Below are selected excerpts from Arundati Roy‘s article

As an appalled world watched, India revealed herself in all her shame — her brutal, structural, social and economic inequality, her callous indifference to suffering.  The lockdown worked like a chemical experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden things.

As shops, restaurants, factories and the construction industry shut down, as the wealthy and the middle classes enclosed themselves in gated colonies, our towns and megacities began to extrude their working-class citizens — their migrant workers — like so much unwanted accrual.

Many driven out by their employers and landlords, millions of impoverished, hungry, thirsty people, young and old, men, women, children, sick people, blind people, disabled people, with nowhere else to go, with no public transport in sight, began a long march home to their villages.

They walked for days, towards Badaun, Agra, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Lucknow, Gorakhpur — hundreds of kilometres away. Some died on the way.

They knew they were going home potentially to slow starvation.

As they walked, some were beaten brutally and humiliated by the police, who were charged with strictly enforcing the curfew.

A few days later, worried that the fleeing population would spread the virus to villages, the government sealed state borders even for walkers. People who had been walking for days were stopped and forced to return to camps in the cities they had just been forced to leave.

Among older people it evoked memories of the population transfer of 1947, when India was divided and Pakistan was born.

Except that this current exodus was driven by class divisions, not religion.

Even still, these were not India’s poorest people. These were people who had (at least until now) work in the city and homes to return to.

The jobless, the homeless and the despairing remained where they were, in the cities as well as the countryside, where deep distress was growing long before this tragedy occurred. All through these horrible days, the home affairs minister Amit Shah remained absent from public view.  (Arundati Roy, FT.com, April 3, 2020)

To read complete article on FT click here

 

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Vaccines and the Liberal Mind

April 11th, 2020 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr

This article was originally published in June 2018.

Instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, too many online outlets are silencing critics and shutting down discussion on this key public health and civil rights issue.

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Late last year, Slate published an investigative report detailing how pharmaceutical giant, Merck, used “flawed” and “unreliable” pre-licensing safety studies to push through approval of its multi-billion-dollar bonanza, the HPV vaccine. For veteran safe vaccine advocates, like myself, the most shocking aspect of the expose was that Slate published it at all. Slate and other liberal online publications including Salon, Huffington Post and The Daily Beast customarily block articles that critique vaccine safety in order, they argue, to encourage vaccination and protect public health.

Motivated by this noble purpose, the liberal media—the supposed antidote to corporate and government power—has helped insulate from scrutiny the burgeoning vaccine industry and its two regulators, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Both agencies have pervasive and potentially corrupting financial entanglements with the vaccine manufacturers, according to extensive congressional investigations.

Ironically, liberals routinely lambaste Pharma, and its FDA enablers for putting profits over people. Recent examples include Vioxx (100,000 injured—Merck paid more than $5 billion in fines and settlements), Abilify (Bristol Meyers Squibb paid $515 million for marketing the drug to nursing homes, knowing it can be fatal to seniors), Celebrex and Bextra (Pfizer paid $894 million for bribing public officials and false advertising about safety and effectiveness) and, of course, the opioid crisis, which in 2016 killed more Americans than the 20-year Vietnam War.  What then, makes liberals think that these same companies are immune from similar temptations when it comes to vaccines? There is plenty of evidence that they are not. Merck, the world’s largest vaccine maker, is currently fighting multiple lawsuits, brought by its own scientists, claiming that the company forced them to falsify efficacy data for its MMR vaccine.

The Slate article nowhere discloses that FDA licenses virtually all vaccines using the same mawing safety science deficiencies that brought us Gardasil. FDA claims that “vaccines undergo rigorous safety testing to determine their safety.” But that’s not true. FDA’s choice to classify vaccine makers as “biologics” rather than “drugs” opened a regulatory loophole that allows vaccines to evade any meaningful safety testing. Instead of the multi-year double-blind inert placebo studies—the gold standard of safety science—that the FDA requires prior to licensing other medications, most vaccines now on the CDC’s recommended childhood vaccine schedule were safety tested for only a few days or weeks. For example, the manufacturer’s package insert discloses that Merck’s Hep B vaccine (almost every American infant receives a Hep B shot on the day of birth) underwent, not five years, but a mere five days of safety testing. If the babies in these studies had a seizure—or died—on day six, Merck was under no obligation to disclose those facts.

Furthermore, many vaccines contain dangerous amounts of known neurotoxins like mercury and aluminum and carcinogens like formaldehyde, that are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune problems, food allergies and cancers that might not be diagnosed for many years. A five-day study has no way of spotting such associations. Equally shocking, FDA does not require vaccine manufacturers to measure proposed vaccines against true inert placebos, further obscuring researchers’ capacity to see adverse health effects and virtually guaranteeing that more subtle injuries, such as impaired immune response, loss of IQ or depression, will never be detected—no matter how widespread. Furthermore, the CDC has never studied the impacts on children’s health of combining 50 plus vaccines.

These lax testing requirements can save vaccine manufacturers tens of millions of dollars. That’s one of the reasons for the “gold rush” that has multiplied vaccines from three, when I was a boy, to the 50 plus vaccines that children typically receive today.

There are other compelling reasons why vaccines have become Pharma’s irresistible new profit and growth vehicle. For example, manufacturers of the 50 plus vaccines on CDC’s childhood schedule enjoy what has become a trapped audience of 74 million child consumers who are effectively compelled to purchase an expensive product, sparing vaccine makers additional millions in advertising and marketing costs.

But the biggest economic boon to vaccine makers has been the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA). In 1986, Congress awash in pharmaceutical dollars—Big Pharma is, by far, the top Capitol Hill lobbying group—passed NCVIA giving pharmaceutical companies what amounts to blanket immunity from liability for any injury caused by vaccines. No matter how toxic the ingredients, how negligent the manufacturer or how grievous the harm, vaccine-injured children cannot sue a vaccine company. That extraordinary law eliminated a principal cost associated with making other drugs and left the industry with little economic incentive to make vaccines safe. It also removed lawyers, judges and courts from their traditional roles as guardians of vaccine safety. Since the law’s passage, industry revenues have sky-rocketed from $1 billion to $44 billion.

The absence of critical attention to this exploding industry by liberal online sites is particularly troubling since pharma, using strategic investments, has effectively sidelined, not just Congress, lawyers and courts, but virtually all of our democracy’s usual public health sentinels. Pervasive financial entanglements with vaccine makers and the other alchemies of agency capture have transformed the FDA and CDC into industry sock puppets.

Strong economic drivers—pharmaceutical companies are the biggest network advertisers—discourage mainstream media outlets from criticizing vaccine manufacturers. A network president once told me he would fire any of his news show hosts who allowed me to talk about vaccine safety on air. “Our news division,” he explained, “gets up to 70% of ad revenues from pharma in non-election years.” Furthermore, liberal activists including environmental, human rights, public health and children’s advocates also steer clear of vaccine safety discussions. On other core issues like toxics, guns and cigarettes, the CDC has a long record of friendly collaboration with these advocates who have thereby acquired a knee-jerk impulse to protect the agency from outside criticism.

In this vacuum, online liberal news sites are the last remaining barrier to protect children from corporate greed, yet they have become self-appointed arbiters against exposing the public to negative information about vaccine manufacturers and regulators. Liberal voices are not just sidelined, they are subsumed in the orthodoxy that all vaccines are always good for all people—and the more the better. Working with Pharma reps and their tame politicians, liberal news reporters and columnists across America are laboring in nearly every state to make the CDC vaccine schedule compulsory for children and to eliminate religious, philosophical and even medical exemptions.

As a result, the government/Big Pharma combination has gained unprecedented power to override parental consent and force otherwise healthy children, and other unwilling consumers, to undergo compulsory vaccinations, a shocking advance along the road to a corporate totalitarianism which seeks absolute control, even of our bodies. Keep in mind that there is no authentic dispute that vaccination is a risky medical intervention. It was the wave of lawsuits arising from injuries suffered from the Diphtheria/Tetanus/Pertussis (DTP) vaccine in the 1980s, that caused Congress to pass the NCVIA bestowing immunity on the pharmaceutical industry, which threatened, otherwise, to stop making vaccines. In upholding that law, the Supreme Court declared NCVIA justified because “vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.” Since then, the Federal Vaccine Court, created by NCVIA, has paid out $3.8 billion to vaccine-injured individuals. That number dramatically understates the true gravity of the harm. A Department of Health and Human Services funded report acknowledges that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.”

Supporting a law that forces Americans to relinquish control of their bodies to a corporate/state behemoth is an odd posture for liberals, who once championed the precept of “informed consent,” as the mainstay of the Nuremberg Code and the declarations of Helsinki and Geneva which protect individuals against all coerced medical interventions.

Science suggests that we might have made a big mistake by not aggressively safety testing our mandatory vaccines. Chronic diseases like ADHD, asthma, autoimmune diseases and allergies now affect 54 percent of our children, up from 12.6 percent in 1988, the year NCVIA took effect. And those data measure only the injuries characterized in digital medical records. Health advocates warn that we may be missing subtler injuries like widespread losses in reading and IQ and in executive and behavioral functions.

The suspicion that the neurotoxins in vaccines may be negatively affecting a generation is not wild speculation. Numerous studies point to the once ubiquitous use of leaded gasoline as the cause of widespread IQ loss and violence that bedeviled the generations from the 1960s-1980s.  Is it not possible that dramatically increased infant exposures to aluminum and ethyl mercury—a far more potent neurotoxin than lead—might be significantly debilitating the post NCVIA generation?

The CDC claims that the cause of the sudden explosion in neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune illnesses and food allergies that began in the late 1980s, is a mystery. However, vaccine court awards, manufacturers’ package inserts and reams of peer-reviewed science all recognize that many of the chronic diseases that suddenly became epidemic in our children following the passage of NCVIA can be caused by vaccines or their ingredients.

The Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine), the ultimate arbiter of federal vaccine safety science, has listed 155 diseases potentially associated with vaccination and scolded the CDC for failing to study 134 of them. School nurses who have spent decades in their jobs say they are seeing the sickest generation in history. The epidemic has not proven a problem for the vaccine industry. On the back end of the chronic disease explosion, vaccine companies like Merck are making a killing on the EpiPens, antidepressants, stimulants, asthma inhalers and anti-seizure drugs.

Instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, liberal blogs shut down discussion on this key public health and civil rights issue, and silence critics, treating faith in vaccines as a religion; the heresy of questioning dogma meets with anathema and excommunication.

The core of liberalism is a healthy skepticism toward government and business. So why do vaccines get a mulligan?

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a longtime environmental campaigner and author of American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family (HarperCollins) and Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. Follow him on Twitter: @RobertKennedyJr

COVID-19: Coronavirus and Civilization

April 11th, 2020 by Diana Johnstone

As time goes on in close confinement, even people bound by love may start to find each other unbearable. On a larger scale, in this crazy mass confinement, people brought together by a common rejection of the lies of our criminal rulers may find themselves at each other’s throats because of conflicting interpretations of why who is doing what.

This is happening on alternative media – especially in Germany. It seems that many anti-conformist political analysts believe that the Coronavirus crisis is a fake, perpetrated by media and governments for sinister reasons. They are actually calling for protest demonstrations against confinement.

I can’t help seeing this as an obsession of certain dissidents to prove to themselves that they are good “anti-authoritarian” Germans who would never have bowed to Nazism. But is this assertion of individual freedom appropriate in the midst of a public health crisis?

The Limits of Power

Very clever people naturally want to find motives behind whatever happens. At one time such people might have been theologians, who explained the extremely mysterious ways in which God carries out His cosmic plan. A flood, a plague, an earthquake? There had to be a reason for it, a motivation in human terms. The All-Powerful was punishing his sinful flock and reminding them of who was boss.

Mammon. (Wikipedia)

Today, quite a number of alternative media commentators are ready to believe in the absolute power not of God but of Mammon, of the powers of Wall Street and its partners in politics, the media and the military. In this view, nothing major happens that hasn’t been planned by earthly powers for their own selfish interest.

Mammon is wrecking the economy so a few oligarchs will own everything. Or else Mammon created the hoax Coronavirus 19 in order to lock us all up and deprive us of what little is left of our freedom. Or finally Mammon is using a virus in order to have a pretext to vaccinate us all with secret substances and turn us all into zombies.

Is this credible? In one sense, it is. We know that Mammon is unscrupulous, morally capable of all crimes. But things do happen that Mammon did not plan, such as earthquakes, floods and plagues. Dislike of our ruling class combined with dislike of being locked up leads to the equation: They are simply using this (fake) crisis in order to lock us up!

But what for? To whom is there any advantage in locking down the population? For the pleasure of telling themselves, “Aha, we’ve got them where we want them, all stuck at home!” Is this intended to suppress popular revolt? What popular revolt? Why repress people who aren’t doing anything that needs to be repressed?

What is the use of locking up a population – and I think especially of the United States – that is disunited, disorganized, profoundly confused by generations of ideological indoctrination telling them that their country is “the best” in every way, and thus unable to formulate coherent demands on a system that exploits them ruthlessly? Do you need to lock up your faithful Labrador so he won’t bite you?

If anything, the trauma of this situation might actually awaken a somnolent population to the vital need for basic transformation of society. The notion that this lockdown threatens to be permanent is totally unrealistic, against all evidence from previous lockdowns. On the contrary, prolonged confinement is most likely to lead to explosions. The question is, can these explosions be constructive.

On a wall in Paris: “You will not confine our anger.”

Blinded by Hubris

Rather than deploring the all-powerful nature of Mammon, it would be more constructive to look for the flaws in his armor, for his weaknesses, for the ways he can be massively discredited, denounced and defeated.

Mammon is blinded by its own hubris, often stupid, incompetent, dumbed down by getting away with so much so easily. Take a look at Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence – are these all-powerful geniuses? No, they are semi-morons who have been able to crawl up a corrupt system contemptuous of truth, virtue or intelligence – like the rest of the gangsters in power in a system devoid of any ethical or intellectual standards.

The power of creatures like that is merely the reflection of the abdication of social responsibility by whole populations whose disinterest in politics has allowed the scum to rise to the top.

The lockdown decreed by our Western governments reveals helplessness rather than power. They did not rush to lock us down. The lockdown is disastrous for the economy which is their prime concern. They hesitated and did so only when they had to do something and were ill-equipped to do anything else. They saw that China had done so with good results. But smart Asian governments did even more, deploying masks, tests and treatments Western governments did not possess.

Western governments called for confinement when experts explained the exponential curves to them. They didn’t know what else to do. There is at least enough sense of social responsibility left in our societies to oblige governments to take the basic, classic quarantine methods usual during pandemics.

Of course, in every crisis some are well placed to take advantage of disaster. The vultures didn’t cause the cattle to die so they could eat the carrion. But they will gobble it up when it’s there. Wall Street financial powers could quickly get Congresspeople to vote laws to bail them out while small businesses sink and working people are plunged into despair.

But in the long run, without the small businesses, without the workers now being deprived of income to spend, without normal economic activity, Wall Street itself will have no one to bleed, nothing to exploit. It makes absolutely no sense to believe that dominant economic powers sought this ruinous crisis for some mysterious benefit to themselves.

In the European Union, creditor countries like Germany and the Netherlands refuse to let the European Central Bank issue “Coronabonds” to finance economic recovery of hard-hit countries like Italy and Spain. That means those countries will have to borrow from the private financial system, at high interest rates leading to bankruptcy.

That sounds like a boon to international finance, which, however, will find itself holding an infinite amount of unpayable debt. And the European Union may split apart as a result – not in the interests of any of these powerful masters of Mammon.

Public Health Is Not an Individual Choice

In the West, “human rights”, are conceived in terms of the “rights” of the individual, or of a minority, to go against what we call “the regime” when speaking of countries other than our own. The United States uses the absolute value of “human rights” as a pretext to impose its will through sanctions and bombing on nations that reject its global domination. The defiance of authority is celebrated as resistance, without necessarily examining the details.

However, virtually all key aspects of any civilized society go contrary to the absolutism of individual rights. Every civilized society has some sort of legal system, some basic rules that everyone is expected to follow. Most civilized societies have a public education and (except for the United States) a public health insurance system designed to benefit the whole population. These elements of civilization include constraints on individual freedom.

The benefits to each individual of living in a civilized society make these constraints acceptable to just about everybody. The health of the individual depends on the health of the community, which is why everyone in most Western countries accepts a single payer health insurance system. The only exception is the United States, where the egocentricities of Ayn Rand are widely read as serious thought.

Mammon and His Slave. (Wikimedia Commons)

The arrival of a plague or an epidemic suddenly calls for totally abnormal, extremely unpleasant constraints, such as quarantines. This is a case where the freedom of the individual is sacrificed for the general good: the individual is confined not merely for his own good but for the good of his community and indeed of all humanity.

The paradox of our highly technological societies is that the greater the impossibility of the general public (all of us) to understand crucial functions and issues, the more we depend on experts and authorities, and the more we distrust those experts and authorities and suspect them of using their position to advance secret agendas. There is thus a sort of built-in paranoia in our societies where the power of invisible forces becomes constantly more inscrutable.

This paradox operates forcefully on issues of medicine and public health, all the more in that the authorities themselves are frequently divided in their opinions. In Germany especially, where the crisis has been relatively mild, one can hear a doctor claiming that fear of Covid-19 is artificially created and that nature should be allowed to take its course, since healthy people will be spared and the few who die would have died anyway.

Stay Home and Take a Pill

This opinion is readily accepted by those who suspect every government measure of being an arbitrary assault on personal liberties. But it is hardly a majority opinion in the world medical profession.

Personally, I’ve been there. I’ve seen this virus in action. This is not simply a bad cold, or a seasonal flu. Yes, there are light cases, but there are fatal ones as well. It does not just kill off superfluous elderly people that some commentators seem satisfied to get rid of.

Still, it is quite reasonable to question the usefulness of confinement alone. Here in France, authorities turned to confinement with some delay, only because the illness was spreading and they had nothing else to do about it.

There were no masks; a factory in Brittany that provided the domestic market with masks and other medical equipment had been bought up a while back by Honeywell and closed down. This is an aspect of the deindustrialization of France, based on the assumption that we in the West can live from our brains, our ideas, our startups, while actual things are made for low wages in poor countries.

So there were no masks and no immediate capacity to make them. There was also a shortage of ventilators, even of hospital beds – in fact there was no ability to deal with the epidemic other than to tell people to stay at home and prescribe paracetamol.

Surely there are better ways to deal with it, and one inevitable explosion after confinement will be an outpouring of criticism of the way the government has handled the crisis and demands for drastic improvements in the public health system.

The argument that “oh well, even more people die of ordinary flu, or cancer, or something else” is not valid because this illness comes in addition to all the others that are anticipated: it pushes already largely saturated health facilities over the top, into collapse.

In Italy, Covid-19 has killed off a hundred medical doctors in just over a month. They would not have “died anyway, of something else” without the epidemic.

In France, in normal times, dial the emergency service SAMU 15 and usually a team is there within minutes. During the Covid-19 crisis, you could dial 15 and wait an hour or more for an answer, whatever your health crisis might be, and help might never come.

The main purpose of the quarantine is to reduce the pression on overburdened systems. Without the confinement, the overload would have been even worse. This crisis is exposing the inadequacy of existing facilities and the crucial need for major programs to strengthen public health systems.

Irrational Fear of Vaccination

Jonas Salk’s vaccine wiped out polio in the United States, and he didn’t patent it.  (Wikimedia Commons)

Mass vaccination has always been the surest way to wipe out deadly diseases. It is also an instance where individual freedoms need be sacrificed to the general good. It is deeply disturbing that many intelligent people are more afraid of the vaccine that may be developed to combat this virus than they are of the virus itself.

One objection is that profit-oriented Big Pharma takes advantage of every illness to make money. But the answer is not to reject pharmaceuticals. The main problem with Big Pharma is unleashed neoliberal capitalism in the United States, combined with the absence of a government-run single payer health insurance, which allows pharmaceutical companies to charge outrageous prices for their products, as well as to focus on production of the most profitable rather than the most generally useful medication.

The answer to this is not to give up medication but to demand greater public supervision and price control.

Finally, the pharmaceutical industry should be considered a public utility rather than a business and nationalized so that revenue can be used to finance research rather than to pay dividends to Big Finance.

The prospects are different from one country to another. Achieving social control in the United States looks practically impossible because of the overwhelming belief that “free enterprise” is the only way to do things. In France, which has positive experience of a mixed economy, it could be politically possible to nationalize pharmaceutical companies – if France were not under the domination of the European Union and, less directly, the United States, which is always prepared to do what it can to block socialist measures anywhere in the world.

No Longer the Center

But the West is no longer the center of the world. The Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated the rising capabilities and more human attitudes of East Asia. There will be vaccines developed in China, in Russia, in other countries outside the NATO sphere. Their achievements will break the monopoly of Western “Big Pharma.”

In Europe, and notably in France, Italy and Spain, the total disillusion with the European Union is strengthening the trend toward return of national sovereignty. And sovereign nations, able to respond to their people’s demands can be able to break away from the dictates of Big Finance in order to renew democracy in more appropriate forms.

In France, labor unions and progressives are demanding better protection of the population, starting with all those essential service workers, in hospitals and grocery stores, bus drivers, deliverymen, all those who are increasingly appreciated by their confined compatriots and who need to reap the benefits of their public service.

Yellow Vests protest, March 7, 2020 in Paris before lockdown. (Joe Lauria)

Perhaps because of the long tradition of social struggle in France, including the Yellow Vest movement which is not dead but only on hold, one can be sure that after confinement there will be an explosion of demands to abandon the fantasies of neoliberal globalism and build a system where the welfare of the people comes first.

In contrast, in the context of the corona virus crisis in Germany, someone supposedly “on the left” has initiated a petition calling on persons over 75 to declare that if they are sick, they renounce medical treatment, in order to give preference to younger people. This is a new twist of identity politics, of classifying people by groups, and a step toward revival of the worst eugenics of Nazism.

Which is civilized and which is barbaric: insisting on a system that gives equal care to all, or deciding that the elderly be sacrificed for the others? What is this but a suggestion to resort to human sacrifice to please Mammon?

For Civilization

Sounding the alarm about how horrible our ruling class is gets us nowhere unless we have an idea of a real alternative – not just “resisting” but proposing and fighting for something different and better.

Let’s start with a most concrete practical issue and work from there: vaccination. Like other aspects of public health, this is an issue of collective welfare rather than individual rights. It is an element not of “resistance to oppression” but of the construction of civilization.

The coronavirus has not illustrated the need to get rid of vaccines – on grounds that “they” want to use them against us – but on the contrary, of the need to make sure that vaccines are developed under proper supervision for the public welfare and not as a means for Big Pharma to make bigger dividends for BlackRock.

So the problem with vaccines is not vaccination but American capitalism that has gotten completely out of hand. Once upon time, the Food and Drug Administration was a reliable monitor of pharmaceutical innovations. In recent decades, such control agencies have increasingly been taken over by the companies they are supposed to control and transformed into rubber stamps.

Alarms are also raised about the alleged role of billionaires like Bill Gates whose philanthropic institutions are suspected of manipulating vaccines for hidden nefarious purposes.

The remedy is not to flee medication and vaccination, but to dismantle these overgrown dictatorial powers and build a society that can properly be called civilized because it is balanced between collective and individual welfare. Of course, to say what should be done is very far from knowing how to do it. But without an idea of what should be done, there will not even be any effort to figure out how.

A Mixed Economy

In the United States, it would be necessary to accept the fact that certain essential activities must be considered public services. This requires a wave of reforms equivalent to a revolution, not as prescribed by Marxist revolutionaries to situations that no longer exist. Pharmaceuticals and hospitals are public services and must be socially controlled. Internet has become a public service.

How should that be treated? Innovators who used free market mechanisms to gain virtual monopoly control of their sector should be invited to choose which of their mansions to retain as residence as they are retired to the role of advisor, while their disproportionate accumulated earnings should become part of the public treasury.

What I am advocating is not a “communist revolution,” certainly not for the United States. I am advocating a mixed economy, which can take various forms, from France in the 1960s to China today. The commanding heights of the economy should be under social control, to ensure that major investment has social purpose.

The forms of this control can vary. In the United States, the first task of the commanding heights should be to shift investment away from insanely wasteful military production to domestic infrastructure and measures to integrate all citizens into a genuinely civilized society. Such a mixed economy creates a favorable environment for the proliferation of small independent enterprises free to innovate.

Free from fear of illness and homelessness allows more real freedom than the polarized lottery that passes for capitalism in the United States today. Such a project of civilization should win support from decent and lucid people in all classes of society.

I am perfectly aware that the United States today is ideologically light years away from such a sensible project. But developments are underway in other countries to meet the threat of Big Pharma and meddling American billionaires. The word that sums up these developments is “multipolarization.”

This is the slogan launched by Vladimir Putin in 2007. It drove Western champions of unipolar globalization into a frenzy from which they are far from having recovered – witness the insanely provocative “Defender Europe 20” military games practicing nuclear war right up to the Russian border, stalled temporarily by Covid-19.

The United States and its European satellites are in effect waging war against the Free World – that is, countries free of U.S. domination, in order to perpetuate an imaginary global regime along the lines of neoliberalism: rule of finance approved by manipulated elections.

Nevertheless, unipolar globalization is in the process of disintegration. All the slander against China cannot change the facts. While U.S. propagandists blast their rising rival, most of the world sees that China handled the epidemic with more professional know-how than the West. The United States control of international agencies is being threatened by growing Chinese influence – in particular, the World Health Organization.

This is the greatest threat to Big Pharma: a multipolar world. Bill Gates and U.S. pharmaceutical companies will have no monopoly of vaccine development to combat Covid-19. A dramatic shift from neoliberal globalization to multipolar national sovereignty will restore genuine competition – not only in production of vaccines but in social organization.

