it’s done more harm than good” by creating financial crises.

“We don’t need the Fed,” he said, adding:

“I have for many years been in favor of replacing the Fed with a computer (that) would print out a specified number of paper dollars” to augment the money supply — the “same number, month after month, week after week, year after year.”

“The Fed has had very few periods of relatively good performance. For most of its history, it’s been a loose cannon on the deck, and not a source of stability.”

“I do not believe the Fed ought to let its monetary policy be determined by the stock market.”

“The Fed ought to devote its attention solely to keeping a relatively stable price level of goods and services” and working for full employment.

Since established in 1913 by federal law at the behest of monied interests, time and again the Fed failed to achieve its mandated obligations.

Sunday on CBS News 60 Minutes, Fed chairman Jerome Powell was interviewed.

Instead of apologizing for failed policies and vowing to change his wasy for the betterment of the economy and ordinary Americans, he falsely blamed dire economic conditions on COVID-19.

He ignored the longtime house of cards US economy. If coronavirus didn’t trigger collapse, it would have been something else — notably because of Fed mismanagement.

He maintained the myth that “the the economy…can start getting better fairly soon,” ignoring its rotting underbelly because of wrongheaded Fed, congressional, and executive branch policymaking.

Rome burns while he, Trump, and congressional leaders pretend otherwise.

At the same time, Powell admitted that recovery “could stretch through the end of next year. We really don’t know.”

He failed to explain that since economic collapse began this year, over 100,000 US small and medium-sized business shut down permanently, millions of jobs gone, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study.

He largely ignored record high plunges of key economic data, notably unemployment that way exceeds the worst of the Great Depression with no near-term prospect for turning things around.

If a second coronavirus outbreak occurs, all bets are off. It could be worse than what’s ongoing, perhaps lasting well into next year or longer — exacerbating a collapsed economy and human misery more greatly than already.

Throughout the 60 Minutes interview, Fed mismanagement was ignored, Powell’s feet not held to the fire.

Nor were the economically harmful policies of his most recent predecessors.

Instead of challenging Powell’s false claim that millions of Americans were only laid off “temporarily,” the deception wasn’t corrected.

Nor was his projected max 20 – 25% unemployment challenged when it’s already near-40%.

Powell also deceptively claimed that “we had a very healthy economy two months ago” — ignoring its house of cards status, a bubble economy burst by a public health crisis.

A litany of misinformation and disinformation was offered viewers throughout the interview.

At no time was Powell’s feet held to the fire.

Nor was anything said about how Wall Street manipulators transformed America into an unprecedented money making racket, facilitated by government collusion at the highest federal, state and local levels — at the expense of the general welfare.

Notably since the neoliberal 90s, ordinary Americans have been scammed of their savings, jobs, homes, and futures to let privileged elites get richer and more powerful.

Money power runs America and the world. The Wall Street owned Fed does it by controlling money, credit and debt, along with manipulating markets for corporate and private enrichment without oversight or supervision.

Fed money printing madness defrauds the public, instead of constructively sustaining prosperous, inflation-free, growth that colonial America enjoyed for a generation — long before the Fed existed.

Markets today work by manipulating them for special interests to profit hugely at the expense of an economy that works for all Americans.

None of the above was discussed during the CBS interview with Powell.

Like most everything aired and published by establishment media on major issues, Sunday’s broadcast was a exercise in mass deception.

Viewers were left uninformed about the economy’s dismal state that’s likely to sustain harder than ever harm times for the vast majority of Americans longterm.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

More than 250 global artists and writers including rocker Peter Gabriel, director Ken Loach and actor Viggo Mortensen have appealed to Israel to stop the “siege” of Gaza.

The coronavirus epidemic could have a devastating effect in “the world’s largest open-air prison”, the artists said in an online letter.

“Long before the global outbreak of COVID-19 threatened to overwhelm the already devastated healthcare system in Gaza, the UN had predicted that the blockaded coastal strip would be unliveable by 2020,” the letter said.

“With the pandemic, Gaza’s almost two million inhabitants, predominantly refugees, face a mortal threat in the world’s largest open-air prison,” it added.

Other signatories included poet Taha Adnan, Canadian writer Naomi Klein and British group Massive Attack.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 when the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the enclave.

Israel argues the measures are necessary to isolate Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by most Western countries.

It says that restrictions on some imports to the coastal strip are designed to deny Hamas materials that could be used to enhance its fighting capabilities.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the group took control of the enclave, but reached a tentative truce in late 2018 that was renewed after successive flare-ups last year.

The Gaza Strip also borders Egypt, which severely restricts movement in and out of the territory.

“Well before the ongoing crisis, Gaza’s hospitals were already stretched to breaking point through lack of essential resources denied by Israel’s siege. Its healthcare system could not cope with the thousands of gunshot wounds, leading to many amputations,“ the artists said.

“Reports of the first cases of coronavirus in densely-populated Gaza are therefore deeply disturbing,“ they said.

“We back Amnesty International’s call on all world governments to impose a military embargo on Israel until it fully complies with its obligations under international law.“

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Source is AFP

The national Covid strategy managed by the government is now in disarray. The mood in Tory HQ is migrating away from its beloved Brexit leader. The mainstream media are now causing confusion, the country is heading towards chaos.

What is the general public supposed to believe when one mainstream newspaper reports that Covid cases are plunging and another says it’s going in the opposite direction. Another says hospital cases (in the wards) are falling, another says the infection rate (testing) is rising. One reports that Britain is open for business, another reports the second wave will do just as much damage as the first?

The children’s commissioner says the unions should stop squabbling and teachers should get back to work, the British Medical Association has backed the unions and said it’s too dangerous.

All of this reporting is just one day on the front pages.

For the time being, the general public is on the side of the government. The latest voting intentions (CantarPublic) put the Tories at 51 per cent (down 3 points) and Labour at 32 per cent (plus 4 points). Saving jobs and businesses have been widely recognised that without government intervention, ten million people would now be fully unemployed and one million companies would have gone bankrupt. This is, in fact, the number of people out of work right now and the number of businesses that have applied for government loans to save them from collapse.

The entire railway in Britain system has been effectively nationalised. Transport for London has just gone bust and also been nationalised. I hear that members of the TFL board have even been removed and government officials are in charge. Sadiq Khan is blaming the government when in reality TFL was already in big trouble before the pandemic hit Britain.

We are told by the government that the peak of Covid infections and deaths in Britain has been reached and we’re on the way down. And yet, we now hear that the government is expecting a brutal second wave and ordered funeral directors to prepare for 100,000 dead in the autumn.

We are told that deaths from Covid are just over 30,000 when the evidence is there that over 60,000 (Financial Times) have died so far.

We are told by the government that arrivals to airports and ports in Britain will require a 14 day period of quarantine (BBC) – and then told that is not the case (BBC).

We are told the virus will be ‘wiped out’ within weeks in London (The Sun) and yet the infection rate will now increase within weeks (ITV).

Boris Johnson clearly stated to parliament that his government moved swiftly to protect the country’s vulnerable care homes, when, in fact, that did not happen at all (Reuters Exclusive).

This confusion is deliberate. It has been concocted to get the government out of the mess it finds itself in. It is largely the work of Dominic Cummings – a man who believes in chaos theory and that better things can be rebuilt from the rubble and ‘once in a lifetime opportunity”. The confusion allows the government to manoeuvre and provides cover from the evident tracks of failure. So far, the government has moved from blaming individuals to whole organisations. Strategically, the government has now shifted to blaming the entire country by allowing ‘common sense’ to prevail.

The overall strategy has been one of failure. This is because the government are working behind the evidence. They are relentlessly monitoring public opinion, using focus groups and blending societal wide data with aides receiving near-daily updates on the public mood. Instead of acting, the government is reacting.

The governments’ own 50-page Covid Recovery Strategy Document makes clear what actions are required. But the car-crash of chaos has happened.

This collision, of obsessive data tracking of public opinion, says a lot about a government that got into power by deceit but is now in a crisis it can’t manipulate.

It explains Johnson’s team approach and the U.K.’s response to the pandemic.

The car-crash has Tory principles of the free-market, of angry Tory donors and his own ranks banging the desk with clenched fists against what the science says and what a very hesitant public really thinks. Ending the lockdown is good for the backers of Boris but bad in the eyes of the public.

We’ve gone from the certainty of ‘Stay Home’ to the ambiguity of ‘Stay Alert.’ The clear first message has gone to confusion. Charlie Cooper from Politico reports that – “the phrase “Stay Alert’ itself did not emerge from a vacuum. The internal polling is pretty extensive every day,” (said the official). “We get an overnight breakdown of surveys of 2,000 adults. We get stats on how worried people are, people’s perceptions of risk, whether they feel they’re being served by government information, whether we’ve got the balance right between the economy and healthcare, polling on people’s finances, thoughts on the NHS, about social distancing, businesses, workplace, face masks.”

The Johnson government is more concerned about how many people have heard of ‘R’, if more of the public want to wear face coverings in shops; whether people are comfortable about relaxing the two-meter social distancing rule, or about sending their children back to school than they are about the actual science or recommendations from the scientific organisations set up to advise government officials.

The car-crash has revealed something else to the Johnson team of public relations. The general public is now moving to a stage where more than 50 per cent are now becoming traumatised by the knowledge that at least 40,000 people are to die in phase one of the pandemic and that phase two might be as bad.

There are some “libertarians in the party who want us to say that it must be up to any individual to decide their own risk and take part in the economy as they want,’” one influential backbencher and former Cabinet minister said. But “the bulk of the party recognizes the public has been through a very bitter experience and wouldn’t thank us if we relaxed too quickly.”

One senior Tory has said – “People have got to get their heads around the fact that the government is no longer going to be able to tell them exactly what to do. They are going to have to have agency and apply common sense. It stands to reason we’ve got to trust people.”

That’s all very well, but the thinking is that when 50,000 people are officially recorded as having died from Covid, public opinion will reverse, especially if the lockdown is proven to have been lifted to early.

The deliberate manufacture of confusion is no better explained than this. “The truth is that people really understand the message, people understand what ‘Stay Alert’ means.” This is what Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program last Tuesday. However, the government knew that only 30 per cent (govdocs pdf) of the public understood it.

Johnson, in his ‘Stay Alert’ speech on Sunday was explicit that it was in the hands of the people to bring the alert level down.  The message was reinforced by a graphic that was aired by every braodcaster in the land.  “As we go, everyone will have a role to play in keeping the R down. By staying alert and following the rules.”

The general public is to be blamed for the second wave death count, which may or may not be as bad as the first. That is what everyone is being prepared for. They are effectively being told to ‘take back control.’ In the meantime, Tory hardliners are getting fed up with Boris Johnson. There are rumours in the corridors of power that if things get any worse in the eyes of the public, they will wait and jettison a leader who would have failed when facing a convincing opposition figurehead in the shape of a forensic and intelligent new leader – Keir Starmer. Johnson’s lack of knowledge, dislike of detail, reluctance for hard work and lack of ability at the despatch box may have worked against Corbyn but it is now irritating senior Tories, big donors and people like Rupert Murdoch.

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Featured image is from TP

New information divulged this week reveals that Juan Guaidó was designated as “commander and chief” of the mercenary operation that completely unraveled on the shores of Venezuela. The 41 page contract that formed the basis of the already known eight page General Services Agreement was published by the Washington Post^[1] this week.

This more complete document confirms what the mercenary and head of SilverCorp, Inc., Jordan Goudreau, had already revealed to the media: the agreement was aimed at “planning and executing an operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro (heretoafter “Primary Objective”) remove the current Regime and install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaido.”

The document provides complete information about the money that would be invested (212 million dollars), and the payments and commissions that SilverCorp would receive from Guaidó’s team, which includes Juan José Rendón, Sergio Vergara and attorney Manuel Retureta.

The document also explains the promised retainer of 1.5 million dollars that Goudreau has been complaining about publicly since the failed operation last Sunday, May 3.

What has not been said: information about the operation was published two days before the attack

There is an important detail that the world press has not analysed. One AP article^[2] which details the preparations for the attack was published Friday May 1, two days before the attempt to invade Venezuela was launched from Colombia. The article  provides particulars on the presence of three paramilitary groups (deserters from the Venezuelan armed forces and police) in Colombia and explains how this operation had been foiled and aborted. It clearly names Jordan Goudreau, including a profile on the mercenary and many other details about the planned attack. No Colombian nor US authority mobilized to neutralize the illegal paramilitary camps.

This document also appears to confirm that Goudreau, despite the exposure of the planned incursion by the press, still proceeded with the attack, irresponsibly putting at risk the lives of those involved. It also shows that neither US intelligence agencies, nor the Colombian police, nor even Guaidó’s team took action to stop the attack.

One can extrapolate two possible reasons for this. Allowing the operation to move forward, without directly committing to SilverCorp, would show the actual consequences of the operation (whether a success or failure). The operation could also expose the government of Maduro to world criticism if it produced fatalities on one side or the other. What is certain is that all of these scenarios, “whether above or under the table” in the words of Rendón on CNN, were discussed extensively with Guaidó and his advisors with the aim of illegally overthrowing Maduro. Rendón told CNN in Spanish that “they analysed all of the scenarios; alliances with other countries, their own actions, uprisings of people from within, of the soldiers that are there, the eventual use of actors that are outside, retired soldiers. All these scenarios were produced, as the president said well, we are analysing things above and below the table.”^[3]

Guaidó was leader of the operations

The most important theme of this story, which the Washington Post does not even mention in its article, is what is described on page 39 of the contract.

Under the title “ATTACHMENT N: CHAIN OF COMMAND,” the document includes the following:

1. Commander in Chief – President Juan Guaidó
2. Overall Project Supervisor – Sergio Vergara
3. Chief Strategist: Juan Jose Rendon
4. On Site Commander – To be determined

The page is signed by Guaidó’s advisors and there is a large black box that surely hides compromising information about SilverCorp.

Denial is followed by selective recognition

The evidence is very clear that Guaidó’s team has decided to change its strategy. The first reaction of Guaidó was to deny that he was involved in the disastrous operation^[4] in the face of the cost of lives of eight mercenaries, former Venezuelan soldiers, and the capture of numerous paramilitaries, including two US former soldiers. Guaidó’s team  however,  publicly acknowledged this week their involvement, but they tried to discredit SilverCorp as if it had acted on its own. Nevertheless Rendón recognized that he had paid 50 thousand dollars to the mercenary company^[5] of Florida and that his signature on the document is legitimate.

The big question is what will be the response of the legal authorities in the US and Colombia. So far there has been no arrest, despite the fact that all of the details of the operation and the violations of law committed are clear and irrefutable.

In the coming days it will become evident whether the governments of Trump and Duque in Colombia opt for the strategy of impunity. This scandal without doubt weakens in an important way the illegal policy of sanctions and the dirty campaign supported by the hard-line Venezuelan opposition that has broken with the strategy of dialogue that other more moderate anti-Chavista sectors continue to advance in Caracas.

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Translation made from the original Spanish by Fred Mills, academic and Co-Director of COHA

Notes

^[1] “From a Miami condo to the Veenzuelan coast, how a plan to ‘capture’ Maduro went rogue”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/from-a-miami-condo-to-the-venezuelan-coast-how-a-plan-to-capture-maduro-went-rogue/2020/05/06/046222bc-8e4a-11ea-9322-a29e75effc93_story.html

^[2] “Ex-Green Beret led failed attempt to oust Venezuela’s Maduro”, https://apnews.com/79346b4e428676424c0e5669c80fc310

^[3] “J.J. Rendón habla sobre la Operación Gedeón en Conclusiones de CNN en Español”, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/07/j-j-rendon-habla-sobre-la-operacion-gedeon-en-conclusiones-de-cnn-en-espanol/

^[4] “Guaidó niega vínculos con intento de invasión en Venezuela”, https://www.chicagotribune.com/espanol/sns-es-coronavirus-guaido-niega-vinculo-intento-invasion-venezuela-20200505-uiditc4i6nbdda3nyx24n26zee-story.html

^[5] “J.J. Rendón habla sobre la Operación Gedeón en Conclusiones de CNN en Español”, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/07/j-j-rendon-habla-sobre-la-operacion-gedeon-en-conclusiones-de-cnn-en-espanol/

Venezuela has warned Britain against “coup-mongering” after the discovery of a “Venezuelan reconstruction unit” in the Foreign Office.

Demanding an urgent explanation, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreeaza lodged a formal complaint with ambassador Duncan Hill, who the minister said confirmed the existence of the unit and “tried to justify the unjustifiable.”

“We demand that [the UK] abandon Washington’s coup-mongering plans and any destabilising initiative. We demand respect for our sovereignty and the purposes and principle of the UN charter,” Mr Arreaza said.

The unit, headed by former UK ambassador to Venezuala John Saville, is believed to be part of plans to “rebuild” Venezuela and promote British interests after the removal of democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian government.

A botched coup attempt involving former US Green Berets working for US-based private security company Silvercorp was foiled at the beginning of May as they tried to enter Venezuela from neighbouring Colombia.

The contract, seen by the Morning Star, detailed plans to kidnap Mr Maduro and replace him with the opposition politician Juan Guaido, who is alleged to have funded the plot.

Mr Maduro insisted that the coup attempt was authorised by US President Donald Trump, who has previously refused to rule out military intervention to topple the Bolivarian leader.

Last month Washington placed a $15 million (£12.37m) bounty on Mr Maduro’s head and mobilised warships off the coast of Venezuela in scenes reminiscent of when former CIA asset General Manuel Noriega was removed from power in Panama in 1989.

Britain, which recognises Mr Guaido’s claim to the Venezuelan presidency, has a history of meddling in the country.

Last year the British government was forced to deny allegations that it was using a military base in Guyana to train armed militias to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Questions were posed by the Morning Star after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last August that dozens of Venezuelans had arrived at a clandestine British military base in Guyana.

She said they would “undergo training in reconnaissance and sabotage teams” and would “infiltrate Venezuela, destabilise the situation there and commit various acts, including extremist and terrorist attacks.”

A Freedom of Information request by the Star last year also exposed that the British government was funding opposition media organisations and “yellow unions” under the guise of supporting democracy.

The Foreign Office confirmed that it was bankrolling three “Freedom of Expression” projects in Venezuela – Consorcio Informativo (Information Collective), the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Prensa (National Union of Press Workers) and the Instituto Radiofonico Fe y Alegria (Radiophonic Institute of Faith and Joy).

All three are known opposition groups committed to the overthrow of the Venezuelan government and regularly produce anti-Maduro propaganda.

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Tehran ordered Shia factions to back the prime minister in return for Washington ‘looking the other way’ over release of assets targeted by sanctions, Iraqi officials tell MEE

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The nomination of Mustafa al-Kadhimi as Iraqi prime minister was the result of a horse trade between the US and Iran in which Tehran agreed to back the former intelligence chief in return for an unfreezing of some of its assets targeted by sanctions, senior Iraqi political sources have told Middle East Eye.

The US policy of exerting “maximum pressure” on Iran will not change, but the US agreed to de-escalate militarily in the Gulf and to “look the other way” if a third-party country in Europe released some of the Iranian money frozen when sanctions were applied, the Iraqi sources said.

As recently as 4 March, Kadhimi’s candidacy for the premiership was called a “declaration of war on the Iraqi people” by the top commander of the pro-Iranian Kataib Hezbollah militia, Abu Ali al-Askari.

Askari accused Kadhimi of involvement in the US drone strikes in January which killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and influential militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a charge explicitly denied by Iraq’s Intelligence Service (INIS).

Other Shia militia and political leaders also vociferously opposed Kadhimi’s nomination and yet last week his new government was installed with majority support in Iraq’s parliament.

Kataib Hezbollah continued to threaten Kadhimi personally but other Shia political factions influenced by Iran allowed his nomination to go ahead.

Iraqi sources say that a behind-the-scenes deal between Washington and Tehran explains the sudden U-turn, with Iran agreeing to lean on the Shia factions it influences in return for some relief from economically crippling US sanctions with the unfreezing of some assets in Europe.

Iraqi sources declined to say where Iranian assets would be unfrozen, but pointed to a decision last month by a court in Luxembourg to block a US request to transfer $1.6bn in Iranian assets to victims of the 9/11 attacks in a case dating back to 2012.

The Iranian assets are held by a Luxembourg-based clearing house, Clearstream, owned by Deutsche Boerse. The court decision was hailed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who said the country had won a legal victory over the assets that had long been frozen in Luxembourg at Washington’s request.

“The Americans managed to get their man, and the Iranians to get their money,” said one source with knowledge of the secret deal.

“The economic hardship that Iranians have faced, and all the difficulties they faced after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, has hit them hard. There were negotiations. The deal ended with the Iranians accepting this guy [Kadhimi] and they told their allies to vote for him.”

Easing of Gulf tensions

Kadhimi was asked in April to form the government after failed attempts to first install Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi and then Adnan al-Zurfi as prime minister, following the resignation of Adel Abdul Mahdi last November over the killing of protesters by Iraqi security forces.

In March, a senior source in Tehran told MEE that the US had agreed to grant waivers allowing some countries to release Iranian assets without facing punitive measures to help Iran to buy medical supplies to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

“The efforts of some countries have led to the release of some of the Iranian central bank’s money,” he said.

“Those countries will receive a sanctions waiver [for releasing Iran’s frozen assets], this has been granted and we are following this issue.”

He added:

“The unfreezing of Iranian central bank money will decrease pressure regarding the lack of foreign exchange for importing medication and life necessities.”

The Iranian source denied then that an official deal had been struck between Tehran and Washington. The report was also denied by the US State Department.

The Iraqi sources said that a precedent for the current agreement was set when Nouri al-Maliki was backed for a second term as prime minister by both Washington and Tehran, after nine months of political conflict following the victory of the al-Iraqqiya bloc in 2010 elections.

The sources said that the US’s withdrawal of Patriot missiles from Saudi Arabia last week and a lowering of military tensions in the Gulf was part of the deal with Tehran.

“As a consequence of this, to reduce the tension in the Gulf, there was a pullout of the Patriots. More importantly, the US agreed to give a green light to allow for Europe to release some of the frozen assets for the Iranians. The US will not object to the release of some of the frozen assets. They will look the other way,” the source said.

Track record

Kadhimi has a track record of working with US intelligence services, which dates back to his association with Ahmed Chalabi, the late Iraqi politician who provided US President George W. Bush with false reports about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A former journalist and editor with Al Monitor news website, whose real name is Mustafa Abd al-Latif, Kadhimi became head of intelligence services under the premiership of Haider al-Abadi.

Kadhimi (C), with Iraqi officials during a visit to Saudi Arabia in November 2018 (SPA)

In 2018, he attended a meeting in Washington with Mike Pompeo, who was then head of the CIA, and Khalid bin Ali al-Humaidan, the head of Saudi intelligence, to discuss measures to support the candidacy of Abadi and counter Iranian backed candidates. That effort failed.

MEE phoned Kadhimi’s office repeatedly for comment on this story but our calls went unanswered.

The possibility of a deal between the US and Iran over Kadhimi has been commented on in the Arab media.

The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper said in an editorial that the Iraqi parliament’s approval for the new government was important, but that it was an Iranian-American deal which was the “decisive matter that opens the way for the parliamentarians’ agreement, and then the regional and world agreement”.