Let Western countries look to their own problems and find solutions. Let other countries develop according to models that suit their history, philosophy and popular demands. It is obvious that the vaunted U.S. “free market democracy” is not a model that should be imposed on every country on earth, nor even on the United States itself.

Mixed economies can take various forms. Some could evolve toward something that could be called socialism, others not. Let every small country be as independent as Iceland. Let the world explore different paths. Let a hundred flowers bloom!

Originally published by Consortium News

Diana Johnstone’s latest book is Circle in the Darkness; Memoirs of a World Watcher, Clarity Press, 2020.

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Total System Failure Will Give Rise to New Economy?

April 11th, 2020 by Pepe Escobar

Nobody, anywhere, could have predicted what we are now witnessing: in a matter of only a few weeks the accumulated collapse of global supply chains, aggregate demand, consumption, investment, exports, mobility.  

Nobody is betting on an L-shaped recovery anymore – not to mention a V-shaped one. Any projection of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 gets into falling-off-a-cliff territory.

In industrialized economies, where roughly 70% of the workforce is in services, countless businesses in myriad industries will fail in a rolling financial collapse that will eclipse the Great Depression.

That spans the whole spectrum of possibly 47 million US workers soon to be laid off – with the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 32% – all the way to Oxfam’s warning that by the time the pandemic is over half of the world’s population of 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty.

According to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) most optimistic 2020 scenario – certainly to become outdated before the end of Spring – global trade would shrink by 13%.  A more realistic and gloomier WTO scenario sees global trade plunging by 32%.

What we are witnessing is not only a massive globalization short circuit: it’s a cerebral shock extended to three billion hyperconnected, simultaneously confined people. Their bodies may be blocked, but they are electromagnetic beings and their brains keep working – with possible, unforeseen political and other consequences.

Soon we will be facing three major, interlocking debates: the management (in many cases appalling) of the crisis; the search for future models; and the reconfiguration of the world-system.

This is just a first approach in what should be seen as a do-or-die cognitive competition.

Particle accelerator

Sound analyses of what could be the next economic model are already popping up. As background, a really serious debunking of all (dying) neoliberalism development myths can be seen here.

Yes, a new economic model should be revolving around these axes: AI computing; automated manufacturing; solar and wind energy; high-speed 5G-driven data transfer; and nanotechnology.

China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are very well positioned for what’s ahead, as well as selected European latitudes.

Plamen Tonchev, head of the Asia unit at the Institute of International Economic Relations in Athens, Greece, points to the possible reorganization – short term – of Belt and Road Initiative projects, privileging investment in energy, export of solar panels, 5G networks and the Health Silk Road.

Covid-19 is like a particle accelerator, consolidating tendencies that were already developing. China had already demonstrated for the whole planet to see that economic development under a control system has nothing to do with Western liberal democracy.

On the pandemic, China demonstrated – also for the whole planet to see – that containment of Covid-19 can be accomplished by imposing controls the West derided as “draconian” and “authoritarian,” coupled with a strategic scientific approach characerized by a profusion of test kits, protection equipment, ventilators and experimental treatments.

This is already translating into incalculable soft power which will be exercised along the Health Silk Road. Trends seem to point to China as strategically reinforced all along the spectrum, especially in the Global South. China is playing go, weiqi. Stones will be taken from the geopolitical board.

System failure welcomed? 

In contrast, Western banking and finance scenarios could not be gloomier. As a Britain-centric analysis argues, “It is not just Europe. Banks may not be strong enough to fulfill their new role as saviors in any part of the world, including the US, China and Japan. None of the major lending systems were ever stress-tested for an economic deep freeze lasting months.”

So “the global financial system will crack under the strain,” with a by now quite possible “pandemic shutdown lasting more than three months” capable of causing  “economic and financial ‘system failure.’”

As system failures go, nothing remotely approaches the possibility of a quadrillion dollar derivative implosion, a real nuclear issue.

Capital One is number 11 on the list of the largest banks in the US by assets. They are already in deep trouble on their derivative exposures. New York sources say Capital One made a terrible trade, betting via derivatives that oil would not plunge to where it is now at 17-year lows.

Mega-pressure is on all those Wall Street outfits that gave oil companies the equivalent of puts on all their oil production at prices above $50 a barrel. These puts have now come due – and the strain on the Wall Street houses and US banks will become unbearable.

The anticipated Friday oil deal won’t alter anything: oil will stay around $20 per barrel, $25 max.

This is just the beginning and is bound to get much worse. Imagine most of US industry being shut down. Corporations – like Boeing, for instance – are going to go bankrupt. Bank loans to those corporations will be wiped out. As those loans are wiped out, the banks are going to get into major trouble.

Derivative to the max

Wall Street, totally linked to the derivative markets, will feel the pressure of the collapsing American economy. The Fed bailout of Wall Street will start coming apart. Talk about a nuclear chain reaction.

In a nutshell: The Fed has lost control of the money supply in the US. Banks can now create unlimited credit from their base and that sets up the US for potential hyperinflation if the money supply grows non-stop and production collapses, as it is collapsing right now because the economy is in shutdown mode.

If derivatives start to implode, the only solution for all major banks in the world will be immediate nationalization, much to the ire of the Goddess of the Market. Deutsche Bank, also in major trouble, has a 7 trillion euro derivatives exposure, twice the annual GDP of Germany.

No wonder New York business circles are absolutely terrified. They insist that if the US does not immediately go back to work, and if these possibly quadrillions of dollars of derivatives start to rapidly implode, the economic crises that will unfold will create a collapse of the magnitude of which has not been witnessed in history, with incalculable consequences.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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A New World Is Being Born: What Will It Be?

April 11th, 2020 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

We are hearing from many that the world after Covid-19 will be different.  The question is:  Different in what way?  Will it be better or worse?

Elites are working to make it better for them, and worse for the rest of us.  About that the evidence is clear.  The Big Boys are being bailed out and their debts covered.  Everyone else, except those already marginalized and without a recent work record and fixed address, got a month’s rent and extended unemployment benefits.  

Big Pharma sees massive profits in the virus, Government sees more power to control

But the disparity in economic benefits is only a part of it.  Powerful vested interests, such as Bill Gates and Big Pharma, are determined to vaccinate us all, and to control our movements with an internal passport called “vaccinated, health cleared” or other words to that effect.  New tracking procedures and technologies are to be put in operation reminiscent of the “mark of the beast” to police the access of varous categories of people to various areas and benefits.  

Experts point out that just as we cannot be vaccinated against the common cold, except perhaps for the past year’s version we cannot be vaccinated against Covid-19 and other mutating viruses, but the experts are already being shouted down. No expert opinion is to be permitted to stand in the way of vaccination profits.  

Neither will nutrition and vitamin advocates be allowed to get in the way.  Bill Sardi predicts that orchestrated scares generated by mandatory recalls of “toxic” vitamins await us. Big Pharma is determined to acquire control over vitamins and homeopathic remedies, and the FDA is Big Pharma’s likely pawn.

Vaccination has been elevated above cure, as Big Pharma and its shills such as CNN shout down the positive experience doctors report of successful treatments with Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin, and the effectiveness of Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, and Zinc in strengthening the ability of immune systems to fight off the virus.  Big Pharma-influenced medical orthodoxy cannot get out of the box it has been put into.  When new thinking and experimentation are needed, those capable of thought are hasseled and even blocked by FDA regulations and dogmatism.

The permanent government and its security agencies see in the population’s fear and confusion opportunities to put into place more tyrannical measures, more set-asides of Constitutional Rights, more impairments on free speech.  The ability of freedom to resist oppression is ever diminished.

Various descriptions of the expected dystopia are offered on the Internet.  But it does not have to turn out this way.  It is up to us. Demoralized and fearful, we can accept more government power as we did after 9/11.  Instead, we can collectively recognize the massive failure everywhere of Western leadership and construct a more liveable and sustainable society. 

The failure of leadership is an opportunity for real change

CNN, the New York Times, and the rest of the controlled media tell us every day that President Trump represents the failure of leadership.  But the failure of leadership goes beyond all the leaders of the last 30 years and resides in the system itself.  Global, “self-regulating,” greed-driven, financialized, soulless capitalism cannot unite people into a sustainable community. 

The failure of leadership resides in the long-term failure of leadership that made Western societies vulnerable by moving high-productivity, high-valued jobs offshore in order to raise corporate profits at the expense of domestic consumer incomes.  It means the movement offshore of the ability to produce medicines, N95 masks, and other needed resources for national survival.  It means dependency on foreign powers.  It means the inability to function without massive imports.  However you look at it, globalism is a death sentence.  Its only advantage is to the rich, and the advantage comes to them in the form of cheap labor that swells their profits while it shrinks domestic incomes and the purchasing power of the population.

Without incomes to drive the economy, the elites provided loans and expanded credit in order to provide spending power based in personal debt to absorb the offshored production brought home to sell in American markets. The cost of college education soared as its quality declined.  Education subsidies were cut and student debt substituted in its place.  Inflation was understated in order to deny Social Security pensioners cost-of-living increases. Medicare payments to health care providers were squeezed down.  The social safety net was ripped again and again. More and more people fell out, and homeless populations grew providing fertile breeding grounds for Covid-19.

The income and wealth distribution in the US went from fair to extremely unequal in a short time as the rich profited from the Federal Reserve pumping trillions of dollars into the prices of financial assets and from corporations buying back their own stock, thus decapitalizing the corporation while taking the company into debt, all for the temporary benefit of higher bonuses for executives and more capital gains for shareholders.  The elites killed the economy for short-run benefits to themselves.

These destructive polices were the work of greed-driven short-term thinkers—people whose only vision was “I want even more.”  And it is these unworthy people, not their victims, that Uncle Sam is now rescuing.  The massive unpayable debt bubble that already overhung the economy is being blown larger.  The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury are in the process of destroying the US dollar in futile efforts to save the super-rich from their own greed-driven misbehavior.

In place of this insane approach to the economic crisis, there is a sane approach.  The bailed out corporations and banks are in effect being purchased by the government.  Therefore, they should be treated as the nationalized corporations that they are.  Once nationalized, the government, unlike the corporations, can create the money to pay the salaries and health premiums. The predicted 30 or 40 percent unemployment can be avoided.  It is better to pay salaries than to pay unemployment benefits.  The psychological difference alone is worth a vast amount.

The inability of the high-cost American private health care system to cope with the present medical crisis is apparent.  A profit-driven health care system is the highest cost system to have. 

Profit is built in at every level, which raises costs to levels that private insurance and Medicare refuse to reimburse.  The result is shrinkage, not expansion of the system.  Just look, for example, at the number of hospitals, especially in rural areas, that have recently closed.  

Moreover, the coverage of a private system—and Medicare itself—has massive gaps.  The resistance to a nationalized health service is ridiculous, especially as a nationalized service can coexist with a privatized one.  Two are clearly better than one.

Nationalization has numerous benefits.  It permits the large unwieldly enterprises, created, for example, by the mergers of giant banks like Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan, to be broken up and to reestablish the separation of commercial from investment banking.  The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws were ignorant policymaking at its worse. Nationalization permits the government to bring home the offshored production of global US corporations and to put the US workforce back to work in middle class jobs.  It is win-win for the American people.

Once the giant monopoly corporations are broken up, they can be privatized and returned to private ownership on a fair value basis, not on the giveaway basis of a pennies on the dollar sale. The money the government receives from their sale can be used to retire government debt.  

For individuals, the life- and economy-suffocating heavy debts should be written down to levels that can be serviced by their incomes.  Michael Hudson and I proposed a “debt jubilee” as a solution:     Others have taken up our call:  https://truthout.org/articles/1200-only-goes-so-far-its-time-to-abolish-debt/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=98cb6aac-8ef8-4e0e-b80e-24a1d1f92ef6 

Currently the Federal Reserve is socializing debt without writing it down.  This is nonsensical as it bails out debt by expanding it.  

In the US there is so much dogmatic prejudice against anything that has a tint of socialism, even as a temporary expedient measure, that thought and sensible action face strong barriers.  If we cannot overcome these barriers, we are destined for far more difficult times.

Can community be restored or will nationality degenerate into the clans and tribalism of Identity Politics?

The greatest challenge we face is to restore the concept of community.  There was a time when  the United States was a community, a unique one as it consisted of a multitude of ethnicities. As each wave of ethnic immigrants arrived, they passed a test on the Constitution, learned the national language, and became assimilated into the American community.  

This community has been destroyed by a variety of forces, the latest being Identity Politics.  Identity Politics prohibits community by breaking down the population into mutually hostile groups by gender, sexual preference, race, and whatever classification can be invented or imagined.  The result is a Tower of Babel.  A Tower of Babel is not a community.  

 

Perhaps the challenge from Covid-19 will force us to come together again in order to prevail over the virus, which in mutated versions might be with us forever.  A coming together would be helped by an economic bailout perceived as fair rather than as the one-sided approach that has been taken. A debt jubilee provides the necessary fairness.  

The elites by thinking only of their interests are in the way of the opportunity that crisis provides to bring people together.  If we can’t be brought back together, we can forget about unity beyond the boundaries of our own victim or identity group.  In place of community, we will be organized in clans of seperate identities.  The absence of unity at home will make us a sitting duck for enemies abroad.  

We know what the Dystopian Wish List is.  Can we come together with an anti-dystopian wish list as a mutually supportive community or have the elites succeeded in atomizing us into disparate tribal hate groups?  

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UN Ceasefire Defines War As a Non-Essential Activity

April 11th, 2020 by Medea Benjamin

At least 70 countries have signed on to the March 23 call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a worldwide ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like non-essential business and spectator sports, war is a luxury that the Secretary General says we must manage without for a while. After U.S. leaders have told Americans for years that war is a necessary evil or even a solution to many of our problems, Mr. Guterres is reminding us that war is really the most non-essential evil and an indulgence that the world cannot afford—especially during a pandemic.

The UN Secretary General and the European Union have also both called for a suspension of the economic warfare that the U.S. wages against other countries through unilateral coercive sanctions. Countries under unilateral U.S. sanctions include Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe.

In his update on April 3rd, Guterres showed that he was taking his ceasefire call seriously, insisting on actual ceasefires, not just feel-good declarations. “…there is a huge distance between declarations and deeds,” Guterres said. His original plea to “put armed conflict on lockdown” explicitly called on warring parties everywhere to “silence the guns, stop the artillery, end the airstrikes,” not just to say that they would like to, or that they’ll consider it if their enemies do it first.

But 23 of the original 53 countries that signed on to the UN’s ceasefire declaration still have armed forces in Afghanistan as part of the NATO coalition fighting the Taliban. Have all 23 countries ceased firing now? To put some meat on the bones of the UN initiative, countries that are serious about this commitment should tell the world exactly what they are doing to live up to it.

In Afghanistan, peace negotiations between the U.S., the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban have been going on for two years. But the talks have not stopped the U.S. from bombing Afghanistan more than at any other time since the U.S. invasion in 2001. The U.S. has dropped at least 15,560 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan since January 2018, with predictable increases in already horrific levels of Afghan casualties.

There was no reduction in U.S. bombing in January or February 2020, and Mr. Guterres said in his April 3rd update that fighting in Afghanistan had only increased in March, despite the February 29th peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban.

Then, on April 8th, Taliban negotiators walked out of talks with the Afghan government over disagreements about the mutual prisoner release called for in the U.S.-Afghan agreement. So it remains to be seen whether either the peace agreement or Mr. Guterres’ call for a ceasefire will lead to a real suspension of U.S. airstrikes and other fighting in Afghanistan. Actual ceasefires by the 23 members of the NATO coalition who have rhetorically signed on to the UN ceasefire would be a big help.

The diplomatic response to Mr. Guterres’s ceasefire declaration from the United States, the world’s most prolific aggressor, has mainly been to ignore it. The U.S. National Security Council (NSC) did retweet a tweet from Mr. Guterres about the ceasefire, adding, “The United States hopes that all parties in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere will heed the call of @antonioguterres. Now is the time for peace and cooperation.”

But the NSC tweet did not say that the U.S. would take part in the ceasefire, essentially deflecting the UN’s call to all the other warring parties. The NSC made no reference to the UN or to Mr. Guterres position as UN Secretary General, as if he launched his initiative just as a well-meaning private individual instead of the head of the world’s foremost diplomatic body. Meanwhile, neither the State Department nor the Pentagon have made any public response to the UN’s ceasefire initiative.

So, unsurprisingly, the UN is making more progress with ceasefires in countries where the U.S. is not one of the leading combatants. The Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen has announced a unilateral two week ceasefire beginning on April 9th to set the stage for comprehensive peace talks. Both sides have publicly supported the UN ceasefire call, but the Houthi government in Yemen will not agree to a ceasefire until the Saudis actually halt their attacks on Yemen.

If the UN ceasefire takes hold in Yemen, it will prevent the pandemic from compounding a war and humanitarian crisis that have already killed hundreds of thousands of people. But how will the U.S. government react to peace moves in Yemen that threaten the U.S.’s most lucrative market for foreign arms sales in Saudi Arabia?

In Syria, the 103 civilians reported killed in March were the lowest monthly death toll in many years, as a ceasefire negotiated between Russia and Turkey in Idlib appears to be holding. Geir Pedersen, the UN’s special envoy in Syria, is trying to expand this to a nationwide ceasefire between all the warring parties, including the United States.

In Libya, both the main warring parties, the UN-recognized government in Tripoli and the forces of rebel general Khalifa Haftar, publicly welcomed the UN’s call for a ceasefire, but the fighting only worsened in March.

In the Philippines, the government of Rodrigo Duterte and the Maoist New People’s Army, which is the armed wing of the Philippines Communist Party, have agreed to a ceasefire in their 50-year-old civil war. In another 50-year civil war, Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) has responded to the UN’s ceasefire call with a unilateral ceasefire for the month of April, which it said it hopes can lead to lasting peace talks with the government.

In Cameroon, where minority English-speaking separatists have been fighting for 3 years to form an independent state called Ambazonia, one rebel group, Socadef, has declared a two-week ceasefire, but neither the larger Ambazonia Defense Force (ADF) rebel group nor the government have joined the ceasefire yet.

The UN is working hard to persuade people and governments everywhere to take a break from war, humanity’s most non-essential and deadly activity. But if we can give up war during a pandemic, why can’t we just give it up altogether? In which devastated country would you like the U.S. to start fighting and killing again when the pandemic is over? Afghanistan? Yemen? Somalia? Or would you prefer a brand new U.S. war against Iran, Venezuela or Ambazonia?

We think we have a better idea. Let’s insist that the U.S. government call off its airstrikes, artillery and night raids in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and West Africa, and support ceasefires in Yemen, Libya and around the world. Then, when the pandemic is over, let’s insist that the U.S. honor the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of force, which wise American leaders drafted and signed in 1945, and start living at peace with all our neighbors around the world. The U.S. has not tried that in a very long time, but maybe it’s an idea whose time has finally come.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK, and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.  

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It’s all about the lever of balance.  Laws made for public protection, within which public health features prominently, provide grounds for derogation authorities can exploit.  Like plasticine, the scope of power during times of an emergency extends.  But at what point does a state of public health become a police state?  In time, we may find these to be not only indistinguishable but synonymous; the body will be the site where liberties are subordinate to regulation, movement, medical testing, and directives made in the name of health. 

Across countries, the “lockdown” as a term has come to keep company with “social distancing”, now retouched as “physical distancing”; “self-isolation” along with a host of numbing words such as “unprecedented” and “rapidly evolving”.  Such lockdowns naturally vary in terms of how the coronavirus will be dealt with.

In New Zealand, the focus of the lockdown has been on suppression and elimination.  Thoughts of mitigating COVID-19 have been cast aside.  On March 23, the country was openly committed to the elimination strategy.  A piece in the New Zealand Medical Journal authored by the country’s notable epidemiologists in justifying the approach, insisted on a departure from the management strategies of old.  Mitigation had been used in Europe, North America and Australia.  Suppression, resulting in flattening the curve of infection, had also been adopted. But these did not adequately appreciate the nature of COVID-19, which was “not pandemic influenza.”  It had a longer incubation period (5-6 days) relative to influenza (1-3 days). 

Rather than increasing the measures in progressive response to the spread of the virus, the focus would be on imposing firm measures from the start, including border controls, case isolation and quarantine. Mass community measures might be needed to stop community transmission: physical distancing, internal travel restrictions, mass quarantining.  While intrusive, the authors extol the virtues of a hard approach from the outset: “if started early it will result in fewer cases of illness and death.  If successful it also offers a clear exit path with a careful return to regular activities with resulting social and economic benefits for New Zealand.”

On March 23, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered a statement warning New Zealanders that they had 48 hours to get their affairs in order.  “Right now we have a window of opportunity to break the chain of community transmission – to contain the virus – to stop it multiplying and to protect New Zealanders from the worst.”  By March 25, a state of emergency had been declared, with “level 4” lockdown measures closing schools, non-essential workplaces, banning social gatherings and imposing travel restrictions.  Two 14-day incubation cycles have been factored into it.

Tributes from the public health sector followed.  Professor Michael Baker of the University of Otago, a co-author on the NZMJ piece justifying the elimination method, gave his assessment of the slowdown of cases: “a triumph of science and leadership”.  The prime minister “approached this decisively and unequivocally and faced the threat.”

A slew of items are now in circulation glowing for the approach taken by the Ardern government.  New Zealand, goes the line, is on to something, though care should be taken from which source they come.  The Guardian, for instance, ran an article of congratulation for the elimination formula, but you only had to realise the authors: Baker and his colleague Nick Wilson. Unsurprisingly, it is effusive:

“New Zealand now appears to be the only ‘western’ nation following an articulated elimination strategy with the goal of completely ending transmission of COVID-19 within its borders.  The strategy appears to be working, with new case numbers falling.”

The Washington Post was similarly brimming with admiration.  “New Zealand isn’t just flattening the curve.  It’s quashing it.”  Qualifications are, however, forthcoming.  “In New Zealand’s case, being a small island nation makes it easy to shut borders.  It also helps that the country often feels like a village where everyone knows everyone else, so messages can travel quickly.”

Shifting away from the pure health dimensions of the response, and a less praiseworthy image emerges.  The legal cognoscenti have been lukewarm, albeit admitting that emergency measures are necessary.  The police, for instance, have discretionary powers unseen since the 1951 waterfront strike. The Health Act 1956 has been used to deem COVID-19 a “quarantinable disease”, thereby giving “medical officers of health” vast powers, backed by the police use of reasonable measures, to impose conditions of isolation, quarantine or disinfection.

Barrister and journalist Catriona MacLennan, in an irate open letter to the New Zealand Police, wrote of how it was “hard to get our heads around the extent of these [emergency] powers.  They are not something most New Zealanders have ever imagined.”  There was, for instance, no legal obligation for any New Zealand citizen to have letters from their employers or work identity cards.  The regulations on when people could or could not leave their homes needed to be standardised.  “Contradictory messages and over-the top enforcement will rapidly erode public goodwill and result in increasing failure to comply.”

This has seen various altercations.  One featured police berating former broadcaster Damian Christie for delivering video equipment to a client’s food producing business as a needless act and in breach of the lockdown.  Armed with a letter showing otherwise, and outlining that the video gear would be used to share information to employees on COVID-19, the response to Christie was absolute: He could only leave the house for medical necessaries.

This distant island has become a fledged police state, perhaps not quite fully but well on the way.  Some of this has to with confusion between the State of National Emergency as distinct from the lockdown itself.  These have been blended into an authoritarian mix.  Police may, without warrant, enter premises and rummage through possessions.  Indefinite detention may be imposed on those who have no good reason to leave their home, though this is very much down to a loose reading of power.

Another by-product of these measures is a willingness to turn citizens into accessories of the state, small time agents and spy enthusiasts.  They are the tittle-tattles, or, to use the vernacular, dobbers, the do-good brigade enlisted in public health’s calling.  It first came in the form of an online email address run by the Ministry of Health regarding breaches of self-isolation and mass gathering directions.  The emergency police line was then choked by hundreds of the dedicated. 

This saw the establishment of an online site which was swamped with reports within an hour of its activation, crashing it.  (Some 4,200 reports are said to have been lodged, many snarling about joggers and walkers.)  The continued level of interest shown by the users in reporting on their fellow citizens has seen police calls for patience. “If you are having difficulty, please try again later.”  Something to be truly proud of.    

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

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US Doctors and Nurses Becoming Infected with COVID-19

April 11th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Doctors, nurses, and other medical staff are on the frontlines of combating COVID-19.

What happens if their ranks are infected with the virus?

Who’ll be there in enough numbers to treat patients needing healthcare without them remaining safe on the job?

Perhaps thousands of US doctors and nurses have been infected with COVID-19, most others at risk for lack of enough personal protective equipment (PPE). More on this below.

Last Monday, I spent half a day receiving treatment for a chronic health issue at Illinois’ top rated hospital, one of America’s 10 best, according to US News & World Report.

I was struck by the dedication of the staff to do their jobs effectively and efficiently despite risks to their health from COVID-19 infection.

While everyone I saw wore a mask and surgical gloves, I saw no one wearing an N95 respirator mask that provides the most effective protection from exposure to contaminants other than hazmat attire.

Why? Because the Trump regime isn’t supplying states with PPE from Strategic National Stockpile.

Yet its war department sent around one million surgical masks to Israel for IDF use — while Americans are told to make their own from “quilting fabric or cotton sheets,” according to the CDC, adding:

“T-shirt fabric will work in a pinch.” Instructions to make them aren’t simple for most people, ideally requiring some seamstress skills for a proper fit for protection from contaminants.