In The Arab newspaper, also published in London, Ibrahim al-Zubaidi wrote: ”As you saw and you see, [political currents] agreed to pass it in parliament, as if nothing had happened, only when the last orders and instructions were issued from the [Iranian] embassy in Baghdad, or from the embassy of Uncle Donald Trump. Theatrics you would not have believed.”

Kadhimi’s nomination has been publicly welcomed in both Washington and Tehran.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would “be with the government with all our might to help it progress and establish stability”, according to a statement on the Iranian foreign affairs ministry website.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month announced details of a proposed strategic dialogue with the Iraqi government that is set to take place in June. Pompeo said that “all strategic issues” would be on the agenda at the talks.

Officials in Washington and Tehran played down reports of a deal over Iraq.

A State Department spokesperson dismissed the reports as “absurd”.

“We respect Iraq’s sovereignty and have consistently advocated for Iran to do so as well and end its interference in their internal matters,” the spokesperson told MEE.

The Iranian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment but an Iranian official approached by MEE said he had not heard of any deal, and described it as “unlikely”.

Significantly, the first call Kadhimi got after his nomination was from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who asked the new Iraqi prime minister to restart mediation with Iran, the sources said.

Although bin Salman will consider Kadhimi closer to him than any other candidates, the restart of a dialogue between Washington and Tehran is not strategically good news for Saudi Arabia. Secret negotiations by Oman to release an American prisoner in Iran ended up with the nuclear deal between Iran and the US under Barack Obama.

Along with the unilateral withdrawal of US-operated Patriot missiles, the crown prince is coming under fresh US pressure to end the three-year blockade on Qatar. To this end, the emir of Kuwait sent a minister to Qatar to reopen mediation efforts.

“While Trump will claim credit for his maximum pressure policies on Iran, the fact is US policy in the Gulf, the Saudi campaign in Yemen which it can no longer afford, and the pressures on Iran – all three powers are in trouble. And this is something for the Saudis to consider: the collapse of a US-based strategy to push back on Iran. Trump will not mind negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran, just as long as it has got his name on it,” said one Iraqi official.

This may lead to negotiations resulting in further agreements between Washington and Tehran, the Iraqi official added.

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Featured image is from public domain

I refuse to describe Iran as a victim. It is not. It is one of the most influential and strong-minded nations on Earth.

When facing mortal danger, its people unite, harden themselves and get ready to face invaders, no matter how threatening they might be.

Iran is home to one of the oldest and deepest cultures in the world, and it’s precisely this culture that helps Iranian people to survive the most frightening moments.

And one such moment is sadly, right now.

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US battleships are sailing right next to the Iranian territorial waters. One mistake, one false move, and war could erupt, engulfing the entire region in flames. Iran is a proud nation, and it takes its independence extremely seriously.

Right now, the country is facing one of the most unjust embargos in human history. It is being punished for nothing; or more precisely, for sticking to all the points of the agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) also known as The Iran Nuclear Deal, which it signed in 2015 with China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany, and which the United States abandoned, without providing any logical explanation. While not particularly happy about the U.S. withdrawal; Germany, France and U.K. are doing all they can not to anger their senior partner, and its leaders in Washington.

Add COVID-19, and inability of the country, due to sanctions, to buy medical equipment, at least in the West, and you have the perfect scenario for a national calamity and even for imminent collapse.

Or more precisely, anywhere else this would be the case, but not in Iran!

After receiving terrible blows from the West, one after another, Iran has never fallen to its knees. It has never abandoned its internationalist and socialist course (socialist, with Iranian characteristics), and it has preserved its dignity.

What it has managed to achieve is amazing, nothing short of heroic, given the circumstances.

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If you look at the latest, 2019 HDI (Human Development Index, compiled and published by the UNDP), Iran is in the High Human Development bracket, and only 3 steps from the Highest Human Development group of countries. Which is thoroughly amazing, given the above-mentioned sanctions, embargos and constant military intimidations.

Whenever I visit Iran, I am astonished by its public spaces, cultural institutions, public transportation, fountains, comfortable trains… The country is functioning well, showing incredible grace under pressure. Its television channel – PressTV – is one of the most important anti-imperialist news outlets in the world. I don’t see extreme misery, or homelessness, there. Iranians are polite, well-educated and proud. They have to deal with complex exchange rates, which I do not understand. Whenever I pay in a café or taxi, I simply extend my hand full of local currency, and I never get cheated. Things are solid and reassuring there; I feel it and really appreciate it.

Iran is an internationalist country. Not unlike Cuba or Venezuela, who are its long-term allies. Even when injured, itself, it helps others, those who need solidarity even more. This can never be forgotten, particularly in places like Latin America, or Syria.

Hezbollah, Iran’s close ally in the Middle East, is fighting the most dangerous terrorist groups in Syria; those groups that have been injected there by the West, but also by Washington’s allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. But Hezbollah is also essentially the only social net for the poor in Syria’s neighbor – Lebanon. And not only for the Shi’a Muslims, but also for the disadvantaged Sunni citizens, for the Christians, and non-believers. Whoever is destitute in Lebanon, comes to Hezbollah, for assistance. I was based in Beirut for five years, and I know what I am talking about. All this, while the Lebanese elites are burning money in Paris, in Nice, in the nightclubs of Beirut, driving their lavish cars through the slums. And the more Iran and Hezbollah help the region, the more frustrated, outraged and aggressive the West gets.

Look at Palestine. When it comes to the liberation of the Palestinian people from the long and brutal Israeli occupation, the Gulf countries just talk and talk. In the end, some of them side with the West and Israel. The closest, the most determined allies of the long-suffering Palestinian people in the region, are, without doubt, Iran and Syria. That, everybody in the Middle East, knows, and it is only “a secret” to Westerners.

In Afghanistan, particularly in Herat, I witnessed long lines of Afghan people in front of the Iranian consulate. Devastated by the NATO occupation, Afghanistan is in despair, rated as a country with the shortest life expectancy in Asia, and the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) on the Asian continent. Tens of thousands of the Afghan people have been travelling to Iran in search of jobs. Without Iran, Herat would most likely starve to death. And now, Iran is searching for ways, (together with China and Russia), how to help Afghanistan to find a political solution, and send the NATO forces packing.

For years, all the Socialist countries of Latin America, could always rely on Iran. Be it Bolivia, before the legitimate government of Evo Morales was overthrown, or Cuba and especially Venezuela. Iran has been building social housing, it was helping with oil technology, and with many other social essentials.

Iraq and Iran, two great nations, in the past brutally pitched against each other by Washington, are once again cooperating, working together. The Western occupation has already thoroughly ruined Iraq (as it has ruined Afghanistan), historically one of the richest countries in the region. However, more positively Iran gets involved in neighboring Iraq, the more aggressively the West behaves. It now habitually crosses all the lines of acceptable behavior. In January 2020, a U.S. drone strike murdered Iran’s national hero, General Quasem Soleimani, while he was travelling right near the Baghdad International Airport.

For years now, Iran has been standing shoulder to shoulder with Russia, China, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba; the nations which are openly and bravely deterring the aggression and brutality of Western imperialism.

It seems that no matter what the West tries to do, Iran cannot be broken. Despite the embargos and sanctions, it demonstrates that it is capable of producing and shooting satellites into space, or of producing its own medical equipment to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. While the nation creates its great scientific and technological achievements, Iranian filmmakers keep producing their cinematic masterpieces. What a nation!

Unfortunately, all this is hidden from the eyes and ears of the public, both in the West, and in the client states. There, Iran is portrayed as a “threat”.

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Look at this irony. On April 30, 2020, Reuters released a report about the German move to ban Hezbollah:

“Last December, Germany’s parliament approved a motion urging Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to ban all activities by Hezbollah on German soil, citing its “terrorist activities” especially in Syria.

On a trip to Berlin last year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped Germany would follow Britain in banning Hezbollah. Britain introduced legislation in February of last year that classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.”

When the West says “Terrorist activities, especially in Syria”, what it really means is “fighting the terrorism injected by the West and its allies, into Syria”. Everything is twisted, perverted and turned upside-down by the propaganda outlets operating out of the United States, Europe, Israel and the Gulf.

“Terrorist activities” outside Syria, also means supporting the Palestinian struggle for independence, as well as at least moral support for Syria, in its attempts to regain the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, an occupation which has never been recognized, even by the United Nations. It also means helping Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Latin American countries, which are brutalized (or should we say ‘terrorized’), relentlessly, by Washington and its allies.

This is precisely the logic and lexicon which was used by German propagandists during WWII, to describe resistance forces in its colonies. Freedom fighters and partisans were labeled as terrorists, in France, Yugoslavia, Ukraine.

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Even the otherwise mainstream newspaper – The Independent – published on May 1, 2020 a report critical of the bizarre US scheming against Iran:

“The United States is pushing ahead with a scheme to extend a United Nations arms embargo on Iran that is due to be lifted in October as part of the nuclear deal that Washington abandoned two years ago.

To force the extension, Washington will attempt to lobby the Security Council to continue the arms embargo, which bars weapons sales to or from Iran.

But it also is making what legal experts and diplomats describe as a convoluted argument that it is still part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action it left, and hence able to use one of its provisions to “snapback” the embargo.”

This weird political somersault has been, according to The Independent, criticized even by one of Washington’s allies, the French President Emmanuel Macron:

“China and Russia have already vowed to use any means to block the US plan. France’s Emmanuel Macron has been working behind the scenes to sabotage the Trump scheme because of what it sees as an attempt by the White House to destroy international legal norms, said a well-placed European diplomat.”

France, the UK, Germany and other EU countries are not necessarily happy with Washington’s foreign policy towards Iran, but their outrage is far from being moral indignation. Iran is big and it is far from being poor. European companies are losing billions of euros in trade, because of the sanctions. For instance, in the recent past, two Iranian airlines were ready to purchase large numbers of brand-new Airbus aircraft, in order to compete with Qatar Airways and the Emirates. Such plans collapsed, because of the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, and the almost immediate imposition of new, senseless but brutal sanctions against Teheran. Now even Mahan Air, a civilian airline, is facing sanctions, allegedly because of its flights to Venezuela, and to several Middle Eastern destinations.

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Now, many are perhaps wondering, what triggered, in the West, such hate towards Iran?

There is a well-hidden (again, in the West) secret regarding Iran: “It is a Socialist country. Socialist with Iranian characteristics.”

In his latest and by all means ground-breaking book about Iran (“Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism”), which our publishing house Badak Merah will be publishing later in May 2020, an Iranian author and the PressTV Paris chief correspondent, Ramin Mazaheri, passionately defends the Iranian socialist concept:

“I think that if open-minded leftists would simply become aware of the facts and… modern socialist interpretations of Iran’s policies – many of which I’m sure are being presented in English for the first time – I’m sure that they would not be waiting breathlessly for the collapse of the Middle East’s greatest bulwark against imperialism and capitalism.

It is urgent that Western leftists understand that the reversal of Iran’s popular, democratic revolution would have incredibly negative ramifications for the anti-imperialist movement in the Middle East, and thus the global anti-imperialist movement, and it certainly would be the cruelest loss for Islamic Socialism, which is taken quite seriously in the Muslim world even if atheistic Trotskyism cannot even discuss the concept without resorting to insults.

And, of course, a counter-revolution in Iran would be a major blow for global democracy, as there is no doubt that the Iranian People support their revolution, constitution and unique system in a democratic majority.”

Like Russia and China in Euro Asia and in Asia, like Venezuela, Cuba and before the coup, Bolivia, Iran is spreading hope and revolutionary optimism in its entire part of the world. And it is an extremely wounded part of the world, where hope is absent, but desperately needed.

Spreading hope – that is never forgiven by the Western empire, which, like some gigantic and sadistic prison warden, constantly demands submission, while spreading depression and fear.

In the entirety of modern history, Iran has never invaded, never attacked anyone. Iran is a peaceful nation. But at the same time, it is a powerful, brave and proud country.

The United States and its turbo-capitalist regime understand brutal force, only. They do not comprehend, do not appreciate cultural nuances, let alone depth. Pity! There is so much to learn from Iran and its culture.

Iran will not attack anyone, that is clear as is proven by history. But if physically confronted, it will defend itself, and its people. It will fight, well and bravely.

The West should know: if it triggers a war with Iran, the entire Middle East will be consumed by terrible fire.

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Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

“We were Hezbollah trainers. It is an organisation that learns quickly. The Hezbollah we met at the beginning (1982) is different from the one we left behind in 2000”. This is what the former Chief of Staff and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabi Ashkenazi, said twenty years after the Israeli unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon.

“For the first time we met a non-conventional army, but also an ideological organisation with deep faith: and this faith triumphed over us. We were more powerful, more technologically advanced and better armed but not possessing the fighting spirit …They were stronger than us”. This is what Brigadier General Effi Eitam, Commander of the 91^st Division in counter-guerrilla operation in south Lebanon said.

Alon Ben-David, senior defence correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13, specialised in defence and military issues, said: “Hezbollah stood up and defeated the powerful Israeli Army”.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the architect of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, said: “The withdrawal didn’t go as planned. The deterrence of Hezbollah and its capability increased greatly. We withdrew from a nightmare”. Barak meant he had planned to leave behind him a buffer zone under the control of his Israeli proxies led by the “South Lebanon Army” (SLA) commander Antoine Lahad. However, his plans were dismantled and the resistance forced Lahad’s men to run towards the borders, freeing the occupied buffer zone. As they left Lebanon, the Israeli soldiers said: “Thank God we are leaving: no one in Israel wants to return”.

In 1982, Israel believed the time had come to invade Lebanon and force it to sign a peace agreement after eliminating the various Palestinian organisations. These groups had deviated from the Palestinian compass and had become embroiled in sectarian conflict with the Lebanese Phalange, believing that “the road to Jerusalem passed through Jounieh” (the Maronite stronghold on Mt. Lebanon, northwest of Beirut, a slogan used by Abu Iyad). Israel intended Lebanon to become the domicile of its Palestinian conflict. It failed to realise that in so doing it was letting the Shiite genie out of the bottle. Signs of this genie began to appear after the arrival of Sayyed Musa al-Sadr in Lebanon and the return of students of Sayyed Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr from Najaf to their home country and residency in the Lebanese Bekaa. Also, the victory of Imam Khomeini and the “Islamic revolution” in Iran in 1979 was not taken into consideration by Israel, and the potential consequences for the Lebanese Shia were overlooked.

The 1982 Israeli invasion triggered the emergence of the “Islamic resistance in Lebanon”, which later became known as “Hezbollah”, and it forced Israel to leave Lebanon unconditionally in 2000. This made Lebanon the first country to humiliate the Israeli army. Following their victory over the Arabs in 1949, 1956, 1967 and 1973, Israeli officials had come to believe they could occupy any Arab country “with a brass band”.

Israeli soldiers exited through the “Fatima Gate” (on the Lebanese border, also known as Good Fence, HaGader HaTova) under the watchful eyes of Suzanne Goldenberg on the other side of the border. She wrote:

“After two decades and the loss of more than 1000 men, the chaotic Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon leaves its northern flank dangerously exposed, with Hezbollah guerrillas sitting directly on its border. The scale of the Israeli fiasco was beginning to unfold… After the Israelis pulled out of Bint Jubayl in the middle of the night, their SLA allies, already in a state of collapse in the centre of the strip, simply gave up. Branded collaborators, they and their families headed for exile. Behind them, they left tanks and other heavy equipment donated by their patrons. Shlomo Hayun, an Israeli farmer who lives on Shaar Yeshuv farm, said of the withdrawal, “This was the first time I have been ashamed to be Israeli. It was chaotic and disorganised.”

Israeli withdrawal (2000) crossing Fatima Gate.

What did Israel and its allies in the Middle East achieve?

In 1978, Israel occupied a part of southern Lebanon and in 1982, for the first time, it occupied an Arab capital, Beirut. During its presence as an occupation force, Israel was responsible for several massacres amounting to war crimes. In 1992, Israel thought that it could strike a death blow to Hezbollah by assassinating its leader, Sayyed Abbas Al-Mousawi. He was replaced by his student, the charismatic leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah has proved to be more truthful than the Israeli leaders, and thus capable of affecting the Israeli public through his speeches, as Israeli colonel Ronen, chief Intelligence officer for the Central Command of Israel Defence Forces, has said.

The new Hezbollah leader showed his potential for standing up to and confronting Israel through TV appearances. He mastered the psychological aspects of warfare, just as he mastered the art of guerrilla war. He leads a non-conventional but organised army of militants “stronger than several armies in the Middle East,” according to Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israeli Chief of Staff.

The Israeli doctrine relies on the principle of pre-emptively striking what is considered as a potential threat, in order to extinguish it in its cradle. Israel first annexed Jerusalem by declaring it in 1980 an integral part of the so-called “capital of the state of Israel”. In June 1981, it attacked and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor that France had helped build. In 2007, Israel struck a building in Deir Ezzor, Syria, before it was completed, claiming that the government had been building a nuclear reactor.

6 years after its withdrawal, Israel declared war on Lebanon in 2006, with the aim of eradicating Hezbollah from the south and destroying its military capacity. Avi Kober, a member of the department of political studies at Bar Ilan University and researcher at the Israeli BESA centre said:

“The war was conducted under unprecedented and favourable conditions the like which Israel has never enjoyed – internal consensus, broad international support (including tacit support on the part of moderate Arab States), and a sense of having almost unlimited time to achieve the war objectives. The IDF’s performance during this war was unsatisfactory, reflecting flawed military conceptions and poor professionalism and generalship. Not only the IDF fail in achieving battlefield decision against Hezbollah, that is, denying the enemy’s ability to carry on the fight, despite some tactical achievements, throughout the war, it played into Hizballah’s hands.”

“Soon we shall pray in Jerusalem” (Portray Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah).

Israel withdrew from the battle without achieving its goals: it was surprised by Hezbollah’s military equipment and fighting capabilities. Hezbollah had managed to hide its advanced weapons from the eyes of Israeli intelligence and its allies, who are present in every country including Lebanon. The result was 121 Israeli soldiers killed, 2,000 wounded, and the pride of the Israeli army and industry destroyed in the Merkava Cemetery in southern Lebanon where the Israeli advance into Wadi al-Hujeir was thwarted.

Hezbollah hit the most advanced class Israeli destroyer, the INS Spear saar-5, opposite the Lebanese coast. In the last 72 hours of the war, Israel fired 2.7 million bomblets, or cluster bombs, to cause long-term pain for Lebanon’s population, either through impeding their return or disrupting cultivation and harvest once they did return. “An unjustified degree of vindictiveness and an effort to punish the population as a whole”, said the report of the UN commission of inquiry conducted in November 2006 (Arkin M. W. (2007), Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Air University Press, Alabama, pp 67-71).

The battle ended, Israel withdrew again, closed the doors behind its army, raised a fence on the Lebanese borders, and installed electronic devices and cameras to prevent any possible Hezbollah crossing into Palestine.

When Israel’s chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi said “Israel instructed Hezbollah in the art of war”, he was right. Hezbollah has learned from the wars that Israel has waged over the years. In every war, Hezbollah saw the necessity of developing its weapons and training to match and overcome the Israeli army (which is outnumbered) and which enjoys the tacit support of Middle Eastern regimes and the most powerful western countries. Hezbollah developed its special forces’ training and armed itself with precision missiles to impose new rules of engagement, posing a real threat to the continuity of the permanent Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Today, Hezbollah has sophisticated weapons, including the armed drones that it used in Syria in its war against the Takfirists, and precision missiles that can reach every region, city and airport in Israel. It has anti-ship missiles to neutralize the Israeli navy in any future attack or war on Lebanon and to hit any harbour or oil platform. It is also equipped with missiles that prevent helicopters from being involved in any future battle. The balance of deterrence has been achieved. Hezbollah can take Israel back to the Stone Age just as easily as Israel envisages returning Lebanon to the Stone Age.

Hezbollah is Israel’s worse nightmare, and it was largely created by the Israeli attempt to overthrow the regime in Lebanon, occupy Lebanon, and impose an agreement that Israel could then mould to its own liking. But the tables were turned: a very small force emerged in Lebanon to become a regional power whose powerful support was then extended to the neighbouring countries of Syria and Iraq. The harvest journey has begun.

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All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated; featured image: A woman mocking an Israeli tank left behind when withdrawing from south of Lebanon in the year 2000, using its cannon as a hanger to dry cloths. Photo by @YounesZaatari

A week ago a former Canadian soldier instigated a harebrained bid to kidnap or kill Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Launched from Colombia, the plot failed spectacularly with most of the men captured or killed.

Still, the leader of the invasion Jordan Goudreau, a veteran of the Canadian military and US special forces, has been remarkably forthright about the involvement of opposition figure Juan Guaidó. A leaked contract between Guaidó’s representative in Florida and Goudreau’s Silvercorp USA describes plans for a multi month occupation force, which after ousting Maduro would “convert to a National Asset Unit that will act under the direction of the [Guaidó] Administration to counter threats to government stability, terror threats and work closely” with other armed forces. Apparently, Goudreau was hoping for a big payday from Venezuela’s opposition. He also had his eyes on the $15 million bounty Washington put up in March for Maduro’s capture as well as tens of millions dollars for other members of the government.

As the plot has unraveled, Ottawa has refused to directly criticize the invasion launched from Colombia. The military has also refused to release information regarding Goudreau’s time in the Canadian forces. What’s more, since the plot began Canada’s foreign affairs minister has reached out to regional opponents of Maduro and reasserted Ottawa’s backing for Guaidó. The PM also discussed Venezuela with his Colombian counterpart.

The Trudeau government’s reaction to recent events suggest the global pandemic has not deterred them from brazenly seeking to overthrow Venezuela’s government. In a bid to elicit “regime change”, over the past couple years Ottawa has worked to isolate Caracas, imposed illegal sanctions, took that government to the International Criminal Court, financed an often-unsavoury opposition and decided a marginal opposition politician was the legitimate president.

The day after the first phase of the invasion was foiled foreign minister François-Philippe Champagne spoke to his Colombian, Peruvian and Brazilian counterparts concerning the “Venezuela crisis and the humanitarian needs of Venezuelans.” Four days later Champagne tweeted,

“great call with Venezuela Interim President Juan Guaidó. Canada will always stand with the people of Venezuela in their desire to restore democracy and human rights in their country.”

On Monday Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with Colombian President Iván Duque Márque. According to the official release, they “discussed the crisis in Venezuela and its humanitarian impact in the region which is heightened by the pandemic. They underscored the need for continued close collaboration and a concerted international effort to address this challenging situation.” Over the past 18 months Trudeau has repeatedly discussed Venezuela with a Colombian president who has offered up his country to armed opponents of Maduro.

The Trudeau government has been chummy with Duque more generally. After he won a close election marred by fraud allegations then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland “congratulated” Duque and said, “Canada and Colombia share a commitment to democracy and human rights.” In August 2018 Trudeau tweeted,

“today, Colombia’s new President, Ivan Duque, took office and joins Swedish PM, Norway PM, Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sánchez, and others with a gender-equal cabinet. Iván, I look forward to working with you and your entire team.”

A month later he added,

“thanks to President Ivan Duque for a great first meeting at UNGA this afternoon, focused on growing our economies, addressing the crisis in Venezuela, and strengthening the friendship between Canada & Colombia.”

But, Duque is from the extreme right — “le champion du retour de la droite dure en Colombie”, according to a Le Soleil headline. The Colombian president has undercut the peace accord the previous (right, but not far right) government signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end Colombia’s 50-year civil war, which left some 220,000 dead. Duque’s policies have increased violence towards the ex-rebels and social activists. Seventy-seven former FARC members were killed in 2019. Even more human rights defenders were murdered. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights found that at least 107 Colombian, mostly Indigenous, rights defenders were killed in 2019.