When the nation’s healthcare staff and general population lack enough PPE, House Committee on Oversight and Reform chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said the following:

A new HHS document “shows that the federal government has distributed just a fraction of the personal protective equipment and critical medical supplies that our hospitals and medical first responders urgently need,” adding:

States and local communities are “lef(t) to scour the open market for these scarce supplies, and to compete with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic, free-for-all bidding war.”

Trump “failed” to use his Defense Production Act authority to “procure and manage the distribution of critical supplies. He must take action now to address these deficiencies.”

The HHS document shows that “less than 1% of (an estimated) 3.5 billion masks…necessary in the event of a severe pandemic… have been distributed.”

“Only 7,910 ventilators have been distributed from the (national) stockpile (despite) a recent survey of 213 mayors—which did not include New York City, Chicago, or Seattle—identified a total estimated need of 139,000 ventilators.”

Reportedly around 90% of federally stockpiled N95 respirators, surgical and face masks, face shields, gowns, and gloves are depleted — remaining PPE reserved for federal workers.

Why wasn’t the national stockpile replenished with enough PPE for healthcare staff and all Americans when an early 2017 report showed that the Pentagon knew that a novel contagious respiratory disease like COVID-19 could emerge and spread any time?

Why did Trump regime officials fail to prepare what’s happening now?

Why wasn’t FEMA on this issue years ago to be ready to deal with what’s ongoing?

Why is the world’s richest country unprepared when help that only the federal government can properly provide isn’t forthcoming?

Last month, healthcare know-nothing Mike Pence disturbingly said people who’ve been “exposed” to COVID-19 infected individuals can “return to work more quickly…if (show) no symptoms…by wearing a mask for a certain period of time.”

Global health think tank ACCESS Health International president William Haseltine called Trump regime guidance “deadly, deadly advice,” adding:

“This is so bad. If you want to really spread this infection like crazy, that’s what to do. It’s near insanity.”

“No health expert would have ever told them that, unless it’s a Trump sycophant. If you want to kill hundreds and thousands of Americans, he’s found a good way to do it.”

Trump wants the economy reopened as soon as possible because he fears loss of support the longer dismal economic conditions and high unemployment continue.

Polls show support for how he’s handling the crisis is slipping. A new CBS News poll on his job performance found respondent support at 47%, down from 53% two weeks ago.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll showed 55% of respondents disapprove of Trump’s COVID-19 response, 44% expressing approval, down from 55% in mid-March.

According to a late March Healthline report, increasing numbers of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff “are falling ill or being quarantined due to exposure to” COVID-19.

“More and more instances of healthcare workers exposed to the disease appear to be cropping up almost daily.”

On April 3, psychiatrist Jessica Gold reported that fear of COVID-19 infection is affecting the mental health of healthcare staff, explaining:

“I know that their calm surface appearance is the only armor they have left.”

“Underneath it, many health care workers are barely keeping it together.”

“They are anxious and they are afraid. They aren’t sleeping and they find themselves crying more than usual.”

“The overall feeling in my friends, family, and co-workers is one of an impending doom and an existing gloom that is both physically and psychologically palpable.”

Gold stressed that lack of PPE is a major contributor to their emotional angst and fear.

“The risk of infection, especially if it is asymptomatic, instills fear of spreading the virus to their patients and families,” she explained.

Even though fear of possible death is irrational for young healthy healthcare workers, many on the front lines of treating patients for any issues fear it.

“Some health care workers are using words like betrayal and coercion and moral injury to describe this experience,” said Gold, adding:

“They feel betrayed by their employers, the health care system, and the government, all of which were woefully unprepared for a pandemic and then chose to ignore their warnings.”

Some healthcare workers “would rather quit medicine all together” than risk their well-being.

According to the Lancet medical journal, “(f)igures from China’s National Health Commission show that more than 3,300 health-care workers have been infected as of early March” — two dozen deaths reported at end of February.

“In Italy, 20% of responding health-care workers were infected, and some have died.”

“Reports from medical staff describe physical and mental exhaustion, the torment of difficult triage decisions, and the pain of losing patients and colleagues, all in addition to the infection risk.”

Nations with significant numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks are likely affected the same way — notably the US with over 500,000 reported cases and around 19,000 deaths — about 30% of world infections, around 18% of global deaths from the virus.

While it’s unknown how many US healthcare staff are infected with COVID-19, numbers may be thousands.

According to US News & World Report, “(s)tates (and the CDC) aren’t consistently tracking health care workers infected with the coronavirus,” adding:

US reports of infections are “anecdotal.” Yet it’s believed that perhaps “thousands of US medical workers have contracted the virus, with their illnesses ranging from asymptomatic to severe and in some cases fatal.”

US News & World Report contacted 50 state health departments, hearing back from 35.

Ten provided information on how many healthcare staff are infected with COVID-19, “a total of 1,119 across those states.”

If the number represents a small fraction of the national total, there’s potentially significant risk to healthcare professionals and patients they treat for all issues, as well as the general population.

Pennsylvania reported 4.4% of healthcare staff infected with COVID-19, Oklahoma 10.6%, Ohio about 20%, and about one-fourth of Rhode Island medical personnel.

Some states are just beginning to compile infection rate data. New York with over 40% of national COVID-19 outbreaks said information on numbers of infected healthcare workers is “unavailable.”

Numerically it’s highly likely to be largest in the US by far.

Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital, one of the nation’s best, screens medical and other staff on arrival for work, anyone with possible COVID-19 symptoms sent home and told to self-isolate.

If growing numbers of healthcare staff in the US (and elsewhere) become infected with the virus, hospitals and other medical facilities with be hard-pressed to provide proper care to all patients they treat.

It’s why precautionary measures are important to contain the spread of the virus.

Public and personal health matter above all else. The economy can wait.

In the US with virtually unlimited federal resources for militarism, warmaking, and corporate handouts, providing financial help to ordinary Americans at a time of growing millions in need should be prioritized.

Desperate times call for desperate measures to address public health and welfare over all other priorities, including a subsidized living wage for Americans without enough or any income until crisis conditions end.

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Fierce clashes between the Syrian Army and ISIS terrorists erupted near the villages of al-Sukhnah and Wadi al-Waer in the province of Homs on April 9 evening.

According to pro-government sources, the army and local militias backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces kicked off a wide-scale security operation to crack down on the terrorists hiding in the desert area. Its goal is to put an end to the recently observed increase of actions of the terrorist group against pro-government forces on the western bank of the Euphrates.

Supporters of the so-called ‘moderate Syrian opposition’ immediately claimed that government forces suffered heavy casualties in this operation. They insist that over 20 soldiers were killed. Pro-government sources claim that up to 30 ISIS members were neutralized.

In the coming days, Syrian troops will likely continue developing their anti-ISIS operation along the Sukhna-Deir Ezzor road and in the southern countryside of Mayadeen. ISIS cells infiltrating the government-controlled area from the eastern bank of the Euphrates in eastern Syria and the border area in western Iraq have become a serious security threat recently.

Meanwhile, ISIS announced that it had conducted 29 attacks on government forces across Iraq during the past week. The terrorist group claims that 66 government fighters were killed or injured. These claims remain unconfirmed. After the collapse of ISIS’ self-proclaimed Caliphate in the Middle East, ISIS-affiliated media outlets become used to spreading fake news and dramatically overestimating supposed ‘successes’ of the terrorist group.

The Turkish Army established a new observation post near the village of Jannet Elqora in Syria’s southwestern Idlib. This village is located in a close proximity to the M4 highway, which links the port city of Lattakia with the country’s industrial hub, Aleppo city. Last week, the Turkish military established three similar posts in the towns of Baksariya, al-Z’ainiyah and Furaykah in southwest Idlib.

According to open data, the Turkish military currently has up to 60 ‘observation posts’ across the region of Greater Idlib. Ankara claims that all these positions were established and heavy military equipment were deployed to them in order to put an end to the terrorist threat in the region and observe the ceasefire. However, so far, the only real goal achieve by Turkey has been the increase of security for al-Qaeda terrorists operating in the region.

The US State Department welcomed a new OPCW report accusing the Syrian military of using chemical weapons. According to the new accusations, Syria conducted 3 chemical attacks in the province of Hama in March 2017. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also accused Iran and Russia of conducting a ‘disinformation campaign’ in order to ‘hide’ the usage of chemical weapons by Syrian forces.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said the OPCW report “is misleading and contains falsified and fabricated conclusions”, while Russia’s permanent mission to the watchdog described the document as “not trustworthy.”

Since the very start of the conflict, the chemical weapon issue has been deeply polarized and the OPCW’s conclusions on the topic have repeatedly faced a strong criticism from independent experts. Furthermore, recent leaks from the OPCW investigation on the Douma incident demonstrated that the organization is intentionally hiding facts, doctoring investigation results and drawing preplanned conclusions in order to push forward the mainstream agenda designed to demonize the Assad government.

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Jesus of Nazareth. Time for Reflection and Understanding

April 11th, 2020 by Philip A Farruggio

First published on Good Friday 2018

As I write this column it is Good Friday, the most somber day in the Christian religion. This is the day that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. It is a time for reflection and understanding. One need not be devout to recognize that Jesus, according to many various scriptures, was a man who ‘ Spoke truth to power’ throughout his 33 years of earthly life. Regardless of whether one believes that he was God or the son of God, many can ascertain that the many quotes of his were meant to teach and instruct. Writing as a political activist, I will not go into my feelings and beliefs about my own spiritual path at this time. For hundreds of millions on this planet Jesus was a special soul who was as true a role model as one could ever imagine… period!

Among the myriad of great and insightful quotes from his teachings, one sticks out to me, especially during this Easter season, in relation to just how deeply our nation has regressed:  For what shall it profit a man , if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

We have a culture that actually celebrates great wealth, so much so that so many working stiffs continue to elect the super rich to rule us. What better indication than the fact that a billionaire real estate mogul and reality television star is our president?

Trump is only the tip of this dangerous iceberg too. Look at who he and his predecessors chose to help run their governments: Mostly super rich insiders who care not for what that man on the cross was all about! Do you think this one fraction of 1% of our populace understands about the economic dilemmas facing we who work for a living? Worse than that, how about the millions of us who either cannot find viable work or cannot even get up each day to go to work? The cherished safety net has been and will continue to be cut each and every day by these scoundrels. Power and greed are what runs this nation, not empathy and cooperation!

One recalls when we faced that infamous subprime mortgage crisis in 2008-09, caused of course by the greed and selfishness of the banking industry. The Bush/Cheney cabal had recruited Henry Paulson, the just retired CEO of that bankster investment house Goldman Sachs to become Treasury Secretary for we 300 million drones. Henry, in his last year with Goldman, left with a compensation package of .. ready for this… $ 500 million!!Can you imagine how much money that is? If you earn let us say $ 50k a year, it would take you ONE THOUSAND YEARS  to earn that much!! Remember how he stood there, in front of the cameras, with Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid from the loyal  Democratic Party and Paulson’s fellow sharks from the Republican Party, giving him comfort. He had this look of such despair on his face as he let all of us know how the deal would be made to ‘ Save our Economy’ by bailing out the banksters… with OUR tax money of course.

Jesus is probably smirking right now up in the heaven that many of us believe in. He knows that those down here who failed to heed his words won’t be able to see him for a long time after they leave this existence. At best the Fat Cats and phony pols will have to spend a great deal of time in Purgatory before they can reach those Pearly Gates! For Mr. Trump: Location, Location, Location!

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House,  Global Research ,Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected] )

A few weeks ago we reported that, according to the Italian Institute of Health (ISS), only 12% of Italy’s reported Covid19 deaths actually listed Covid19 as the cause of death.

Given that 99% of them had at least one serious co-morbidity (and that 80% of them had two such diseases) this raised serious questions as to the reliability of Italy’s reported statistics.

Prof Walter Ricciardi, advisor to Italy’s health minister, explained this was caused by the “generous” way the Italian government handles death certificates:

The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.

Essentially, Italy’s death registration process does not differentiate between those who simply have the virus in their body, and those who are actually killed by it.

Given the amount of fear and panic Italy’s comparatively alarming numbers caused around the world, you would think other nations would be eager to avoid these same mistakes.

Surely all the other countries of the world are employing rigorous standards for delineating who has, and has not, fallen victim to the pandemic, right?

Wrong.

In fact, rather than learning from Italy’s example, other countries are not only repeating these mistakes but going even further.

In Germany, for example, though overall deaths and case-fatality ratio are far lower than Italy’s, their public health agency is still engaging in similar practice.

On March 20th the President of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute confirmed that Germany counts any deceased person who was infected with coronavirus as a Covid19 death, whether or not it actually caused death.

This totally ignores what Dr Sucharit Bhakdi calls the vital distinction between “infection” and “disease”, leading to stories such as this, shared by Dr Hendrik Streeck:

In Heinsberg, for example, a 78-year-old man with previous illnesses died of heart failure, and that was without Sars-2 lung involvement. Since he was infected, he naturally appears in the Covid 19 statistics.

How many “Covid19 deaths” in Germany, fall into this bracket? We don’t know, and will likely never know.

But at least Germany is actually limiting itself to test positive cases.

In the United States, a briefing note from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Service read as follows [our emphasis]:

It is important to emphasise that Coronavirus Disease 19, or Covid-19, should be reported for all decedents where the disease caused or is presumed to have caused or contributed to death.

“Presumed to have caused”? “Contributed”? That’s incredibly soft language, which could easily lead to over-reporting.

The referenced detailed “guidance” was released April 3rd, and is no better [again, our emphasis]:

In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed.” In these instances, certifiers should use their best clinical judgement in determining if a COVID–19 infection was likely.

Are careful records being kept to separate “Covid-19” from “presumed Covid-19”? Are the media making sure they respect the distinction in their reporting?

Absolutely not.

Whenever the alleged casualties are referenced we are fed one large all-inclusive number, without context or explanation, which – thanks to lax reporting guidelines – could be entirely false.

Government agencies all across the UK are doing the same thing.

Northern Ireland’s HSC Public Health Agency is releasing weekly surveillance bulletins on the pandemic, in those reports they define a “Covid19 death” as:

individuals who have died within 28 days of first positive result, whether or not COVID-19 was the cause of death

NHS England’s Office of National Statistics releases weekly reports on nation-wide mortality. Its latest report (Week 12 – March 14th-20th)was released on March 31st and made special mention of Covid19, explaining they were going to change the way they report the numbers in future.

The ONS system is predicated on the registration of deaths. Meaning they count, not the number of people who die every week, but the number of deaths registered per week. This, naturally, leads to slight delays in the recording of numbers as the registration process can take a few days.

However, with coronavirus deaths, since its a “national emergency”, they are now including “provisional figures” which will be “included in the dataset in subsequent weeks”. This leaves them wide open to – either accidentally or deliberately – reporting the same deaths twice. Once “provisionally”, and then once “officially” a week later.
That’s just one peculiar policy decision. There are many others.

Up until now, the ONS reported those Covid19 numbers collated by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The DHSC records only those who died in hospital and have tested positive for the coronavirus as Covid19 deaths.

BUT, from now on, the ONS will also include Covid19 deaths “in the community” in their statistics. That “includes those not tested for Covid19”and where suspected Covid19″ [our emphasis] is presumed to be a “contributory factor”.

Here are some screencaps of the relevant sections

The official NHS guidance for doctors filling out death certificates is just as vague [our emphasis]:

if before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death, and then share the test result when it becomes available. In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.

The government is telling doctors it is OK to list “Covid-19” as a cause of death when there is literally no evidence the deceased was infected. That means there are potentially huge numbers of “Covid19 deaths” that were never even tested for the disease.

Further, any possible mistakes will never be noticed or rectified, thanks to recent changes to the law.

Usually, any death attributed to a “notifiable disease” had to be referred to a coroner for a jury hearing.

Under UK law Covid19 is a “notifiable disease”, but the new Coronavirus Bill alters the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, to specifically exempt alleged Covid19 deaths from jury inquests.

Further, according to the office of the Chief Coroner, the Coronavirus Bill means that these deaths don’t have to be referred to a coroner at all, and that medical practitioners can sign off a cause of death for a body they have never even seen:

Any registered medical practitioner can sign an MCCD [Medical Certificate for Cause of Death], even if the deceased was not attended during their last illness and not seen after death, provided that they are able to state the cause of death to the best of their knowledge and belief.

Deaths “in the community” can be listed as Covid19 deaths without being tested for the disease, or even seen by a doctor at all. These deaths will not necessarily be referred to a coroner, and certainly not heard by a jury.

By enacting this legislation the UK government has not only made false reporting of Covid19 deaths more likely, they actively removed the safeguards designed to correct it. Recording accurate fatality numbers in this situation is borderline impossible.

This is, at best, totally irresponsible and at worst incredibly sinister.

Now, before you roll your eyes at the whacky alternate media and their crazy paranoia, the idea deaths are being over-estimated is not a fringe concept or a “conspiracy theory”. It is actually addressed in the mainstream frequently, people just seem to not hear it, drowned out as it is by the fear-inducing headlines.

Dr John Lee, a professor of pathology and retired consulting pathologist with the NHS, wrote in a column for the Spectator:

WHY COVID-19 DEATHS ARE A SUBSTANTIAL OVER-ESTIMATE

Many UK health spokespersons have been careful to repeatedly say that the numbers quoted in the UK indicate death with the virus, not death due tothe virus – this matters.
[…]
This nuance is crucial ­– not just in understanding the disease, but for understanding the burden it might place on the health service in coming days. Unfortunately, nuance tends to be lost in the numbers quoted from the database being used to track Covid-19
[…]
This data is not standardised and so probably not comparable, yet this important caveat is seldom expressed by the (many) graphs we see. It risks exaggerating the quality of data that we have.

In fact, Dr Lee goes out of his way to emphasise:

The distinction between dying ‘with’ Covid-19 and dying ‘due to’ Covid-19 is not just splitting hairs.

The BBC dealt with the same issue in an article on April 1st [again, emphasis ours]:

The death figures being reported daily are hospital cases where a person dies with the coronavirus infection in their body – because it is a notifiable disease cases have to be reported.

But what the figures do not tell us is to what extent the virus is causing the death.

It could be the major cause, a contributory factor or simply present when they are dying of something else.

These absurd rules contributed to this recent example, referenced in the BBC article, but not widely reported at the time:

An 18-year-old in Coventry tested positive for coronavirus the day before he died and was reported as its youngest victim at the time. But the hospital subsequently released a statement saying his death had been due to a separate “significant” health condition and not connected to the virus.

This story is completely true. The boy was widely reported as the UK’s “youngest coronavirus victim” on March 24th, before the hospital issued a statement saying:

[The hospital] had tested for COVID-19 on the day before he died, but this was not linked to his reason for dying.

Despite the hospital correcting the press, the case was still being reported in the tabloids a week later on March 31st.

However, the important detail here is being lost: Going by the current NHS rules, despite the hospital officially saying it was not his cause of death, this boy is still part of the official coronavirus fatality statistics.

How many more people fit that profile? We will never know.

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Italy, Germany, the United States, Northern Ireland and England.

That’s five different governments, across four countries, all essentially saying it’s OK to just assume a patient died of Covid19, and then add that to the official statistics.

Is that really responsible practice during a potential pandemic?

Are any other countries doing the same?

To what extent can we trust any official death statistics at all, at this point?

As Dr Lee points out, Covid19 is not a disease that presents with a unique – or even rare – collection of symptoms. The range of severity and type of presentation is in line with literally dozens of extremely common respiratory infections.

You cannot see “fever” and “cough” and then diagnose “probable covid19” with even the slightest chance of accuracy.

This has become one of those nuggets of information we all know by heart, but between 290000 and 650000 people die of flu, or “flu like illness”, every year. If just 10% of those cases are incorrectly assumed to be “probable” coronavirus infections, then the fatality numbers are totally useless.

At a time when good, reliable information is key to saving lives and preventing mass-panic, global governments are pursuing policies which make it near-impossible to collect that data, whilst stoking public fear.

Due to these policies, the simple fact is we have no reliable way of knowing how many people have died from this coronavirus. We have no hard data at all. And governments and international organisations are going out of their way to keep it that way.

It’s time we started asking why.

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Trump Regime Escalates War on China by Other Means

April 10th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

China is aggressively targeted by Washington because of its growing political, economic and military power on the world stage.

Pompeo falsely accused its ruling authorities of “repression…unfair competition…predatory economic practices, (and) a more aggressive military posture (sic).”

All of the above explain how the US operates, its agenda defined by its war on humanity at home and abroad — COVID-19 used as a pretext to pursue it.

Enactment of the US Secure and Trusted Communications Act last month was the latest anti-China shoe to drop.

It requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish a $1 billion fund to help small telecom firms remove existing Chinese equipment the Trump regime and Congress consider a threat to US security — despite none posed, no evidence suggesting it.

The measure prohibits using US subsidies to buy network communications equipment from Huawei and other Chinese tech companies.

A Justice Department statement said various “Executive Branch agencies unanimously recommended that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoke and terminate China Telecom’s authorizations to provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States,” falsely adding:

The company’s operations in the US potentially lets the firm “engage in malicious cyber activity enabling economic espionage and disruption and misrouting of US communications.”

A joint disinformation statement by House Energy and Commerce Committee co-sponsors said the following:

“Securing our networks from malicious foreign interference is critical to America’s wireless future, especially as some communications providers rely on equipment from companies like Huawei that pose an immense threat to America’s national and economic security (sic).”

The measure has nothing to do with “ensuring the integrity of America’s telecommunications systems.”

It’s all about China bashing, the latest step to weaken the country economically and technologically.

It aims to ban use of products by Chinese tech giants Huawei, ZTE, and other high-tech firms from the US on the phony pretext of national security concerns.

Last year, the US Commerce Department’s so-called “entity list” effectively banned Huawei and scores of other Chinese tech companies from the US market and supply chain.

They include enterprises  involved in producing aviation related products, semiconductors, engineering, as well as other high-tech products and components.

Falsely claiming these enterprises act “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States” is cover for wanting corporate America to have a leg up on Chinese competition — especially related to the rollout of 5G technology, Huawei leading the race globally.

At stake are trillions of dollars of economic value, why Huawei and other Chinese tech firms are targeted by Washington.

Blacklisted companies are prohibited from purchasing US technology without Washington’s permission, Huawei and its 70 affiliate companies notably targeted.

According to Competitive Carriers Association director Steven Barry, the new law “essentially attempt(s) to rebuild the airplane in mid-flight” by requiring US users of Chinese telecom equipment to remove and replace it while attempting to maintain uninterrupted operations.

On Monday, the US  Semiconductor Industry Association, National Foreign Trade Council, and seven other US industry groups wrote Trump regime Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, saying:

Proposed US changes “result in significant impacts to the semiconductor industry, its global supply chain, and the broader technology sector,” adding:

“Semiconductors drive the functionality in advanced medical equipment used by health professionals to treat the public” and enable telework.

SEMI president Ajit Manocha wrote Trump, saying proposed anti-China changes will disrupt over $20 billion in US industry business annually, adding:

New rules will “serve as a disincentive for further investments and innovation in the US and lead to the design-out of US technology and components.”

They’ll also disrupt supply chains that are “critical to fighting” COVID-19.

New rules aren’t finalized. Industry pushback may not be enough to halt the Trump regime from fully enforcing them along with more of the same to come.

A Final Comment

COVID-19 is a global issue, falsely called the “Wuhan virus” by Trump and other regime officials. Most likely it originated in the US, not China.

On April 7, UK-based Nature magazine apologized for associating COVID-19 with China, saying:

“That we did so was an error on our part, for which we take responsibility and apologize,” adding:

“(W)hen (a viral) outbreak happens, everyone is at risk, regardless of who they are or where they are from.”

“(A)ssociat(ing) a virus and the disease it causes with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop.”

Since early COVID-19 outbreaks, “people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs” — Chinese nationals mostly affected.

“(W)e must all do everything we can to avoid and reduce stigma; not associate COVID-19 with particular groups of people or places; and emphasize that viruses do not discriminate — we are all at risk.”

“Coronavirus stigma must stop — now.”

*

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Trump to Reopen US Economy in May?

April 10th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Social distancing, sheltering in place, and lockdowns are unprecedented and painful for everyone.

The unemployed are harmed most, out of work and unable to freely seek new sources of income needed for essentials to life and welfare.

It’s unclear how long current crisis conditions may last or how many people will be harmed by COVID-19.

Older people with pre-existing conditions and weakened immune systems from age and overall poor health affected further by a cocktail of prescription drugs with harmful side effects are most vulnerable.

When prescribed and used only as needed, drugs are necessary. Time and again they’re overused, risking more harm than good.

Some drugs should never be taken in combination with others. Drug overdoses together with others are a leading cause of death. Opioids are especially dangerous. Yet they’re widely prescribed and overused.

According to Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, around two-thirds of Americans use prescription drugs.

Nearly everyone with diabetes uses them and around 90% of people with arthritis.

Three-fourths of Americans aged-50 or older use them, over 90% of the US population over age-80.

The average number of prescription drugs used in the US increases with age.

Individuals with one or more chronic illnesses, especially if older, are most vulnerable to become a COVID-19 fatality.

If younger otherwise healthy individuals are infected with the virus, their full recovery prospects are overwhelmingly positive.

Older individuals infected by the virus with serious pre-existing conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and/or respiratory issues who perished may have succumbed because of one or more of these issues, not COVID-19.

Yet its rapid spread in the US and elsewhere is a great cause for concern. Extra precautions should be taken to be safe and not sorry.

Trump’s top priorities are getting reelected and serving privileged interests in the country exclusively, no matter the cost to human health and welfare.

According to the Washington Post and other media, Trump aims to reopen most of the economy by May 1, “according to (unnamed) people familiar with the discussions,” WaPo noted.

On Thursday, Trump said “(h)opefully, we’re going to be opening up — you could call it opening — very, very, very, very soon, I hope.”

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin told CNBC the same thing.

Most states are in lockdown. Governors may be reluctant to ease strict measures until comfortable that outbreaks ceased or at least are overwhelmingly under control.

Reopening the economy too soon would risk a new wave of infections, deaths, and public angst.

As long as most people are fearful of contagion, they’ll likely be reluctant to resume normal activities even if eager to go back to work.

A second White House task force is being formed to decide on how the economy will be reopened.

A former unnamed Trump regime official criticized “too many cooks in the (White House) kitchen” without clear leadership and direction in dealing with the health and economic crisis.

Trump admitted that it’s up to state officials to decide when the coast is clear in their parts of the country to begin resuming normal activities.

Governor Cuomo and health officials in hard-hit New York City and state may be reluctant to jump the gun too soon.

“We’ve underestimated the virus from the beginning,” Cuomo said. NY is in lockdown until April 29. Easing or lifting it entirely will depend on whether outbreaks are contained.

This week, updated COVID-19 CDC guidelines were issued for “critical infrastructure” employees — focusing on precautionary measures over current lockdown restrictions “to ensure continuity of essential functions.”

They call for continuation of social distancing, mask wearing, temperature checks, along with cleaning and disinfecting equipment, workplaces and common areas regularly.

Anyone feeling ill should be sent home immediately. Anyone in close contact with an ill employee should be considered exposed and quarantined.

Reopening the economy too soon is high-risk. COVID-19 is highly contagious.

Social distancing and other restrictions appear to be flattening the outbreak curve in various states which is good news.

Boston’s Mass General Emergency Medicine Department chair Dr. Paul Biddinger cautioned that evidence of a flattened peak doesn’t mean that crisis is ending.

“There are many, many more weeks of hard work ahead of us,” he stressed.

According to US News & World Report’s ranking of America’s best hospitals, Boston’s Mass General is second best in the nation after Rochester, MN’s Mayo Clinic.

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Information Warfare Behind Chloroquine

April 10th, 2020 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

As the new coronavirus pandemic advances around the world, several side questions are raised. Many controversies have been discussed around the treatment of COVID-19, with countless speculations about the efficiency of experimental methods, and defenders and opponents of the application of these methods are emerging everywhere. One clear examples of what we are talking about here is the discussion around the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of people infected by the virus. With results that are still not very accurate, the medicines have been the target of a wide variety of opinions: on the one hand, some support them fanatically due to the fact that they have already shown good results in the treatment of some patients, on the other hand, some reject them completely because they present several side effects. In the midst of this clash, several relevant decisions are made in several countries and on the international stage.

Chloroquine is a drug traditionally used in the treatment of malaria, which is why it is considered an essential drug and of necessary availability by the World Health Organization. Similar in structure, hydroxychloroquine is a drug commonly used in the treatment of chloroquine-sensitive malaria cases, as well as in cases of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Both drugs have only recently started to be tested in the treatment of COVID-19, as part of several applied scientific research programs aimed at tackling the global pandemic. To date, only a few studies with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been carried out, and research has been effective mainly in France and China, most of them inconclusive.

In fact, in some of the cases of application of these experimental methods, the results were positive, indicating that the drugs, if properly analyzed and developed, can really indicate improvements for the patients most affected by the disease. In general, the cases with the best results in the application were precisely the most severe, with patients admitted to intensive care units, not being generally experienced in patients with a less advanced state of the disease. The reasons for this are simple: at the same time that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine can – apparently – improve the situation of critically ill patients, they can be a real poison for cases of less aggressive disease, taking into account mainly its side effects, which range from diarrhea, pain and nausea to severe convulsions and significant changes in mental status. In other words, the effects of the wrong or unnecessary application of these drugs can be harmful, especially for a disease like COVID-19, which is, in most cases, totally or partially asymptomatic.

In general, the scientificity of the experiments with both drugs is being neglected in favor of purely political or economic discourses.

The commitment to the truth about the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine is being replaced by the commitment to diverse interests behind the official pronouncements of States and international organizations. In Brazil, treatment with chloroquine was received by the government of Jair Bolsonaro as a “magic formula” against COVID-19. Worse still, rumors were spread that the medicine would also act preventively – contrary to all scientific evidence – which made thousands of people go to pharmacies to look for the drug and take it unnecessarily, many of them being hospitalized because of this. Similarly, in the U.S., President Donald Trump contradicted the recommendations of several experts and issued statements defending the use of chloroquine as a cure for the new coronavirus, which resulted in a huge demand and depleted stocks of this drug in American pharmacies. As a consequence, several cases of hospitalizations due to inappropriate use of the drug have already been recorded, with at least one confirmed death, in the state of Arizona. The US and Brazil have already started international negotiations with India to trade chloroquine raw material.

On the other hand, opinions against the use of chloroquine are also gaining strength in different parts of the world. France imposed extremely restrictive protocols on the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19. In early April, the European Medicines Agency, a member network of the EU, said that both drugs should only be used under medical prescription, warning about the serious side effects that can result from their misuse. Even in Brazil, opinions are not homogeneous about the use: contrary to the president’s speech, the National Health Surveillance Agency vetoed the use of medicines due to little scientific support. In China, a research by the University of Zheijang found that the use of chloroquine is less efficient than the most basic health care and hygiene measures. Comparing patients who received treatment with chloroquine and patients who did not, the researchers found no differences in their final result, concluding that the method is irrelevant.

Finally, what can we conclude from all this? The most realistic conclusion we can reach by analyzing these data is that the doubts and different discourses around the treatment with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19 are precisely due to the immaturity of scientific research with these treatments. The tests carried out so far are absolutely inconclusive precisely because they have been few and relatively shallow. So what is the reason for the collective hysteria surrounding these drugs? The answer is simple: we are facing the Information War.

With the country devastated by the pandemic in an election year, chloroquine’s speech as a magic formula against coronavirus fits perfectly with Donald Trump’s plans. In Brazil, the situation of Jair Bolsonaro is not different: politically unstable, unpopular and with an exponential growth of the pandemic in the country, the “best” thing to do is to spread rumors about a miraculous cure. In Europe, divergent opinions about treatment are due to the very European political nature, since there is no longer any interest for the EU to adopt any American discourse early, given the unstable relations between both and the serious situation of the pandemic on the continent. China, which already contained the outbreak of the pandemic and resumed stability, is conducting more complex research on treatment and with greater scientific rigor. The trend in India, which is profiting from exportations to the US and Brazil, is definitely to corroborate the treatment efficiency discourse. Thus, decisions are being made on the international scene based on inaccurate, insecure and unstable information.

In the end, who is really interested in the truth about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine? Is it the truth about the treatment that will move the global political and economic machine in the midst of the pandemic or simply the official opinions of States and world organizations formed on the basis of strategically manufactured information? Apparently, science is not the interest behind the speeches for and against these drugs. In the era of hybrid and information wars, rumors are worth much more than scientific articles.

*

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

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This article was first published on Global Research on October 30, 2017.

For clarity…

…the “Surgeon General’s Report” on the assassination stated that the first bullet entered the President’s throat below the adams apple, clearly showing that two persons were involved with the first shot being fired from the bridge across the park way in front of the car.

To further substantiate this, POTITO said there was a bullet hole in the wind shield of the President’s car

See original FBI report below

***

TruePundit.com warns that one haunting paragraph unearthed from 3,000 never-before-seen documents will shake Patriots to their core about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Or perhaps worse. Make that haunting three paragraphs.

This is not pretty.

But it is likely President Donald Trump understands what Kennedy comprehended, which now appears to have led to his murder:

The out-of-control shadow government in this country threatens the fabric and the future of the United States.

See for yourself.

As a reminder, here is the position of the alleged shooter explained…

So how do ‘they’ explain this…

From Jan 31st 1964 FBI memo

For clarity…

…the “Surgeon General’s Report” on the assassination stated that the first bullet entered the President’s throat below the adams apple, clearly showing that two persons were involved with the first shot being fired from the bridge across the park way in front of the car.

To further substantiate this, POTITO said there was a bullet hole in the wind shield of the President’s car

Not exactly the narrative that was sold to the world – and certainly not the narrative that J. Edgar Hoover proclaimed must be defended to the world.

Here is Douglas P. Horne, via LewRockwell.com, detailing the photographic evidence of a bullet hole in JFK’s limousine’s windshield “hiding in plain sight.”

Photographic Evidence of Bullet Hole in JFK Limousine Windshield ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’

In 2009, I believed I had discovered new evidence in the JFK assassination never reported by anyone else: convincing photography of the through-and-through bullet hole in the windshield of the JFK limousine that had been reported by six credible witnesses. I revisited that evidence today, and am more convinced than ever that the bullet hole in the limousine windshield is what I am looking at in those images. But the readers of this piece don’t have to take my word for it — you can examine the images yourself, and make up your own minds. The evidence is contained in one of the banned, suppressed episodes of Nigel Turner’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy — episode 7 in the series, called “The Smoking Guns,” which was aired in 2003, and then removed from circulation by The History Channel in response to intense political pressure by former LBJ aides Jack Valenti and Bill Moyers.

I’ll tell you about the stunning evidence I have found in that episode at the end of this article, but first we need to set the stage by reviewing the eyewitness testimony about the damage to the windshield observed the day of JFK’s assassination, on Friday, November 22nd, 1963; as well as three days later, on Monday, November 25th, 1963.

Introduction

Before I reveal the details about the “new” photographic evidence I am talking about here, let’s review the Big Picture, the “evidentiary landscape” on this issue (see pages 1439-1450 of Volume V of my book, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, for full details):

(1) Dallas motorcycle patrolmen Stavis Ellis and H. R. Freeman both observed a penetrating bullet hole in the limousine windshield at Parkland Hospital. Ellis told interviewer Gil Toff in 1971: “There was a hole in the left front windshield…You could put a pencil through it…you could take a regular standard writing pencil…and stick [it] through there.” Freeman corroborated this, saying: “[I was] right beside it. I could of [sic] touched it…it was a bullet hole. You could tell what it was.” [David Lifton published these quotations in his 1980 book, Best Evidence.]

(2) St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Richard Dudman wrote an article published in The New Republic on December 21, 1963, in which he stated: “A few of us noted the hole in the windshield when the limousine was standing at the emergency entrance after the President had been carried inside. I could not approach close enough to see which side was the cup-shaped spot which indicates a bullet had pierced the glass from the opposite side.”

(3) Second year medical student Evalea Glanges, enrolled at Southwestern Medical University in Dallas, right next door to Parkland Hospital, told attorney Doug Weldon in 1999: “It was a real clean hole.” In a videotaped interview aired in the suppressed episode 7 of Nigel Turner’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy, titled “The Smoking Guns,” she said: “…it was very clear, it was a through-and-through bullet hole through the windshield of the car, from the front to the back…it seemed like a high-velocity bullet that had penetrated from front-to-back in that glass pane.” At the time of the interview, Glanges had risen to the position of Chairperson of the Department of Surgery, at John Peter Smith Hospital, in Fort Worth. She had been a firearms expert all her adult life.

(4) Mr. George Whitaker, Sr., a senior manager at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan, told attorney (and professor of criminal justice) Doug Weldon in August of 1993, in a tape recorded conversation, that after reporting to work on Monday, November 25th, he discovered the JFK limousine — a unique, one-of-a-kind item that he unequivocally identified — in the Rouge Plant’s B building, with the interior stripped out and in the process of being replaced, and with the windshield removed. He was then contacted by one of the Vice Presidents of the division for which he worked, and directed to report to the glass plant lab, immediately. After knocking on the locked door (which he found most unusual), he was let in by two of his subordinates and discovered that they were in possession of the windshield that had been removed from the JFK limousine. They had been told to use it as a template, and to make a new windshield identical to it in shape — and to then get the new windshield back to the B building for installation in the Presidential limousine that was quickly being rebuilt. Whitaker told Weldon (quoting from the audiotape of the 1993 interview): “And the windshield had a bullet hole in it, coming from the outside through…it was a good, clean bullet hole, right straight through, from the front. And you can tell, when the bullet hits the windshield, like when you hit a rock or something, what happens? The back chips out and the front may just have a pinhole in it…this had a clean round hole in the front and fragmentation coming out the back.” Whitaker told Weldon that he eventually became superintendent of his division and was placed in charge of five plant divisions. He also told Weldon that the original windshield, with the bullet hole in it, had been broken up and scrapped — as ordered — after the new windshield had been made.

When Doug Weldon interviewed Whitaker in August of 1993, his witness insisted on anonymity. Weldon reported on the story without releasing Whitaker’s name in his excellent and comprehensive article titled: “The Kennedy Limousine: Dallas 1963,” which was published in Jim Fetzer’s anthology Murder in Dealey Plaza, in 2000. After Weldon interviewed Whitaker in August of 1993, Mr. Whitaker subsequently — on November 22, 1993 (the 30th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination) — wrote down all he could remember about the events he witnessed involving the Presidential limousine and its windshield. After George Whitaker’s death in 2001, his family released his written testament to Nigel Turner, who with their permission revealed Mr. Whitaker’s name, as well as the text of his “memo for history,” in episode 7 of The Men Who Killed Kennedy, “The Smoking Guns.”

In “The Smoking Guns,” the text of Whitaker’s memo can be read on the screen employing freeze frame technology with the DVD of the episode. It said, in part: “When [I] arrived at the lab the door was locked. I was let in. There were 2 glass engineers there. They had a car windshield that had a bullet hole in it. The hole was about 4 or 6 inches to the right of the rear view mirror [as viewed from the front]. The impact had come from the front of the windshield. (If you have spent 40 years in the glass [illegible] you know which way the impack [sic] was from.”

(5) The sixth credible witness to a bullet hole in the windshield of the limousine was Secret Service agent Charles Taylor, Jr., who wrote a report on November 27, 1963 in which he detailed his activities providing security for the limousine immediately after the car’s return to Washington following the assassination. The JFK limousine and the Secret Service follow-up car known as the “Queen Mary” arrived at Andrews AFB aboard a C-130 propeller-driven cargo plane at about 8:00 PM on November 22, 1963. Agent Taylor rode in the Presidential limousine as it was driven from Andrews AFB to the White House garage at 22nd and M Streets, N.W. In his report about what he witnessed inside the White House garage during the vehicle’s inspection, he wrote: “In addition, of particular note was the small hole just left of center in the windshield from which what appeared to be bullet fragments were removed.”

Summary of the Eyewitness Testimony About the Windshield Bullet Hole

Summarizing, six credible witnesses — Stavis Ellis, H. R. Freeman, Richard Dudman, Evalea Glanges, George Whitaker, and Charles Taylor — all reported seeing a bullet hole in the windshield of JFK’s limousine either on the day of the assassination (for five of the six witnesses), or on the following Monday (in the case of Mr. Whitaker, who did not see the limousine and its windshield until he reported to work at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant, in Detroit, on Monday morning, November 25th, 1963).

Two of these witnesses — Evalea Glanges and George Whitaker — were absolutely positive that the bullet causing the damage had been a shot from the front, which had entered the front surface of the windshield, and exited the inside surface.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Because if true, the windshield bullet evidence alone disproves the lone assassin myth aggressively promoted by the U.S. government for 49 years now, since the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was supposedly firing from above and behind the limousine as it traveled down Elm Street.

The Windshield Evidence Was Twice Switched-Out — Substituted — By the U.S. Government…

The windshield in evidence today at the National Archives is not the windshield that was in the Presidential limousine on Elm Street, in Dallas, on November 22, 1963. It simply cannot be. Why? Remember, according to George Whitaker, Sr. of the Ford Motor Co., the original was destroyed, per company orders, after it was used as a template to make a replacement on November 25th, 1963.

But it gets much worse than that. The first replacement, the one installed by Whitaker’s two lab technicians in Detroit, was damaged on the wrong side by an incompetent Secret Service organization (incompetent not only at protecting the 35th President, but also in implementing a cover-up). Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman (who rode in the right front seat of the limousine in Dallas) testified before the Warren Commission, in March of 1964, that when he examined the windshield (obviously the replacement, installed by Whitaker’s team in Detroit) on November 27th, it was smooth on the outside, and damaged on the inside. This is consistent with damage caused by an impact on the front side of the windshield. (Safety glass exhibits damage on the opposite side from which it is struck). Researcher Robert P. Smith (as reported by David Lifton in Best Evidence) interviewed a Mr. Bill Ashby, crew leader at the Arlington Glass Company, who told Smith he removed the limousine’s windshield in Washington, D.C. on November 27th; this occurred after Roy Kellerman had felt the interior surface earlier that day and determined it to be damaged on the inside, and smooth on the outside.

But the windshield at the National Archives today exhibits long cracks — not a through-and-through bullet hole — and is damaged on the outside, which is the opposite of what Kellerman noted by physical examination on November 27th.

Co-owner Willard Hess of the automotive firm Hess and Eisenhardt in Cincinnati, Ohio told Doug Weldon that his company also replaced the windshield in the Presidential limousine, and that the glass removed was standard safety glass — consistent with what George Whitaker said his team reinstalled in the limousine in Detroit, immediately after the assassination. Hess and Eisenhardt replaced the standard safety glass with special bullet resistant glass made by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. (Presumably, the windshield removed by Hess and Eisenhardt was the second new windshield installed — by the Arlington Glass Company — on November 27th, 1963, and is the one in the National Archives today.) Mr. Hess told Weldon that the windshield his company removed was not damaged at the time it was removed.

The clear implication here is that the windshield in the Archives today, which exhibits cracks but not a bullet hole, was intentionally damaged by someone involved in the cover-up AFTER its removal by Hess and Eisenhardt.

This distressing (and depressing) tale of cover-up, deceit, and deception mirrors what was going on with the JFK medical evidence (namely, the President’s cranial wounds and throat wound; and the autopsy photographs and x-rays), and the Zapruder film, during the weekend following the assassination — that is, alteration and gross substitution. The pattern is the same, and the pattern is one of lying, and intentionally covering up the truth, by destroying some evidence, and substituting altered evidence in its place. All of this substitution of evidence — tampering with wounds prior to the commencement of the autopsy through clandestine post mortem surgery; the alteration of some of the key autopsy photographs and x-rays (and the destruction of others); and the alteration of the Zapruder film — was all intended to suppress evidence of shots from the front (i.e., proof of conspiracy), so the government could more easily promote its lone assassin cover story.

…And the U.S. Government Later Suborned Perjury in the Matter of the Damage to the Limousine Windshield

Unfortunately for Mr. Charles Taylor of the Secret Service, he — like Galileo Galilei before the Inquisition in the 17th century — was forced to recant, for he had committed heresy when he wrote in his official report on November 27th that he had observed a bullet hole in the windshield of the limousine as the car was closely examined in the White House garage the evening of the assassination, in 1963. In his 1976 recantation, an affidavit prepared for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), Taylor indicated that he changed his mind after examining the windshield stored in the Archives on December 19, 1975. Like Galileo, when prompted by his inquisitors, Taylor reversed himself, saying: “…I never examined this apparent hole [on November 22, 1963] to determine if there had been any penetration of the glass, nor did I even get a good look at the windshield in well-lighted surroundings…”. This is hardly credible. SA Kinney drove JFK’s limousine from Andrews AFB to the White House garage on November 22nd, 1963, and Taylor was the only passenger. The back seat bench (as revealed by horrifying color photographs taken in the White House garage) was still covered with gore, so we know Taylor did not sit there amidst the blood and brain tissue; and it is most doubtful that he sat in one of the uncomfortable jump seats in the middle of the car. Surely, he sat in the right front seat of the limousine all the way from Andrews AFB, to the garage where it was examined that evening — an ideal spot for noticing the bullet hole in the windshield, which would have been within arm’s reach for him. Inevitably, when the interior of the car was disassembled that evening inside the White House garage by FBI and Secret Service agents working together, the lights must have been on for this crucial joint inspection! Taylor reported on their activities in detail in his report, prepared on November 27th, 1963. The report makes clear that the agents could see what they were doing. In that context, consider Taylor’s written statement in his 1976 HSCA affidavit, about thirteen years later, in which he stated: “I have no doubt that the cracks [seen in the windshield placed in the Archives and in official photographs]…cracks in the inner layers of the glass only, are the ones I noticed on the trip from Andrews Air Force Base…it is clear to me that my use of the word ‘hole’ to describe the flaw in the windshield was incorrect.” Taylor’s sworn affidavit in 1976, shortly after he was asked by someone in government to examine the switched-out windshield deposited in the Archives, can only be viewed and described for what it was: perjury.

Previously Known Photographic Evidence of a Windshield Bullet Hole

As I documented in chapter 15 of my book, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, the famous “Altgens photo” taken on Elm Street, the one reported to be equivalent to Zapruder frame 255 in the extant film, appears to many who study it to show a bullet hole in the windshield in some of the versions of that photograph that have been published: namely, in The Torch Is Passed (1964), on page 16; in Groden’s The Killing of a President, on pages 30 and 36; on page 314 of Trask’s Pictures of the Pain; and in the version published in Fetzer’s Murder in Dealey Plaza, on page 149. The apparent bullet hole detected by many viewers in the Altgens photo appears to be just to the right of the rightmost edge of the rear view mirror, as seen from the front. But there is another Altgens photo taken on Elm Street, showing Jackie Kennedy on the trunk of the limousine after the assassination, which also shows damage in the area of the windshield that is left-of-center, as seen from inside the car. Frustratingly, the damage seen in this photograph appears to be some cracks emanating from a frosted white area of the windshield that is left-of-center. It is most clearly seen in The Torch Is Passed, on page 17; in my view, it is unclear whether we are looking at a round bullet hole with two cracks emanating from it, or simply cracks. The poor quality versions of this image published in The Killing of a President (on page 42) and in Pictures of the Pain (on page 316) are useless in resolving this issue.

Therefore, any additional photographic evidence captured the day of the assassination might prove decisive in resolving the windshield debate, once and for all — which leads us back to the headline of this journal entry: “Photographic Evidence of Bullet Hole in JFK Limousine Windshield Hiding in Plain Sight.”

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT SINCE 2003

On pages 1473-1474 of Volume V my book (in chapter 16), I wrote about the circumstances in which The History Channel, in 2003, was forced by political pressure and by threat of legal action to stop airing the remarkably popular seventh, eighth, and ninth episodes of the series The Men Who Killed Kennedy: “The Smoking Guns,” “The Love Affair,” and “The Guilty Men.” Not only did The History Channel agree to stop broadcasting the three episodes (which were getting very high ratings), but it also pulled all of the DVDs from stores (where they were selling like hotcakes), and agreed to stop selling the three episodes, which were packaged together in a two-disc, three episode A & E network video product titled: The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Final Chapter, Cat. No. AAE-71255. (Thanks to Phil Singer of Chicago, I own a set of these three banned DVDs.)

Not only did former LBJ aides Jack Valenti and Bill Moyers engage in a high-profile publicity campaign against The History Channel, but an enraged Jack Valenti (who had long been the chief lobbyist in the nation’s capital for the motion picture industry) summoned the executive producer of episodes 7, 8, and 9 (including the LBJ episode, “The Guilty Men”) — Dolores Gavin — to Washington, D.C., where she was given the “Valenti treatment,” i.e., browbeaten and intimidated in private, in a rather brutal fashion. (I was informed of this by a Hollywood-based professional who had worked with her on the project; Dolores Gavin herself was the source of the information.) Shortly afterwards, The History Channel succumbed to this overt censorship and all three episodes were added to a new, twenty-first century Index Expurgatorius.

The presumptive cause of this Holy Edict of the American Establishment was the LBJ episode, “The Guilty Men,” which fingered Lyndon Baines Johnson with involvement in the JFK assassination conspiracy. But in retrospect, I now wonder if perhaps the real, principal (but unacknowledged) cause of the suppression was actually the episode titled “The Smoking Guns.” The LBJ episode may have simply been the excuse to ban “The Smoking Guns,” for this episode contains multiple evidentiary proofs of a U.S. government cover-up of the Kennedy assassination evidence.

The Stunning Content of “The Smoking Guns”

There is some “B-roll” in “The Smoking Guns” episode, only a little over two seconds long, which definitely appears to show the bullet hole in the limousine windshield — the through-and-through bullet hole described by the six credible witnesses cited above. This is shown during the segment of the program in which Evalea Glanges was interviewed. This “B-roll” footage appears between the times of 14:02 and 14:04 on the DVD, and consists of a total of 84 video frames (there are 30 video frames per second in a U.S. television broadcast). The black-and-white images appear to come from standard 16 mm B & W newsreel footage, taken by a stocky man wearing a hat who had approached the Presidential limousine as it was parked outside the Parkland Hospital emergency room (and before the bubble top was installed). The point of view (POV) of the camera was that of someone sitting in the limousine, or rather standing just beside it and to the right side. The camera is pointed at the inside surface of the windshield from behind — that is the POV. One man in a suit and tie can be seen standing on the front side, or forward of, the windshield, and two DPD motorcycle patrolmen (are they Ellis and Freeman?) can be seen leaning in and examining the windshield. What looks to me like a through-and-through bullet hole is visible in all 84 video frames, left of center on the windshield (adopting the POV of the camera) and approximately halfway down from the top, although these are only rough approximations. The location appears to be entirely consistent with that described by Charles Taylor and George Whitaker (above).

I wish to make something very clear here: you cannot access the images I am describing above in the U-Tube segment in which this episode has been put up on the internet. First, the timing is different in the U-Tube segment (13:08, vice 14:02), because the U-Tube segment was copied from the broadcast. [The factory DVD location of the clip is at a later point in the program, at 14:02, because of advertising material inserted at the beginning of the DVD.] Second, the size of the U-Tube presentation is so small on one’s computer screen, and the resolution so poor in comparison with a big screen HD television, that you can forget seeing this windshield bullet hole on U-Tube. The viewer needs the factory-produced DVD; a good DVD player with functioning frame-by-frame advance; and a big screen, High Definition (1080p) TV. The bullet hole shows up clearly on my 52″ SONY Bravia television. So anyone concerned with doing research here simply must obtain the factory-produced DVD.