Through the first part of this year the pace at which social leaders and demobilized FARC members have been killed has increased. According to the UN observer mission in Colombia, 24 demobilized guerrillas have already been assassinated and a recent Patriotic March report on the “The other pandemic lived in Colombia” details 95 social leaders, human rights defenders and former guerrillas killed in the first four months of 2020.

Trudeau’s dalliance with Duque is difficult to align with his stated concern for human rights in Venezuela.

The same can be said for Ottawa’s failure to condemn the recent invasion attempt. The Trudeau government should be questioned on whether it was involved or had foreknowledge of the recent plot to invade Venezuela.

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Featured image is from Presidencia de la República

“There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet plagues and wars take people equally by surprise” –Albert Camus

“The Plague”

Camus’ novel of a lethal contagion in the North African city of Oran is filled with characters all too recognizable today: indifferent or incompetent officials, short sighted and selfish citizens, and lots of great courage. What not even Camus could imagine, however, is a society in the midst of a deadly epidemic pouring vast amounts of wealth into instruments of death.

Welcome to the world of the hypersonic weapons, devices that are not only superfluous, but which will almost certainly not work, They will, however, cost enormous amounts of money. At a time when countries across the globe are facing economic chaos, financial deficits and unemployment at Great Depression levels, arms manufacturers are set to cash in big.

Hypersonic weapons are missiles that go five times faster than sound—3,800 mph—although some reportedly can reach speeds of Mach 20—15,000 mph. They come in two basic varieties, one powered by a high-speed scramjet, the other –launched from a plane or missile—glides to its target. The idea behind the weapons is that their speed and maneuverability will make them virtually invulnerable to anti-missile systems.

Currently there is a hypersonic arms race going on among China, Russia and the US, and, according to the Pentagon, the Americans are desperately trying to catch up with its two adversaries.

Truth is the first casualty in an arms race.

In the 1950s, it was the “bomber gap” between the Americans and the Soviets. In the 1960s, it was the “missile gap” between the two powers. Neither gap existed, but vast amounts of national treasure were, nonetheless, poured into long-range aircraft and thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The enormous expenditures on those weapons, in turn, heightened tensions between the major powers and on at least three occasions came very close to touching off a nuclear war.

In the current hypersonic arms race, “hype” is the operational word.

“The development of hypersonic weapons in the United States,” says physicist James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ”has been largely motivated by technology, not by strategy. In other words, technologists have decided to try and develop hypersonic weapons because it seems like they should be useful for something, not because there is a clearly defined mission need for them to fulfill.”

They have certainly been “useful” to Lockheed Martin, the largest arms manufacturer in the world. The company has already received $3.5 billion to develop the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (Arrow) glide missile, and the scramjet- driven Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (Hacksaw) missile.

The Russians also have several hypersonic missiles, including the Avangard glide vehicle, a missile said to be capable of Mach 20. China is developing several hypersonic missiles, including the DF-ZF, supposedly capable of taking out aircraft carriers.

In theory hypersonic missiles are unstoppable. In real life, not so much.

The first problem is basic physics: speed in the atmosphere produces heat. High speed generates lots of it. ICBMs avoid this problem with a blunt nose cone that deflects the enormous heat of re-entering the atmosphere as the missile approaches its target. But it only has to endure heat for a short time because much of its flight is in frictionless low earth orbit.

Hypersonic missiles, however, stay in the atmosphere their entire flight. That is the whole idea. An ICBM follows a predictable ballistic curve, much like an inverted U and, in theory, can be intercepted. A missile traveling as fast as an ICBM but at low altitude, however, is much more difficult to spot or engage.

But that’s when physics shows up and does a Las Vegas: what happens on the drawing board stays on the drawing board.

Without a heat deflecting nose cone, high-speed missiles are built like big needles, since they need to decrease the area exposed to the atmosphere Even so, they are going to run very hot. And if they try to maneuver, that heat will increase. Since they can’t carry a large payload they will have to very accurate, but as a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, that is “problematic.”

According to the Union, an object traveling Mach 5 for a period of time “slowly tears itself apart during the flight.” The heat is so great it creates a “plasma” around the craft that makes it difficult “to reference GPS or receive outside course correction commands.”

If the target is moving, as with an aircraft carrier or a mobile missile, it will be almost impossible to alter the weapon’s flight path to intercept it. And any external radar array would never survive the heat or else be so small that it would have very limited range. In short, you can’t get from here to there.

Lockheed Martin says the tests are going just fine, but then Lockheed Martin is the company that builds the F-35, a fifth generation stealth fighter that simply doesn’t work. It does, however, cost $1.5 trillion, the most expensive weapons system in US history. The company has apparently dropped the scramjet engine because it tears itself apart, hardly a surprise.

The Russians and Chinese claim success with their hypersonic weapons and have even begun deploying them. But Pierre Sprey, a Pentagon designer associated with the two very successful aircraft—the F-16 and the A-10—told defense analyst Andrew Cockburn that he is suspicious of the tests.

“I very much doubt those test birds would have reached the advertised range had they maneuvered unpredictably,” he told Cockburn. “More likely they were forced to fly a straight, predictable path. In which case hypersonics offer no advantage whatsoever over traditional ballistic missiles.”

While Russia, China and the US lead the field in the development of hypersonics, Britain, France, India and Japan have joined the race.

Why is everyone building them?

At least the Russians and the Chinese have a rationale. The Russians fear the US anti-missile system might cancel out their ICBMs, so they want a missile that can maneuver. The Chinese would like to keep US aircraft carriers away from their shores. But anti-missile systems can be easily fooled by the use of cheap decoys, and the carriers are vulnerable to much more cost effective conventional weapons. In any case hypersonic missiles can’t do what they are advertised to do.

For the Americans, hypersonics are little more than a very expensive subsidy for the arms corporations. Making and deploying weapons that don’t work is nothing new. The F-35 is a case in point, but nevertheless, there have been many systems produced over the years that were deeply flawed.

The US has spent over $200 billion on anti-missile systems and once they come off the drawing boards, none of them work very well, if at all.

Probably the one that takes the prize is the Mark-28 tactical nuke, nick named the “Davy Crockett,” and its M-388 warhead. Because the M-388 was too delicate to be used in conventional artillery, it was fired from a recoilless rife with a range of 2.5 miles. Problem: if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction the Crockett cooked its three-man crew. It was only tested once and found to be “totally inaccurate.” So, end of story? Not exactly. A total of 2,100 were produced and deployed, mostly in Europe.

While the official military budget is $738 billion, if one pulls all US defense related spending together, the actual cost for taxpayers is $1.25 trillion a year, according to William Hartung of the Center for International Policy. Half that amount would go a long way toward providing not only adequate medical support during the Covid-19 crisis, it would pay jobless Americans a salary.

Given that there are more than 31 million Americans now unemployed and the possibility that numerous small businesses—restaurants in particular—will never re-open, building and deploying a new generation of weapons is a luxury the US—and other countries—cannot afford. In the very near future, countries are going to have to choose whether they make guns or vaccines.

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Featured image: Moscow’s breakthrough Avangard missile system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle will be deployed on combat duty with the Strategic Missile Force in December 2019 (Indian Punchline)

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla discussed the April 30 attack on the country’s embassy in Washington with the press yesterday, stating: “Here is the attacker, an AK-47 rifle, 32 shell casings, 32 bullet holes and a statement – by the perpetrator – of his intention to attack and kill”

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Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, during an online press conference, yesterday May 12, to discuss the April 30 terrorist attack on the Cuban embassy in the United States, stated:

“Here is an attacker, an AK-47 rifle, 32 shell casings, 32 bullet holes and a statement – by the perpetrator – of his intention to attack and kill.”

From the U.S. government we have received only silence, a silence that we know well, one that has accompanied violence against Cuba by groups based in U.S. territory for years. Every wave of terror was preceded by rabid campaigns of hate, rancor, threats, and attempts to discredit Cuba’s work in the international arena, alongside tightening of the economic siege.

The deaths number 3,478, with 2,099 Cubans disabled, in addition to incalculable economic damage. Terrorism has cost the country, carried out with or without the support of the U.S. government, but always with its blessing, following CIA directives. Hundreds of terrorists groups have been created, financed and trained by the CIA, organizations that had in their ranks notorious killers like Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampol, among others.

The Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), created in 1976, meant the integration of an international terrorist network, the first in history. “War on the roads of the world,” as they called it, did not respect borders or international law, and Cuban embassies were the preferred target.

More than 370 terrorist operations were carried out in those years; the atrocious bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane in mid-flight was the ultimate expression of this hatred, aggravated and protected by silence from the White House.

The perpetuator of the most recent attack on our embassy in Washington, Alexander Alazo Baró met with persons of known hostile behavior toward the Cuban Revolution, at a church called the Doral Jesus Worship Center. One of his “friends” at the religious center, Pastor Frank Lopez, maintains close relations with none other than Marco Rubio, Congressman Diaz-Balart and other persons with recognized extremist positions.

His behavior prior to the attack could not have been more obvious; he did not hide his hatred for the nation of his birth, or his delusions, be they real or fictitious; he was short of money, without a steady job, as his wife stated to several sources. Days earlier he had surveyed the site, planned every step of what he would do, all in the middle of Washington DC, just a few blocks from the White House, in a heavily guarded area. Ready for anything, at zero hour he drove miles with an AK-47, and fired on his target.

Cuba has every reason to demand an exhaustive investigation of the facts from the U.S. government, and that the necessary measures be adopted to prevent a return to times of spilled innocent blood, to put an end to the country’s hostile policy, verbal attacks, and actions that encourage such behavior.

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‘We’ll cut off the whole relationship’ – Trump threatened China in a recent Fox-Business interview, suggesting he may cut diplomatic relations with China and thereby saving US$ 500 billion. He didn’t say how, though.

Mr. Trump’s anger referred to what he calls China’s “mismanagement” of the corona crisis. This is consistent with the new China bashing hard line being pushed by his administration. “I’m very disappointed in China,” Trump said during the same Fox interview. “We asked to go over and they said no,” he continued, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) February offer of assistance to the virus-stricken city of Wuhan. “They didn’t want our help. And I figured that was OK because they must know what they are doing. So, it was either stupidity, incompetence or deliberate.”

These are strong and unsubstantiated words, since there has never been a clearly documented accusation against China in how precisely China mismanaged the COVID-19 outbreak and is supposedly responsible for the COVID crisis in the US – where real mismanagement, corruption, conflict of interest and particularly pharma-interests, competing private vaccine company interests – are written all over the walls, the walls of shame, falsifying corona statistics, by falsifying death certificates, paying hospitals for declaring any patient a COVID-patient, even if many of them aren’t, and for using ventilators, though it is widely known that ventilators are causing death in 40% to 60% of patients; see this.

Was the virus created in a US bio-weapons lab from where it escaped deliberately or by accident and that patient zero was in the US and that the virus was brought to China in one way or another? President Trump knows it. He also knows about the real mismanagement of the crisis in his country, the United States. But he has always been good at self-promoting propaganda and slandering perceived enemies, as long as he thinks it may help him being reelected.

It is obvious that the US China bashing has nothing to do with China’s “mismanagement” of the corona epidemic, but rather with China’s bold move a step further away from the dollar-economy, by

• First, using the yuan and local currencies boosting trade among the ASEAN+3 countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam; plus 3 = Japan, South Korea and China). Monetary transactions will use the CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), avoiding the dollar controlled SWIFT payment scheme. This is mostly to prevent US interference in international monetary transactions – and also in response to the United States’ threat of cutting off Chinese supply chains.

The cutting off supply chains, is of course, sheer bluff, as literally 80 percent-plus of US industries depend in one way or another on supplies from China. This dependence is particularly significant in medical supplies, where the US depends for 80% to 90% on China. But China is China, and President Xi acted fast calling the bluff – and the US may suddenly stand therewith an empty cup, since such supply chains are not replaced overnight.

In the first quarter 2020, ASEAN countries have become China’s largest trading partner with 15.1 %, outpacing the European Union (EU). Trade with South Korea and Japan amounted to another 13.7%, bringing the total close to 30%. Adding China’s trade with Russia, another at least 15%, is getting close to a 50% tipping point of China’s closest partners abandoning commercial transactions in US-dollars.

• Second, by launching a new People’s Bank of China (PBC = China’s Central Bank) controlled crypto-currency for international trade, thereby further circumventing the US-dollar and SWIFT controlled international money transfer system which makes all transactions vulnerable to US interference and sanctions.

China’s new cyber-money, e-RMB (Ren Min Bi, meaning People’s Money), or Yuan, is currently being tested in several Chinese cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Xiong’an. In these cities it has almost universal acceptance, i.e. for salary payments, public transportation, food and most retail shopping.

The use of digital money is nothing new in China. Today about 90% of all monetary transactions are electronic, for example through WeChat and AliPay, but they do not replace the existing cash currency.

Commodity pricing today mostly dollarized, will be priced by China in yuan and traded in crypto-yuan. Yuan pricing for commodities, such as gold, crude oil and iron ore, has already started. As China is recovering from the pandemic more quickly than the rest of the world, relatively high-returning yuan-denominated investments and commodity assets will become more attractive.

The non-interference factor of a Chinese Central Bank backed crypto-currency is an additional security element that will further boost the Chinese Yuan as a reserve currency. Already now, countries around the globe are sick and tired of US meddling in their international transactions and especially with US sanctions – that may come at a whim – every time a country demonstrates her sovereignty, or disobedience to US dictates. This leads many countries that may not speak out publicly for fear of sanctions, to gradually and quietly divesting their dollar holdings into Chinese yuan.

A tipping point may be reached, when about 50% of world trade and world reserves are denominated in yuan. At this point it would be likely that the worldwide dollar hegemony will be no more, as it may be displaced by the yuan.

Several leaders of countries were killed for attempting to replace the dollar for trading with other currencies. For example, Saddam Hussein, for his intent to use the euro for trading Iraq’s hydrocarbon riches, and Libya’s Gadhafi, when he wanted to introduce the Gold-Dinar as a Pan-African trading currency, thereby freeing Africa from western monetary slavehood. As we all recall, he was literally lynched by NATO on 20 October 2011, at the initiative of Hillary Clinton with the strong support of then French President Sarkozy. By the way, this western monetary stranglehold on Africa prevails as of this day – a new-old kind of colonization, nobody in the western mainstream reports on.

Once the new e-RMB (yuan) has been successfully tested locally it will be launched internationally. While China’s new PBC-backed cyber-currency’s internationalization will make the yuan even more attractive among trading partners – and also as a reserve currency, China may simultaneously divest its huge reserves of US Treasury bonds (about US$1.2 trillion) into purchasing assets abroad paid in US-dollars. The Belt and Road investments may be a suitable vehicle to reduce dollar holdings at home.

In the current high corona debt-crisis around the world, especially the Global South, China may also consider a program of Debt Jubilee (debt forgiveness) to the poorest partner countries – which may be already or potentially be future Belt and Road associates.

At present and since October 2016, the Renminbi (Chinese yuan) is part of a 5-currency basket at the IMF that constitutes the Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the world’s ultimate virtual reserve currency. The SDR share distribution is US-dollar 41.73%, euro 30.93%, Chinese yuan 10.92%, Japanese yen 8.33% and the British pound 8.09%. This currency allocation to the SDR is disproportionate with regard to the economic strength of the respective countries, especially China, the world’s second largest economy, rapidly moving towards first place.

China may want to vigorously renegotiate with the IMF her currency proportion in the SDR, as well as reviewing country quotas which by now are out-of-line with member countries economic weight. An IMF capital increase is overdue. The IMF capital base today is SDR 477 billion (US$ 677 billion). In addition, there is the temporary New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) which in January 2020 has been doubled to SDR365 billion (US$ 475 billion), a total resource-base of about US$ 1.15 trillion. Yet, the IMF already today foresees US$ 1 trillion for additional corona debt lending and debt forgiveness. Since the NAB is only a temporary arrangement, a quota increase and review, i.e. a proper adjustment for China’s economy, is more than overdue.

A quota adjustment in favor of China and the corresponding adjustment of the yuan’s proportion in the SDR basket would further enhance China’s currency vis-à-vis the rest of the world. This coupled with an incorruptible cryptocurrency controlled by Chinas Central Bank and possibly backed by gold, would be a formidable reserve currency that most countries would like as their chief reserve asset. This, of course is what Washington is afraid of. It would clearly endanger and probably crush the global US-dollar hegemony.

The world would be a better place for it.

Therefore, the current China bashing and attributing guilt for spreading and mismanaging the corona virus, is a sheer farce – a treachery of the world, a deviation of the real reason behind Trump’s attempt to demolish China’s reputation around the globe, namely by doing so, hoping to destroy the rise of China and the appreciation of the Chinese yuan, and thereby the yuan’s attractiveness as an investment currency for most of the rest of the world.

This is pretty similar to the real reason for the 2018-2019 US-China trade war, initiated by President Trump, had the objective of ruining the yuan’s reputation in the world arena. To no avail. Washington eventually quietly and unceremoniously lost the conflict over trade. Despite Trump’s loud declarations to the contrary, the US needs China much more than vice-versa.  Just look at the Chinese supply chain which the west, in particular the US, cannot replace from one day to the other.

Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has switched gears rather fast. Preparations to orient towards Asian markets are in full swing. China is enhancing relations with Asian markets, i.e. the ASEAN countries, plus Japan and South Korea.

Members of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) are also a trading market China is already engaged in and may further strengthen it. The SCO, in addition to China and most of the Central Asian countries, include also Russia, India and Pakistan – and Iran is waiting for imminent admission. Others, like Malaysia and Mongolia are in observer status and also slanted to become SCO members in due course.

The combination of SCO, ASEAN-plus 3, amounts to more than half the world population and accounts for more than a third of the world’s economic output. This is a formidable global “market share” – and will likely increase with every atrocity – military and economic – Washington is committing around the globe.

With her new crypto-currency which eventually will be internationalized, China is well on her way to fully dedollarize, with the cyber-yuan replacing the US-dollar as the key trading and main reserve currency and to displace the United States as the world’s financial and economic hegemon.

The current China bashing does not prevent China from forging ahead with her economic activities – trade – and especially the unstoppable Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) via maritime and land routes, already counting on 160 partners (about 120 countries and some 40 multinational organizations) on four continents. This revolutionary global development scheme will require trillions of yuans and dollars for investments. It will also be generating trillions in revenues over time, shared with BRI partners. All towards a common future for mankind – a world moving towards an equilibrium with justice, harmony and peace.

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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.

This video was uploaded in August 2019.

The video below shows Doctor Robert Epstein during his 2019 Senate testimony concerning media manipulation in the 2016 US elections. 

He testified that Google’s manipulation of votes, through biased search results, gave at least 2.6 million additional votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

And in 2020, they could shift at least 15 million votes without people’s knowledge and without leaving paper trail for authorities to trace.

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Featured image is from Twitter

“On the anniversary of the Nakba… a tour through depopulated Palestinian villages within Israel … and rare meetings between the owners of the original Palestinian homes and their current Jewish residents” — Najwan Simri, reporting for Al Jazeera (video clip in Arabic and my translation follow).

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Translation of the video narration

Information on the Palestinian village of Ijzim shown as three consecutive red text blocks throughout the video clip:

• The village of Ijzim south of Haifa is one of three villages known as the Carmel triangle of villages that fell at the hands of Zionist gangs after the establishment of Israel.
• A number of the people of the village of Ijzim took refuge in nearby cities and villages. Others took refuge in Arab countries after Ijzim’s occupation by Zionist gangs.
• Many of the landmarks of the village of Ijzim, south of Haifa, are still there as witness of the events of the Nakba 72 years ago.

… Here lives a family uprooted from a nearby village. We had an appointment with Hajjeh Im Samir to accompany her there. Her [ailing] husband insisted on coming with us because he said the air of Ijzim is the best cure.

Despite its beauty, the road there seems desolate as if it gets you to the place but doesn’t take you there. Eagerly, Im Samir organizes our tour for us and tells us the names of the [Palestinian] owners of the houses.

Our first stop is God’s house. Its stones have been preserved as they were. Alone, the colors of its locked doors change each time the dryness of the seasons intensifies.

Here, Abu Samir does not stay in the car because this stop [station] is the location for which he has most longed in order to banish the other stations of his life. “This was our house, my father’s house. After the ’48 wars, the Jews occupied it.”

After a few minutes, the residents of the house come out to [the gate]. They ask us what we want. We say, this is the owner of the house; how do you feel living in a house built on the wreckage of his house? [The answer] Frankly, I don’t feel anything. I am very happy. Living here is very enjoyable.

How strange is the distance between the owner of the house and he who is occupying it. How strange is the irony between he who has to stand inside the gate and he who must stand outside the gate. How strong Abu Samir is! For other uprooted people have refused to accompany us [on our tour]. One of them told us that he cannot bear to glimpse through the window of his father’s house a foreigner living there.

And that [glimpse] could possibly be of a strange symbol, like [what is glimpsed through the window] of a stolen [Palestinian] school converted into a temple with an emblem [the flag of Israel] that is not as old as the memory of the stones of the school.

Flag of Israel glimpsed through the window of the converted school of the Palestinian village of Ijzim, which is now a Temple

And so, an extreme picture! It is said that the passage of time helps in forgetting, but, in the Palestinian case, it seems that the equation of time is different and that the years are merely a number. Rather, the longer the banishment of the Palestinians is, the more they remember.

This is Najwan Simri, reporting from the depopulated village of Ijzim for Al Jazeera.

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

Featured image: An encounter between a Jewish couple in Ijzim, Israel (south of Haifa) the the displaced Palestinians in whose house that couple resides, who are denied return to their village and property. (Screenshot from the video)

The security situation has been escalating in southern Syria. Over the past 24 hours, at least 3 pro-government fighters and a civilian have been killed in attacks by gunmen in al-Musayfrah and Saida-al-Taebah. The attacks followed the March 14 and March 13 protests that erupted in the town of Tafas and in the southern part of Daraa’s city center, Daraa al-Balad.

A portion of the locals previously affiliated with militant groups defeated in southern Syria was protesting against the recent deployment of the Syrian Army reinforcements to the province. The attempts of the Syrian Army and security forces to restore law and order find no understanding among supporters of radicals.

At the same time, the very same group of persons does not see anything wrong in the recent series of assassinations and attacks on Syrian troops and security personnel. At least 14 people have been reportedly killed in these attacks since the start of May. In these conditions, Syrian forces have no other option, but to launch a series of combing operations to track and neutralize terrorists that still hide in the province.

Fresh videos from the province demonstrate the increased presence of Syrian troops in the villages of Ibtta, Khirbet Ghazaleh and the city of Daraa. The deployed reinforcements included T-72 battle tanks and other heavy military equipment.

On May 14, a strike by an unidentified unmanned combat aerial vehicle destroyed a vehicle and injured 4 fighters of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham near the town of Sarmin in southern Idlib. The strike took place just a few hours after a joint Russian-Turkish patrol on the M4 highway, between the towns of Saraqib and Arihah.

This was the 11th joint patrol conducted by the sides in the framework of the March de-escalation agreement and the third extended patrol since the removal of a camp of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham supporters from the north of Nayrab. The patrol was faced by a new round of protests by Idlib radicals but they did not try to block or attack it.