Now, no doubt the “lone-nutter” crowd — both those who are in denial of the reality of an American coup in 1963 (because they can’t handle the truth), and the U.S. government’s third-party surrogates in the midst of the research community (whose job it is to cast doubt on all new research pointing to conspiracy and cover-up) — will react violently to this essay, and that is predictable. But you don’t have to listen to their opinions…EXAMINE THE EVIDENCE YOURSELF AND MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND. Just obtain a factory-produced DVD of “The Smoking Guns,” by hook or crook (or E-Bay); put it in your DVD player; go to the specified time of 14:02 into the program; and then examine the 84 video frames, one at a time, on an HD big screen TV. You will find that video frames 1, 15, 31, 37, 47, 59, and 71 best depict the bullet hole. The 16 mm camera was hand-held, so there is some motion and some blurring of the images, and that is why some video frames are more clear than others. In my opinion, the best frames are #1 and # 71 in the windshield sequence.

Then consider how dangerous this two-seconds of “B-roll” footage is to the U. S. government’s contrived position on the assassination as we approach the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination: a through-and-through hole in the limousine windshield, made by a frontal shot traveling from front-to-back (as stated by George Whitaker and Evalea Glanges), all by itself, demolishes the lone-assassin myth still being perpetuated by the U.S. government and by its surrogates in the mainstream media in America. No wonder the establishment in America felt this episode had to be suppressed.

And consider the other reasons for its suppression. This episode also features Dr. David Mantik, M.D., PhD., eloquently and clearly discussing his conclusion — based on his nine visits to the National Archives to view the autopsy materials — that the autopsy photographs of the rear of JFK’s head are photographic forgeries. It also features former USIA photographer Joe O’Donnell discussing how White House photographer Robert Knudsen showed him two sets of post mortem photos of JFK’s head wounds late in 1963: one set that consisted of authentic, pre-alteration images, showing the true entry and exit wounds in the head (an entry wound high in the right forehead, and a large exit wound in the right rear of the skull); and another set of images that was post-alteration, with the entry wound high in the forehead no longer visible, and the back of the head seemingly intact. It also features Dr. Gary Aguilar, M.D., discussing in convincing terms G. Robert Blakey’s suppression of the content of interviews the HSCA conducted with JFK autopsy witnesses, and Blakey’s intentional misrepresentation of the contents of those interviews in the HSCA’s report; the JFK Records Act resulted in the “premature release” of the suppressed autopsy witness interviews in 1993, and the “Big Lie” in the HSCA report was exposed. (The HSCA report, in volume 7, stated that all of the Dallas doctors had to be wrong about the exit wound they recalled in the back of JFK’s head, since all of the autopsy witnesses the HSCA had interviewed said the wounds they observed matched the autopsy photos which show the back of the head intact. The release of the interview reports in 1993 revealed that the HSCA had lied about what those witnesses had said.) All of this, and more, was presented in this one key episode.

So ask your friends, go on E-Bay, and one way or another, get your hands on the banned episode of The Men Who Killed Kennedy titled “The Smoking Guns,” and see the bullet hole in the windshield yourself. Then compare it to the photographs of the windshield in the National Archives, and ask yourself what this sorry episode says about the integrity of our national government.

President Kennedy was killed in Dealey Plaza by a crossfire, meted out by shooters firing from multiple directions, from both the front and behind — therefore, he was felled by a conspiracy, by definition. The windshield bullet hole evidence, all by itself, proves a conspiracy; and its clumsy and unsuccessful suppression, all by itself, is proof of a government cover-up of the facts in President Kennedy’s assassination, since the U.S. government controlled all of the windshield evidence. The facts contained in this tale prove that we had a coup in America in 1963, and that powerful and influential people were still covering it up in 1975, and 1976, and 1979, and in 2003. Former CIA Director William Colby once said that everyone of any significance in the U.S. media was owned by the CIA. I believe it — otherwise, this windshield nonsense would have been exposed long ago on a show like “60 Minutes.”

I have expressed here my own strong opinion about what is shown in the 84 video frames visible in this documentary. A good follow-on step here would be to obtain the original 16 mm camera footage (presumably a black and white negative, not some multi-generational stock footage), perform a high-resolution digital scan of the film frames in Hollywood, and have them analyzed by motion picture professionals in the film industry who have no axe to grind — not by Gary Mack at the Sixth Floor Museum (who has never been to film school, or worked in the motion picture industry), or by any member of the JFK research community who has espoused a conspiracy or cover-up in the assassination. A true, third-party independent analysis of the camera negative, or of the earliest surviving generation of this newsreel footage, would be a good next step in the process of evaluating these images.

I have sounded the alarm here — and I am not afraid of a truly independent third-party analysis. Let’s do a little honest science here, and “let the chips fall where they may.”

Douglas P. Horne graduated Cum Laude from Ohio State University in 1974, with a B.A. in History. He served for ten years as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy, and then worked for the Navy for ten more years as a Federal civilian. In 1995 he joined the staff of the President John F. Kennedy “Assassination Records Review Board,” and rose to the position of Chief Analyst for Military Records. In that capacity, he focused on the medical evidence surrounding the JFK autopsy; the Zapruder film; and ensured the release of military records on Cuba and Vietnam. In 2009 he published the extensive five-volume work, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, which documents the U.S. government’s coverup of the medical evidence surrounding JFK’s assassination, and the alteration of the Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination.

All images in this article are from Zero Hedge.

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Jesus Was Born in a Police State

April 10th, 2020 by John W. Whitehead

First published on December 22, 2017

The Christmas narrative of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable, where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus.

Unfortunately, Jesus was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. And when he grew up, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

Yet what if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born and raised in the American police state?

Rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, etc.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they would have been turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret.

From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he dared to step out of line while in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence.

From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups.

Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs.

Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

Viewed by the government as a dissident and potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward with no access to family or friends.

Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year.

Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

Either way, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

Remember, what happened on that starry night in Bethlehem is only part of the story. That baby in the manger grew up to be a man who did not turn away from evil but instead spoke out against it, and we must do no less.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured image is from the author.

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The devastating impact of the coronavirus on Italy has sparked considerable speculation as to why the country appears to have suffered so disproportionately from the disease. Some initial theories suggested that the deaths might be due to lower standards and ill-advised practices in the Italian national health system, but the reality is that northern Italy, where the virus has struck hardest, has by most metrics better and more accessible health care than does the United States overall.

By one reckoning, the claimed number of dead is too high because anyone who tested positive and died had his or her death attributed to the virus even if it was actually due to other unrelated causes. And that argument has also been flipped on its head to demonstrate that the numbers are too low, using the fact that many Italians have not been tested for the virus to assert that many dead were actually caused by coronavirus. Since those dead were not medically confirmed positive for COVID-19, the deaths were erroneously attributed to other causes.

A third bit of somewhat more bizarre speculation centers on the fact that in September 2019 Italy made legal euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses seeking to end their suffering, a move strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church. Some of those weighing in on the number of deaths have claimed without evidence that a significant percentage of the dead were actually cases of euthanasia, i.e. implying that Italy has been deliberately killing off its elderly. Those seeking an explanation for such bizarre behavior by the national health service have suggested that it would be to ease pressure on the troubled Italian economy by eliminating old age pensions and medical costs.

Be that as it may, there is an interesting backstory developing in the Italian media about why Italy has been hit so hard by the “Chinese” virus in spite of the fact that it has been in lockdown for over one month. Italy’s ties with China, and with the city of Wuhan, where the virus may have originated, run deeper than with any other European country.

Last spring, when my wife and I were traveling in Northern Italy, we noticed the large numbers of Chinese, not only in tourism centers like Venice and Verona, but also in commercial and industrial areas. Italian shop holders we spoke with told us how the Chinese government and individual entrepreneurs were buying up businesses and properties at an alarming rate, penetrating the Italian economy at all levels. One gift shop proprietor in Venice described how even tourist items were increasingly being manufactured in China, a development which he described as “selling cheap junk.” He reached beneath his counter and produced a perfume bottle which looked like a local product but instead of being made in Murano it bore a tiny stamp “Made in China.”

A little less than a year ago Italy became the first G-7 country in Europe to sign a memorandum of understanding formalizing its membership in the Chinese Belt and Road project, part of the Silk Road scheme to create a vast linked commercial network across Asia and into Europe. Two of the main hubs being developed for the project are Genoa and Trieste. The Italian government, confronted with a struggling economy, based the move on “commercial reasons” and “economic advantages,” to include the investment being offered by Beijing, but Rome paid a price for the move with intense criticism coming from both Washington and Brussels. The Atlanticist crowd, which normally applauded a form of globalism and free trade, inevitably insisted that not only were the Chinese seeking to “destabilize” Europe, Beijing was also attempting to divide Europe politically and militarily from the United States.

One of the more interesting, and perhaps coincidental, aspects of the Chinese entry into Italy has been the particular connection between China and the northern Italian fashion houses, centered on Milan, that have shifted their production to Wuhan to take advantage of the cheap labor in China’s own textile industry, largely centered on the city. By all accounts, Chinese investors bought up factories in Northern Italy starting in the early 1990s. By 2016 many major brands had been completely acquired, to include Pinco Pallino, Miss Sixty, Sergio Tacchini, Roberta di Camerino and Mariella Burani while major shares of Salvatore Ferragamo and Caruso were also obtained.

The Chinese owners and investors replaced ageing machinery and brought in, often illegally, tens of thousands of skilled Chinese seamstresses as a labor force. By the end of last year when the virus first struck China, direct flights from Wuhan to Lombardy served the roughly 300,000 Chinese residents of Italy who mostly work in Chinese-owned factories producing Chinese inspired Made in Italy designs. It is widely believed, though not confirmed by the Rome government, that the first infections by coronavirus in Italy, attributed to visiting “tourists,” actually may have taken place in crowded dormitories where Chinese shift workers from Wuhan dined and slept.

In less than a year, however, Italians have come to realize that a tight economic embrace with Beijing also has a downside. Italy’s trade gap with China has gone up, not down and much promised investment in new enterprises has failed to materialize. But even as the dust cleared, the results derived from opening the door to China were not pretty. By 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded 52 billion EUROS, giving them ownership of more than 300 companies representing 27% of major Italian corporations.

The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy as well as the major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) and the two top energy utilities (ENI and ENEL). China also has controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler and Pirelli.

More recently, Italian government views on China’s human rights record in Hong Kong have hardened and the country’s legislature has rejected overtures by the Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei to have a major role in developing the country’s new 5G technology. One might observe, however, that the barn door is being closed after the horse has already escaped.

To limit the damage, the Chinese have sweetened their economic expansion into Western Europe by carefully integrating trade with humanitarian initiatives to make the transformation palatable to the local populations. The Health Silk Road initiative is a major exercise of soft power which has, in the current crisis, provided various forms of emergency medical assistance to a number of European nations. In doing so, it has done more than the European Union or the United States. Italy currently has three Chinese medical teams assisting its doctors in and around Milan and has benefited from airlifted medical supplies to include millions of masks and testing kits.

China is not doing what it does for altruistic reasons. It sees itself as the major economic driver of a new globalism, displacing an increasingly foundering and incapable United States, which has dominated world finance and commerce since the Second World War. For China COVID-19 is seen as an opportunity to reconfigure the playing field in its favor.

The experience of Italy, which may have become an epicenter for the virus due to its close commercial and personal ties to China, is illustrative of how globalism and free trade being promoted by a number of engaged groups in many countries can be exploited to create a new reality. Beijing is shaping that reality while the U.S. and E.U. stand on the sideline and watch.

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This article was originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation.

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

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NATO in Arms to “Fight Coronavirus”

April 9th, 2020 by Manlio Dinucci

 The 30 NATO foreign ministers (Luigi Di Maio for Italy), met on April 2 by videoconference, and instructed US general Tod Wolters, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, to “coordinate the necessary military support to fight the  coronavirus crisis”.

 He is the same general who declared in the United States Senate on February 25 “nuclear forces are supporting every US military operation in Europe” and   ” I am a fan of a flexible first-use policy” of nuclear weaponsthat is nuclear attack by surprise (“Dr. Strangelove  takes care of our health”, Il manifesto, March 24).

 General Wolters is the supreme commander of NATO as head of the United States European Command. He is therefore part of the Pentagon’s chain of command, which has absolute priority. Its strict rules are confirmed by a recent episode: the aircraft carrier Roosevelt commander, Brett Crozier, was removed from command because he violated military secrecy by urging aid sending, faced with the spread of the coronavirus on board.

To “fight coronavirus crisis“, General Wolters has “fast-track paths through Europe’s airspace for military flights“, while civilian flights have almost disappeared.

Fast-track paths are also used by the US strategic bombers B2-Spirit for nuclear attack: on March 20, they took off from Fairford in England, together with Norwegian F-16 fighters, they flew to the Arctic towards Russian territory. In this way – General Basham, deputy commander of the US Air Force in Europe – explains “we can promptly and effectively respond to threats in the region, demonstrating our determination to bring our fighting power everywhere in the world”.

 While NATO is committed to “fighting coronavirus” in Europe, two of the major European Allies, France and Great Britain, sent their warships to the Caribbean.

The amphibious assault ship Dixmund sailed on April 3 from Toulon to French Guiana for what President Macron calls “an unprecedented military operation“. called “Resilience“, in the framework of the “war to coronavirus“.

Dixmund can perform the secondary function of hospital ship with 69 beds and 7 for intensive care. The primary role of this large ship, 200 m long and with a flight deck of 5000 m2, is that of amphibious assault: approaching the enemy coast, it attacks with dozens of helicopters and landing crafts transporting troops and armored vehicles.

Similar characteristics, albeit on a smaller scale, has the British ship RFA Argus, which sailed on April 2 to British Guyana.

The two European ships will take position in the same Caribbean waters near Venezuela, where the war fleet is arriving – with the most modern coastal combat ships (also built by Italian Leonardo Company for US Navy) and thousands of marines – sent by President Trump officially to stop drug trafficking.

He accuses Venezuelan President Maduro of “taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to increase the drug trafficking, he finances his narco-state with“. The purpose of the operation, supported by NATO, is to strengthen the embargo tightening to economically strangle Venezuela (a country with the largest oil reserves in the world), whose situation is aggravated by the coronavirus that has started to spread.

 The aim is to depose regularly elected President Maduro (on whose head the US has placed a $ 15 million bounty) and to establish a government that will bring the country into the sphere of US domination. It cannot be excluded that an incident could be caused as a pretext for the invasion of Venezuela. The coronavirus crisis creates favorable international conditions for an operation of this type, perhaps presented as “humanitarian“.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto. Translated by Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti 

Award winning author and geopolitical analyst Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. (CRG)

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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary” — H.L. Mencken

As the global pandemic grips world attention, completely unnoticed by mainstream media was the release of a final report of an academic study pertaining to another previously calamitous event of international significance. On March 25th, the conclusion of a four year investigation by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks was published which determined that the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11th, 2001 was not caused by fire. The peer-reviewed inquiry was funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization composed of more than 3,000 building architects and engineers who are a signatory to the group’s formal appeal calling for a new investigation into the three — not two — WTC skyscrapers destroyed on 9/11. The researchers infer that the collapse of Building 7 was actually the result of a controlled demolition:

“The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

With or without a pandemic, it is likely corporate media would have ignored the study anyway, just as they have anything that contradicts the official story of 9/11. However, it is notable that many have drawn parallels between the COVID-19 outbreak and the 9/11 attacks based on the widespread changes to daily life as a result of the crisis going forward. Already there is talk of nationwide lockdowns as a “new normal” with many rightly expressing concerns over civil liberties, press freedoms, the surveillance state, and other issues just as there were following 9/11.

By the same measure, a false dichotomy is being established by political gatekeepers in order to silence those who dare challenge the official account as to how the coronavirus began. It is a stigmatization that is all too familiar to those who have never believed the conventional narrative that 19 Arab hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden armed only with box-cutters were solely responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that fateful day.

There is a common misconception that to believe in so-called “conspiracy theories” is to somehow lose sight of the bigger picture or systemic problems. Behind this phenomenon is a mistakenly presumed conflict between understanding the broader, overarching system versus the sinister motives of those in power who administer it — when they are inextricably linked. Political scientist Michael Parenti, who drew the ire of many of his fellow left-wing colleagues for his work on the Kennedy assassination, refers to it in his lecture “Understanding Deep Politics” as a perceived incompatibility between “the structural and the functional.” The anti-conspiracists wrongly assume that the more impersonal or wider the lens, the more profound an analysis. By this logic, the elite are absolved of conscious intent and deliberate pursuit of nefarious self-interest, as if everything is done by incidental chance or out of incompetence. Not to say efficacy applies without exception, but it has become a required gesture to disassociate oneself from “conspiracies” to maintain credibility — ironically even by those who are often the target of such smears themselves.

This applies not only to mainstream media and academics, but even leading progressive figures who have a mechanical, unthinking resistance to assigning intent or recognizing the existence of hidden agendas. As a result, it disappears the class interests of the ruling elite and ultimately assists them in providing cover for their crimes. With the exception of the Kennedy assassination — coincidentally the subject of a new epic chart-topping song by Bob Dylan — nowhere has there been more hostility to ‘conspiracism’ than regarding the events of 9/11. Just as they assailed Parenti, David Talbot and others for challenging the Warren Commission’s ‘lone gunman’ theory, leading figures on the left such as Noam Chomsky and the late Alexander Cockburn railed against the 9/11 Truth movement and today it is often wrongly equated with right-wing politics, an unlikely trajectory given it occurred under an arch-conservative administration but an inevitable result of the pseudo-left’s aversion to “conspiracies.” If polls are any indication, the average American certainly disagrees with such elitist misleaders as to the believability of the sham 9/11 Commission findings, yet another example of how out-of-touch the faux-left is with ordinary people.

A more recent example was an article by left-wing journalist Ben Norton proclaiming that to call 9/11 a false flag or an “inside job” is “fundamentally a right-wing conspiracy”, in complete disregard of the many dedicated truther activists on the left since its inception. Norton insists the 9/11 attacks were simply “blowback”, or an unintended consequence of previous U.S. foreign policy support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets during the 1980s which later gave birth to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Norton argues “Al-Qaeda’s unofficial strategic alliance with the US eventually broke down” resulting in 9/11 as retaliation, completely overlooking that Washington was still supporting jihadist factions during the 1990s in Bosnia (two of which would be alleged 9/11 hijackers) and Kosovo in the Yugoslav wars against Serbia, even while the U.S. was ostensibly pursuing bin Laden for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000.

A 1997 Congressional document by the Republican Policy Committee (RPC) throws light on how Washington never discontinued its practice in Afghanistan of using jihadist proxies to achieve its foreign policy goals in the Balkans. Although it was a partisan GOP attack meant to discredit then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, nevertheless the memo accurately presents how the U.S. had “turned Bosnia into a Militant Islamic Base”:

“In short, the Clinton administration’s policy of facilitating the delivery of arms to the Bosnian Muslims made it the de facto partner of an international network of governments and organizations pursuing their own agenda in Bosnia: the promotion of Islamic revolution in Europe. That network not only involves Iran but Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan (a key ally of Iran), and Turkey, together with front groups supposedly pursuing humanitarian and cultural activities. For example, one such group about which details have come to light is the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization which has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups…”

It was also in Bosnia where a raid was conducted in 2002 by local police at the Sarajevo branch of a Saudi-based purported charitable organization, Benevolence International Foundation, which was discovered to be a front for Al-Qaeda. Seized on the premises was a document, dubbed the “Golden Chain”, which listed the major financial sponsors of the terrorist organization to be numerous Saudi business and government figures, including some of Osama bin Laden’s own brothers. By the 9/11 Commission Report’s own admission, this same fake Islamic charity “supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with Serbia” at the same time as the CIA.

It cannot go without mentioning that the common link between Al-Qaeda and subsequent extremist groups like ISIS/Daesh and Boko Haram is the doctrine of Wahhabism, the puritanical sect of Sunni Islam practiced in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and founded in the 18th century by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the religious leader who formed an alliance with the founder of the first Saudi state, Muhammad bin Saud, whose descendants make up the House of Saud royal family. The ultra-orthodox teachings of Wahhabism were initially rejected in the Middle East but reestablished by British colonialism which aligned with the Saud family in order to use their intolerant strain of Islam to undermine the Ottoman empire in a divide-and-conquer strategy. In a speech to the House of Commons in 1921, Winston Churchill admitted the Saudis to be “intolerant, well-armed and bloodthirsty.”

This did not stop the British from supporting the House of Saud so long as it was in the interest of Western imperialism, an unholy alliance which continues to this day. However, U.S.-Saudi relations did come under scrutiny when the infamous 28 redacted pages of the December 2002 report of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001” conducted by the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence were finally disclosed in 2016.

The section revealed not only the numerous U.S. intelligence failures in the lead-up to the attacks but the long suspected culpability of Saudi Arabia, whose nationals were not the focus of counterterrorism because of Riyadh’s status as a U.S. ally. The declassified pages show that some of the hijackers, 15 of them Saudi citizens, received financial and logistical support from individuals linked to the Saudi government, which FBI sources believed at least two of which to be Saudi intelligence officers. One of those Saudi agents received large payments from Princess Haifa, the wife of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a stipend from the latter’s bank account which inevitably went from the go-betweens to the sleeper cell.

A key member of the House of Saud and then-Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar has such a long and close relationship to the Bush family he was given the nickname “Bandar Bush.” For obvious reasons, when the congressional joint inquiry report was first published in 2003, the 28-page portion on the Saudi ties to the attacks was completely censored at the insistence of the Bush administration. Yet the Bush family’s connection to the Gulf state kingdom is not limited to the ruling monarchy but includes one of the petrodollar theocracy’s other wealthiest families— the bin Laden family itself. While Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11 mostly whitewashed the real conspiracy of 9/11it did reveal that numerous unquestioned members of the bin Laden family were given special treatment and suspiciously evacuated on secret flights out of the U.S. shortly after the attacks in coordination with the Saudi government.

The Bush-bin Laden connection goes all the way back to the beginning of George W. Bush’s business career prior to his political involvement in 1976 with the founding of an oil drilling company, Arbusto Energy, whose earliest investors included a Texas businessman and fellow reservist in the Texas Air National Guard, James R. Bath, who oddly enough was the American liaison for Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half brother. To put it differently, the bin Laden family and its construction fortune helped finance Bush’s start in the oil industry, a relationship that would continue through the 1990s with Harken Energy, later the recipient of an offshore oil contract in Iraq’s reconstruction alongside Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.

The Bush dynasty’s financial ties to both the Saudi royals and bin Laden family went on as co-investors in the Carlyle Group private equity firm where the elder Bush’s previous government service contacts were exploited for financial gain. In fact, on the morning of 9/11, Bush Sr. just happened to be attending a Carlyle business conference where another bin Laden sibling was the guest of honor in what we are supposed to believe is another astounding coincidence. Just days later, Shafiq bin Laden would be spirited off on a chartered flight back to Saudi Arabia in an exodus overseen by Prince Bandar himself.

Osama bin Laden himself also got an evacuation of sorts when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. It was legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh who first reported that bin Laden and thousands of other Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were suspiciously allowed to escape to Pakistan in an evacuation dubbed the ‘airlift of evil.’ This was corroborated in a leaked 2009 Hillary Clinton State Department email published by WikiLeaks regarding a Senate report on the Battle of Tora Bora and bin Laden’s escape where Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal is shown discussing the controversial airlift as having been requested by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney — but don’t dare call it a conspiracy:

“Gary Berntsen, the head of the CIA armed operation in eastern Afghanistan, is a major source for the report. I am in contact with him and have heard his entire story at length, key parts of which are not in his book, Jawbreaker, or in the Senate report. In particular, the story of the Kunduz airlift of the bulk of key AQ and Taliban leaders, at the request of Musharaff and per order Cheney/Rumsfeld, is absent.”

Could it have anything to do with just a few years earlier the Taliban visiting Texas when Bush was Governor to discuss with the Unocal Corporation the construction of a gas pipeline through Afghanistan into Pakistan? It is also well known that the Pakistani government and its Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) had supported the Taliban for decades and during the 1980s had been the CIA’s main conduit for supplying arms to the Afghan mujahideen, including bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Maktab al-Khidamat, the organizational precursor to Al-Qaeda. As shown in the documentary 9/11: Press for Truth, little in their relations changed in the years between the Afghan-Soviet war and 9/11, as ISI director Mahmud Ahmed was reportedly busted wiring $100,000 to alleged hijacker ringleader Mohamed Atta not long before the WTC attacks. Throughout 2001 both before and after 9/11, General Ahmed had repeatedly visited the U.S. and met with top Pentagon and Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet, making Prince Bandar not the only figure to have been caught financing the operation and where a direct line can be drawn between the White House and the hijackers.

While Bandar has thus far eluded justice, one year after the release of the 28 pages a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the families of the victims against the government of Saudi Arabia which presented new evidence that two years prior to the attacks in 1999, the Saudi Embassy paid for the flights of two Saudi agents living undercover in the U.S. to fly from Phoenix to Washington “in a dry run for the 9/11 attacks” where they attempted to breach the cockpit and test flight security. This means the Saudi government was likely involved in planning the attacks from the very beginning, in addition to providing the subsidies and patsy hijacker personnel for the smokescreen of blaming Al-Qaeda and making bin Laden the fall guy, whose links to 9/11 are tenuous at best. After all, the “confession” from supposed planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was extracted only after his being water-boarded 183 times while bin Laden himself initially denied any role in the attacks before questionable videos were released of his admittance.

The Saudi nationals who participated in the hijacking rehearsal were posing as students. However, the Sunni dictatorship was not the only country conducting a mass espionage operation in the U.S. prior to 9/11 under such a front. In the first half of 2001, several U.S. federal law enforcement agencies documented more than 130 different instances of young Israelis impersonating “art students” while aggressively trying to penetrate the security of various government and military facilities as part of a Mossad spy ring. Several of the Israelis were found to be living in locations within the near vicinity of the hijackers as if they were eavesdropping on them. The discovery of the Israeli operation raised many questions, namely whether Mossad had advanced knowledge or involvement in 9/11. Ironically, Fox News of all places was one of the few outlets to cover the story in a four-part series which never re-aired and was eventually scrubbed from the network website.

The Israeli “art student” mystery never gained traction in the rest of the media, much like another suspicious case in the “Dancing Israelis”, a smaller group of Mossad spies posing as furnishing movers who were arrested in New Jersey on the morning of 9/11 taking celebratory pictures with the twin towers burning in the background of the Manhattan skyline. The five men were not only physically present at the waterfront prior to the first plane impact but found with thousands of dollars in cash, box-cutters, fake passports, and Arab clothing after they were reported for suspicious behavior and intercepted at the Lincoln tunnel heading into Manhattan. Initially misreported as Arabs by the media, the men were connected to Mossad by an FBI database and held for five months before their deportation to Israel while the owner of the front moving company fled to Jerusalem before further questioning. It should be noted that if Israel were to have participated in a ‘false flag’ attack on the U.S., it would not have been the first time. During the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israeli Air Force and Navy launched an unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy spy ship that was surveilling the Arab-Israeli conflict from international waters in the Mediterranean, an “accidental” assault which killed 34 Americans in an attempt to blame Egypt and provoke U.S. intervention.

If Israel turned out to be co-conspirators with the Saudis, it too is not as unlikely a scenario as it may seem. Wrongly assumed to be sworn enemies, it is an open secret that the two British-created states have maintained a historical covert alliance since the end of World War I when the first monarch of the modern Saudi state, King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, defeated his rival the Sharif of Mecca who opposed the Balfour Declaration. Authored by British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour and presented to Zionist leader Baron Rothschild, the 1917 letter guaranteed a Jewish homeland in Palestine by colonization with European Jews. Once Sharif was out the way, the Zionist movement had the green light to move forward with its colonial project. Although Ibn Saud publicly opposed Zionism, behind the scenes he negotiated with them through an intermediary in his advisor, British agent St. John Philby, who proposed a £20 million compensation to the Saudi king for delivering Palestine to the Jews.

Ibn Saud communicated his willingness to compromise in a 1940 letter from Philby to Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization and later the first Israeli president. However, Philby himself was an anti-Zionist and sabotaged the plan by leaking it to other Arab leaders who voiced their vehement opposition and it was only after this exposure that the Saudi king claimed to have turned down the bribe, something the Zionists would only solicit if they thought he would accept. Ever since, the ideologies of Saudi Wahhabism and Israeli Zionism have been center to the West’s destabilization of the Middle East which contrary to misperceptions was not uniquely plagued by conflict historically more than the Occident until the West nurtured Salafism and Zionism. Predictably, discussing either the Saudi or Israeli role in 9/11 has been strictly forbidden in corporate media, since both are among Washington’s geo-strategic allies and each hold immense lobbying power over large media institutions.

Less than five months after 9/11, Bush notoriously declared the nations of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as comprising an “axis of evil” in his 2002 state of the union address. In reality, the phrase is better suited to describe the tripartite of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. government itself who are likely the real trio of conspirators behind 9/11. The infamous choice of words were attributed to neoconservative pundit and Bush speechwriter, David Frum, who claimed to have taken inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “a date that will live infamy” speech given the day after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. It was a continuation of a theme present in the manifesto of the neoconservative cabal authored one year prior to 9/11 — “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) think tank, whose members included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush. The strategic military blueprint called for a massive increase in U.S. defense spending in order to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars”before ominously predicting:

“The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.

Ten members of PNAC would be subsequently appointed to positions in the Bush White House where their vision of a “new Pearl Harbor” conveniently materialized. Then again, there is plenty of evidence that Pearl Harbor itself was a ‘false flag’, or that U.S. intelligence and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had foreknowledge of an impending Japanese attack on the naval base in Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7th, 1941. As pointed out by the filmLoose Change, it is probable that Roosevelt allowed it to happen on purpose in order to win public support for a U.S. entry into the European theatre of World War II, a move opposed by a majority of Americans prior to the ‘surprise’ Japanese attack. Given what is known about Pearl Harbor and the abandoned Operation Northwoods, which proposed both fabricating and committing terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft to be pinned on Fidel Castro in order to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1962, there are no grounds to assume that such false flag operations were ever phased out of military procedure before 9/11 or since.

Loose Change also made a useful historical analogy between 9/11 and the Reichstag fire, the 1933 arson attack on the German parliament building that occurred a month after Adolf Hitler was inaugurated as Chancellor and pinned on a 24-year old half-blind Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe. While there is no denying the incident was used a pretext by the Nazi regime to consolidate power and suspend law and order, there is still a heated debate between historians as to whether van der Lubbe was the real culprit. However, it was coincidentally in 2001 when a group of historians uncovered evidence that a Nazi stormtrooper who died under mysterious circumstances in 1933 had previously confessed to prosecutors that members of Hitler’s Storm Detachment had set fire to the edifice under orders from paramilitary leader Karl Ernst, lending credence to the widely held suspicion that it was a Nazi-engineered ‘false flag’ all along.

Most Americans are unaware that a similar coup d’etat nearly took place during the same year in the United States in an attempt to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install an authoritarian government modeled on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as part of a scheme hatched by an inner circle of right-wing bankers otherwise known as the the ‘Business Plot.’ It was a conspiracy that only became public after it was heroically thwarted by a whistleblower in decorated Marine Corps veteran turned anti-imperialist, Major General Smedley Butler, after he was recruited to form the junta. Incredibly, one of the prominent business figures allegedly involved was  Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush’s father and George W. Bush’s grandfather, who at the time was the director and shareholder of a bank owned by German industrialist and Nazi financier Fritz Thyssen seized by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

After his transformation, in 1935 Smedley Butler famously penned War is a Racket and there is perhaps no better phrase that would sum up the so-called ‘War on Terror’ today. Not only did the American Reichstag fire of 9/11 trigger a domestic police state transformation that overrode the U.S. constitution in an American equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Act and the Heimatschutz (“homeland protection”) defense forces with the passing of the USA-Patriot Act and founding of the Department of Homeland Security, but it fulfilled the prophecy of political scientist Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations in a face-off between Islam and Christianity abroad.

The prediction that religion and culture would be the primary source of geopolitical conflict in the post-Cold War world was an apocalyptic paradigm envisioned by right-wing orientalist philosophers like Huntington and Bernard Lewis which the PNAC neocon ideologues put into practice. Today, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis appears likely to have similar broad and long-term political, social and economic consequences and those who have doubts about the official explanation for the pandemic can hardly be blamed for their distrust given this history unless the lessons of 9/11 have gone unlearned.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at [email protected]
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As Russia Sends Aid, US and NATO Sneer and Smear

April 9th, 2020 by Ulson Gunnar

When Russian military planes and trucks arrived in Italy to provide relief for communities hit by the Covid-19 outbreak, the Italian government, elected into power by the Italian people, was thankful for the assistance offered by Moscow.

Named officials within the Italian government, including the foreign minister, the minister of defense and the governor of Apulia, Michele Emiliano, publically expressed thanks to Russia for the aid.

But finding any mention of this across the Western media is difficult, often buried deep within articles aimed entirely at smearing Russia for sending aid and depicting Italians as victims of a publicity stunt.

Reuters, in a smear piece published by the New York Times and aimed at vilifying Moscow, still had to admit regarding Russian aid that Italians were grateful, noting:

There are no new geopolitical scenarios to trace, there is a country that needs help and other countries that are helping us,” Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio was quoted as saying by Italy’s Il Corriere della Sera newspaper on Thursday.

Despite Italy being capable of speaking for itself and bringing up any suspicions (if they had any), the West decided to step in and speak for Italy instead.

Sneering and Smearing 

Western headlines are flooded with scorn for both Russia and the aid they sent, completely indifferent to how Italians themselves perceived the gesture.

Articles like Bloomberg’s “Italy Questions Russians Over Their Goodwill Virus Gestures,” admit several paragraphs in that officially, Italy was grateful for the aid, noting:

“Our country can only be grateful” for the solidarity of many countries, including Russia, the Italian defense and foreign ministries said in a joint statement Friday.

Yet claims that “Italy questions Russia” suggest the entire nation is suspicious of the aid. Upon reading Bloomberg’s article, the only source cited is a single article in the Italian newspaper “La Stampa.” It is hard to believe an article in “La Stampa” constitutes all of “Italy.”

According to the pro-Western Moscow Times in their article, “80% of Russia’s Coronavirus Aid to Italy ‘Useless’ – La Stampa,” also entirely based on the La Stampa article, its admits La Stampa’s information came from an “unnamed source.”

Other articles, like the BBC’s “Coronavirus: What does ‘from Russia with love’ really mean?,” Foreign Policy’s “Beware of Bad Samaritans,” and Forbes’ “From Russia With Love? Putin’s Medical Supplies Gift To Coronavirus-Hit Italy Raises Questions,” all used similarly disingenuous tactics to depict the Russian aid as somehow sinister and unwanted.

The Guardian in its article, “Coronavirus: Russia sends plane full of medical supplies to US,” explains:

Critics likely to claim Moscow will exploit goodwill gesture as public relations coup.

France 24 in headline alone makes Western criticism even clearer, claiming, “Flying aid to virus-hit Italy, Moscow flexes soft power.

So by sending aid to Italy, Russia is somehow supposedly flexing its “soft power.”

So How is the West Using Its Soft Power? 

The West faced a collective decision. They could have used their own, very substantial soft power to one-up Russia by sending even more aid to Italy and other regions of the globe impacted by the spread of Covid-19.

Instead, they mobilized the entirety of their soft power to sneer and smear Russia’s efforts with Western-funded media fronts writing entire articles doing just that.

The West’s attempts to depict the Russian media reporting on the aid as also somehow sinister rather than simply telling the world what Russia is doing is also particularly surreal.

The Western media itself spends the summation of its own time and energy promoting what their respective governments are doing abroad which usually involves illegal invasions, wars, occupations and interventions… not sending aid.

A Missed Opportunity 

Because certain special interests in the West fear some Western governments growing closer to nations like Russia and China in the spirit of cooperation and mutual benefits and derailing the Washington-led “international order” that has prevailed post World War 2, resources have been committed to attacking any development that could spur this process further.

But because these resources have been invested into attacking, even when attacking is not the best option, that is all the West appears capable of doing.

The answer to Russian aid to Italy was Western aid to Italy. The benefit would have been a flood of resources sent to where it was needed and everyone involved enjoying the benefits of lending a helping hand to those who would be grateful in return.

Instead, the West appears to be throwing rocks at a time when others are coming together to help, and throwing those rocks at those who are helping.

Rather than teaching the Italians never to deal with Russia again, it is likely this process is going to remind Italians as to why they’ve diversified their foreign relations outside the West in the first place.

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

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Brazilian Military Plan to Overthrow Bolsonaro

April 9th, 2020 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

The political situation in Brazil worsens day after day. The irresponsible way in which President Jair Bolsonaro is managing the effects of the pandemic has been causing concern and fury in all sectors of Brazilian society. All the bases that have so far guaranteed President Bolsonaro’s power are being shaken by his irresponsible policies. At the same time as its popularity plummets exponentially, the group that guaranteed the inviolability of his mandate – the military – is increasingly distant from the president’s projects.

In fact, the relationship between Bolsonaro and the military lasted a long time until its decline, which in itself is curious when we look at the concrete data. Despite his speech praising the Armed Forces and his apologies for the military dictatorship that prevailed in Brazil between 1964 and 1985, Bolsonaro’s government has been marked by a serious process of scrapping of the Armed Forces. The public budget allocated to the Ministry of Defense in 2020 was the smallest in more than two decades.

Clearly, Bolsonaro’s project has as its main objective the complete subordination of Brazil to the foreign military and economic powers of the western axis and this project requires the definitive bankruptcy of national military institutions. For this reason, the common discourse of the Brazilian political left, stating that Bolsonaro intends to militarize the country, is a flawed and shallow one, which does not understand the real problem of the current government.

Certainly, the great military mass was deceived by the Bolsonarian speeches and thus formed his electoral base. On the other hand, a small group of generals and high-ranking officials agreed to political positions with the neoliberal leadership and agreed to support the regime in exchange for personal benefits. However, these same soldiers are already beginning to realize the serious mistake they made.

Jair Bolsonaro’s neoliberal ideological fanaticism has led him to make serious mistakes that endanger national security itself. Examples of this attitude can be seen in the irresponsible creation of unnecessary friction and tension with Venezuela, at the regional level, and China, at the global level.

With an economically bankrupt country, facing the serious pandemic of the new coronavirus and with the Armed Forces absolutely scrapped, how to manage geopolitical crises of this magnitude? This is the big question that generals are beginning to ask and realizing that the only possible way is the end of the Bolsonaro’s government.

Since then, the military has started a series of moves that indicate they are planning a political intervention. Recently, Vice President Hamilton Mourao met with a group of generals to discuss ways to bring him to power. In practice, this means that the Brazilian military are openly planning a political coup to withdraw Bolsonaro and place Mourao in the presidency of the Republic.

Undoubtedly, the height of tensions between Bolsonaro and the military is being the inertia with which the president has dealt with the serious COVID-19 epidemic that plagues the country. The president’s neglect to take quarantine and social isolation measures has led to the exponential growth of the infection, causing the fury not only of the military, but also of all sectors of the civil society.

In the Parliament, an impeachment request has already been initiated. In The Hague, Bolsonaro has already been reported to the International Criminal Court for encouraging actions that lead to the growth of the pandemic, which could lead to the death of thousands of people. In fact, from all points of view, it seems that Bolsonaro’s tenure as president is almost over. Legally denounced, without popular support and rejected by the Armed Forces, all that remains for the Brazilian president is to count on foreign aid, coming from the nation to which he has sworn allegiance: the US. However, since the US is currently the country most affected by the global pandemic, having to deal with a serious domestic economic and political crisis, is Washington really interested in helping Bolsonaro? In the end, who will save the Brazilian president from the oncoming fate?

Everything indicates that Bolsonaro will fall in a matter of weeks or months. It remains to be seen what will come after him. It is unlikely and even undesirable that Bolsonaro will be brought to international trial. Still, taking into account all the bureaucracy surrounding the impeachment process in the Brazilian system, it is also unlikely that he will fall through the legal channels of the Brazilian Constitution, since the country’s situation is an emergency due to the pandemic. Therefore, it is speculated that the idea of ​​military intervention will gain more and more strength in the coming days.

However, it is also unlikely that a military intervention to remove Bolsonaro will start a military dictatorship. The more realistic scenario indicates that the generals will overthrow the president and surrender the office to the current vice president, without militarizing the country anyway. It is also possible that this is the pretext for the establishment of a new constituent assembly, taking into account that for a long time the most liberal factions of the Brazilian Congress have proposed the installation of a parliamentary system in the country. Another possible scenario is that Bolsonaro gives in completely to the demands of the military and changes his attitudes, becoming a decorative figure in Brazilian politics.

Finally, the situation is one of several doubts and with a single certainty: Bolsonaro is alone and weakened.

Lucas Leiroz, research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

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Social Crisis and the Public Use of Reason

April 9th, 2020 by Prof. Sam Ben-Meir

Presently we face a true crisis – a crisis in the fullest sense of the word.  A crisis is defined not simply by the magnitude of the problem – but rather, by how it compels us to question our basic assumptions and preconceptions; it is a situation that forces us to reevaluate the conditions that made it possible in the first place. This implies that within the darkness of every crisis there lies a seed, a kernel of something from which a new reality, a new way of thinking of ourselves and our duties to each other, can emerge.

Genuine leadership recognizes that in a crisis there is the possibility of positive and profound change. Just as Lincoln used the horror of the Civil War – and particularly the Union’s strategic victory at the awful battle of Antietam – as an opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, a decree which irrevocably transformed the meaning of the war, and indeed the nation itself. A crisis allows us to challenge and rework the coordinates of the present condition. It invites us, even if just for a moment, to suspend our habitual frame of reference, to create – or perhaps re-create – ourselves and our world, our social bonds; our forms of social unity, our ways of being together; our sense of shared responsibility.

A crisis such as this one demands that we exercise what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the ‘public use of reason’ – as opposed to merely the ‘private use of reason’ where, briefly put, the expert, the specialist is tasked with resolving a defined problem. The private use of reason is sufficient when we are dealing with a problem that can be solved by simply applying the appropriate expertise. As one would only hope and expect, around the world virologists and epidemiologists are intensely focused on how to resolve the coronavirus.

At the same time however, we cannot afford to overlook the public use of reason: reason that does not simply solve a given problem, but asks further unsettling questions, such as how did this problem arise in the first place? Can we really overlook the fact that in the spring of 2018 the Trump administration began dismantling the team in charge of responding to pandemics, including firing its head, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer. Under Trump’s administration, the team was ultimately disbanded – indeed, the country was already underprepared to face a public health crisis and Trump’s cuts only left us more vulnerable.

The public use of reason asks questions like: What were the underlying conditions and unarticulated assumptions that made the crisis possible? For example, this public health crisis underscores the importance of a universal healthcare system. Our current patchwork system, with high rates of uninsured, and ever-increasing healthcare costs made it more likely for the pandemic to occur, and as a nation has made it harder to fight effectively. The lack of medical equipment, of ICUs and diagnostic testing, of doctors per capita, all point to a general lack of preparedness. This has been exacerbated by a health insurance system that leaves millions uninsured: in the US, healthcare is treated as a commodity and a privilege, rather than as a right.

The public use of reason asks: how we are defining the problem? Is our definition – our conceptualization of the problem – perhaps part of the problem itself? Is this pandemic solely a problem of public health, or is it also a problem of extreme economic inequality? The public use of reason requires that we question the very frame of reference in which we are operating. We know, for example, that social and economic inequalities are exacerbated during a pandemic. By the same token, a 2008 report – published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior – found that “When society develops the capability to prevent or treat disease, health disparities across socioeconomic levels and along racial lines are enhanced.”

Let us use this crisis to begin addressing one of the gravest problems of our time – that is, growing economic inequality, the concentrations of vast wealth, and the ever-increasing gap between those who have and those who have not. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that “the top one percent’s share of income before transfers and taxes has been rising since the late 1970s, and in recent years has climbed to levels not seen since the 1920s.” This increasing concentration of income among the wealthiest one percent means that nearly everyone has seen their piece of the pie shrink.

Since this crisis began, the greatest failure of the administration is not the denial, the lies, the lack of preparedness, but the inability to rally and unify the nation against this common threat, the lack of genuine leadership – Trump’s utter inability to bring the nation together. The president’s irresponsible comments – from his repeated reference to the coronavirus as the Chinese virus, as well as his claim that the government is not “a shipping clerk” – are demoralizing and divisive. History will remember this as the saddest chapter in the story of this disastrous administration. Yet, within every crisis there is opportunity, a chance to change the status quo and emerge with a newfound sense of strength, solidarity, and hope. However, to realize that possibility will require, among other things, a revitalization of the public use of reason.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

Featured image is from Morning Star

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The water ice and other lunar resources that will help the United States establish a long-term human presence on the moon are there for the taking, the White House believes.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order today (April 6) establishing U.S. policy on the exploitation of off-Earth resources. That policy stresses that the current regulatory regime — notably, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty — allows the use of such resources.

This view has long held sway in U.S. government circles. For example, the United States, like the other major spacefaring nations, has not signed the 1979 Moon Treaty, which stipulates that non-scientific use of space resources be governed by an international regulatory framework. And in 2015, Congress passed a law explicitly allowing American companies and citizens to use moon and asteroid resources.

The new executive order makes things even more official, stressing that the United States does not view space as a “global commons” and sees a clear path to off-Earth mining, without the need for further international treaty-level agreements.

The executive order, called “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources,” has been in the works for about a year, a senior administration official said during a teleconference with reporters today. The order was prompted, at least in part, by a desire to clarify the United States’ position as it negotiates with international partners to help advance NASA’s Artemis program for crewed lunar exploration, the official added. (Engagement with international partners remains important, the official said.)

Artemis aims to land two astronauts on the moon in 2024 and to establish a sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor by 2028. Lunar resources, especially the water ice thought to be plentiful on the permanently shadowed floors of polar craters, are key to Artemis’ grand ambitions, NASA officials have said.

The moon is not the final destination for these ambitions, by the way. Artemis is designed to help NASA and its partners learn how to support astronauts in deep space for long stretches, lessons that will be key to putting boots on Mars, which NASA wants to do in the 2030s.

“As America prepares to return humans to the moon and journey on to Mars, this executive order establishes U.S. policy toward the recovery and use of space resources, such as water and certain minerals, in order to encourage the commercial development of space,” Scott Pace, deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the U.S. National Space Council, said in a statement today.

President Trump has shown considerable interest in shaping U.S. space policy. In December 2017, for example, he signed Space Policy Directive-1, which laid the groundwork for the Artemis campaign. Two other directives have aimed to streamline commercial space regulation and the protocols for space traffic control. And Space Policy Directive-4, which the president signed in February 2019, called for the creation of the Space Force, the first new U.S. military branch since the Air Force was stood up in 1947.

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Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook

Featured image: Artist’s illustration of mining activity on the moon. (Image: © James Vaughan)

Now that the state and its media have falsely characterized the coronavirus as a pandemic closing in on the 1918 flu pandemic (falsely attributed to Spain), it is time for the global elite and their technocrats to force not only highly-profitable (for Big Pharma) vaccines on the world but biometric IDs as well. 

“As countries begin to lift coronavirus lockdowns, biometric identification can help verify those who have already had the infection, and ensure that the vulnerable get the vaccine when it is launched, health and technology experts said,” reports Reuters. 

A biometric ID system can keep a record of [the infected] and those getting the vaccine, said Larry Dohrs, Southeast Asia head at iRespond, a Seattle-based nonprofit that launched its technology last month.

The pretense for this—as it was for the US decimation of Libya, Syria, and Iraq—is “humanitarianism,” according to iRespond and Simprints, a British NGO partnered with Johns Hopkins University’s Global mHealth Initiative, the latter connected to the US military and its “Dark Winter” and “Event 201” pandemic scenarios (see Whitney Webb: All Roads Lead to Dark Winter). 

Total surveillance requires 24/7 monitoring of individuals—especially those included in the Main Core database of activists and political enemies of the state—and biometric technology introduced during the hysteria of an exaggerated health threat fits the bill. 

ID2020—a project initiated by the Rockefeller Foundation, Bill Gates and Microsoft, transnational pharmaceutical corporations, and technology firms—is pushing the concept that every human on the planet needs biometric verification because “to prove who you are is a fundamental and universal human right,” according to the ID2020 website. 

“What they really want is a fully standardized data collection and retrieval format, and cross-border sharing of identities of the entire population of the planet, in order for the stand-alone AI-powered command center to work without a hitch, and for purposes of calculating everyone’s potential contribution, and threat to the system,” explains OffGrid Healthcare. 

If you believe this is dangerously close to China’s “social credit” system, you’re not far off the mark. 

Introducing this totalitarian technology under the cover of a supposed pandemic rife with speculation and a dearth of hard numbers is a near-perfect cover for “patient ID technology” producing data on individuals shared with the state and its corporate partners. 

A vaccine ostensibly designed to combat COVID-19 will become mandatory and those who resist will be blacklisted as public health criminals. They will be locked out of society, similar to Chinese citizens suffering under China’s totalitarian social credit system. 

Martin Armstrong believes the healthcare-industrial complex and the state will surreptitiously introduce a nanotech ID and tracking chip along with a cocktail of vaccine toxins, or they will sell it to the public as a way to identify those presumably infected.

The proposal is a digital certificate that verifies if you have been vaccinated and was developed by MIT and Microsoft. They are looking at merging this with Bill Gates’ ID2020. It is entirely possible that this scare has been a deliberate plot to get people to accept these digital implants. Refuse, and you will be prohibited from social gatherings. Like 9/11 conditioned us to be x-rayed before entering a plane, now the next stage is to embed digital markers that they have been using in dogs and cats.

COVID-19 is the perfect Trojan horse for a control freak state itching to not only micromanage the lives of ordinary citizens but also ferret out critics and potential adversaries and punish them as enemies of the state. The latter is the primary objective. History is replete with examples—from Stalin and Mao to Hitler and Mussolini, with lesser autocrats and dictators along the way. 

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

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We are greatly saddened by the passing of Martin Khor, a long-time friend and colleague, an undaunted fighter for the poor and underprivileged, a passionate believer in a more balanced and inclusive multilateralism, a rare intellectual and eloquent orator, an icon of the Global South worthy of veneration, greatly respected for his struggle for justice and fairness against the dominance and double-standards of big economic powers.   

Martin was born in 1951 in colonial Malaysia, still under British rule, to a family of journalists. After his primary and secondary education in Malaysia, he left for the UK in 1971 to study at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his B.A Hons and M.A. in economics, before completing his second Masters in Social Sciences at the University of Science, Malaysia in 1978.

In his Master’s thesis, he grappled with the changing nature of external dependence and surplus extraction in Malaysia as it moved from colonial to post-colonial status, with a view to its implications for the scope and limits of industrialization and development; a study which left an indelible mark on his subsequent engagement and activities in a world characterised by increasingly asymmetric power relations.