Contrary to this, the previous such patrol, held on May 12, was marked by a military incident involving Hayat Tahrir al-Sham supporters. An improvised explosive device detonated just near a patrol when it reached the roundabout at the eastern entrance to Arihah.

The attack did not cause casualties and both the Turkish and Russian sides successfully ignored it in their reports on the joint patrolling. However, the May 14 events demonstrated that the attack did not go unanswered.

A series of mysterious drone strikes in Greater Idlib started in early April and since then led to the killing of over a dozen fighters and field commanders. Maher Kojak, the most prominent TOW missile operator, that reportedly participated in about 150 TOW strikes, was among the eliminated militants.

Opposition sources often claim that the strikes were carried by Iran or Russia. However, the targeting pattern and the timing of strikes indicate that Ankara may have been slowly eliminating the segment of its proxies that do not like its rapprochement with Moscow and try to sabotage the Russian-Turkish de-escalation agreement.

The US-led coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue their series of anti-ISIS raids on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. According to the SDF, two ISIS members blew themselves up during the recent raid in eastern Deir Ezzor. Despite all these efforts, ISIS cells remain very active in the area, especially near the US-controlled Omar oil fields.

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The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now have internationally a lawless world (or “World Order”) in which “Might makes right,” and in which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster “law,” ruling on an international level. It is what Hitler and his Axis of fascist imperialists had imposed upon the world until the Allies — U.S. under FDR, UK under Churchill, and U.S.S.R. under Stalin — defeated it, and established the United Nations. Furthermore, America’s leaders deceived the American public into perpetrating this invasion and occupation, of a foreign country (Iraq) that had never threatened the United States; and, so, this invasion and subsequent military occupation constitutes the very epitome of “aggressive war” — unwarranted and illegal international aggression. (Hitler, similarly to George W. Bush, would never have been able to obtain the support of his people to invade if he had not lied, or “deceived,” them, into invading and militarily occupying foreign countries that had never threatened Germany, such as Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia. This — Hitler’s lie-based aggressions — was the core of what the Nazis were hung for, and yet America now does it.)

As Peter Dyer wrote in 2006, about “Iraq & the Nuremberg Precedent”:

Invoking the precedent set by the United States and its allies at the Nuremberg trial in 1946, there can be no doubt that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a war of aggression. There was no imminent threat to U.S. security nor to the security of the world. The invasion violated the U.N. Charter as well as U.N. Security Council Resolution #1441.

The Nuremberg precedent calls for no less than the arrest and prosecution of those individuals responsible for the invasion of Iraq, beginning with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleez[z]a Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Take, for example, Condoleezza Rice, who famously warned “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” (That warning was one of the most effective lies in order to deceive the American public into invading Iraq, because President Bush had had no real evidence, at all, that there still remained any WMD in Iraq after the U.N. had destroyed them all, and left Iraq in 1998 — and he knew this; he was informed of this; he knew that he had no real evidence, at all: he offered none; it was all mere lies.)

So, the Nuremberg precedent definitely does apply against George W, Bush and his partners-in-crime, just as it did against Hitler and his henchmen and allies.

The seriousness of this international war crime is not as severe as those of the Nazis were, but nonetheless is comparable to it.

On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet “The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq” and wrote that “our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion,” and linked to solid evidence, backing up their estimate.

On 6 February 2020, BusinessInsider bannered “US taxpayers have reportedly paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2 trillion total for the Iraq war alone”, and linked to the academic analysis that supported this estimate. The U.S. regime’s invasive war, which the Bush gang perpetrated against Iraq, was also a crime against the American people (though Iraqis suffered far more from it than we did).

On 29 September 2015, I headlined “GALLUP: ‘Iraqis Are the Saddest & One of the Angriest Populations in the World’,” and linked to Gallup’s survey of 1,000 individuals in each of 148 countries around the world, which found that Iraq had the highest “Negative Experience Score.” That score includes “sadness,” “physical pain,” “anger,” and other types of misery — and Iraq, after America’s invasion, has scored the highest in the entire world, on it, and in the following years has likewise scored at or near the highest on “Negative Experience Score.” For example: in the latest, the 2019, Gallup “Global Emotions Report”, Iraq scores fourth from the top on “Negative Experience Score,” after (in order from the worst) Chad, Niger, and Sierra Leone. (Gallup has been doing these surveys ever since 2005, but the first one that was published under that title was the 2015 report, which summarized the 2014 surveys’ findings.)

Of course, prior to America’s invasion, there had been America’s 1990 war against Iraq and the U.S. regime’s leadership and imposition of U.N. sanctions (which likewise were based largely on U.S.-regime-backed lies, though not totally on lies like the 2003 invasion was), which caused massive misery in that country; and, therefore, not all of the misery in Iraq which showed up in the 2015 Global Emotions Report was due to only the 2003 invasion and subsequent military occupation of that country. But almost all of it was, and is. And all of it was based on America’s rulers lying to the public in order to win the public’s acceptance of their evil plans and invasions against a country that had never posed any threat whatsoever to Americans — people residing in America. Furthermore, it is also perhaps relevant that the 2012 “World Happiness Report” shows Iraq at the very bottom of the list of countries (on page 55 of that report) regarding “Average Net Affect by Country,” meaning that Iraqis were the most zombified of all 156 nationalities surveyed. Other traumatized countries were immediately above Iraq on that list. On “Average Negative Affect,” only “Palestinian Territories” scored higher than Iraq (page 52). After America’s invasion based entirely on lies, Iraq is a wrecked country, which still remains under the U.S. regime’s boot, as the following will document:

Bush’s successors, Obama and Trump, failed to press for Bush’s trial on these vast crimes, even though the American people had ourselves become enormously victimized by them, though far less so than Iraqis were. Instead, Bush’s successors have become accessories after the fact, by this failure to press for prosecution of him and his henchmen regarding this grave matter. In fact, the “Defense One” site bannered on 26 September 2018, “US Official: We May Cut Support for Iraq If New Government Seats Pro-Iran Politicians”, and opened with “The Trump administration may decrease U.S. military support or other assistance to Iraq if its new government puts Iranian-aligned politicians in any ‘significant positions of responsibility,’ a senior administration official told reporters late last week.” The way that the U.S. regime has brought ‘democracy’ to Iraq is by threatening to withdraw its protection of the stooge-rulers that it had helped to place into power there, unless those stooges do the U.S. dictators’ bidding, against Iraq’s neighbor Iran. This specific American dictator, Trump, is demanding that majority-Shiite Iraq be run by stooges who favor, instead, America’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies, such as the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia and who hate and loathe Shiites and Iran.

The U.S. dictatorship insists that Iraq, which the U.S. conquered, serve America’s anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian policy-objectives. “The U.S. threat, to withhold aid if Iran-aligned politicians occupy any ministerial position, is an escalation of Washington’s demands on Baghdad.” The article went on to quote a “senior administration official” as asserting that, “if Iran exerts a tremendous amount of influence, or a significant amount of influence over the Iraqi government, it’s going to be difficult for us to continue to invest.” Get the euphemisms there! This article said that “the Trump administration has made constraining Iran’s influence in the region a cornerstone of their foreign policy.” So, this hostility toward Iran must be reflected in Iraq’s policies, too. It’s not enough that Trump wants to destroy Iran like Bush has destroyed Iraq; Trump demands that Iraq participate in that crime, against Iraq’s own neighbor. This article said that, “There have also been protests against ‘U.S. meddling’ in the formation of a new Iraqi government, singling out Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk for working to prevent parties close to Iran from obtaining power.” McGurk is the rabidly neconservative former high G.W. Bush Administration official, and higher Obama Administration official, who remained as Trump’s top official on his policy to force Iraq to cooperate with America’s efforts to conquer Iran. Trump’s evil is Obama’s evil, and is Bush’s evil. It is bipartisan evil, no matter which Party is in power. Though Trump doesn’t like either the Bushes or Obamas, all of them are in the same evil policy-boat. America’s Deep State remains the same, no matter whom it places into the position of nominal power. The regime remains the same, regardless.

On April 29th, the whistleblowing former UK Ambassador Craig Murray wrote:

Nobody knows how many people died as a result of the UK/US Coalition of Death led destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, by proxy, Syria and Yemen. Nobody even knows how many people western forces themselves killed directly. That is a huge number, but still under 10% of the total. To add to that you have to add those who died in subsequent conflict engendered by the forced dismantling of the state the West disapproved of. Some were killed by western proxies, some by anti-western forces, and some just by those reverting to ancient tribal hostility and battle for resources into which the country had been regressed by bombing.

You then have to add all those who died directly as a result of the destruction of national infrastructure. Iraq lost in the destruction 60% of its potable drinking water, 75% of its medical facilities and 80% of its electricity. This caused millions of deaths, as did displacement. We are only of course talking about deaths, not maiming.

UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair should hang with the U.S. gang, but who is calling for this? How much longer will the necessary prosecutions wait? Till after these international war-criminals have all gone honored to their graves?

Although the International Criminal Court considered and dismissed possible criminal charges against Tony Blair’s UK Government regarding the invasion and military occupation of Iraq, the actual crime, of invading and militarily occupying a country which had posed no threat to the national security of the invader, was ignored, and the conclusion was that “the situation did not appear to meet the required threshold of the Statute” (which was only“Willful killing or inhuman treatment of civilians” and which ignored the real crime, which was “aggressive war” or “the crime of aggression” — the crime for which Nazis had been hanged at Nuremberg). Furthermore, no charges whatsoever against the U.S. Government (the world’s most frequent and most heinous violator of international law) were considered. In other words: the International Criminal Court is subordinate to, instead of applicable to, the U.S. regime. Just like Adolf Hitler had repeatedly made clear that, to him, all nations except Germany were dispensable and only Germany wasn’t, Barack Obama repeatedly said that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, which likewise means that every other nation is “dispensable.” The criminal International Criminal Court accepts this, and yet expects to be respected.

The U.S. regime did “regime change” to Iraq in 2003, and to Ukraine in 2014, and tried to do it to Syria since 2009, and to Yemen since 2015, and to Venezuela since 2012, and to Iran since 2017 — just to mention some of the examples. And, though the Nuremberg precedent certainly applies, it’s not enforced. In principle, then, Hitler has posthumously won WW II.

The only way to address this problem, if there won’t be prosecutions against the ‘duly elected’ (Deep-State-approved and enabled) national leaders and appointees, would be governmental seizure and nationalization of the assets that are outright owned or else controlled by America’s Deep State. Ultimately, the Government-officials who are s‘elected’ and appointed to run the American Government have been and are representing not the American people but instead represent the billionaires who fund those officials’ and former officials’ careers. In a democracy, those individuals — the financial enablers of those politicians’ s‘electoral’ success — would be dispossessed of all their assets, and then prosecuted for the crimes that were perpetrated by the public officials whom they had participated in (significantly funded and propagandized for) placing into power. (For example, both Parties’ Presidential nominees are unqualified to serve in any public office in a democracy.)

Democracy cannot function with a systematically lied-to public. Nor can it function if the responsible governmental officials are effectively immune from prosecution for their ‘legal’ crimes, or if the financial string-pullers behind the scenes can safely pull those strings. In America right now, both of those conditions pertain, and, as a result, democracy is impossible. There are only two ways to address this problem, and one of them would start by prosecuting George W. Bush.

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This article was originally published on The Saker.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Featured image: US Stryker vehicle hit by a deeply buried improvised explosive device while conducting operations just south of the Shiek Hamed village in Iraq. 2007. Public domain.

With a better world on the horizon, the old order is desperately asserting its last vestige of power.  What the perpetrators of the coronavirus event were not counting on was that the pandemic would usher in a new era of accelerated awakening as millions continue to acknowledge that there is a new Quantum world emerging. 

That new awareness was followed by the spontaneous  exposure of Big Pharma, Big Science and Big Medicine as more corrupt that previously imagined.  At the same time, the disturbing truth of vaccines lacking scientific merit surfaced as receptacles for nano particles that would alter human DNA as well as enforcing a worldwide mandatory vaccination and digital ID  program – all of which are violations of Universal Law.

It stands to reason that TPTB are terrified of a united opposition of seven billion inhabitants which will never accept their rule,  thereby necessitating a direct assault on free speech and the full acquiescence of a more docile citizenry.

Censorship protects the powerful from criticism just as it needs to keep truth hidden from public awareness.  Censorship is an outright admission that TPTB‘s  grasp is slipping.  As its control continues to falter, more censorship will be applied confirming that their message is not resonating while their control over the population continues to erode.  With the public less than hoodwinked, a second radio frequency wave  is assured.

Section 230 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation refers  to Section 230  as “the most important law protecting internet speech.”

The Communications Decency Act (aka Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” (47 U.S.C. § 230).

The translation is that Section 230 was  specifically adopted to protect a service provider against illegal content; so that it could not be held legally liable for whatever a user might say on line. ThusSection 230 provides “immunity from liability for providers and users of an interactive computer service” which publishes information provided by third-party users:

Congressional Findings are clear:  Section 230 was added to protect innovation, free speech and provide a neutral internet platform:

“…offers a forum for true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.”

Section 230 does not include any ‘community guidelines’ exceptions to allow service providers to make arbitrary, partisan decisions to censor what might be capriciously defined as objectionable or offensive content. Further,

(2) Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—

(A)   any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or…”

Clearly, the intent of Section 230 was always to protect internet content and not as a vehicle to allow Big Tech to censor, ban or de-platform/demonetize any website, individual  or information that does not conform to a service providers variable political agenda.

In 2019, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo) introduced “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act” (S 1914) which would remove Section 230’s automatic  government-sponsored immunity as  Big Tech would be required to ‘earn’ that immunity back by providing evidence to the FTC that their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral. S 1914 would require a super-majority FTC vote for Big Tech to reapply for government-granted immunity as it must renew its immunity every two years.  In addition, S 1914 only applies to tech companies with more than 30 million active monthly users in the US,, more than 300 million active monthly users worldwide, or who have more than $500 million in global annual revenue

The Censors

Since 2016,  Big Tech has revved up its immense power to increasingly control and suppress political internet content.  Aw Big Tech consistently violates its agreement to adhere to Section 230,  they continue to assume the benefits of its government-granted immunity.  Convinced of its political muscle, the tech industry have counted on a derelict Congress as they continue to subvert the free speech of any website or individual who thinks ‘outside the box’ or offers an alternative political point of view.

Big Tech routinely threaten and issues ultimatums to creators and providers of content although, according to Section 230, they have no authority to do so . Likewise, under Section 230, Big Tech has no authority to ban, censor, de-monetize or de-platform any of its content creators. It is long past time for Big Tech to be declared public utilities. Since the tech companies are privately held corporations and not ‘state actors,’ the First Amendment is not applicable.

More specifically, since the coronavirus crisis, Big Tech has increased its ability to censor all discussion, even by Doctors, scientists and medical professionals who dare question the prevailing wisdom about all aspects of the on-going health  crisis.  Increasingly, the only opinions allowed are the one dimensional views that support Big Pharma and its friends.

Censorship

In  response to a lawsuit complaining that You Tube (YT) is censoring conservative speech, a June 25, 2019 YT response declared “..we apply our policies fairly and without political bias. All creators are held to the same standard.”

With two billion monthly users who watch one billion hours a day, YT would easily qualify for S1914’s elimination of immunity and  its need to provide the algorithmic data to prove its lack of bias. YouTube is especially egregious  in routinely stretching its authority in suppressing  free speech under the guise of committing a ‘community guideline” violation.

In her recent rejection of Dr. Erickson’s video which attracted millions of  worldwide viewers, Susan Wojcicki, YT CEO  articulated narrow explanations confirming that all dissent, any medical information that goes against or even questions the establishmentarian view is verboten.

“…but then we talked about removing information that is problematic. Of course anything that is medically unsubstantiated, so  people will  say, take vitamin c, take turmeric, those will cure you, Those are examples of things as a violation of our policy …anything that goes against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy and so remove is another important part of our policy..”

Wojcicki continued that

“…just recently there was a theory that 5G was causing coronavirus symptoms.  Now no established health organization says that 5G is the source of the issue.  We quickly deemed that a violation of our policy, and removed that content“ 

When MS. Wojcicki suggested a blind adherence to WHO, is she referring to their recommendation that masks are not effective or rather their later ‘recommendation’ in favor of mandatory masks  – and was she referring to WHO’s stated opinion that CV was not transmissible or their later turn around that amended that information?

According to Ms. Wojcicki’s pronouncement, she has the right of sole discretion to  decide what medical information should be publicly available even as her opinions are ‘medically unsubstantiated.’

At a time when free and informed discussion is more vital than ever, Ms. W’s lacks the understanding of the necessary role of inquiry and debate as fundamental to Science, she does a disservice to all YT patrons. As a discipline that thrives  on continued exploration of fact-based evidence  which was once the heart of Science, Ms W’s subjective preference is to see them through the narrow authoritarian lens as unnecessary and trivial. With regard to a possible 5G role in the CV, her lack of a curious mind about the military uses of the electro magnetic spectrum denies YT subscribers an opportunity to become better informed.

As the reality is obvious and we all recognize, this is not about the validity of Science or where the truth may lie; it is about the reality that dissent is no longer tolerated even by inferior minds; that those in positions of political power are intent on destroying the First Amendment and shutting down the public’s right to know. Try BitChute.

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

“Is Trump totally insane?” Experts and the international community couldn’t help but ask this question after US President Donald Trump threatened to “cut off the whole relationship” with China on Thursday in an interview with FOX Business. Observers said that Trump’s word would never deter China, but may shock US political and business circles and its own people, and may put world peace in a dangerous position.

“There are many things we could do,” Trump told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo Thursday. “We could cut off the whole relationship.” Trump added that ending relations with China would “save $500 billion.”

Fox Business said in a report that Trump’s Thursday remarks were one of his “strongest comments yet in dealing with China” in the wake of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Americans will suffer

“Again! Trump is talking nonsense.” Trump seems to be losing his mind right now. Even he has such crazy ideas of cutting ties with China, US politicians, businessmen and Americans would not allow him to do so, Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for US Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times.

He noted that Trump is bluffing and acting tough toward China to win more support. Fox News, which has been regarded as Trump’s defender and is notorious for a lack of professionalism, is also making eye-catching news to draw attention.

Jin Canrong, the associate dean of Renmin University of China’s School of International Studies in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday that Trump made very irresponsible and emotional remarks in the interview.

“The China-US relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world and involves huge interests of the two countries, as well as the rest of the world. Therefore, it is not something he can cut off emotionally,” Jin said.

“If the US unilaterally cuts off ties, the American people will pay a heavier price than us, because China’s domestic market is huge and 75-80 percent of Chinese manufacturers are supplying China’s market, and the 2 to 5 percent that supply the US can also be absorbed by the domestic market,” he noted.

US stocks fell sharply in pre-market trading, with the Dow and NASDAQ futures all dropping more than one percent after Trump’s remarks on Thursday.

China has nothing to be afraid of as “in the past, we didn’t solve the Taiwan question because we wanted to maintain the China-US relationship, and if the US unilaterally cuts it off, we can just reunify Taiwan immediately since the Chinese mainland has an overwhelming advantage to solve this long-standing problem.”

“Trump is like a giant baby on the brink of a meltdown as he faces tremendous pressure due to massive failures that caused such a high death toll,” Shen Yi, an expert from Fudan University, told the Global Times. “It’s like someone who wants to show his guts when he passes by a cemetery in midnight. He needs to shout to give himself the courage,” he said.

Shen also noted that the American companies and industries would suffer the most severe consequences, because the supply chain has been integrated with China.

“The Chinese public would only take such bluffing as a joke,” Shen said, adding that there has been no US president in the history who has made such a ridiculous statement against China, not even during the Cold War.

Yuan Zheng, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said he could not even remember any US leader who took a similar action. “His flip-flop rhetoric is unprecedented, but we need to take a look at whether Trump will take real action,” he said, noting that there is no need to pay attention to claims that are unrealistic and meaningless.

New farce, height of blaming China

In the past two months, instead of focusing on handling the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump and his team have insisted on blaming China by using all kinds of excuses – from hyping conspiracies of the virus’ origin, to accusing China of covering up the virus.

Against the backdrop of still increasing infections and deaths from COVID-19 in the US, with no inflection point in sight, Trump has become grumpy and more eager to blame the scapegoat – China, experts said.

“Trump is like a cornered beast doing something desperate, or he could not continue to stay in American politics,” Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

In a short term, Trump’s words can be taken as election language, Li said.

“The most important thing to Trump is to win the election and maintain power. Everything else can be sacrificed.”

In a long run, frictions and conflicts will continue to surface between China and the US. Divergence management will be a major mission of the two sides. It will not be surprising if the management fails and the conflict worsens, said Li, noting that China-US ties could not go back to the past and it is hard to predict how they would develop in the long run.

Jin noted Trump probably wants China to make more compromises in the future trade deal, and “maybe he doesn’t want China to sell medical supplies to states controlled by the Democrats, but only wants China to sell them to his son-in-law,” Jared Kushner, who is in charge of the medical supplies of the Trump administration.

Lü Xiang, a research fellow on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times that the failed handling of the Trump administration of the COVID-19 pandemic is causing total disorder to the country, and the administration’s behavior is getting more unpredictable.

“For Trump, fantasy is power; bluffing is power, so he might use the future of his country to gamble with China. Although China always believes  cooperation is the only right choice for the two countries to solve the problems together, if the US unilaterally and irrationally chooses all-out confrontation, China also needs to be prepared.”

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Featured image is from FinanceTwitter

Palestinians worldwide have an annual day of remembrance called Nakba Day. Nakba comes from the Arabic al-Nakbah and means “disaster” or “catastrophe.” It takes place on May 15^th, the day after the Gregorian calendar date for Israeli independence in 1948. It is an opportunity for a people who live largely in exile to recall what was stolen from them by the nascent Israeli state in 1947 through 1949. An estimated 700,000 Palestinians, half of the country’s Arab Christian and Muslim population, were driven from their homes through a deliberate policy of terrorism officially initiated in January 1948 to drive the Palestinian population out, a clear case of government initiated ethnic cleansing.

The expulsion orders, formulated as Plan Dalet in March, were carried out by the Jewish state’s military and militia forces, to include terrorist groups like Irgun and Lehi. The massacre of Arab civilians at Deir Yassin in April 1948, in which hundreds of civilians died, was, for example, implemented to terrorize the local population, forcing it to flee. In the portion of Palestine that was to become Israel fully 80% of the resident Arabs, many of them Christian, were killed, fled in terror or were compelled to leave at gunpoint.

In the expulsion process, which continued into early 1949, between four hundred and six hundred Arab villages were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, while Palestinians in the larger urban centers were driven from their homes. Those homes were then given to Jews coming from Europe or America and one of the first acts carried out by the new nation Israel’s parliament was to pass laws blocking the return of any Palestinian to his or her home in what was to become the Jewish state. This meant in practice that a European Jew could arrive in Israel on one day and by the next be settled in a former Palestinian home. The legal owner of that home, however, had no right to return or even visit his former property. United Nations demands that the Palestinians should one day be able to return home have been since that time ignored by Israel and unsupported by the United States.

In fact, Israel never intended to allow Palestinians to return to their homes, in spite of the fact that when it joined the United Nations in May 1949 it agreed to “unreservedly accept the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertake to honor them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations.” This included an explicit understanding in principle to allow the return of all Palestinian refugees.

Palestinians are to a certain extent wards of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which was founded in 1949 to support those displaced by the Israelis. In 1949 there were less than one million refugees, but today, due to large families and other population growth, the number who technically qualify for UNRWA’s assistance is over 5 million. Services include education, health care, food security and other essentials, to some 800,000 Palestinians registered as refugees in the West Bank and 1.3 million people in the Gaza Strip, as well as 534,000 in refugee camps in Syria, 464,000 more in Lebanon and also 2 million in Jordan.  Approximately 1 million refugees have no documents other than an UNRWA identification card.

Israel has long been highly critical of UNRWA and the Donald Trump Administration predictably followed its lead to eliminate funding to the organization in August 2018.

The so-called peace plan being promoted by the Trump Administration has been rightly described as a non-starter as it is a wish list for Israel that will permit annexation of much of the West Bank with a rump Palestinian state that has no control over its airspace, water, borders or defense in place for those Arabs who can be induced to remain. It would mark the clearly perceived end of any Palestinian aspirations for either statehood or even for an acceptable relationship marked by mutual respect with its de factoJewish overlords.

American antipathy towards the Palestinians, particularly as expressed by Evangelicals, is somewhat surprising as there has long been a vibrant Christian community in Palestine that has been sharply diminished through the actions of the state of Israel. Residents and church leaders describe the nervousness of the tiny Christian communities in Israel, caught between larger Muslim and Jewish populations. Like other Palestinians, Christians face land seizures, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions and collective punishment that come with the Israeli occupation. Recently radical Jewish settlers have become more active, defacing Christian churches and cemeteries while also threatening and spitting on clergy in the streets.

In and around Bethlehem, Christians constituted 80 percent of the population in 1950 and are only around 12 percent today. Jewish settlements have annexed land owned by Christians in many areas. In Israel itself, Christians were 21 percent of the Arab population in 1948 but number only 8 percent today, just 2 percent of the total population. The process has been described as “a quiet ethnic cleansing… not large-scale massacres or large-scale deportations, but it is bit by bit over many years with a variety of policies which Christians are not necessarily attacked as Christians but they are marked by being Palestinians.”

This year Palestinians are expressing themselves on Nakba Day to demonstrate their rejection of the Trump peace plan as well as of the new Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu led government’s intention to annex large portions of the West Bank, to include the entire Jordan River Valley, after July 1^st. They have adopted the hashtag #COVID1948, which seeks to equate the current devastation resulting from the coronavirus with the catastrophe that occurred to the Palestinian people in 1948 at the hands of the Israelis. It is reportedly trending on social media and is in one sense an eloquent reminder of the wrongs committed against an entire people, to include a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing that bore fruit in 1948-9. It is also a reminder that the Palestinians are a stubborn and self-aware people who will not just go away because the Israelis and the United States would like to see that happen.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from AHT

The trap was set at least twenty-five years ago and the mice jumped at the smell of the cheese.  I am referring to the introduction of the computer as a mass necessity and the Internet that followed. I was slow to enter the trap, “forced” finally in 2007 by the college where I was teaching. Up to that point I was just a member of The Lead Pencil Club, whose motto was “a speed bump on the information superhighway” and whose membership list numbered twenty-three and a half people worldwide. When I slowly and reluctantly reached for the cheese, the trap snapped not on my neck to finish me, but on my head that was half in and half out. 

The out part kept thinking.  What follows are that half-head’s musings on why I didn’t follow my intuition, the whole damn sorry situation we are all in, and what we might do to spring the trap and run free.  I don’t like this trapped feeling.  And, by the way, the cheese was American, which is not exactly real cheese.

In 1960 the sociologist C. Wright Mills said that there was far too much information for people to assimilate and make sense of and that lucid summations were needed.  He was echoing Thoreau who in 1854 said, “If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?” Mills said people needed to develop what he called the sociological imagination that would allow them to condense and simplify news and to connect personal and social matters within historical and structural contexts.

That was the long-lost era of newspapers, long-form paper magazines, the reading of books, and minimal television stations.  To think that there was far too much information then can only make one laugh, now that the digital revolution has buried us in data, information, and “breaking news” at warp speed, usually contradictory and lacking context.  The internet has literally made people crazy, created schizoid or split personalities who don’t know whether they are coming or going or what world they are in, physical or virtual.  This is the era of social schizophrenia.  It is also the era of Covid-19 lockdowns when a far greater online life is promoted as the necessary future.

If people once felt that all the information was too confusing and they were ending up thinking and doing things ass-backwards as a result, back then they might have understood it if you told them that the only way you can do anything is ass-backwards.  Today, many would probably greet you with a look of bewilderment as they googled it to see if there was a way to swivel their asses to the front to get adjusted to the way they feel while waiting online for clear directions to emerge. Which way does an ass go?

They will be waiting for a long, long time.

The Internet is a double-bind because we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. News, writing, and information of all sorts is now often not available any other way. The era of paper newspapers is coming to an end. This was meant to be. Other sources of fact and fiction have gradually been eliminated, while the content on the Internet has been dramatically increased and progressively censored. The dream of an open Internet is turning into a nightmare. If you look at the Internet’s creation and development by the U.S. military-intelligence-Silicon Valley network as a tool for social control, propaganda, and total spying, if you grasp this nexus and their intentions, you will come away realizing that the Internet and the total integrated digital world is a dystopian tool designed to make you crazy.  To sow confusion and endless contradictory information from minute to minute.  To “flood the zone” (see Event 201) with propaganda and disinformation. To give you a headache, keep you agitated, destroy your genuine human experience in the physical world. To put you into a state of frenetic passivity while whispering in your ear that there is no escape, while allowing elements of truth to emerge to keep you addicted.

This is the double-bind. It is what Jacques Ellul in 1964 called the technological society that is ruled by technique in every aspect of its life.  Technique is a way of thinking that emphasizes efficiency; it is a way of thinking that emphasizes order and standardized means to a predetermined end. It is rational, deliberate, and focused on results.  It is a way of thinking that has penetrated deep into the psychic structures of society and opposes spontaneity and unreflective action.  Machines grow out of technical thinking, and today the computer, the internet, and artificial intelligence are the ideal manifestations of such thinking.  They are the result, not the cause.  As such, digital technology satisfies the technical mindsets that have been created over the decades, which includes regular people who have been gradually softened up to believe these machine dreams.  Efficiency, results, practicality, and speed. The human body as a wonderful machine.

We have all been so conditioned, even those of us old enough to have lived before the computer era. Starting particularly in the early 1990s with the rat-a-tat electronic frenzy of the U.S. televised aggressive war against Iraq, euphemistically called the Gulf War and presented live with round-the-clock television coverage by ghoulish announcers more excited than 13-year-old boys with a porn magazine, the speed of everyday life has increased. If you lived through those years and were sensitive to the social drift, you could feel the pace of life pick up year-to-year, as everyone was induced to get in the fast lane.  On the information superhighway, it is the only lane. Paul Virilio, a French thinker, has focused on this issue of speed in his studies of dromology, from dromos: a race, running.  While his language is perhaps too academic, his insights are profound, as with the following point:

The speed of the new optoelectronic and electroacoustic milieu becomes the final void (the void of the quick), a vacuum that no longer depends on the interval between places or things and so on the world’s extension, but on the interface of an instantaneous transmission of remote appearances, on a geographic and geometric retention in which all volume, all relief vanishes.

This is the world of teleconferencing and the online life, existence shorn of physical space and time and people.  A world where shaking hands is a dissident act. A haunted world of specters, words, and images that can appear and disappear in a nanosecond.  A magic show. A place where, in the words of Charles Manson, you can “get the fear,” where fear is king.  A locus where, as we sit at home “sheltering in place,” we are no longer there. Ernest Hemingway sniffed the future when in The Sun Also Rises, he has the protagonist Jake Barnes say no to Robert Cohn, who wants him to travel to South America with him, with these words: “All countries look like the moving pictures.”  That was 1926.

Things have changed a wee bit since then. But the essence of propaganda and social control remains the same.  “All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of other people work on the experiencesof those other people,” wrote R.D. Laing, in The Politics of Experience. “Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways.” Mystification takes place when people can be convinced that a social construction – e.g. the Internet and the digital life – is part of “the natural order of things,” like the air we breathe. And that life online is real life, better and more real than physical existence.

I believe the digital revolution has gone a long way toward destroying our experience as persons. It is the endless magical mystery tour that goes nowhere.  It is the ultimate psychodrama conjured by a satanic magician.

Do I exaggerate?  Perhaps.  But how else explain the spell this medium has cast on billions of people worldwide? Did the human race suddenly get smart? Or are many more people crazy?

I ask myself this question, and now I ask you.  Has the Internet and the devices to access it made your life better or worse? Has it made the life of humanity better or worse? Has its essential role in globalization made for a better world?

Obviously, there are pluses to the Internet, just as there are pluses to almost everything.  I don’t deny that. The plus side of death is that the thought of it reminds you that you are alive. The plus side of television is you don’t have to turn it on. Like you, I could rattle off many good things about the Internet (not cell phones, sorry).  But on the scale of good and bad, where do you come down?  Where do I?

Or is it possible we can’t decide because we are too conflicted and caught in a double-bind?

I am of two minds, or more accurately, two half-heads. The upper part, pinned in the trap and dead to my situation, can only answer yes, sir, now that I am trapped, my life is better.  I can debate endlessly the minutiae of every issue thrown out like pieces of meat for caged lions.  I can check the weather forecast for every hour of every day of the week, even though I know they will probably be wrong.  I can get directions even though I know you don’t need a director to know which way the roads go.  I can research issues quickly and pontificate as if I were an expert on every matter from a to z.  I can feel I am informed while feeling deformed by the contradictory information that appears and disappears every few minutes.  Essentially, I can feel in-touch and worthy of respect from friends and neighbors because I can exchange empty words with them about nothing. I can feel so very normal and rejoice in that.  I can feel sane.

On the negative side, well, my lower half-head, the one that’s still thinking lead-pencil thoughts, the slow and easy stuff, the calm cool breeze oh what a lovely day dreams – you don’t really need to hear what it has to bitch about the Internet.  You can probably guess.

In a fine article, “Vicious Cycles: Theses on a philosophy of news,” in Harper’s Magazine, Greg Jackson writes the following about our addiction to so-called “news” (the Internet):

When we turn away from the news, we will confront a startling loneliness.  It is the loneliness of life.  The loneliness of thinking, of having no one to think for us, and of uncertainty.  It is a loneliness that was always there but that was obscured by an illusion, and we will miss the illusion…. And we will miss tuning in each day to hear that voice that cuts boredom and loneliness in its solution of the present tense, that like Scheherazade assures us the story is still unfolding and always will be.  I don’t know whether we can give it up.

Nor do I.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

Featured image is from Distract The Media

For a long period the Chinese regime has vacillated between seeking accommodation with the U.S.-led imperialist forces to ‘do business’ with the western world, and defending itself against the attempted economic, political, and military encirclement and strangulation of China by those same imperialist forces.

China, though not imperialist like the U.S., had also turned to increased nationalism at least partially in response to the U.S. threat and partially to divert Chinese public attention from the  economic slow-down in China due to the protracted post 2008 world economic crisis.

Now, however, the Chinese vacillation between accommodating the U.S.-led forces and defending itself against them seems to be over. In response to the US.trade war; the false U.S. claims that China is responsible for the U.S. coronavirus crisis; the U.S. South Sea military actions and movement into Asia of 60% of the U.S. military; and the attacks on Huawei and China’s hi-tech sector, the Chinese regime appears to have finally accepted that it must deal with the U.S. as an enemy state.

A lead article in today’s Global Times, a Chinese state newspaper closely aligned with Beijing policies, is entitled ‘China’s countermeasures ready for prolonged ‘war’ with US’.

“The environment for China’s peaceful development has changed greatly. China’s domestic and foreign policies must also adjust. US suppression has become the No.1 challenge to China’s development. For quite a long time, we need to release our strength to destroy US bluster.

“We must be clear that coping with US suppression will be the key focus of China’s national strategy. We should enhance cooperation with most countries. The US is expected to contain China’s international front lines, and we must knock out this US plot and make China-US rivalry a process of US self-isolation.

“That the US suppresses China in full fury goes against trends. As long as we do our job well, there is no need to fear Washington’s thirst for power. If the US really walks beyond the lines, we will first make some US companies suffer to show our strength and resolve. Then we will think how to cope with all these changes and adopt a down-to-earth manner to engage in a prolonged struggle with a reckless US.”

Another article in the same issue is entitled:  ‘China ready to target Apple, Qualcomm, Cisco and Boeing in retaliation against US’ Huawei ban: source.”  The article states that “Apple, Qualcomm, Cisco “and Boeing are all highly dependent on the Chinese market.”

And that investigations or suspensions of their right to do business in China will be implemented if the U.S. regime proceeds with blocking shipments of crucial chips to the Chinese tech giant Huawei.   Stopping all purchases of Boeing aircraft is also mentioned as a distinct possibility.

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Italian master thinker Giorgio Agamben has been on the – controversial – forefront examining what new paradigm may be emerging out of our current pandemic distress.

He recently called attention to an extraordinary book published seven years ago that already laid it all out.

In Tempetes Microbiennes, Patrick Zylberman, a professor of History of Health in Paris, detailed the complex process through which health security, so far at the margins of political strategies, was sneaking into center stage in the early 2000s. The WHO had already set the precedent in 2005, warning about “50 million deaths” around the world caused by the incoming swine flu. In the worst-case scenario projected for a pandemic, Zylberman predicted that “sanitary terror” would be used as an instrument of governance.

That worst-case scenario has been revamped as we speak. The notion of a generalized obligatory confinement is not warranted by any medical justification, or leading epidemiological research, when it comes to fighting a pandemic. Still, that was enshrined as the hegemonic policy – with the inevitable corollary of countless masses plunged into unemployment. All that based on failed, delirious mathematical models of the Imperial College kind, imposed by powerful pressure groups ranging from the World Economic Forum (WEF) to the Munich Security Conference.

Enter Dr. Richard Hatchett, a former member of the National Security Council during the first Bush Jr. administration, who was already recommending obligatory confinement of the whole population way back in 2001. Hatchett now directs the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a very powerful entity coordinating global vaccine investment, and very cozy with Big Pharma. CEPI happens to be a brainchild of the WEF in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Crucially, Hatchett regards the fight against Covid-19 as a “war”. The terminology – adopted by everyone from President Trump to President Macron – gives away the game. It harks back to – what else – the global war on terror (GWOT), as solemnly announced in September 2001 by Donald “Known Unknowns” Rumsfeld himself.

Rumsfeld, crucially, had been the chairman of biotech giant Gilead. After 9/11, at the Pentagon, he got busy aiming to blur the distinction between civilians and the military when it came to GWOT. That’s when “generalized obligatory confinement” was conceptualized, with Hatchett among the key players.

As much as this was a militarized Big Pharma spin-off concept, it had nothing to do with public health. What mattered was the militarization of American society to be adopted in response to bioterror – at the time automatically attributed to a squalid, tech-deprived al-Qaeda.

The current version of this project – we are at “war” and every civilian must stay at home – takes the form of what Alexander Dugin has defined as a medical-military dictatorship.

Hatchett is very much part of the group, alongside ubiquitous Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), very close to WHO, WEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. chapter of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Further applications inbuilt in the project will include all-around digital surveillance, sold as health monitoring. Already implemented in the current narrative is the non-stop demonization of China, “guilty” of all things Covid-19-related. That is inherited from another tried and tested war game – the Red Dawn scheme.

Show me your fragility

Agamben did square the circle: it’s not that citizens across the West have the right to health safety; now they are juridically forced (italics mine) to be healthy. That, in a nutshell, is what biosecurity is all about.

So no wonder biosecurity is an ultra-efficient governance paradigm. Citizens had it administered down their throats with no political debate whatsoever. And the enforcement, writes Agamben, kills “any political activity and any social relation as the maximum example of civic participation.”

What we are already experiencing is social distancing as a political model (italics mine) – with a digital matrix replacing human interaction, which by definition from now on will be regarded as fundamentally suspicious and politically “contagious”.

Agamben has to be appalled by this “concept for the destiny of human society that in many aspects seems to have borrowed from religions in decline the apocalyptic idea of the end of the world”. Economics had already replaced politics – as in everything subjected to the diktats of financial capitalism. Now the economy is being absorbed by “the new biosecurity paradigm to which every other imperative must be sacrificed.”

How to fight against it? Conceptual weaponry is available, such as the courses on biopolitics taught by Michel Foucault at the College de France between 1972 and 1984. They may now be consulted via a decentralized platform set up by a collective which delightfully describes itself as “the crayfish”, who “advance laterally”: a concept that does justice to great rhizomatic master Gilles Deleuze.

Nassim Taleb’s concept of Antifragile is also quite helpful. As he explains, “Antifragile is the antidote to Black Swans.” Well, Covid-19 was a Black Swan of sorts: after all deciding elites knew something like it was inevitably coming – even as lowly Western politicians, especially, were caught totally unprepared.

Antifragile contends that because of fear (very much in evidence now) or a “thirst for order” (natural to any political power) “some human systems, by disrupting the invisible or not so visible logic of things, tend to be exposed to harm from Black Swans and almost never get any benefit. You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.”

The conclusion is that “in the black swan world, optimization isn’t possible. The best you can achieve is a reduction in fragility and greater robustness.”

There’s no evidence, so far, that a “reduction in fragility” in the current world-system will necessarily lead towards “greater robustness.” The system has never proved to be so fragile. What we do have is plenty of indications that the system collapse is being refitted, at breakneck speed, as digital neo-feudalism.

Lost in a biopolitical quarantine

Byung-Chul Han, the South Korean philosopher who teaches in Berlin, has attempted to lay it all out. The problem is he’s too much of a hostage of an idealized vision of Western liberalism.

Byung-Chul Han is correct when he notes that Asia fought Covid-19 with rigor and discipline inconceivable in the West – something that I have followed closely. But then he evokes the Chinese social credit system to mount an attack on China’s society of digital discipline. The system unquestionably allows for biopolitical surveillance. But it’s all about nuance.

The social credit system is like the formula “socialism with Chinese characteristics”; a hybrid that is effective only when responding to China’s complex specificities.

The maze of facial recognition surveillance cameras; the absence of restriction to data exchanged between internet providers and the central power; the QR code that tells whether you’re “red” or “green” in terms of infection; all these instruments were applied – successfully – in China to the benefit of public health.

Byung-Chul Han is forced to admit that does not take place only in China; South Korea – a Western-style democracy – is even considering that people in quarantine should wear a digital bracelet. If we talk about the different Asian models used to fight Covid-19, nuance is the norm.

The Asian-wide collectivist spirit and discipline – especially in Confucianist-influenced societies – works irrespective of the political system. At least Byung-Chul Han admits, “all these Asian particularities are systemic advantages to contain the epidemic.”

The point is not that Asian disciplinary society should be seen as a model for the West. We already live in a digital global Panopticum (where’s Foucault when we need him?) Social network vigilance – and censorship – deployed by the Silicon Valley behemoths has already been internalized. All our data as citizens is trafficked and instantly marketized for private profit. So yes; digital neo-feudalism was already in effect even before Covid-19.

Call it surveillance turbo-neoliberalism. Where there’s no inbuilt “freedom”, and it’s all accomplished by voluntary servitude.

Biopolitical surveillance is just a further layer, the last frontier, because now, as Foucault taught us, this paradigm controls our own bodies. “Liberalism” has been reduced to road kill a long time ago. The point is not that China may be the model for the West. The point is we may have been set up for an endless biopolitical quarantine without even noticing it.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The global pandemic of the new coronavirus worsens day after day worldwide, bringing with it a series of harms for humanity. As it is known, in addition to the simple infection by the virus, the pandemic causes problems in society as a whole and which daily put the lives of millions of people at risk, such as hunger and misery, which are increasingly aggravated by social chaos. However, what has most caught the attention of health authorities recently is the overwhelming increase in the number of mental illnesses. Social isolation, risk, the global atmosphere of fear and tension, as well as anxiety about the near future are affecting the population with almost the same speed and intensity as the virus itself, contributing greatly to the collapse of the international society.

In a report this week, UN health experts warned that COVID-19 currently poses a serious risk to mental health across the planet. The statement highlights several regions of the planet where the risks are greater, in addition to selecting the vulnerable groups most specifically threatened by the growing wave of mental illness. Among the most vulnerable groups are children, the elderly and health professionals.

“Isolation, fear, uncertainty, economic turmoil – all this causes or can cause psychological problems (…) The mental health and well-being of entire societies have been severely affected by this crisis and are a priority to be addressed urgently”, said Devora Kestel, director of the World Health Organization’s mental health department.

Another problem that has been increasing exponentially is the incidence of domestic violence crimes. In several countries, police records of attendances to such occurrences grow on a frightening scale, mainly due to the psychological imbalance to which spouses are constantly subjected during home confinement.

The main problem, however, still seems to be the social factor. In times of economic crisis and recession, despair becomes a common trend among people. Lacking any prospects, millions of individuals are left to fend for themselves, unable to count on their former jobs and in many cases without any government support, as seen in most of the poorest countries. With no forecast of improvement, with an exponential and overwhelming growth of the disease, what remains is a cruel struggle for survival with the few resources available. This is the ideal scenario for the emergence of all sorts of psychological disorders. Helpless by the health service and without enough money to resort to private treatment, many people succumb to such diseases – often without even realizing that they are being affected by them.

The great challenge that is presented, however, is to manage a pandemic situation with escalating mental illnesses. For decades, governments around the world have neglected mental health and, although they have developed complex and efficient public health mechanisms, they have kept their populations vulnerable and unprotected against this type of “invisible threat”. Now, the results are seen in the most tragic way and the management of this scenario will be much more difficult. In fact, to save their citizens from mental illness, governments will have to invest heavily in distance therapy mechanisms and online psychological and psychiatric duty. Equally, it will be necessary to invest in social programs of financial support and emergency aid for the poorest, preventing them from being victimized by evils such as hunger and misery, which inevitably lead to despair.

In the published report, WHO experts proposed a series of public policies to alleviate the reported ills, guiding governments to seek “to reduce immense suffering among hundreds of millions of people and to mitigate long-term social and economic costs for the society”. Such measures include remedying a historic lack of investment in psychological services, providing “emergency mental health” through remote therapies, such as tele-counseling for frontline health professionals, and working proactively with people who already have depression and anxiety, as well as people at high risk of suffering domestic violence and acute impoverishment.

There is still no official research reporting concrete data on the global number of suicides in this pandemic period. It is possible and even probable that in several regions of the planet the numbers are going up considerably. Unfortunately, a research of this nature is not classified as a priority in times of great calamity, which is why we will hardly know in time to prevent major damages. The most promising, however, is to know that at least something has already started to be done and that mental illnesses are being reported and their affected people are receiving treatment recommendations.

We do not know which governments will heed the recommendations. In most countries, the structure of public health does not even include the number of people infected by the virus itself, and the treatment of mental illness is an even more distant reality. In these cases, the pandemic and misfortune cannot be blamed, but the neglect of public health that has characterized most countries in recent decades. Mental illnesses have not arisen now, they have always existed and our international social structure favors their spread even more. Every year, the number of people with mental disorders increases, as does the number of suicide cases. The neglect does not come from now, just an old “time bomb” is exploding amid an even greater chaos. Perhaps, therefore, the most important would be the legacy to be left to the post-coronavirus world.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

During a security operation carried out with the help of the Syrian Badia’s residents, an ambush was set up against an ISIS terrorist group composed of 6 members where 3 of them were killed and the remaining ones were arrested.