He started his professional career as an Administrative Officer at the Ministry of Finance, Singapore before joining the University of Science, Malaysia as lecturer in Economics in 1975.

He became the Research Director of The Consumers’ Association of Penang in 1978, an independent non-profit international research and advocacy organization on issues related to development.

The Third World Network (TWN) was created in 1984 at an international Conference on “The Third World: Development and Crisis” organized by the Consumers’ Association of Penang.   In 1990, Martin became the Director of the TWN, perhaps the most important NGO from the developing world with operations globally, both in the North and the South, through offices, secretariats and researchers, including in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Geneva, Beijing, Delhi, Jakarta, Manila, New York, Montevideo and Accra.

Martin’s approach to advancing progressive solutions on all these fronts was always one of quiet determination driven by a passionate commitment to strengthening the voice of developing countries.

He had an envious ability to synthesise and explain complex negotiating issues to a broad audience and in a way that could bring on board activists and policy makers alike

Martin held both positions at the Consumers’ Association of Penang and the TWN until 2009 when he became the Executive Director of the South Centre in Geneva, an intergovernmental organization of developing countries established in 1995 to undertake research in various national and international development policy areas and provide advice and support to developing countries in a variety of international negotiating fora.

Under his leadership, the South Centre became an important voice in discussions on international trade and investment, intellectual property, health, global macroeconomics, finance, sustainable development, and climate change.

During his tenure, the Centre extended significantly the scope and quality of its policy research and advice, building an enhanced reputation and level of trust among developing countries in the struggles to protect and promote their interests.   After leaving the South Centre in 2018, Martin returned to Penang, already suffering from cancer, and acted as Chairman of the Board of TWN until his death on April 1, 2020.

Martin was a staunch multilateralist but not an advocate of globalization, at least in the neo-liberal guise it acquired from the early 1980s.   On the one hand, he was well aware that individually developing countries could not obtain fair deals with major (and minor) developed countries in the international economic system.

On the other hand, he knew that multilateral rules and practices were unbalanced, designed to subject developing countries to the discipline of unfettered international markets shaped by transnational corporations and self-seeking policies of dominant powers in the North, denying them the kind of policy space they themselves had enjoyed in the course of their industrialization.  His efforts focussed on reshaping multilateral rules and practices as a way to bring about systemic changes in the service of development.

Martin did this on three fronts.  From the mid-1980s he focussed mainly on international trade issues, particularly those raised by negotiations during the Uruguay Round, and subsequently in the WTO and the proliferating free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties that accompanied the shift to a neo-liberal international economic order.

Martin was instrumental in bringing the attention of policy makers and activists to the implications of new trade rules for the industrialization and development of the Global South arising from more demanding obligations on tariff and non-tariff measures, industrial subsidies, investment and intellectual property rights.

He made several proposals for reform in these areas to remove imbalances and constraints over industrialization, and economic diversification more generally, in the Global South. He opposed free trade agreements with developed countries on the grounds that, by simultaneously curtailing the policy space available to governments while expanding the space for abusive practices by the large international firms that dominate international trade, they posed an even greater threat to development than the earlier generation of trade rules under the GATT.

In the aftermath of the Marrakech agreement, Martin was a prominent figure blocking efforts by OECD countries to push for a multilateral investment agreement, to extend the neo-liberal agenda at the first WTO ministerial in Singapore and subsequently at the third meeting in Seattle and to water down the Doha Development Agenda at the Cancun Ministerial in 2003.

The second front concerned the issues around the operations of the Bretton Woods Institutions, notably debt and development finance.  Martin had been a long-time critic of the Washington Consensus, and in particular, the use of policy conditionalities attached to lending by the IFIs which sought to push a series of damaging measures on developing countries in the name of efficiency, competitiveness and attracting foreign investors.

But he started to pay greater attention to these after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, arguing against austerity, advocating capital controls, orderly debt work-out mechanisms, multilateral discipline over exchange rates and financial policies of major advanced economies and global regulation and supervision of systemically important international financial firms.

He was a particularly strong advocate of these positions in his role as a member of the Helsinki Group on Globalisation and Democracy.  Martin took the helm of the South Centre just before the 2009 Global Financial Crisis hit and was quick to provide substantive assistance to developing countries during the 2009 UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development, identifying the key issues for them and working to ensure their insertion in the Outcome Document.

He continued to push hard on these issues through the research output from the Centre while adding the related areas of illicit financial flows and international tax issues to its workload as developing countries sought support on these matters.

The third, and increasingly prominent, front was climate change and sustainable development which gained added importance in international discussions in the new millennium. Environmental issues had always been part of Martin’s work as head of TWN and as a member of the Commission on Developing Countries and Global Change.

But this widened significantly after the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. Subsequently, Martin became a member of the Consultative Group on Sustainable Development and a regular attendee at the UN Climate Change Conferences that began in 1995 playing a particularly important role in the Copenhagen COP in 2009 where the neglect of the development dimension by advanced economies, their reluctance to acknowledge common but differentiated responsibilities and their naïve belief in market-friendly solutions to the climate challenge led to acrimonious discussions and the eventual collapse of the conference.

While he clearly recognized the need to reduce the pace of emissions and protect the environment, Martin was wary that the measures promoted by industrial countries could become instruments to stem development in the Global South.  Under his leadership an important part of the work in the South Centre focussed on this issue.

During this time Martin was a strong critic of tighter intellectual property rights, particularly through trade agreements, that restricted the transfer of the technologies developing countries needed to help in the fight against rising global temperatures and to mitigate the climate damage they were already experiencing.

This work had a parallel in Martin’s fight to ease the burden of TRIPs on developing countries in dealing with public health emergencies which, thanks to a successful civil society coalition where Martin was a pivotal figure, eventually succeeded in a permanent amendment to the TRIPs agreement in 2017.

Martin’s support to developing countries in the climate change negotiations, carried out through the South Centre and TWN, fostered greater coordination among developing countries in protecting and promoting their development policy space in the climate negotiations, highlighting equity, and stressing the international obligation of advanced economies to provide support to developing countries.

Martin’s approach to advancing progressive solutions on all these fronts was always one of quiet determination driven by a passionate commitment to strengthening the voice of developing countries.

He had an envious ability to synthesise and explain complex negotiating issues to a broad audience and in a way that could bring on board activists and policy makers alike. He became a trusted advisor to policy makers and diplomats across the developing world.

But Martin was equally comfortable engaging in a productive debate with policy makers from advanced countries and in mainstream institutions.   His was a uniquely calming but authoritative voice for increasingly anxious times, one that has been silenced too soon and at a moment when his commitment to building a fairer and more resilient world was needed more than ever.

Yilmaz Akyüz, Former Director, Globalization and Development Strategies Division, UNCTAD; and Former Chief Economist, South Centre, Geneva.

Richard Kozul-Wright, Director, Globalization and Development Strategies Division, UNCTAD, Geneva. 

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The Syrian Army and local self-defense forces have carried out an operation against ISIS cells hiding in the desert area on the administrative border of Raqqah and Deir Ezzor provinces. According to pro-government sources, Syrian forces eliminated up to 10 ISIS members and destroyed their hideouts.

The security operation came in response to the recently increased IED attacks and ambushes conducted by ISIS cells near Deir Ezzor city and the town of Mayadin. At least 5 Syrian service members and 8 civilians were killed during the past 2 weeks alone.

The Afrin Liberation Forces, affiliated with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, conducted a new series of attacks on Turkish proxies in the region of Afrin. The attacks took place in Kafr Hashir and on the road between Chima and Deir Survan. A vehicle was destroyed and several Turkish proxies were killed.

Sources affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other Turkish-backed militant groups are accusing the Syrian Army of violating the ceasefire regime in southern Idlib. According to them, over the past few days government forces have repeatedly shelled their positions near Jisr al-Shughur, Sarmin and al-Barah. They also claimed that over the same few days Russian aircraft have increased reconnaissance flights over this area.

Pro-government sources say that these strikes were retaliatory actions to ceasefire violations by militants. However, it should be noted that the Syrian military is not hiding that it is actively deploying reinforcements and rearming troops on the frontline in southern Idlib. All the sides of the conflict understand that the current status quo in the area cannot last long. Al-Qaeda-linked militants and other radicals remain a constant source of terrorist threat in Greater Idlib and nearby areas.

On April 7, Syrian troops and patriotic activists blocked a US military convoy near the city of al-Qamishly in northeastern Syria and forced it to turn back to its permanent positions. This became the third such incident in the area in the last two weeks.

Since the very first moment of the deployment of the Syrian Army and the Russian Military Police in Syria’s northeast, US forces have been trying to limit their movement by blocking Russian and Syrian convoys. They apparently forgot that two can play at this game. So, now US troops prefer to stay put in their bases and conduct their own ‘patrols’ in a very limited area only.

The situation reached such an extent that the US-led coalition was forced to airdrop supplies to its forces deployed in the Omar oil fields area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Another problem is the terrorist threat from ISIS. For a long time, the US coalition and its proxies were turning a blind eye to actions of ISIS cells along the Euphrates because this allowed them to justify the seizure of the oil fields with the need of protecting them from ISIS. As might be expected, this allowed ISIS cells to strengthen their presence in the area and now they regularly conduct attacks on US-backed forces and intimidate locals.

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Ken Loach, one of Britain’s most acclaimed film directors, has spent more than a half a century dramatising the plight of the poor and the vulnerable. His films have often depicted the casual indifference or active hostility of the state as it exercises unaccountable power over ordinary people.

Last month Loach found himself plunged into the heart of a pitiless drama that could have come straight from one of his own films. This veteran chronicler of society’s ills was forced to stand down as a judge in a school anti-racism competition, falsely accused of racism himself and with no means of redress.

Voice of the powerless

There should be little doubt about Loach’s credentials both as an anti-racist and a trenchant supporter of the powerless and the maligned.

In his films he has turned his unflinching gaze on some of the ugliest episodes of British state repression and brutality in Ireland, as well as historical struggles against fascism in other parts of the globe, from Spain to Nicaragua.

But his critical attention has concentrated chiefly on Britain’s shameful treatment of its own poor, its minorities and its refugees. In his recent film I, Daniel Blake he examined the callousness of state bureaucracies in implementing austerity policies, while this year’s release Sorry We Missed You focused on the precarious lives of a zero-hours workforce compelled to choose between the need to work and responsibility to family.

Inevitably, these scathing studies of British social and political dysfunction – exposed even more starkly by the current coronavirus pandemic – mean Loach is much less feted at home than he is in the rest of the world, where his films are regularly honoured with awards.

Which may explain why the extraordinary accusations against him of racism – or more specifically antisemitism – have not been more widely denounced as malicious.

Campaign of vilification

From the moment it was announced in February that Loach and Michael Rosen, a renowned, leftwing children’s poet, were to judge an anti-racism art competition for schools, the pair faced a relentless and high-profile campaign of vilification. But given the fact that Rosen is Jewish, Loach took the brunt of the attack.

The organisation behind the award, Show Racism the Red Card, which initially refused to capitulate to the bullying, quickly faced threats to its charitable status as well as its work eradicating racism from football.

In a statement, Loach’s production company, Sixteen Films, said Show Racism the Red Card had been the “subject of an aggressive campaign to persuade trade unions, government departments, football clubs and politicians to cease funding or otherwise supporting the charity and its work”.

“Pressure behind the scenes” was exerted from the government and from football clubs, which began threatening to sever ties with the charity.

More than 200 prominent figures in sport, academia and the arts came to Loach’s defence, noted Sixteen Films, but the charity’s “very existence” was soon at stake. Faced with this unremitting onslaught, Loach agreed to step down on March 18.

This had been no ordinary protest, but one organised with ruthless efficiency that quickly gained a highly sympathetic hearing in the corridors of power.

US-style Israel lobby

Leading the campaign against Loach and Rosen were the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Labour Movement – two groups that many on the left are already familiar with.

They previously worked from within and without the Labour party to help undermine Jeremy Corbyn, its elected leader. Corbyn stepped down this month to be replaced by Keir Starmer, his former Brexit minister, after losing a general election in December to the ruling Conservative party.

Long-running and covert efforts by the Jewish Labour Movement to unseat Corbyn were exposed two years ago in an undercover investigation filmed by Al-Jazeera.

The JLM is a small, highly partisan pro-Israel lobby group affiliated to the Labour party, while the Board of Deputies falsely claims to represent Britain’s Jewish community, when in fact it serves as a lobby for the most conservative elements of it.

Echoing their latest campaign, against Loach, the two groups regularly accused Corbyn of antisemitism, and of presiding over what they termed an “institutionally antisemitic” Labour party. Despite attracting much uncritical media attention for their claims, neither organisation produced any evidence beyond the anecdotal.

The reason for these vilification campaigns has been barely concealed. Loach and Corbyn have shared a long history as passionate defenders of Palestinian rights, at a time when Israel is intensifying efforts to extinguish any hope of the Palestinians ever gaining statehood or a right to self-determination.

In recent years, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement have adopted the tactics of a US-style lobby determined to scrub criticism of Israel from the public sphere. Not coincidentally, the worse Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians has grown, the harder these groups have made it to talk about justice for Palestinians.

Starmer, Corbyn’s successor, went out of his way to placate the lobby during last month’s Labour leadership election campaign, happily conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism to avoid a similar confrontation. His victory was welcomed by both the Board and the JLM.

Character assassination

But Ken Loach’s treatment shows that the weaponisation of antisemitism is far from over, and will continue to be used against prominent critics of Israel. It is a sword hanging over future Labour leaders, forcing them to root out party members who persist in highlighting either Israel’s intensifying abuse of the Palestinians or the nefarious role of pro-Israel lobby groups like the Board and the JLM.

The basis for the accusations against Loach were flimsy at best – rooted in a circular logic that has become the norm of late when judging supposed examples of antisemitism.

Loach’s offence, according to the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement, was the fact that he has denied – in line with all the data – that Labour is institutionally antisemitic.

The demand for evidence to support claims made by these two bodies that Labour has an antisemitism crisis is now itself treated as proof of antisemitism, transforming it into the equivalent of Holocaust denial.

But when Show Racism the Red Card initially stood their ground against the smears, the Board and Jewish Labour Movement produced a follow-up allegation. The anti-racism charity appeared to use this as a pretext for extracting itself from the mounting trouble associated with supporting Loach.

The new claim against Loach consisted not so much of character assassination as of character assassination by tenuous association.

The Board and Jewish Labour Movement raised the unremarkable fact that a year ago Loach responded to an email from a member of the GMB union who had been expelled.

Peter Gregson sought Loach’s professional assessment of a video in which he accused the union of victimising him over his opposition to a new advisory definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which openly conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel.

The IHRA definition was foisted on the Labour party two years ago by the same groups – the Jewish Labour Movement and the Board of Deputies – in large part as a way to isolate Corbyn. There was a great deal of opposition from rank and file members.

Resisting new definition

Pro-Israel lobby group liked this new definition – seven of its 11 examples of antisemitism relate to Israel, not Jews – because it made it impossible for Corbyn and his supporters to critique Israel without running the gauntlet of claims they were antisemitic for doing so.

Loach was among the many Corbyn supporters who tried to resist the imposition of the IHRA definition. So it was hardly surprising, given Gregson’s claims and the parallels of his story to many others Loach has been documenting for decades, that the film maker replied, offering his critical opinion of the video.

Only later was Loach told that there were separate concerns raised about Gregson’s behaviour, including an allegation that he had fallen out with a Jewish member of the union. Loach distanced himself from Gregson and backed the GMB’s decision.

That should have been an end to it. Loach is a public figure who sees it as part of his role to engage with ordinary people in need of help – anything less, given his political views, would make him a hypocrite. But he is not omniscient. He cannot know the backstory of every individual who crosses his path. He cannot vet every person before he sends an email.

It would be foolish, however, to take the professions of concern about Loach from the Board and the Jewish Labour Movement at face value. In fact, their opposition to him relates to a much more fundamental rift about what can and cannot be said about Israel, one in which the IHRA definition serves as the key battleground.

Toxic discourse

Their attacks highlight an increasingly, and intentionally, toxic discourse surrounding antisemitism that now dominates British public life. Through the recent publication of its so-called 10 pledges, the Board of Deputies has required all future Labour leaders to accept this same toxic discourse or face Corbyn’s fate.

It is no coincidence that Loach’s case has such strong echoes of Corbyn’s own public hounding.

Both are rare public figures who have dedicated their time and energies over many decades to standing up for the weak against the strong, defending those least able to defend themselves.

Both are survivors of a fading generation of political activists and intellectuals who continue to champion the tradition of unabashed class struggle, based on universal rights, rather than the more fashionable, but highly divisive, politics of identity and culture wars.

Loach and Corbyn are the remnants of a British post-war left whose inspirations were very different from those of the political centre and the right – and from the influences on many of today’s young.

Fight against fascism

At home, they were inspired by the anti-fascist struggles of their parents in the 1930s against Oswald Moseley’s Brown Shirts, such as at the Battle of Cable Street. And in their youth they were emboldened by the class solidarity that built a National Health Service from the late 1940s onwards, one that for the first time provided health care equally for all in the UK.

Abroad, they were galvanised by the popular, globe-spannning fight against the institutional racism of apartheid in South Africa, a struggle that gradually eroded western governments’ support for the white regime. And they were at the forefront of the last great mass political mobilisation, against the official deceptions that justified the US-UK war of aggression against Iraq in 2003.

But like most of this dying left they are haunted by their generation’s biggest failure in international solidarity. Their protests did not end the many decades of colonial oppression suffered by the Palestinian people and sponsored by the same western states that once stood by apartheid South Africa.

The parallels between these two western-backed, settler-colonial projects, much obscured by British politicians and the media, are stark and troubling for them.

Purge of class politics

Loach and Corbyn’s demonisation as antisemites – and parallel efforts across the Atlantic to silence Bernie Sanders (made more complicated by his Jewishness) – are evidence of a final public purge by the western political and media establishments of this kind of old-school class consciousness.

Activists like Loach and Corbyn want a historical reckoning for the west’s colonial meddling in other parts of the world, including the catastrophic legacy from which so-called “immigrants” are fleeing to this day.

It was the west that pillaged foreign soils for centuries, then armed the dictators supposedly bringing independence to these former colonies, and now invade or attack these same societies in bogus “humanitarian interventions”.

Similarly, the internationalist, class-based struggle of Loach and Corbyn rejects a politics of identity that, rather than recognising the west’s long history of crimes committed against women, minorities and refugees, channels the energies of the marginalised into a competition for who may be allowed to sit at the top table with a white elite.

It is precisely this kind of false consciousness that leads to the cheering on of women as they head up the military-industrial complex, or the excitement at a black man becoming US president only to use his power to set new records in extrajudicial killings abroad and the repression of political dissent at home.

Loach and Corbyn’s grassroots activism is the antithesis of a modern politics in which corporations use their huge wealth to lobby and buy politicians, who in turn use their spin-doctors to control the public discourse through a highly partisan and sympathetic corporate media.

Hollow concern

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement are very much embedded in this latter type of politics, exploiting a political identity to win a place at the top table and then use it to lobby for their chosen cause of Israel.

If this seems unfair, remember that while the Board and the Jewish Labour Movement have been hammering on about a supposed antisemitism crisis on the left defined chiefly in terms of its hostility to Israel, the right and far-right have been getting a free pass to stoke ever greater levels of white nationalism and racism against minorities.

These two organisations have not only averted their gaze from the rise of the nationalist right – which is now embedded inside the British government – but have rallied to its side.

In particular, the Board’s leaders – as well as the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who publicly reviled Corbyn as an antisemite days before last year’s general election – have barely bothered to hide their support for the Conservative government and prime minister Boris Johnson.

Their professions of concern about racism and their attacks on the charitable status of Show Racism the Red Card ring all the more hollow, given their own records of supporting racism.

Both have repeatedly backed Israel in its violations of human rights and attacks on Palestinians, including Israel’s deployment of snipers to shoot men, women and children protesting against more than a decade of suffocating Gaza with a blockade.

The two organisations have remained studiously silent on Israel’s racist policy of allowing football teams from illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank to play in its football league in violation of FIFA’s rules.

And they have supported the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund in the UK, even as it finances racist settler projects and forestation programmes that are intended to displace Palestinians from their land.

Their hypocrisy has been boundless.

Truth turned on its head

The fact that the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement have been able to exercise such clout against Loach on allegations for which there is no evidence indicates how enthusiastically the Israel lobby has been integrated into the British establishment and serves its purposes.

Israel is a key pillar of an informal western military alliance keen to project its power into the oil-rich Middle East. Israel exports its oppressive technology and surveillance systems, refined in ruling over the Palestinians, to western states hungry for more sophisticated systems of control. And Israel has helped tear up the international rulebook in entrenching its occupation, as well as blazing a trail in legitimising torture and extrajudicial executions – now mainstays of US foreign policy.

Israel’s pivotal place in this matrix of power is rarely discussed –because western establishments have no interest in having their bad faith and double standards exposed.

The Board and the Jewish Labour Movement are helping to police and enforce that silence about Israel, a key western ally. In truly Orwellian style, they are turning the charge of racism on its head – using its against our most prominent and most resolute anti-racists.

And better still for western establishments, figures like Loach and Corbyn – veterans of class struggle, who have spent decades immersed in the fight to build a better society – are now being battered into oblivion on the anvil of identity politics.

Should this perversion of our democratic discourse be allowed to continue, our societies will be doomed to become even uglier, more divisive and divided places.

*

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog.

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

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COVID-19: New Battle in Capitalism’s War on the Black Working Class

April 9th, 2020 by Black Alliance for Peace

“No Retreat, No Compromise: Defeat the War Against the African/Black Working Class,” announced the campaign of the Black Alliance for Peace before coronavirus, before the collapse of the global economy, before the lockdowns and calls for militarization of our communities, before the “discovery” by the country that African Americans had healthcare outcomes even more disastrous than colonized peoples in the global South.

BAP understood then, as we understand today, that structural violence is a permanent feature of the colonial/capitalist system. That understanding helps us to avoid the reformist fantasies held by many that the human rights crisis facing Africans in the U.S. can be resolved through piecemeal adjustments in state policies and expansion of “opportunities” by capitalism in its neoliberal form.

That is why we are not confused or demoralized by the circumstances we face at this COVID-19 moment.  For BAP, and the Black Left in general, the moment reaffirms the strategic prioritization of developing the capacities of the Black left in the U.S. There will be no radical change in the United States without an independent organized Black left.

NO RETREAT, NO COMPROMISE: BAP on the Frontlines of Struggle

There are close to 400,000 cases of coronavirus in the U.S. with over 12,000 deaths. Fear is pervasive and the material deprivation unmistakable with the lines for food pantries and the stories of desperation being shared as people are out of money and food. But as Glen Ford pointed out, it is not the coronavirus that is the culprit but the disease of capitalism that is responsible for the absence of a national healthcare system and the insecurity of millions living paycheck to paycheck, that is if they had a job.

But there is resistance.

BAP individual and organizational members are involved in deep base-building work from Washington D.C. and Baltimore to Oakland, California. Those efforts at building community assistance programs and providing educational materials have been curtailed by the restrictions on movement and travel, but they continue in places like Baltimore where BAP member organization and BAP-Baltimore collective, the Ujima Peoples Party for Progress, is involved in support work with public housing residents in Douglas Homes.

Cooperation Jackson, a BAP member organization, has taken the lead in calling for a general strike for May 1st.  “A Call to Action: Towards a General Strike to End the COVID-19 Crisis and Create a New World,” provides the rationale and the broad demands that Cooperation Jackson says must  ground the strike. The overall principle and strategic goal of the action is that the people must “make demands that will transform our broken and inequitable society, and build a new society run by and for us – the working-class, poor, oppressed majority.”

BAP and Political Education:

Liberals use the diversionary presence of Trump to place the blame for system failure on the mercurial leadership of that one individual. This is a position that oppressed people cannot afford to embrace.
On April 11 and 12th, the Black is Back Coalition for Peace, Social Justice and Reparations will host a national Zoom-based Webinar to build resistance to both the short-term COVID-19 crisis and the longer-term struggle to defeat the colonial/capitalist system that reproduces the conditions and relations of exploitation and oppression generation after generation.

BAP is a member of the BIB, and our National Organizer, Ajamu Baraka, will be a featured speaker. The event will be over two days and will begin at 10am EST on April 11th and 12th.  You can find more information here and here.

Ajamu Baraka, BAP’s National Organizer, argues that COVID-19 has stripped away all pretenses to U.S. exceptionalism. For Baraka, millions are starting to see that the capitalist “emperor has no clothes.” That the coronavirus triggered the latest and most profound systemic failure and has in the process exposed that the interests of the rulers are very different from the interests and needs of the majority of the people.

The message that the interests of Black workers are very different than those of the rulers has not been lost on Black workers. They see the phony and hypocritical appreciation white America is supposed to have for its “essential workers today,” the majority of whom are Black, when before the virus they were being treated like disposables.

In her piece “I Mind Dying,” Erica Caines, BAP member and writer at Hoodcommunist, calls attention to the objective realities of those “heroes” who are out of necessity forced to work and face constant danger for themselves and their families as a result.

Pan African Community Action (PACA) and BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman explores an important issue that BAP has been raising since the beginning of the current crisis. “Expect Police-Military Repression Amid the Crisis of COVID-19 and Its Aftermath” examines the likelihood that the state will use the coronavirus emergency to further strengthen its repressive capacity.
BAP continues to make the connection between the national or domestic and the international or global. In fact, an understanding of domestic issues and politics are impossible without contextualizing those issues and politics within that interconnected framework.