The three arrested ISIS terrorists confessed that they perpetrated many terrorist operations, including murder, execution, kidnapping and acts of destruction .

Many of these terror operations were carried out upon coordination between ISIS ringleaders and US occupation forces that exist in al-Tanf area on the Syrian-Jordanian border.

The terrorist Salah Jaber al-Daher – AKA Abo Abdul Rahman al-Salafi, born in Idleb in 1998, said that he joined ISIS organization through one of his relatives [called Abo Salam Omareyeh] who was among the members of this Takfiri organization and he exploited his need for money and introduced him to another person called Samer al-Bori, who transported him to Jabal al-Bashari area in the Syrian Badia where he was welcomed by ISIS terrorists, including Abo Islam. This took place in 2018.

On his part, the second terrorist Abo al-Baraa al-Homsi, born in Homs in 1999, said that he met a person called Firas al-Khalid in Homs city in 2017. This person had a clothes shop and proposed to give him USD 100-200 and to transport him to Raqqa to join ISIS. He accepted the proposal because he was in need of money.

The third terrorist, Amer Abdul Ghaffar Neameh– AKA Abo Swan– born in Hasaka in 2001, said that he communicated via Whatsapp with his cousin Wahid Meameh, who was in the Badia and he told him that he will get money and a car if he joins the organization.

The 3 terrorists confessed that they were trained for several weeks by ISIS judges, who told them that they are Jihadist and any person fighting against ISIS is an infidel. They were also trained on how to use guns and rockets, including US rockets.

The terrorists were introduced to the so-called ISIS emirs of several nationalities besides fighters of French, British and Indonesian nationalities.

As for some of the crimes in which those terrorists were involved, the first terrorist [Abo Abdul Rahman al-Salafi] said that he killed 21 people while they were searching for truffles and he carried out operations against Syrian army’s convoys.

“We were setting up ambushes against the Syrian army and civilian cars in several areas in aal-Badia'” he added.

The terrorists stressed that they were receiving orders from US occupation forces in al-Tanf area. These occupation forces were ordering ISIS ringleader Hasan Alqam al-Jazrawi of Saudi nationality, to target Syrian army’ units, Palmyra, T4 airbase, oil fields in Palmyra region.

One of the terrorists said:

“A person closed to al-Jezrawi, his name was Hasan al-Wali, told me that he met Americans in al-Tanf base and they told him that we must attack Palmyra region and the T4 airbase and they will provide us with rocket launchers, guns, money, cars and drones. They downlaoded Tag program on their mobiles to observe the movements of the Syrian army. Al-Jazrawi said that he will do that but he needs time to bring fighters from Euphrates region because the current number is not enough”.

The terrorists asserted that there is coordination between ISIS ringleaders and the ringleaders of ” Maghawer al-Thawra” which is affiliated to the so-called the “Free army” in the vicinity of al-Tanf base.

The terrorists were ordered to keep in touch with their ringleaders in order to go in and out the base.

The terrorists cited that the ISIS terrorists were holding the kidnapped people in holes under the ground, in trenches and cars.

The Terrorist pointed out that there were negotiations between ISIS ringleaders in Raqqa and the ringleaders of the US-backed “Syrian Democratic Forces”.

One of the terrorists admitted that the US and SDF forces covered their move from Raqqa towards Der Ezzour.

The terrorists affirmed that three ISIS members : Abo Sofyan al-Jazrawi, Abo Jnid al-Halabi and Abo Brahim al-Demashqi, who were in charge of financial management in Badia, were going every month to al-Tanf base to bring 3 trucks loaded with food, weapons and money to be distributed among ISIS members in Badia region.

Every terrorist gets $100, while ringleaders gets $500 and the military Wali gets $1000.

Al-Tanf base was a safe place for terrorists to receive medical treatment when they were injured.

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Three Daesh terrorists confess to perpetrating a number of operations in cooperation with US occupation forces in al-Tanf.

Implementing President Putin’s directives, Russian federal authorities intensified their efforts to contain both the economic and social impact of the nation-wide coronavirus lockdown, and also some local authorities’ overzealous efforts. This move was impatiently awaited by the Russian society for a month.

It became clear in May that something went wrong in Russia. While in March one could still speak of insufficient medical statistics, of contradictory scientific findings, by now the SARS-COV-v2 situation has become clear.

Due to a variety of reasons, in March and April the world had to cope not so much with the spread of the virus, but rather a pandemic of fear and other processes which might collectively be called “coronacrisis”. One can thus identify three main challenges for humanity today:

1. The coronavirus epidemic as such;
2. The global socio-economic crisis;
3. The pandemic of fear and mass psychosis which complicated professional assessments of the first two problems and, therefore, the development of effective anti-crisis measures.

Separately, one should note that many political forces and financial circles have used the situation for profit. This includes deal-makers of all kinds, from petty speculators and local officials to global elites and corporations. No, they did not “create coronavirus”, at least there is no credible data to this effect, but they nevertheless used it to their advantage.

Russia was not bypassed by these processes. What is more, Russia experienced them to a greater extent than others. It turned out that Russian bureaucracy is unable to deal with new threats and challenges. It uncovered the clannish character of a sizable portion of Russian elites. It revealed problems with executive competence of many regional and federal officials. Especially when it comes to the economy, health care, and social security.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin apparently found himself in informational vacuum, which was particularly evident in the first half of April. It seems that the negative socio-economic developments were triggered by Vladimir Putin’s seemingly correct decision, made in late March, to give regions extraordinary powers. It meant decentralizing authority in order to give regional officials authority to act according to the situation in their region. That’s how many other countries have done, including Germany where the outcome was a positive one.

However, Russian bureaucracy and “liberal” clans that have fused with official institutions and which view themselves as a “new aristocracy” are not the same thing as German regional officials. The gap between Russian elite clans and the population is huge. This is the reason for the clumsy and in some cases even criminal, profit-motivated actions by elite clans after they were granted extraordinary powers.

Modern liberalism, sometimes referred to as “neo-liberalism”, is an ideology promoting serving global monopolies and market speculators. These “liberals” top priority is increasing personal consumption with minimal intellectual or physical effort, using the margin simplification of modern technologies in order to satisfy selfish desires under the guise of post-modern sophistry. Thus they consume public resources while giving nothing in return. Rather, they stand in the way of humanity’s progress.

President Putin and his closest administration members realized by mid-April that unless action is taken at federal level, the situation could quickly transform from critical to catastrophic. It was necessary to reassert control.

On April 23, President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to mitigate the socio-economic crisis being provoked by the COVID-19 outbreak.

“The coronavirus epidemic, challenging the whole world, threatens the lives and health of people first and foremost, but it also impacts the economy, and the condition of entire industries, which is no less dangerous,” Putin said. “Our common crucial task is to mitigate such adverse effects and reduce inevitable socioeconomic losses.”

The president noted that this is exactly why the government made a number of decisions to support families, employment and households’ revenues, individual entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises, and industry-forming companies, along with measures for disease prevention and bolstering healthcare capabilities.

“Nobody needs abstract promises that don’t affect people’s lives, and the effect of such decisions and allocated resources will be low,” Putin said, adding that the government and the Central Bank should promptly make the necessary changes to the regulatory framework.

“It’s not enough to announce that decisions have been made, dear colleagues. We need to work through all the stages of their implementation so that the help arrives on time so that those who really need it can take advantage of it.”

Earlier, on April 15, the Russian president announced a first package of measures to support the country’ economy hit by consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak and the following lockdown. The measures included:

• Monthly state payments to small and medium-sized businesses for every employee in April and May, provided firms maintain 90% of their workforce. The payment is 12,130 rubles ($160) for an employee per month;
• The federal government allocates a package of 200 billion rubles ($2.6 billion) of support for regional budgets;
• At least 23 billion rubles ($307 million) of government support for airlines.
• The federal government will reform the government-backed system of interest-free salary loans for firms. The reform is aimed at providing an easier access to loans by businesses.

As of April 24, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) estimated economic losses at 4-6% of annual GDP. This was the first recorded outcome of actions undertaken by regional authorities and the economic bloc of the federal government, thanks to whom the economy had ground to a halt even in regions where the number of cases was in single or double digits. Even the RCB team of economic liberals was forced to acknowledge that fact, even as they opposed direct economic support of enterprises and the population.

“The Bank of Russia has substantially reviewed its baseline scenario parameters. GDP is forecast to decrease by 4-6% in 2020. The Russian economy is thereafter expected to follow a recovery path with growth predicted to total 2.8-4.8% in 2021 and 1.5-3.5% in 2022,” the press release says.

“The spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Russia and the restrictive measures in place to address it have combined with a drop in external demand and a further decline in the prices of oil and other export goods to make a substantial negative impact on economic activity. In this environment, Q2 GDP is set to decline.”

According to the press release, the deficit of the payment balance in 2020 will be $35 billion in 2020 and $20 billion in 2021, and a return to surplus is expected in 2022. The negative payment balance is forecasted for the first time since 1997.

The complicated socio-economic situation caused by the coronavirus crisis and its economic consequences of the national-wide lockdown revealed a conflict between the representatives of the formally “patriotic” part of the elites and the so-called “liberals” affiliated with the West and the global financial capital.

For example, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina publicly opposes initiatives to introduce additional measures to stabilize the Russian currency market and prevent currency speculations amid the developing economic and social crisis.

On April 23, it became publicly known that the office of Elvira Nabiullina has sent the Ministry of Economic Development a letter in which it asked to silence ex-presidential adviser and the current Integration and Macroeconomics Minister of the Eurasian Economic Commission Sergei Glazyev. The letter claimed that Glazyev’s statements “carry reputational risks for joint government and Bank of Russia”.

A few days earlier, Glaziev proposed to levy a tax (0.01%) on purchase of foreign currency, as well as to fix the currency position of commercial banks and introduce a time lag between the application for purchase and delivery of currency. These measures (employed in multiple countries around the world) should help to stabilize the financial market and limit the impact of currency speculations (the tax of 0.01% will affect only actors that make hundreds of thousands speculative purchases).

Glazyev alongside other prominent economists that can afford the luxury of having his own independent opinion describe the current economic crisis “a consequence of profound structural changes in the global economy due to a change in technological and world economic structures”. He emphasizes the need to implement stabilization measures and consistently accuses the Central Bank of giving control of the ruble exchange rate to financial speculators.

It was during this time that the public rift between so-called “globalists” and national-oriented forces was growing not only in the economic sphere. The Federal Government and the Parliament started to demonstrate that they do not support actions of the team led by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and forces which it represents. The bone of contention are the draconian lockdown measures, mass surveillance, and illegal fees for violations of the ‘self-isolation regime’ pushed by the Moscow city managers.

While many European countries started to ease coronavirus restrictions in the second half of April, the Sobyanin team was seeking to increase pressure and limitations under the pretext of the crisis. These attempts were being conducted under the cover of unprecedented propaganda campaign that included even threats to deploy troops on the streets of the city, tighten the ‘self-isolation’ regime (in fact the home arrest regime) and further, and statements blaming Moscow residents for failures of the regional authorities.

The threat to deploy troops on the streets of Moscow was made by Sobyanin in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel on April 23.

“In many other large cities, the situation is somewhat different, first they introduce very soft, very democratic measures, and then they are forced to send troops into the streets. We don’t want this scenario, so we have the optimal mode of self-isolation installed in Moscow ,” Sobyanin said hinting that if Moscow residents continue demonstrating their dissatisfaction with the city managers’ actions, troops will be deployed.

As later events have shown, these actions had no impact on Moscow’s actual epidemiological situation, though the fines did enrich the city budget and organizations close to the mayor. Moscow government also tried to shift blame onto the inhabitants. For example, on April 24 , Deputy Mayor of Moscow Anastasia Rakova blamed Moscow residents for the regional authorities’ move to harden the imposed regime of ‘self-isolation’.

“Of course, what can I say, Moscow residents are tired. And they really became less responsible towards the compliance with the regime of self-isolation. More and more people go out on the street, use their personal or public transport. We were forced to take measures aimed at tightening the regime of self-isolation,” Rakova said.

Rakova added that there are more and more hospitalized and severely ill patients with COVID-19 in the capital.

“If last week the average daily level of hospitalization was 1,300-1,400 people, today it is 1,900,” Rakova said.

The numbers provided by Rakova originated from the Moscow COVID-19 HQ that on April 23 noted the increase of COVID-19 cases in the city and said that the situation was worsening.

Let’s take a look what happen in Moscow a week earlier that caused the increase of COVID-19 cases. For everyone, excluding Russian mainstream media and the Moscow COVID-19 HQ, the answer is clear.

On April 15, the Sobyanin team introduced a mandatory digital pass system triggering mass traffic jams and throngs of people waiting at metro stations while their digital passes (QR codes) to be checked by authorities. Hundreds of thousands of people (some sources say that over 1 million) struck in crowds.

На входе в московское метро — тотальная проверка пропусков. Скапливаются большие очереди, в которых явно не удается соблюдать социальную дистанцию.

Фото: Sergey Elkin, Jazzverok, The Insider, Fredegonda1 pic.twitter.com/46V4JImaw6

— Znak.com (@znak_com) April 15, 2020

Первый день с пропусками в метро. Кто еще не заболел, точно заболеет. pic.twitter.com/LsC78XkOsD

— Fredegonda🔪 (@Fredegonda1) April 15, 2020

Note: The pass for movement is a set of letters and numbers. The first four characters indicate the expiration date of the document, and the remaining 12 will identify its owner and the purpose of the trip.

Electronic passes are divided into three categories:

• for trips to work or business trips – issued once valid through to the end of the month;
• for trips to medical institutions – issued for trips to a specific hospital, the number of such passes per week is not limited;
• one-time for trips for personal purposes that do not violate the rules of the self-isolation regime – issued for one day no more than twice a week.

Contrary to the public declarations of the city managers, the very first day of the usage of the digital pass system in fact contributed to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia and derailed the previous weeks of the ‘self-isolation regime’ and sacrifices of the country’s  economy.

The reason of the traffic collapse and the new wave of the COVID-19 outbreak spread was the demand of Sobyanin to conduct mass checks of digital passes. The Moscow authorities through its channels immediately laid blame for the consequences of their own actions on Police, in particular on the Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs branch in the Moscow Metro Colonel Shamil Sibanov.

It is hard to imagine that Sobyanin that has a wide and long experience of management of the social systems and his team of ‘effective managers’ did not foresee how the digital pass system introduction would end.

As a result of the April 15 incident and similar developments of smaller scale in the next days, tens of thousands people (the estimated number is 30,000-50,000) were likely infected.

The average incubation period of the COVID-19 disease is 5.1 days. In the case of a severe progress of the disease, the exacerbation occurs after 2nd-3rd day from the onset of symptoms of the disease. If the course is moderate, then exacerbation could occur on the 7-8th day. Accordingly, the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in Moscow was expected to begin on April 21-22 and, according to an official data by the Moscow COVID-19 HQ, this happened.

In spite of the tragedy, the Moscow authorities continued to push their ‘digital pass system’ idea and even further expanded the digital surveillance and control measures over Moscow residents.

On April 22, they imposed an automated control of digital passes for personal, government and commercial transport moving around the city. Cameras for photo and video recording of traffic violations monitor whether license plate numbers are included in the lists of such passes. If the number is not entered in the digital pass, the car owner is being recognized as a violator of the ‘self-isolation regime’ and gets a fine of 5,000 rubles (~66 USD).

This applies to everyone, including military service members, special service officers and federal officials. Therefore, Moscow authorities insist that officers (including intelligence officers) and officials should provide their personal data to the united database managed by the regional authorities to avoid fines. This poses a direct threat to the interest of the state and creates conditions for leaks of sensitive data to Western special and intelligence services. There is no secret that a major part of the Sobyanin team, including Sobyanin himself, are directly or indirectly affiliated with the West. For example, the main consultants of Moscow mayor’s office, including the health departments, social welfare, and IT is Boston Consulting Group and people from openly pro-Western Higher School of Economics.

The positions of the federal government, security services and the federal legislative system were ignored. This measure also went contrary to the recommendations of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

All of these measures were adopted additionally to the already existing fees for ‘self-isolation’ regime violations.

Note: On April 2, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced administrative fines for violations of the regime of ‘self-isolation’ in the city. The  document (a Moscow city law) was published on the mayor’s official website. The law provides for a fine for violators of up to 5,000 rubles (~ 65 USD), and for organizations – up to 500,000 rubles (6,410 USD).

This situation created an additional administrative pressure on city residents, especially socially disadvantaged groups of the population that had little resources to pay new fines, but still had an essential need to go to work, travel to the hospital, help relatives with the purchase of products and had other urgent matters to leave home.

The financial explanation of the current situation is that the Moscow city managers are just creating an additional instrument to solidify their own power and compensate economic losses from traffic rules violations fine and paid parking.

On April 22, Moscow authorities reported that the created digital pass tracking system already detected 230,000 cars without digital passes. This is 230,000*5,000=1,150,000,000 rubles (~15,333,333 USD) of revenue in fines for a single day.

The Sobyanin team tried to expand these flawed policies to other regions. The Moscow mayor was a mastermind behind idea to expand the Moscow style system into the entire country. For sure under his control and based on a smartphone app developed for the Moscow region.

Russia needs digital passes “so that we could see the traffic, its volume and the travelers,” he claimed.

“I believe [the system] can be extended… to control the movement of air, rail and intercity and inter-regional bus transport.”

It’s worth reminding these events unfolded between April 6 and 24. In other words, when Moscow’s mayor practically usurped power in the socio-economic realm in the whole country. The Coronavirus HQ headed by Sobyanin duplicated the functions of Prime Minister Mishustin’s government agencies. His influence on regional elites greatly exceeded that of Mishustin who took up his post only 3 months earlier. Moreover, Mishustin was not perceived as a political player but merely as an effective technocrat. Many governors copied Moscow mayor’s actions, viewing him as, at a minimum, the future Prime Minister.

President V.V. Putin only began to overcome the cloud of disinformation at that time. It apparently became possible after Putin was forced to adopt self-isolation and remote work after visiting the Kommunarka infection ward.

Путин в Коммунарке: Костюм и респиратор для президента pic.twitter.com/QkrBA3UYwp

— Дмитрий Смирнов (@dimsmirnov175) March 24, 2020

On March 24, President Putin visited a hospital for coronavirus patients on Kommunarka. It was the first repurposed Moscow clinic. During his visit, Putin was accompanied by the chief physician Denis Protsenko.

On March 28, Putin’s visible activity dropped off. It did not return to normal on March 30. At the same time, it was announced that Protsenko contracted COVID-19 (he recovered by April 15). Putin self-isolates. After that, in late March and early April, changes were made in federal laws which further allowed Moscow mayor Sobyanin revamp municipal legislation and de-facto take it out of the federal power structure.

It’s not clear whether the decline in Putin’s political activity in the first two weeks of April was connected to his health or whether it was a political maneuver. It’s hard not to notice that after April 15, and especially after April 23, Putin began to operate more actively. There were clear signals given that Putin was not pleased with Putin’s activity. In spite of draconian measures, the number of COVID-19 cases in Moscow grew. There was information about the catastrophic situation in a number of Moscow clinics, and that Moscow health care officials want as many fatalities attributed to COVID-19 as possible.

The situation reached the point of absurdity. Sobyanin and his team claim that tests supposedly don’t work, and therefore COVID-19 diagnosis ought to be given in accordance with symptoms. Deputy Mayor Rakova stated that all Moscow inhabitants with signs of respiratory illness would be considered as potentially coronavirus-infected.

The motivation to categorize all individuals with respiratory symptoms as COVID-19 cases became more clear after it became known that several large sites in Moscow and Moscow region would be reconstructed as hangar-style hospitals.

Such hospitals are being built, for example, in Pavilion No. 75 of VDNKh. With a  surface area of 53 thousand square meters, it can accommodate 1,779 beds. This is an hangar with a single ventilation system where the beds are not separated by hard partitions. In addition to VDNKh, similar temporary hospitals for patients supposedly suffering from COVID-19 will be deployed in the Krasnaya Presnya Expo-Center, the Sokolniki Convention and Exhibition Center, Krylatskoye Ice Palace, and Moskva Mall on the Kashirka Road. They would have a total of 10 thousand beds, not counting 5 thousand additional beds being added to existing city hospitals. These hangar hospitals would collect all patients with signs of respiratory illness, including flu, pneumonia, bacterial bronchitis, allergies, etc., in other words everyone who was suspected of COVID-19.

It’s obvious that there is high danger of intra-hospital mutual infections. Considering the high contagiousness of SARS-COV-v2, one can assume that soon every patient in such hangar hospital would be COVID-19-positive. Billions of rubles were disbursed without proper evaluation of competing offers. The average cost of a single bed, according to open sources, would be about 650 thousand rubles (8,666 USD). In turn, a single COVID-19 course of treatment costs about 205 thousand rubles (2,733 USD), according to mandatory health insurance price tables. It’s more expensive than, for example, a chemotherapy round of treatments in Russia.

In accordance with the decision by Moscow government, these funds ought to be allocated for every patient admitted to a COVID-19 hangar hospital. This in a situation where tests supposedly “don’t work”, diagnoses are issued according to symptoms. As a result, there are massive opportunities for personal enrichment for a small circle of people.

One might object on the basis that lives are more important than money. Nevertheless, Moscow has dozens of empty hospitals. Many of them were closed only recently. Mayor Sobyanin closed 460 municipal medical facilities and reduced the number of ambulances and physicians by 37% during the last five years.

What is more, many existing hospitals repurposed as COVID-19 infection centers are using only 30% of their capacity. For example, the Voronovskoye Moscow Infectious Disease Clinical Center is operating at only 25% capacity. The Center, which has 800 beds, admitted only 233 patients as of May 12. A similar situation can be observed in the Kommunarka hospital where, as of May 13, there were only 317 patients as compared to its capacity of 1300 beds, not counting the 1000 beds that were additionally set up. The 15^th Filatovo Hospital which was one of the first to take in COVID-19 patients, had 1340 patients as of May 12, while the capacity was 1740 beds.

Ordinary hospitals in the meantime greatly reduced or stopped planned operations and patient visits. It particularly concerns the cancer patients, heart surgeries, transplants, planned surgeries on children, etc. One can find a video on the Internet with a multi-kilometer chain of ambulances, caused not by a huge number of respiratory patients but criminally incompetent logistical organization.

Death rate is increasing not so much from COVID-19 complications but rather from poorly organized Moscow health care system, and also a decrease in Moscow inhabitants’ immunity who were forbidden to leave homes, participate in any form of physical activity in open air, and were subjected to massive informational stress.

Economic problems are becoming critical, with a sharp increase in unemployment.

None of these facts went unnoticed in the Kremlin. On April 30, 2020, there was unexpected information on how Prime Minister Mishustin allegedly became infected and is leaving for hospital treatment. His place was temporarily occupied by the First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov, a Soviet-school economist. Moreover, he was appointed as the acting Prime Minister by Vladimir Putin’s decree. In earlier such cases of illness or absence, no such decrees followed. Belousov is not only a widely acknowledged professional but also a political heavyweight. He may be compared, with qualifications, to such major figures as Maslyukov and Gerashchenko who led Russia out of the 1998 crisis.

Events continued to unfold. On May 6, there was another meeting that included President Putin and Acting Prime Minister Belousov. Following the meeting, the coronavirus control authority was de-facto returned to the government of the Russian Federation from Sobyanin’s working group. Moreover, the Moscow mayor was not able to force the government to extent quarantine until the end of May for the whole country. Deliberately promoted media hysteria concerning coronavirus dangers did not help either, nor did playing around with statistics. For example, during the meeting Sobyanin claimed that Moscow supposedly had 300,000 infections. Furthermore, he claimed that the number of hospitalizations in Moscow has not changed. Sobyanin’s motives are unclear. They may be based in political ambitions, but also on economic calculations.

Not having achieved his goal, Sobyanin de-facto ignored the president’s position and announced that Moscow’s self-isolation would be extended to May 31 with the regime being further strengthened through the addition of the requirement to wear masks and gloves under the penalty of fines.

Several regions immediately followed suit, apparently by inertia. They included the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, and Crimea. Which makes it all the more surprising to hear that the admissions of patients into hospitals was reduced by, for example in Kommunarka, a factor of three.

Masks and gloves are not provided for free, but rather are being sold by businesses affiliated with the Moscow mayor’s office. For example, the Moscow metro 50 rubles, or 70 cents, will buy you ONE very simple mask and gloves. The Rospotrebnadzor recommended term of wearing such mask does not exceed 2 hours.

On May 14, it was revealed that Moscow authorities bought the largest producer of masks in Russia. According to the available data, before the start of the crisis the cost of a single mask was 1 ruble (0.013 USD). After the start of the COVID-19 crisis, the cost grew up to 7 rubles (0.093 USD). At the same time, the cost of a single mask, which is being sold in the Moscow Metro (controlled by the local authorities), is 30 rubles (0.4 USD). The revenue from this business goes to persons and organizations affiliated with the city’s mayor.

On top of this, the Sobyanin team undertook additional steps to increase an administrative pressure on Moscow residents. In April, local authorities obliged people that receive administrative protocols imposing on them a forceful regime of quarantine (ironically described as the self-isolation) imposed on them because they may be suspected of being infected with SARS-CoV-2 to install a special application on their phones and tablets. The application monitors the activity and location (via GPS) of the user and demands him to make selfies (sent to the dedicated server) to confirm his location several times per day (in fact almost every hour). This move put Moscow a one step closer to becoming a real-life digital concentration camp.

On April 16, Moscow authorities officially announced a decision to label all people with respiratory symptoms will be diagnosed with “suspected coronavirus infection”. All of these people, whom the mayor team was able to locate and detect, became a target of forceful monitoring and administrative limitations. In fact, administrative decisions of these kind are imposed widely towards a variety of people, including children with sinusitis, rhinitis, otits, people with allergy or some chronic illness. The Sobyanin team did not stop on this and on May 10 introduced an update to the monitoring application. This update allowed it to impose fines on residents that fail to make a selfie within an hour after the request. Other reasons for fines are changes of the location, the shut off of application or the phone with the installed application (due to any reasons). The fine of 4,000 rubles (53 USD) is imposed for every such incident.

It’s hard to justify this measures by the need to contain the coronavirus outbreak or care about people. The two main possible reasons are vested interest of the local authorities that pump money into the budget and affiliated structures by this way or political games, in which the Sobyanin team is playing to damage actions and policies of President Putin and the federal government.

Reports appeared in Russian social media that Google proposed the Moscow authorities at least 0.5 million USD to promote information regarding the COVID-19 outbreak; in fact, to fuel the hysteria over the situation.

The next big event took place on May 11. President Vladimir Putin announced the work holiday would come to an end. As of May 12, the regime of limitations would gradually be shut down. Vladimir Putin announced this in his address to the Russian citizens at the beginning of meeting with governors. Then he announced a new and unprecedented, for contemporary Russia, packet of measures of support for ordinary citizens and businesses. These decisions were diametrically opposed to the ideas supported by the liberal clan that includes Nabiulina, Sobyanin, Siluanov, and others.

The new support measures include:

• All families with children aged 3-15 may receive one-time payments of 10 thousand rubles (133 USD) per child, starting on June 1.
• Individual entrepreneurs, small and mid-sized businesses in hard-hit industries as well as socially-oriented non-commercial organizations will have all tax and insurance payments canceled for the second quarter, with the exception of value-added tax.
• Self-employed will have their income taxes paid in 2019 refunded. They will also receive “tax capital” at the rate of one minimum-wage annual salary to fulfill tax payments.

At the same time, Putin’s address left the impression of half-measures. It included announcements that governors’ additional coronavirus-related powers were being extended, giving them the ability to raise and reduce restrictions depending on the situation.

However, even that format had the effect of an exploding bomb.

Since May 11, when Putin announced the decision to ease coronavirus restrictions, Russia has become a target of a large-scale international media campaign designed to fuel the coronavirus panic in the country. Western mainstream media and Russian-language media organizations funded by the West or affiliated with it structures and persons released a coordinated series of articles arguing and speculating (with no evidence) that Russia is hiding the real COVID-19 death toll. An overwhelming majority of these articles refers to ‘anonymous sources’ or representatives of the ‘non-system’ Russian opposition (like Alexei Navalny) that seek to gain some hype without any real evidence.

An example:

Are you kidding? BECAUSE THEY ARE LYING, as they do about everything. Stop having medical experts write about Russian coronavirus and use only fake news experts. Every number is a lie. https://t.co/aEGshQV8iH

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) May 14, 2020

The Russian Foreign Ministry descried these reports as fake news. Nonetheless, the interesting fact is that no article released in the framework of this new anti-Russian campaign criticizes actions of Sobyanin or members of the liberal part of the Russian elites. All of them are aimed against President Putin and the federal government. This campaign goes fully in the framework of the efforts of the Russia-based liberal clans to keep the coronavirus-related restrictions and further. In fact, Russian social media and news media are full of reports revealing that in many cases local authorities insist to add any person with a positive (and in some cases even supposedly positive) SARS-CoV-2 test to the coronavirus death toll.

Right after the president’s meeting with the governors, Tatarstan announced removing the pass regime and destroying all personal data collected.

The government of one of Russia’s key regions also signaled immediate removal of all the main limitations starting on May 12. One should note that the Moscow pass regime was based on Kazan’s experience, with Sobyanin himself closely collaborating with Kazan financial and economic elites. Tatarstan was followed by Bashkiriya and many other regions. The Federal Ministry of Health signaled that 33 regions were ready to remove the restrictions.

Moscow Region Governor Vorobyov, who closely followed the example of Moscow mayor and earlier also announced that the quarantine would be extended until May 31, delayed his announcement by four hours. But by 21:20 Moscow time he announced that “due to new demands of the epidemiological legislation the planned construction and production starts are delayed until May 18.” He did not mention the end of May.

It seems that Sobyanin and the liberal team needed a whole day to decide how to proceed. It seems they decided not to change the course of action and instead decided on a collision course with the president, possibly also with the intent of increasing social instability in Moscow. It is difficult to interpret these facts differently.

Interestingly, several unofficial media sources which are nevertheless seen as linked to the presidential administration began to openly accuse Sobyanin of an attempted coup d’etat. Thus the popular Kremlyovskiy Bezbashennik Telegram channel (reportedly linked with former adviser to President Putin -Vladislav Surkov) writes:

“it is entirely correct to write about the consequences of scandalous decisions made by Sobyanin which raise social tensions and which may lead to unrest in Moscow. But these are not mistakes by the mayor and no, he has not lost his mind. It’s all part of the plan being implemented step by step by the Party of Troubles which “Stag” described already at the start of this whole coronavirus bacchanalia. The HQ of the Covid-19 party and its frontman Sobyanin should be happy with the results of the investigation. The battle for Moscow has seen the use of the stratagem of seizure of power through destabilizing the situation an using the “street factor” in order to nullify the Constitution (in other words, the State) and obtain extraordinary powers during social unrest. Therefore as far as Sobyanin is concerned, the worse, the better. They’ll never get another chance to get power”.

If events continue to develop in this way, the last doubts that coronavirus is being deliberately used by certain elite factions in order to achieve certain political and economic objectives will scatter. It looks like that the initial plan of Sobyanin and his colleagues from the liberal clan was to de-facto conduct a creeping seizure of power in the country through the system of digital totalitarianism created under a pretext of the combating coronavirus outbreak. They achieved some successes, but the recent developments demonstrate that apparently this plan has not been 100% effective. The federal government and the Kremlin have realized the threat of the uncontrolled ‘lockdowns’ imposed by the regional authorities and working to compensate the social, administrative and economic damage of these actions.

Furthermore, actions of the Moscow authorities already significantly undermined the trust the Sobyanin team had among Moscow residents and caused a major negative reaction in the social media all across the country. The negative economic, social and medical impact of their actions are an open secret.

Moscow government and allied liberal clans are not about to give up or change their plans. Even modest attempts of the Sobyanin team to turn off the already set course met with a wave of criticism in the media controlled by the so-called liberal bloc. This week, a new media campaign was launched. It claims that Moscow authorities allegedly underestimate mortality from the COVID-19 outbreak.

Moscow risks becoming a center of socio-economic tension and political instability due to Mayor’s Office actions in delaying the gradual removal or weakening of administrative, social, and economic restrictions. Even when they are forced to remove them, Sobyanin’s team will do everything possible to preserve as many powers as possible during the pandemic. This may include the ability to limit the movement of citizens in the capital. In any event, one may confidently predict that the political tension between Moscow and federal authorities will grow. It may enable external forces which are interested in social instability in Russia to further destabilize the situation.

*

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In 2020, Lithuania’s and Latvia’s gross domestic product (GDP) will decrease by seven per cent, according to a European Bank for Reconstruction and Development report published only days ago. Estonia’s GDP is projected to decline by six percent. A six to seven percent contraction is the biggest in the European Union, and it certainly can be partly blamed on the current coronavirus pandemic that has shut down entire industries. The total decline in the economies of the Baltic and Central European countries in 2020 will be an average of 4.3 percent, and in 2021 it is forecasted to be a 4.5 percent growth.

Quarantine is in place in Lithuania until May 31. However, the government is lifting more and more previously imposed restrictions. These include the obligatory wearing of masks in public places, work in the entertainment sector, as well as other industries. According to the latest data, more than 1,510 cases of coronavirus were detected in the republic, and 54 patients died. The figures are not all too different in the other Baltic countries.

According to the influential RAND think-tank, some NATO members are concerned that some members are deliberately escalating the confrontation with Russia, fearing that Russia’s threat to the Alliance would otherwise be underestimated. It is clear that Russia’s relations with NATO have been in a deep crisis recently, and anti-Russian tendencies has dominated a lot of the West – primarily the U.S. even though China has now become the main target.

Baltic states are trying to keep the focus on Russia however, fearing that Russia’s threat to the Alliance will otherwise be underestimated, and that they will be left alone in a hypothetical war. According to the study, due to the current mutual mistrust, poor communication, clear lack of understanding of the other side’s position and possible incorrect strategic and tactical conclusions, any minor incident could lead to a military conflict, which Russia and many NATO members themselves do not want.

A study by the Atlantic Council claims that Chinese investment in European infrastructure, like ports and in the telecommunications sector, could have a significant impact on military mobility in Europe. Generally speaking, access to critical infrastructure needs to be restricted as it could disrupt military mobility at a crucial moment. It is written in small print at the bottom of one page that NATO members – especially Poland and the Baltic states – must destroy Russian railways and replace it with a European one and deal with bridges on the border with Russia so that Russian heavy military equipment cannot pass them.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, speaking recently with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, emphasized that despite the epidemic, Lithuania would continue to devote 2% of the country’s GDP to defense and will continue to implement its other NATO commitments through its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nausėda also noted that Lithuania sees Russia’s so-called efforts to spread disinformation through the pandemic, and is supposedly concerned about Russia’s continuing military activity in the east and other regions, such as Syria and Libya.

Therefore, the President stressed to the NATO Secretary General that the best way to respond to Moscow’s aggressive actions is to implement defense strengthening measures consistently and quickly, as well as strengthening air defense in the Baltic region, the rapid adoption of NATO military forces and developing necessary defense plans.

Unfortunately for the U.S. and the Baltic countries, constructive dialogue with Russia is still alive in a lot of Europe, and at a serious level, with the different parties trying to understand each other’s position and reach some kind of compromise that would increase European security. For this reason, the Baltic countries who will be the worse hit from the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus need to re-establish positive relations with Russia for their own economic benefit.

As much as 19.8% of Lithuanian, 16.2% of Latvian and 11.4% of Estonian exports were directed to Russia in 2013. Despite this huge economic relationship, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were some of the first states to call for tougher EU sanctions against Moscow when it reunited with Crimea in 2014. Russia can be a major market for Baltic made products and Russia in turn can offer cheap energy sources, alleviating a lot of the financial pressure causing by the coronavirus pandemic. Despite these advantages, the Baltic states continue only to want to serve NATO interests contrary to their own benefit and interests.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

With the US spiraling downward, a downward trajectory merely steepened by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, we’d expect other nations to suffer likewise.

But China, where we are told the virus first appeared, has already bounced back. While it has significant damage to repair socioeconomically, it has not only overcome the initial outbreak, but has put into place more resilient measures and means to weather future outbreaks.

Health Impact

China, with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, allegedly suffered between 4,000 and 5,000 deaths from COVID-19.

Just how China, with a population as large as the US plus an extra billion, has so many fewer deaths can be explained several ways.

Some cite quick action taken by the Chinese government to contain the spread of COVID-19. But since COVID-19 clearly spread globally and likely all across China as well, another explanation is much more likely.

A Global Times article titled, “Data methods show gap between US, Chinese flu-related deaths,” would note the differences between US and Chinese methods of attributing deaths to the common flu, stating:

“The US flu mortality rate includes cases where flu causes other illnesses to worsen and lead to death, while China only counts people who die directly from flu,” an observer who prefers to be anonymous told the Global Times.”

A similar approach was most likely used to tally COVID-19 deaths.

Clearly, for those who took the time to look into the underlying health issues many who succumbed to COVID-19 had in the US, they would have found a wide variety of preexisting conditions ranging from morbid obesity, diabetes, heart disease, advanced age and even cancer that COVID-19 simply helped push over the edge.

Counting any and all deaths where COVID-19 was simply present as a “COVID-19 death” is inaccurate and borders on dishonest. As previously reported, many millions more in the US appear to have been infected by COVID-19 than is officially admitted with most people easily overcoming the pathogen.

China appears to have only counted cases where COVID-19 was a primary factor in death, rather than simply contributing to a cocktail of preexisting, chronic health conditions. Because of China’s more moderate approach to defining COVID-19’s deadliness, it was able to apply more moderate measures to respond.

Measures

Yes, China did initially crackdown heavily on cities where COVID-19 was present, locking down populations and paralyzing travel. Factories were shuttered and supply chains around the globe were impacted.

But it appears that as quick as these lockdowns were implemented, they were lifted and populations across China allowed back to work.

While US car manufacturer Tesla wages a legal and public battle against the government of California to reopen its car plant in Alameda County, Tesla’s factory in Shanghai has been reopened for months now.

China is moving forward with caution, but not to the extent of paralyzing society or seizing up economic progress. The largest hurdle China’s government will need to overcome is convincing other nations it does business with to return to work and reopen their borders.

Socioeconomic Impact

Because China depends on international trade as well as internal socioeconomic stability to sustain itself, no matter how quickly China itself bounced back from the COVID-19 crisis, the fact that the rest of the world (constituting China’s export markets) is lagging behind with some nations like the United States seemingly collapsing before our eyes, means that China itself will suffer to some extent as well.

Closed borders and restrictions on travel have already complicated China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. As others have pointed out, this presents both challenges and opportunities, with China able to leverage existing networks to move medical assistance abroad as part of a sort of “Healthcare Silk Road.”

For China itself, it is a large and dynamic society with a likewise large and dynamic economy. As Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018 once famously said:

The Chinese economy is a sea, not a pond. Storms can overturn a pond, but never a sea.

Judging by how quickly China has gone back to business with the most significant damage being incurred simply by China waiting for its trade partners to likewise bounce back, this is just as true today as it was when President Xi said it two years ago.Geopolitically, China faces backlash in the form of US propaganda aimed at scapegoating the nation for America’s own shortcomings both in the form of its self-inflicted lack of preparations for any sort of healthcare crisis and for its already downturned economy taking yet another hit.

The US appears to be using this scapegoating to further advance its agenda of isolating and undermining China upon the global stage as well as redirecting public ire at home abroad against Beijing rather than at those in Washington chiefly responsible for America’s growing crisis.

COVID-19, whatever it actually is, be it a genuinely dangerous pathogen or a dangerous exercise in stoking and exploiting public panic, will define all nations depending on how they weather the crisis and how they bounce back from it.

China appears to have already bounced back and is fully prepared to weather future outbreaks, be they pathogens or in the form of propaganda. For China’s competitors, it is clear that tricks are no substitute for actual economic and geopolitical mettle. Those relying on tricks will find themselves swept away by crises like COVID-19, while those relying on economic and geopolitical mettle will prevail.

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

Featured image is from NEO

On Friday, the Dem-controlled House narrowly passed a new $3 trillion stimulus package — by a 208 – 199 majority.

Fourteen House Dems opposed the measure. Republican Peter King, representing New York’s hard-hit 2nd district, supported the so-called Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act.”

The GOP-controlled Senate and Trump oppose the measure, wanting aid going largely to corporate America, favoring crumbs alone for ordinary people in need.

They oppose further public health and welfare measures that don’t include suspension of employer and worker payroll taxes at least through yearend.

Revenues from them are essential to fund Social Security and Medicare, vital programs they want eroded and eliminated.

As things now stand, the politicized House measure in an election year is going nowhere — despite serving the interests of the US pay or die health insurance industry, benefits it lobbied for heavily.

The House bill includes insurance company subsidies through yearend to continue coverage for laid off or furloughed workers whose employers provide high-quality health insurance.

The benefit was included in House legislation primarily to assure a continued revenue stream for insurers through January 31, 2021 — instead of guaranteeing healthcare for all Americans, a new national policy, Medicare for all that both right wings of the one-party state oppose.

Subsidies to insurers will largely benefit them and workers with high-quality employer-provider coverage of most or all their healthcare needs.

Uninsured workers are left out. Ones way under-insured are marginally helped at best, far short of what’s needed, leaving them unable to receive expensive healthcare services for lack of being able to pay for them.

The House bill also provides no health insurance for individuals who bought their own coverage.

Tens of millions of Americans are on their own uninsured during unprecedented economic collapse that’s likely to be protracted.

A national healthcare emergency exists for individuals becoming seriously ill at this time — unaddressed by House legislation.

The world’s richest country is indifferent toward the health and welfare of its ordinary people, serving privileged ones alone, including at a time of economic crisis that’s likely to worsen before beginning to improve.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded derisively to the House measure, saying:

“We have not yet felt the urgency of acting immediately. That time could develop, but I don’t think it has yet.”

The measure includes about $1 trillion for states and cities that face their severest budget shortfalls in memory.

Without considerable federal help, they’re increasingly forced to lay off workers and slash public expenditures for lack of funds.

New York needs over $60 billion in federal aid, almost as much for California at around $54 billion.

Without a proposed income tax hike, my own state of Illinois will be $7.4 billion short of being able to meet its financial obligations for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

My home city of Chicago has a $1 billion budget hole, Mayor Lori Lightfoot saying “we are going to be in a world of hurt” because of lost tax revenues.

Along with worker layoffs, the city’s already high property taxes may be raised to help reduce the revenue shortfall.

Other provisions of the House bill include $200 billion in hazard pay for frontline workers, and another $1,200 for laid off individuals up to a maximum $3,600 for affected households with three or more members.

More funding for COVID-19 testing and tracing is also included.

At around 29,000 tested per one million population, the US lags well behind Russia, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Belgium.

It about matches the testing level in Britain and Canada.

There’s no data available on China, a nation that mass-tested almost everyone in areas hard-hit by COVID-19 outbreaks.

Days earlier, the South China Morning Post reported that all 14 million Wuhan area residents will be retested over a 10-day period after a small number of new outbreaks occurred in the city.

China quickly responds to outbreaks when happen to prevent a second large-scale wave it’s going all-out to avoid.

According to US public health experts, close to a million tests should be conducted daily in the country to control outbreaks — things nowhere near this standard.

Inadequate contact tracing and the testing shortfall are key factors behind continued US large numbers of new cases daily.

The new House bill also includes $10 billion in additional funding for food stamps, a small fraction of what’s needed.

Another $10 billion is for small businesses. Most small US enterprises have gotten little or nothing in federal aid, why hundreds of thousands that shut down won’t reopen.

The bill includes $25 billion for the financially-strapped US Postal Service that Trump and GOP leaders want privatized.

With Senate GOP and White House opposition, the House measure is going nowhere.

Perhaps a revised bill will surface in the weeks ahead.

Whatever new legislation is congressionally passed and enacted into law by Trump will be corporate America-friendly at the expense of equity and justice for the nation’s ordinary people.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The US is at war by hot or others means against all nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to its interests.

Russia and China top its regime change target list, Iran and Venezuela close behind.

The Islamic and Bolivarian Republics are allied in mutual cooperative efforts.

Along with China, Iran has been helping Venezuela deal with its fuel shortage.

These and other countries dealing cooperatively with Venezuela face a likely harsh Trump regime response, including illegal secondary sanctions.

Because of significant fuel shortages, Caracas is working with Tehran and Beijing to repair and upgrade its oil refining capabilities.

Reportedly since April, around 20 flights from Iran and China brought hundreds of tons of technical equipment and personnel to work on the project.

State-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is supplying Venezuela with compressors and refinery parts.

Iran’s state-owned Khatam al-Anbiya engineering firm is also providing this needed equipment and technicians to install it.

Venezuela Analysis reported that state oil company PDVSA reopened its El Palito refinery.

When fully operational, it “has a capacity to refine 80,000 bpd.” President Maduro aims to upgrade and restart refining operations nationwide that have been largely offline since last year.

Repair work began on Venezuela’s Paraguana Refining Complex, the world’s second largest.

Iranian and Chinese technicians are working to bring it back online. Reactivating the Cardon refinery is another priority.

The Trump regime is hostile toward nations involved in legally aiding its adversaries — invented ones. The US faced no foreign threats since WW II ended, what establishment media never explain.

Last month, Pompeo called on Middle East and other nations to deny Iranian airline Mahan Air access to their airspace, saying:

“Over the last few days, multiple aircraft belonging to Mahan Air have transferred unknown support to” Venezuela — Iran’s legal right.

“This is the same…airline that Iran used to move weapons and fighters around the Middle East (sic).”

The flights “must stop just as many (countries) denied landing rights to” the airline because of heavy-handed US pressure and threats.

In late April, a Venezuelan official said materials were received from Iran to help restart the Cardon refinery’s cracking unit that’s necessary to produce gasoline.

According to TankerTrackers.com, several Iranian vessels with gasoline are heading to Venezuela.

The country faces a major shortage of the fuel because until upgrading of its refining capacity is completed, it’s unable to supply internal needs.

It’s only able to produce about 10% of diluents needed for gasoline production.

On Friday, Reuters headlined: “Exclusive: US weighs measures in response to Iran fuel shipment to Venezuela,” saying:

An unnamed Trump regime official threatened further US actions against Tehran.

“It is not only unwelcome by the United States but it’s unwelcome by the region (sic), and we’re looking at measures that can be taken,” the official said.

Unilateral US sanctions against both countries and others have no legal validity.

Nations observing them are in violation of international law. They’re also complicit with Washington’s war on humanity, wanting all countries transformed into US vassal states.

It’s unclear what actions the Trump regime intends taking against Iran.

Is interdicting its tankers in international waters one of them?

US warships patrol Caribbean Sea waters as part of the Trump regime’s economic embargo on Venezuela.

AMN News reported that the USS Detroit, Lassen, Preble and Farragut are operating near Venezuela’s coastline — on the phony pretext of conducting anti-drug operations.

The CIA profits hugely from the illicit trade in cahoots with the underworld. So do major Wall Street banks by laundering billions of dollars of dirty money.

If the Trump regime orders the interdiction and seizure of Iran vessels in international waters, an act of high-seas piracy if it goes this far, Tehran will surely respond in its own way at an appropriate time.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: The photograph shows a meeting between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on October 22nd, 2016. 

Genetically engineered crops are a form of food imperialism. This technology allows mega-corporations like Bayer/Monsanto to patent seeds, lure farmers into buying them with visions of high yields, and then destroy the ability of small farmers to survive.

Genetic engineering produces an artificial combination of plant traits which often results in foods with less nutritional value while introducing health problems to animals and humans who eat them. It increases costs of food production, pushing millions of farmers throughout the world into poverty and driving them off their land.

Agricultural corporations get control of enormous quantities of land in Africa, Latin America and Asia which they use to control the world’s food supply and reap super-profits from the cheap labor of those who work for them, sometimes people who once owned the same land. These crops can be developed in open-field testing which allows the novel pollen to contaminate wild relatives of the engineered crops.

Agro-industries which dominate this process have the resources to lobby two sections of governments. They tell one government agency that their plants do not need to pass safety tests because they are “substantively equivalent” to already existing plants. Yet, out of the other side of their mouths, corporate lawyers argue that, far from being equivalent to existing plants, their engineered ones are so novel as to deserve patents, patents which allow companies to sue farmers who save seeds for planting during the next season.

As a resident of St. Louis, former world headquarters of Monsanto (now Bayer), I have participated in and organized dozens of actions at the company’s world headquarters, as well as forums and conferences. It is necessary to compare the use of biotechnology by food corporations with that of Cuba to decide if they are the same or fundamentally different.

Medicine in Cuba

John Kirk’s Health Care without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism (2015) provides a wealth of information regarding Cuba’s early use of biotechnology in medicine. It is a poor country suffering effects of a blockade by the US which interferes with its access to materials, equipment, technologies, finance, and even exchange of information. This makes it remarkable that Cuba’s research institutes have produced so many important medications. Even a partial list is impressive. The use of Heberprot B to treat diabetes has reduced amputations by 80 percent. Cuba is the only country to create an effective vaccine against type-B bacterial meningitis, and it developed the first synthetic vaccine for Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib), which causes almost half of pediatric meningitis infections. It has also produced the vaccine Racotumomab against advanced lung cancer and has begun clinical tests for Itolizumab to fight severe psoriasis.

By far, the best known efforts of Cuban biotechnology followed an outbreak of dengue fever in 1981 when its researchers found that it could combat the disease with Interferon Alpha 2B. The same drug became vitally important decades later as a potential cure for COVID-19. Interferons are signaling proteins which can respond to infections by strengthening anti-viral defenses. In this way, they decrease complications which could cause death. Cuba’s interferons have also shown their usefulness and safety in treating viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles and HIV-AIDS.

A tale of two technologies

There are marked differences between corporate biotechnology for food and Cuba’s medications for health. First, corporations produce food that fails to be healthier than non-engineered food which it replaces. Cuba’s biotechnology improves human health to such a degree that dozens of nations have requested Interferon Alpha 2B.

Second, corporate food production drives people off of their land while making a few investors very rich. No one loses their home due to Cuban medical advances.

Third, food imperialism fosters dependency but Cuba promotes medical independence. While corporate biotechnology drains money from poor counties by monopolizing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Cuba strives to produce drugs as cheaply as possible.

Patents for its many medical innovations are held by the Cuban government. There is no impetus to increase profits by charging outrageously high prices for new drugs – these medications become available to Cubans at much lower cost than they would in a market-based health care system like that of the United States. This has a profound impact on Cuban medical internationalism. The country provides drugs, including vaccines, at a cost low enough to make humanitarian campaign goals abroad more achievable. Its use of synthetic vaccines for meningitis and pneumonia has resulted in the immunization of millions of Latin American children.

Cuba’s other phase of medical biotechnology is also unknown in the corporate world. This is the transfer of new technology to poor countries so that they can produce drugs themselves and do not have to rely on purchasing them from rich countries. Collaboration with Brazil has resulted in meningitis vaccines at a cost of 95¢ rather than $15 to $20 per dose. Cuba and Brazil worked together on several other biotechnology projects, including Interferon Alpha 2B, for hepatitis C, and recombinant human erythropoletin (rHuEPO), for anemia caused by chronic kidney problems.

In perspective

The bigger picture is that technology of all types is not “value free” – it reflects social factors in its development and use. Nuclear plants require military forces for protection from attack, making them attractive in any society dominated by those who employ a high degree of violence to suppress dissent.

Market forces within capitalism select technologies that are profitable, even if they are destructive to human welfare. Of course, medicine such as antibiotics benefit humanity even if their original goal was profits for pharmaceutical giants.

At other times, products that damage society as a whole are pursued because they augment corporate profits by weakening labor unions. Planting and harvesting equipment have been used to undermine organizing efforts of agricultural workers. In the mid-1880s Chicago McCormick adopted new molding machines which could be run by unskilled workers. The company used them to replace skilled workers of the National Union of Iron Molders.

Expensive technologies can destroy small competitors so that large companies with more capital can better control the market. No case is clearer than the use of GMOs in agriculture. By use of market control (making non-GMO seeds unavailable), financial terrorism (such as lawsuits against resistant farmers), and the pesticide addiction treadmill, GMO giants such as Bayer/Monsanto have increased the cost of food production. This destroys the livelihood of small farmers across the globe while transforming the large farmers who remain into semi-vassals of these multinational lords of seeds and pesticides.

Though a century separated them and they affected different types of labor, actions by McCormick and Bayer/Monsanto had something in common. They both utilized novel technology which resulted in less desirableproducts but increased profits.

Because they were an invaluable weapon against the union, McCormick used molding machines that produced inferior castings and cost consumers more. GMOs in agriculture result in lower-quality food. Since two-thirds of GMOs are designed to create plants that can tolerate poisonous pesticides such as Roundup, pesticide residues increase with GMO usage.

GMOs are also used to increase the production of corn syrup which sweetens a growing quantity of processed foods, and thereby contributes to the obesity crisis. At the same time, food engineered to be uniform, survive transportation, and have a longer shelf life contains less nutritional value. The use of GMOs in corporate agriculture is one of the largest contributing factors to the phenomenon of people simultaneously being overweight and undernourished.

Cuba’s use of biotechnology to create medications is in sharp contrast to both McCormick and Bayer/Monsanto. Its drugs, especially Interferon Alfpha 2B, are used to help people overcome illnesses. They are created to share throughout the world rather drive people into worse poverty. Making a distinction between the biotechnology of Bayer/Monsanto and Cuba requires understanding the difference between bioimperialism and biosolidarity. Imperialism subdues. Biosolidarity empowers.

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Don Fitz ([email protected]) is on the editorial board of Green Social Thought where a version of this article first appeared. Portions of this article are from his forthcoming book, Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution, to be published by Monthly Review Press in June, 2020.

Smug assertions of liability in history are often incautious things.  They constitute a fruit salad mix: assertions of the wishful thinkers; hopes of the crazed; the quest of genuinely aggrieved generations who feel that wrongs need to be rectified (the Elgin Marbles and transatlantic slavery come to mind).  Before you know it, the next historical act will require compensation, the next crime balanced on the ledger of misdeeds.  Lawyers will be summoned, writs and briefs drawn up.   

The advocates of the China-compensation initiative for COVID-19 are growing in number; most are charmingly untouched by history.  Sociologist Massimo Introvigne is one, and with a certain peashooter menace claims that China, specially the Chinese Communist Party “may find itself attacked by an enemy its mighty military power will not be able to stop, aggressive Western lawyers.” Introvigne, while clearly no sharp taloned legal eagle, suggests reference to the International Health Regulations of 2005 which obligate States to conduct surveillance of, and convey accurate and timely information about, diseases through their agencies to the World Health Organization.  Tardiness on the issue of reporting outbreaks that can constitute public health emergencies, for Introvigne, might constitute such grave breaches as to violate the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. 

These particular articles, drafted by the International Law Commission, are not binding. But the Blame-China lobby has been cunning.  James Kraska of the US Naval War College, for instance, thinks that the restatement has been absorbed into the ether of international state practice.  Magically, the articles have been constituted as international customary law, which is binding. 

A rash of legal suits have appeared across the United States, all sharing one common theme: a guerrilla compensation war via courts against a sovereign state.  Members of Congress have been drafting various bills seeking to ease the pathway of private and public suits. 

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn is one of several, hoping to amend that imposing legal obstacle to suing states known as the Foreign State Immunities Act of 1976 by establishing “an exception to jurisdictional immunity for a foreign state that discharges a biological weapon”.  The name of the bill is instructive and leaves little to the imagination, being either the “Stop China-Originated Viral Infectious Diseases Act of 2020” or the “Stop COVID Act of 2020”.   

This sort of legal pamphleteering and raging from the stump is interesting but not very instructive.  Guilt and agency is already presumed by the advocates: China was not merely negligent in not containing the outbreak of COVID-19, but had actually created the virus with venality.  The supreme self-confidence of those in this group leads to problems, the most obvious being the evidence they cite, and much they do not.

Even if there was something to be made about international pandemic wrongfulness, the United States would surely be one of the first to be cautious in pushing the compensation cart. The measure by Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, for instance, would grant the US president powers to impose visa and financial sanctions on foreign government officials who “deliberately conceal or distort information” about public health crises.  This would also cover associates and those assisting in the endeavour. 

But as has been pointed out by more grounded analysts, such measures will simply place US officials in the retaliatory firing line, including those who were rather slipshod with informing the US public about the dangers of the novel coronavirus.  Rachel Esplin Odell is convincing in her summation at War on the Rocks: “If applied to Chinese officials, such sanctions would likely invite swift retaliation against US officials who themselves dismissed the threat of COVID-19, shared incorrect medical information about it, or spread false theories about its origins, such as the president, vice president, and many governors and members of Congress – including Cotton himself.”

Odell also warns that using the Draft Articles on State Responsibility in the context of public health is more than mildly treacherous.  Disease outbreaks can be unruly things, hard to monitor and track; the the customary rule accepting that a state in breach of international law is required “to make full reparation for the injury caused” by that breach has not featured in international health efforts. 

David Fidler, a global health specialist, also suggests abundant caution in Just Security for linking state wrongs with infection and disease.  What such eager commentators as Kraska avoid is the tendency in state practice to avoid attributing “state responsibility for acts allegedly to be legally wrongful with respect to the transboundary movement of pathogens.”  Compensatory mechanisms are absent in any treaty dealing with the spread of infectious disease, and this includes the International Health Regulations (2005). 

The pursuit of blame, and efforts to monetise it, also brings to mind the fact that an imperium such as the United States should be reluctant to cast stones in the glass house of international politics. That pedestrian dauber yet dangerously inept President George W. Bush might be free to pontificate about COVID-19 and the sweetness of solidarity but remains silent about his misdeeds in ruining Iraq, and, by virtue of that, a good deal of the Middle East.  This was an individual who, in March 2003, said that the US would meet the threat of “an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder” so as not to do so “later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”  Unlike the case of pathogen transmission, the issue of attribution in that case is far from difficult. 

While international law furnishes little by way of financial compensation for damage caused by pandemics, it does about the criminal liability of state leaders and military commanders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  It is also worth noting that the foundations for the invasion by the US and its allies was conspiratorial and deceptive, filled with the sorts of fabrications and mendacity that make the bumbling authorities in Wuhan seem childishly modest.  In doing so, the crime against peace, sketched by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, was committed.  As a Dutch Parliamentary inquiry found in 2010, UN Security Council Resolution 1441, giving Saddam Hussein a final chance to disarm, could not “reasonably be interpreted as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council’s resolutions.”  The warning for US law and policy makers in seeking Chinese scalps should be starkly crystal in clarity.

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

UPDATE (May 8, 9:00AM EST): Archbishop Viganò, who gathered the signatures and communicated with Cardinal Sarah about the initiative, has now issued a timeline of his communications with Sarah. Read full report here.

UPDATE (May 7, 8:00PM EST): This story originally indicated, based on information from the organizers, that Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, had joined the appeal. But the cardinal has now written on Twitter that he did not sign. “From a personal point of view, I may share some questions or preoccupations raised regarding restrictions on fundamental freedom but I didn’t sign that petition,” he wrote.

A Note from Global Research:

This a powerful statement for all humanity. It upholds fundamental values. It rejects “global governance”. It upholds the sovereignty of nations. It points to the irresponsibility of national governments which pay lip service to a global public health concern while adopting economic and policies which impoverish their citizens. Politicians in high office have become the lackeys of powerful financial interests.

The facts have shown that, under the pretext of the Covid-19 epidemic, the inalienable rights of citizens have in many cases been violated and their fundamental freedoms, including the exercise of freedom of worship, expression and movement, have been disproportionately and unjustifiably restricted. Public health must not, and cannot, become an alibi for infringing on the rights of millions of people around the world… (read statement in full below)

The rights to income and employment are denied. Social engineering is imposed leading to a de facto police state. Increasingly, there is evidence that the data pertaining to the COVID-19 has been deliberately manipulated with a view to sustaining the fear campaign led by the corporate media.

The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) supports the substance of this important endeavor of the catholic clergy. This message should spread Worldwide.

Michel Chossudovsky, May 11, 2020

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Catholic clergy led by former papal nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Cardinals Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Joseph Zen, and Janis Pujats have joined an appeal “for the Church and the world” that warns that the COVID-19 pandemic is being used as a “pretext” by world leaders to “control” people, strip them of their fundamental rights, while providing a “disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control” (read full text below).

In the face of restrictions around the world on the public celebration of the sacraments, the signatories assert the right of the Church to offer public worship, unimpeded by State interventions.

Finally, as Pastors responsible for the flock of Christ, let us remember that the Church firmly asserts her autonomy to govern, worship, and teach. This autonomy and freedom are an innate right that Our Lord Jesus Christ has given her for the pursuit of her proper ends. For this reason, as Pastors we firmly assert the right to decide autonomously on the celebration of Mass and the Sacraments, just as we claim absolute autonomy in matters falling within our immediate jurisdiction, such as liturgical norms and ways of administering Communion and the Sacraments. The State has no right to interfere, for any reason whatsoever, in the sovereignty of the Church.

The signatories ask that “restrictions on the celebration of public ceremonies be removed.”

Along with the 4 cardinals signing the appeal are 8 bishops, 3 priests, 21 journalists, 11 medical doctors, 13 lawyers, 18 teachers and professionals, and 12 various groups and associations.

SIGN Appeal for the Church and the World here

In reference to coronavirus lockdown measures around the world and the reduction of individuals’ civil liberties, the signatories say that they believe there are powers at work in society “interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements.”

“The imposition of these illiberal measures is a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control,” they state.

Arguing that widespread closures of shops and businesses has in some instances “precipitated a crisis that has brought down entire sectors of the economy,” the signatories continue to raise concerns about potential radical changes to the geopolitical landscape. They stated that such weakened economies “encourages interference by foreign powers and has serious social and political repercussions.”

“Those with governmental responsibility must stop these forms of social engineering, by taking measures to protect their citizens whom they represent, and in whose interests they have a serious obligation to act,” the letter states.

The letter also directly addresses several questions related to medical treatments for Covid-19.

In the first instance, the letter implores governments and international bodies not to allow “shady business interests” to influence their responses to the coronavirus.

“It is unreasonable to penalize those remedies that have proved to be effective, and are often inexpensive, just because one wishes to give priority to treatments or vaccines that are not as good, but which guarantee pharmaceutical companies far greater profits, and exacerbate public health expenditures,” the signatories write.

On the question of potential coronavirus vaccines, the signatories say that “for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted fetuses.” They insist too that individuals must be free to reject such vaccines without any penalties being imposed on them.

The letter also calls on governments not to adopt attempts to control people through “tracking systems or any other form of location-finding,” or for the crisis to be used as an excuse for increasing levels of media censorship and the de-platforming of dissenting voices.

“Let us not allow centuries of Christian civilization to be erased under the pretext of a virus, and an odious technological tyranny to be established, in which nameless and faceless people can decide the fate of the world by confining us to a virtual reality,” the letter urges.

The signatories stress that in the face of the current crisis, followers of God must try to understand the current situation in the light of the Gospels.

“This means taking a stand: either with Christ or against Christ. Let us not be intimidated or frightened by those who would have us believe that we are a minority: Good is much more widespread and powerful than the world would have us believe.”

“With faith, let us beseech the Lord to protect the Church and the world. May the Blessed Virgin, Help of Christians, crush the head of the ancient Serpent and defeat the plans of the children of darkness,” the appeal concludes.

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APPEAL FOR THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

To Catholics and all people of good will

Veritas liberabit vos. Jn 8:32

In this time of great crisis, we Pastors of the Catholic Church, by virtue of our mandate, consider it our sacred duty to make an Appeal to our Brothers in the Episcopate, to the Clergy, to Religious, to the holy People of God and to all men and women of good will. This Appeal has also been undersigned by intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, journalists and professionals who agree with its content, and may be undersigned by those who wish to make it their own.

The facts have shown that, under the pretext of the Covid-19 epidemic, the inalienable rights of citizens have in many cases been violated and their fundamental freedoms, including the exercise of freedom of worship, expression and movement, have been disproportionately and unjustifiably restricted. Public health must not, and cannot, become an alibi for infringing on the rights of millions of people around the world, let alone for depriving the civil authority of its duty to act wisely for the common good. This is particularly true as growing doubts emerge from several quarters about the actual contagiousness, danger and resistance of the virus. Many authoritative voices in the world of science and medicine confirm that the media’s alarmism about Covid-19 appears to be absolutely unjustified.

We have reason to believe, on the basis of official data on the incidence of the epidemic as related to the number of deaths, that there are powers interested in creating panic among the world’s population with the sole aim of permanently imposing unacceptable forms of restriction on freedoms, of controlling people and of tracking their movements. The imposition of these illiberal measures is a disturbing prelude to the realization of a world government beyond all control.

We also believe that in some situations the containment measures that were adopted, including the closure of shops and businesses, have precipitated a crisis that has brought down entire sectors of the economy. This encourages interference by foreign powers and has serious social and political repercussions. Those with governmental responsibility must stop these forms of social engineering, by taking measures to protect their citizens whom they represent, and in whose interests they have a serious obligation to act. Likewise, let them help the family, the cell of society, by not unreasonably penalizing the weak and elderly, forcing them into a painful separation from their loved ones. The criminalization of personal and social relationships must likewise be judged as an unacceptable part of the plan of those who advocate isolating individuals in order to better manipulate and control them.

We ask the scientific community to be vigilant, so that cures for Covid-19 are offered in honesty for the common good. Every effort must be made to ensure that shady business interests do not influence the choices made by government leaders and international bodies. It is unreasonable to penalize those remedies that have proved to be effective, and are often inexpensive, just because one wishes to give priority to treatments or vaccines that are not as good, but which guarantee pharmaceutical companies far greater profits, and exacerbate public health expenditures. Let us also remember, as Pastors, that for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted fetuses.

We also ask government leaders to ensure that forms of control over people, whether through tracking systems or any other form of location-finding, are rigorously avoided. The fight against Covid-19, however serious, must not be the pretext for supporting the hidden intentions of supranational bodies that have very strong commercial and political interests in this plan. In particular, citizens must be given the opportunity to refuse these restrictions on personal freedom, without any penalty whatsoever being imposed on those who do not wish to use vaccines, contact tracking or any other similar tool. Let us also consider the blatant contradiction of those who pursue policies of drastic population control and at the same time present themselves as the savior of humanity, without any political or social legitimacy. Finally, the political responsibility of those who represent the people can in no way be left to “experts” who can indeed claim a kind of immunity from prosecution, which is disturbing to say the least.

We strongly urge those in the media to commit themselves to providing accurate information and not penalizing dissent by resorting to forms of censorship, as is happening widely on social media, in the press and on television. Providing accurate information requires that room be given to voices that are not aligned with a single way of thinking. This allows citizens to consciously assess the facts, without being heavily influenced by partisan interventions. A democratic and honest debate is the best antidote to the risk of imposing subtle forms of dictatorship, presumably worse than those our society has seen rise and fall in the recent past.

Finally, as Pastors responsible for the flock of Christ, let us remember that the Church firmly asserts her autonomy to govern, worship, and teach. This autonomy and freedom are an innate right that Our Lord Jesus Christ has given her for the pursuit of her proper ends. For this reason, as Pastors we firmly assert the right to decide autonomously on the celebration of Mass and the Sacraments, just as we claim absolute autonomy in matters falling within our immediate jurisdiction, such as liturgical norms and ways of administering Communion and the Sacraments. The State has no right to interfere, for any reason whatsoever, in the sovereignty of the Church. Ecclesiastical authorities have never refused to collaborate with the State, but such collaboration does not authorize civil authorities to impose any sort of ban or restriction on public worship or the exercise of priestly ministry. The rights of God and of the faithful are the supreme law of the Church, which she neither intends to, nor can, abdicate. We ask that restrictions on the celebration of public ceremonies be removed.

We should like to invite all people of good will not to shirk their duty to cooperate for the common good, each according to his or her own state and possibilities and in a spirit of fraternal charity. The Church desires such cooperation, but this cannot disregard either a respect for natural law or a guarantee of individual freedoms. The civil duties to which citizens are bound imply the State’s recognition of their rights.

We are all called to assess the current situation in a way consistent with the teaching of the Gospel. This means taking a stand: either with Christ or against Christ. Let us not be intimidated or frightened by those who would have us believe that we are a minority: Good is much more widespread and powerful than the world would have us believe. We are fighting against an invisible enemy that seeks to divide citizens, to separate children from their parents, grandchildren from their grandparents, the faithful from their pastors, students from teachers, and customers from vendors. Let us not allow centuries of Christian civilization to be erased under the pretext of a virus, and an odious technological tyranny to be established, in which nameless and faceless people can decide the fate of the world by confining us to a virtual reality. If this is the plan to which the powers of this earth intend to make us yield, know that Jesus Christ, King and Lord of History, has promised that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail” (Mt 16:18).

Let us entrust government leaders and all those who rule over the fate of nations to Almighty God, that He may enlighten and guide them in this time of great crisis. May they remember that, just as the Lord will judge us Pastors for the flock which he has entrusted to us, so will He also judge government leaders for the peoples whom they have the duty to defend and govern.

With faith, let us beseech the Lord to protect the Church and the world. May the Blessed Virgin, Help of Christians, crush the head of the ancient Serpent and defeat the plans of the children of darkness.

8 May 2020

Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii

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