Margaret Kimberley, from Black Agenda Report (BAR) and member of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, keeps the focus on the deadly consequences of U.S. sanctions on the people of Venezuela and Iran in her piece, “Standing with Venezuela and Iran.

The fact that these measures constitute crimes against humanity as collective punishments against the civilian population of those countries matters very little to the Trump Administration and its supporters in the Democrat Party because non-European lives have never “mattered.”

But BAP will never abandon the people of Iran and Venezuela. See the BAP statement on Venezuela here.

No Retreat, No Compromise

Coordinating Committee, Black Alliance for Peace

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More than 2,000 people working in the healthcare industry have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 in the Detroit metropolitan area sending further tremors through the already heavily-shaken region which has been identified as a major “hotspot” in the pandemic.

A spokesperson for Beaumont Hospital system said on April 6 that 1,500 of their employees have symptoms consistent with COVID-19. These numbers include 500 nurses.

At Sinai-Grace Hospital, a group of nurses staged a sit-in demanding that additional staff be hired and assigned to their shift. The nurses emphasized that there was not enough personnel to address the needs of the patients.

These nurses were then told to go home. Another nurse two weeks earlier was terminated by Sinai-Grace for raising the same concerns in a social media post.

Henry Ford Hospital announced on April 8 that over 700 of its 31,000 employees had tested positive for COVID-19. 718 patients battling the virus are being treated in the five Henry Ford Hospital campuses across Detroit and its suburbs.

With these two healthcare systems combined, Beaumont and Henry Ford, is where in excess of 2,000 employees have come down with COVID-19. The situation has created much anxiety and anger among workers in the hospital systems.

Nurses at Beaumont Hospital issued a statement during the week of April 6 demanding additional personal protective equipment (PPE), additional pay, free and regular testing, and screening, housing allowances and the hiring of additional staff. A Facebook page group has sprung up in support of these workers called “Stand with Beaumont Nurses.” 

The Facebook page has 1,300 members stating in its mission that: “Beaumont nurses need our help. Nurses at all eight Beaumont hospitals are working without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). They are short staffed due to illness and hospital mismanagement, so they are being forced to work long hours and in situations that might not fit their skill sets. They are putting their families and communities at risk because of their exposure to COVID-19 at work. If they speak out about these issues, they risk losing their jobs.”

Three nurses from the Detroit area have already died from the virus. Others within public safety, emergency medical services and public transportation have also been sickened and died.

Department of Transportation (DDOT) bus driver Jason Hargrove became the face of the plight of municipal workers in late March when he posted a video on Facebook complaining about a passenger coughing on the bus without covering up their face. Within a week the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26 member was dead from COVID-19.

Hargrove on his post said: “It was about 8 or 9 people on the bus and she stood there and coughed and never covered up her mouth. We out here as public workers trying to do our job, trying to make an honest living, trying to care of our families, but for you to get on the bus and stand on the bus and cough several times without covering your mouth — and you know that we are in the middle of a pandemic — that lets me know that some folks don’t care.”

The DDOT driver left behind a wife and three children. His widow has spoken to ABC News where she recounted the daily distress Hargrove experienced working under the conditions prevalent in the city as the pandemic unfolded.

A rapid rise in COVID-19 cases in Detroit and other areas throughout Michigan has laid bare the social consequences of years of impoverishment, the lack of universal healthcare and dangerous working conditions. The termination of water services and the lack of adequate food outlets have compounded with the high incidences of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other ailments which impact African Americans making the virus a serious threat to the health and well-being of the entire region.

African Americans Disproportionately Affected by Pandemic

As of early April, the United States has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the world where municipalities such as New York City, Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore have been the source of a large number of the 395,000 cases resulting in 12, 800 deaths. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been documenting the number cases and deaths on a daily basis. 

Internationally there were 1,357,000 cases reported as of April 8 while nearly 80,000 have died. COVID-19 cases have been reported in 212 countries. 

Within these statistics the number of African Americans contracting and succumbing to the virus has prompted alarm among community and public leaders locally, statewide and nationally. In almost every city and state where COVID-19 has surfaced on a significant level, African Americans have been disproportionately impacted.

According to a report published on April 7 by Vox.com, it says:

“As of Tuesday, Black people made up 33 percent of cases in Michigan and 40 percent of deaths, despite being just 14 percent of the state’s population. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, where Black people represent 26 percent of the population, they made up almost half of the county’s 945 cases and 81 percent of its 27 deaths, according to a ProPublica report. In Illinois, Black people made up 42 percent of fatalities but make up only 14.6 percent of the state’s population. In Chicago, the data is even graver: Black people represented 68 percent of the city’s fatalities and more than 50 percent of cases but only make up 30 percent of the city’s total population.” 

On April 7 the State of Michigan reported more than 5,500 cases of the virus in Detroit with an official death total of 222. These figures may represent an underreporting of cases due to the difficulty people had with testing during the early weeks of the pandemic in the city. Some people have died of symptoms suspected to be COVID-19 prior to being tested. Rapid testing kits have been introduced to Detroit and a trial study of the prescription drug hydroxychloroquine is being conducted at Henry Ford Hospital.

Much controversy has surrounded the medication utilized to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Some physicians have suggested that patients suffering from COVID-19 have shown positive results after treatment while others point out that more research is needed. President Donald Trump has championed the medication in several White House Coronavirus Task force briefings. Many African Americans are weary of utilizing the patient population in Detroit as an experimental group for testing the drug. 

At present drive thru testing facilities are busy every day at the State Fairground and Beaumont Hospital. In the state of Michigan figures released on April 8 said that there were over 20,000 COVID-19 cases and nearly 1,000 deaths.

The southern city of New Orleans has too been a major focal point for the spread of the disease. A pattern of disparate impact is reinforced in the Louisiana city where large numbers of African Americans reside.

Statistics related to comorbidities are also quite revealing. The above-mentioned article from Vox.com notes: “This is also backed up by data released in Louisiana on Monday (April 6). In the state, the leading underlying medical conditions in patients who tested positive for coronavirus are hypertension (66.4 percent), diabetes (43.52 percent), chronic kidney disease (25.1 percent), and obesity (24.7 percent).”

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke to various national media outlets on the crisis inside this Midwestern city of 2.7 million people. Over 50 percent of cases in Chicago are among African Americans while 72 percent of the people killed are from the same demographic.

University of Chicago Medical School faculty member Dr. Monica Peek who studies racial disparities in healthcare said that many of the people considered essential workers in the service industry are African Americans. African Americans, who are more likely to have underlying health conditions, are still expected to come to work.

Dr. Peek said of the situation: “When the city puts out orders for people to shelter in place … the grocery stores are open … public transit is still open. And the people that are working in those jobs are primarily or disproportionately racial or ethnic minorities.” 

Community Response in Detroit

Streets are largely empty in Detroit due to the state of emergency declared by Michigan Governor Gretchin Whitmer on March 12 which has been reinforced by a “state at home” order. Even in grocery stores and pharmacies, managers are limiting the number of people who can enter the establishment.

Lines formed outside of several supermarkets in the Midtown District where customers lined up six feet apart waiting to enter the front doors. The normally bustling restaurants, bars, schools, colleges and universities, churches, mosques and other religious institutions remained closed to public gatherings. Some restaurants have shifted to carry-out and delivery only service requiring far fewer workers.

There is strong solidarity with healthcare workers, bus drivers, grocery store employees and other essential workers expressed through signs and banners located on street corners around the Detroit Medical Center and other hospitals. Many bus drivers remain on the job while a high rate of absenteeism is being reported.

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition, a community organization concerned with local, national and international issues, has been holding its regular weekly meetings via conference calls since March 16. Discussions have centered-around the need to guarantee services for the people suffering from the pandemic and threatened by its very existence.

Governor Whitmer in a recent press conference requested volunteers in the medical field from around the U.S. to come to Detroit and assist with pandemic relief. Moratorium NOW! Coalition has told the governor to request the cooperation of Cuban medical personnel. This would be a direct challenge to the six decades-long blockade and an enormous benefit to the healthcare system in the state which is reaching near capacity in regard to hospital space, equipment along with the shortages of personnel and equipment.

Moratorium NOW! Coalition has established a sub-committee to demand Cuban medical relief to Detroit and other areas throughout the state. The Cuba Caravan will be holding a joint event online with Moratorium NOW! Coalition in commemoration of May Day, where there will be a review on the current state of the blockade and U.S.-Cuba relations.

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

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Coronavirus: Europe Can Go “the Italian Way”?

April 9th, 2020 by Paul Antonopoulos

As coronavirus began spreading across China and devastating the once prosperous city of Wuhan, Western countries should have immediately begun preparing to deal with what would later be announced as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).  

The results of the carelessness of the political elite is evident. To date, the United States leads in the number of infected people of 400,000. This is largely because of the inconsistency in the measures taken by the White House, where U.S. President Donald Trump even had the arrogance to announce that lockdowns and normalcy will return to normal after Western Easter.

In Europe, the most dramatic situation is in Italy, where more than 135,000 cases of infection and 17,000 deaths from coronavirus are registered. For the EU, the situation in Italy should have been an occasion to join forces in the fight against the pandemic. However, each European country confronts the coronavirus separately, increasingly distancing itself from the problems of its neighbors, demonstrating that the liberal globalized order which the EU was a supposed champion of is collapsing under pressure. This has created a realpolitik situation where states are now contracting into self-serving agendas.

Probably, a significant share of responsibility for such a catastrophic situation should be placed on Germany, which for many years has sought recognition for its leading role in the EU, claiming the status of a “system-forming state.” But German authorities cannot effectively counter a pandemic even in their own country where over 2,000 people have already died. In terms of the number of infected, Germany is in fourth place in the world, behind the United States, Italy and Spain. In just one day on April 2 6,174 people were infected with the dangerous virus in Germany. The total number of cases is nearly at 110,000. This is the predicament that Germany finds itself in despite having what is considered one the best healthcare system in the world.

Ironically it is little Greece, once the “black sheep” of Europe and considered “lazy” that has been a shining light and embarrassing their European counterparts. Berlin and Brussels decimated the Greek healthcare system with its strict austerity measures imposed since 2010 when the financial crisis began, and saw funding in the sector reduce by upwards of 50%. This reduction saw 35,000 Greek doctors emigrate to Germany alone by 2015 – this does not include doctors who went elsewhere as well. While Germany struggles to contain the coronavirus, Greece has 1,832 cases and 81 deaths. Even when adjusted for per capita, Italy’s fatality rate is almost 40 times greater than Greece. But even when compared to countries with a similar population like Belgium that has 2,035 deaths and a far higher GDP without a devastated healthcare system, it gives an insight in how effective early lockdowns and closure of the borders has been for Greece – something the overwhelming majority of the EU did not do.

But Greece is only one standout case on a continent that has seen the traditional powerhouses like Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK absolutely devasted. The EU in fact recognizes the inability to contain the pandemic on its own. As a result, Italy accepted the help of Russia, which sent several planes to the Mediterranean country with equipment for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19, with modern disinfection means, as well as teams of high-class medical specialists. At the same time, Moscow confirms its readiness for dialogue with European countries in expanding cooperation in the fight against coronavirus. Russia was able to develop more effective methods to counter the pandemic. While in Germany 288 people died in just one day from complications caused by coronavirus, in Russia, for the entire time of the terrible pandemic, the number of deaths from the dangerous infection is at 63 people.

Of course, when it comes to people’s lives, such statistics is not a reason for pride or gloating. But the countries of the EU could somehow use the experience of Russia in confronting COVID-19 and learn from it despite the bruised egos it may create. After all, only by joint efforts, abandoning political differences and ideological prejudices, the world community will be able to defeat the deadly infection.

Unfortunately, the United States, together with Great Britain, the EU, Ukraine, and Georgia, blocked the Russian draft resolution at the UN General Assembly on countering the pandemic, claiming there were some deceptive purposes in the Russian call to establish closer cooperation between all countries of the world and temporarily abandon mutual trade restrictions, sanctions and profiteering of essential goods.

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Trump Regime COVID-19 Blame Game

April 9th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

The US needs enemies to pursue its imperial agenda. None exist so they’re invented.

Most often they’re sovereign independent nations the US doesn’t control, making them a prime targets for regime change — notably if they’re oil rich like Iran and Venezuela or powerful enough to challenge US hegemonic aims like Russia and China.

Time and again, US regimes falsely blame other nations for their own wrongdoing.

Russia is a prime target, blamed repeatedly by US hardliners for things it had nothing to do with.

The Russians did it Big Lie has a life of its own, notably because US establishment media operate as press agents for the imperial state and other privileged interests — at the expense of truth and full disclosure.

China is a prime target because of its growing prominence on the world stage politically, economically and militarily.

Major Sino/US differences have nothing to do with trade, everything to do with Washington wanting China marginalized, weakened, contained and isolated industrially, technologically, and militarily.

Trump and others surrounding him turned truth on its head, calling COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus.”

Most likely it originated in the US. A Taiwanese virologist suggested it, saying  “Japanese (nationals visited) Hawaii (in September 2019) and returned home infected.”

Since 2018, China also had significant outbreaks of bird flu and African swine flu. Was bad luck responsible or US biowarfare — its specialty throughout the post-WW II period, along with use of chemical, radiological and other banned weapons.

Since gaining independence from US control in 1959, Washington waged war on Cuba by other means — following its humiliating 1961 Bay of Pigs defeat by Cuban revolutionary forces.

US proxies attacked the country’s sugar mills by air. A Belgian ship in Havana was blown up, killing crew members and dock workers.

Stores, theaters and other targets were dynamited. Dozens of bombings and other attacks occurred.

Hundreds of attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro failed. The CIA conducted biological warfare against the country.

Toxic viruses destroyed sugar cane and other crops. A US biological attack contaminated half a million pigs in Cuba with swine fever.

Dengue fever introduced in the country harmed over 340,000 people, killing at least 158, including 101 children.

Cubana flight 455 was terror-bombed in by former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles, killing passengers and crew on board.

Despite all of the above and much more thrown at Cuba by Washington and its proxies, the country remains proudly independent of US control.

It remains on the US target list for regime change along with all other sovereign independent countries — what the scourge of US imperialism is all about, a diabolical plot to achieve unchallenged global dominance, no matter the human cost.

Failure by the Trump regime to address COVID-19 outbreaks in the US responsibly bears full responsibility for growing outbreaks that could have and should have been brought under control by now.

The US knew of the threat since early 2017 but did nothing to prepare. Claiming what’s ongoing was “unforeseen” by Trump is one of many of his bald-faced Big Lies.

If responsible actions were taken at the time, things would likely be under control as China achieved in controlling and largely eliminating outbreaks — even though one or more new waves remain possible in the country and elsewhere.

According to the Daily Beast (DB), citing information from two US officials and a Trump regime cable, “the White House…launch(ed) a communications  plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a ‘cover-up’ and creating a global pandemic.”

Trump’s National Security Council appears to be behind the mass deception campaign.

The cable obtained by DB claims Beijing “hid news of the virus from its own people for weeks, while suppressing information and punishing doctors and journalists who raised the alarm.”

No evidence was presented because none exists. The Trump regime’s anti-China blame game continues spreading disinformation to deflect attention from its own malfeasance.

According to Science Business on April 7, “China (and) its scientists led the way in tackling the virus.”

“They won international praise for hitting several key milestones in understanding the novel, fast-moving virus.”

False accusations against its leadership “became a political weapon in…the US, the UK and Canada.”

Biomedical Sciences Professor Ian Jones explained that “many research findings from the Chinese experience are now appearing,” providing valuable information to other nations.

Lancet editor Richard Horton noted that Chinese scientists “took time to write up their findings in a foreign language and seek publication in a medical journal thousands of miles away.”

“Their rapid and rigorous work was an urgent warning to the world. We owe those scientists enormous thanks.”

University of Southampton senior research fellow Michael Head said “we’re seeing reasonable cooperation between China and elsewhere,” adding:

“The Chinese have been leading the way in publishing open-access evidence on case management, genomics and numerous areas of public health and epidemiology, which has been vital in informing the response in more or less every country.”

The Trump regime is an obstacle to tackling outbreaks domestically by failing to supply states and cities with federal direction, along with enough ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE) from the national stockpile.

The Journal of the American Medical Association noted that China “improved its epidemic response capacity” since the 2002–03 SARS outbreak.

The New England Journal of Medicine explained that evidence doesn’t support claims about fake numbers from China.

Science magazine noted that normality is beginning to return to China, saying:

“Three-quarters of China’s workforce was back on the job as of 24 March.”

“China has done what few believed was possible: Bring a blazing epidemic of a respiratory virus to a virtual standstill.”

Most new infections have been imported by incoming air passengers.

China is leading the world in dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks. Falsely blaming its authorities by the Trump regime is an attempt shift attention from its own bungled response.

China’s response was draconian but effective. If other nations followed its example, COVID-19 would likely have been brought under control by now.

China has about 83,000 confirmed cases. Numbers in the US exceed 435,000 and are increasing by many thousands more daily — nearly 30% of world outbreaks.

Given how the Trump regime mishandled things, it’s unclear when outbreaks will be brought under control in the US.

So far about 1% of the US population is infected with the virus. It’s unknown how much further it may spread or for how long.

Trump’s focus on corporate interests, stock market performance, and imperial aggression over human health and welfare at home suggests the issue could fester for some time.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Phantoms of “The Operation”

April 9th, 2020 by Edward Curtin

“Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.”   – Shakespeare, King Lear

Many thousands of New Yorkers have temporarily moved into the small Massachusetts town (permanent population approximately 7,000) where I live because of fear and panic created by fraudulent disease and death data gathered and disseminated under the umbrella term Covid-19. 

Such deceitful, fear-inducing news concerning diseases is old hat, but this time it’s part of perhaps the biggest propaganda campaign in modern history, resulting in an unprecedented government crackdown on people’s freedom, a massive transfer of trillions of public dollars to the banks and corporations, and crumbs for average Americans.  In my little town, second vacation homes,

Airbnbs, room rentals, and hotel rooms are packed. It is a flight to “safety” reminiscent of the months following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks that originated from a U.S. government bioweapons laboratory.  In the years immediately following those attacks, McMansions were built throughout these hills and local houses were bought up like penny candy as New Yorkers flooded the area.  Now as then, the wealthy refugees absconding on the road of flight accept official explanations and arrange their lives accordingly. Little is learned as repetition compulsion rules and the latest terror alert has them cowering in fear, playing their parts in a theatrical production conceived by master dramatists. 

Let’s call it “The Operation.”

During the day, you can see small numbers of them out walking, yards apart, on the country roads. The downtown streets are deserted day and night. This in a town that over the past twenty years has become an upscale movie set catering to tourists and second-home owners who have brought great wealth with them, making it very difficult for regular people to afford the town and survive on jobs in the service economy.

Now that the country has been brought to a halt by the government shutdown, the regular people are screwed big-time. Many small businesses will never again open. The town’s largest employer, Jane Iredale cosmetics, the perfect employer for life the movie, has just laid off forty-seven employees. Make-up for the psycho-social drama might run short now, even though the theater has temporarily gone indoors. I don’t know if Iredale’s mascara (Italian, maschera, mask) is still available.

In normal times, the town would be filled with people frequenting the restaurants, cafes, and boutiques, parading down the streets dressed like movie stars in SoHo. Black clad actors.  Now it is a ghost town without many ghosts.  The few you do see wear cloth or paper masks.

The word mask comes from Latin, larva, a ghost, specter, a disembodied spirit – a mask.  Larvatus, masked, a personality, or person, an actor, one who wears a mask. Person, Persona, a mask, a false face personare – to sound through the hole in the mask.

Shakespeare was right.  To grasp the social play, one must be a theater critic.  There is a reason ghosts play such important parts in his plays.  If life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, then what are we the cast?  Are we but seldom masters of our fate but usually only underlings, dancing to the tunes our masters play for us?  It seems tis so.

For the paper and cloth masks people are wearing are just a second layer of masking, the first being what sociologists – diminutive descendants of Shakespeare – call status/roles and regular people just call roles, even when they don’t know they are playing them, which is most of the time. Most people associate playing a role with being phony, while failing to notice that social life is comprised of such play-acting, “as if” the play were natural.  To admit that it is fictitious and that one is performing in a play written and directed by someone else is to open a trapdoor beneath one’s feet. 

The sociological term status refers to the very many positions one occupies in a lifetime such as occupational titles, family positions, even racial statuses that society imposes on people.  So a person could, for example, be categorized as a medical doctor who is a father and an uncle.  Each status – doctor, father, uncle – would have socially imposed expectations attached to it that are called roles that one is expected to play or else one is considered an oddball at best.  To treat them as playful simulations in a life of experimentation, and to treat social titles and statuses as comical, results in one not being considered a team player or actor in the social play.  Only children and crazy people do that.

Imagine you are an impostor and dress in the uniform of an airline pilot.  To pass for a pilot you must know how to perform the role.  In other words, to be a good actor in the role and pass yourself as the “genuine” thing.  This is what Shakespeare meant by all the world’s a stage, with the wooden stage where Hamlet and Othello are performed just being another artificial form of the “naturally” occurring fabricated life of society.  So social life is phony in that sense, which raises the basic question of what then does it mean to be genuine, to be real.

The philosopher René Descartes once said, “As an actor, to conceal his blush of embarrassment, enters the stage masked, so I step forth onto the stage of the world, masked.”

But to be masked is to be hidden, to be a ghost that no one can see, a cipher. So Descartes and Shakespeare were asking us that fundamental question: Who are we?  Are we? 

Nietzsche asked it this way:

Are you genuine?  Or merely an actor?  A representative?  Or that which is represented?  In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor.”

Most people, as good underlings do, have now obeyed the director’s instructions and retreated into their Plato’s caves where they huddle fearfully around the flickering screens that have become their well-nigh reality, and which will become even more so in the future as the powers-that-be push their digital agenda.  It’s still showtime but of a different sort with the performers receiving the director’s cues all electronically. That the cast didn’t write the play and doesn’t know who did doesn’t seem to bother many.  They see it as the only show in town and they’re playing it, and while the anonymity of the digital life adds to the comedy of errors, it may be what many desire.

We live in the culture of the copy in every sense of the term.  There is rarely one of anything, even people.  Long ago Walter Benjamin wrote a famous article called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”  In it he says that the mechanical reproduction of a work of art eliminates its “aura.”  “By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence,” he wrote.  In the age of film and digital screen existence, this is very true for people as well. Uniqueness is fading. The more people live in and by screen images and the propaganda such technology affords to the powerful, the more they can be reproduced.  This of course has happened.  Once the masses had to be gathered into a herd in one place and induced to act in unison. Today place has been replaced with cyberspace and the masquerade ball can be directed without movement.

Welcome.  “The Operation” is just beginning.

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Who Profits from the Pandemic?

April 9th, 2020 by Pepe Escobar

You don’t need to read Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics to understand that neoliberalism – in deep crisis since at least 2008 – is a control/governing technique in which surveillance capitalism is deeply embedded.

But now, with the world-system collapsing at breathtaking speed, neoliberalism is at a loss to deal with the next stage of dystopia, ever present in our hyper-connected angst: global mass unemployment.

Henry Kissinger, anointed oracle/gatekeeper of the ruling class, is predictably scared. He claims that, “sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity.” He’s convinced the Hegemon should “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.” Otherwise, “failure could set the world on fire.”

That’s so quaint. Public trust is dead across the spectrum. The liberal world “order” is now social Darwinist chaos. Just wait for the fire to rage.

The numbers are staggering. The Japan-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), in its annual economic report, may not have been exactly original. But it did note that the impact of the “worst pandemic in a century” will be as high as $4.1 trillion, or 4.8 percent of global GDP.

This an underestimation, as “supply disruptions, interrupted remittances, possible social and financial crises, and long-term effects on health care and education are excluded from the analysis.”

We cannot even start to imagine the cataclysmic social consequences of the crash. Entire sub-sectors of the global economy may not be recomposed at all.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) forecasts global unemployment at a conservative, additonal 24.7 million people – especially in aviation, tourism and hospitality.

The global aviation industry is a humongous $2.7 trillion business. That’s 3.6 percent of global GDP. It employs 2.7 million people. When you add air transport and tourism —everything from hotels and restaurants to theme parks and museums — it accounts for a minimum of 65.5 million jobs around the world.

According to the ILO, income losses for workers may range from $860 billion to an astonishing $3.4 trillion. “Working poverty” will be the new normal – especially across the Global South.

“Working poor,” in ILO terminology, means employed people living in households with a per capita income below the poverty line of $2 a day. As many as an additional 35 million people worldwide will become working poor in 2020.

Switching to feasible perspectives for global trade, it’s enlightening to examine that this report about how the economy may rebound is centered on the notorious hyperactive merchants and traders of Yiwu in eastern China – the world’s busiest small-commodity, business hub.

Their experience spells out a long and difficult recovery. As the rest of the world is in a coma, Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong stresses that China faces a 30 percent decline in external demand at least until next Fall.

Neoliberalism in Reverse?

San Miguel, Bulacan, Philippines, 2016. (Judgefloro, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

In the next stage, the strategic competition between the U.S. and China will be no-holds-barred, as emerging narratives of China’s new, multifaceted global role – on trade, technology, cyberspace, climate change – will set in, even more far-reaching than the New Silk Roads. That will also be the case in global public health policies. Get ready for an accelerated Hybrid War between the “Chinese virus” narrative and the Health Silk Road.

The latest report by the China Institute of International Studies would be quite helpful for the West — hubris permitting — to understand how Beijing adopted key measures putting the health and safety of the general population first.

Now, as the Chinese economy slowly picks up, hordes of fund managers from across Asia are tracking everything from trips on the metro to noodle consumption to preview what kind of economy may emerge post-lockdown.

In contrast, across the West, the prevailing doom and gloom elicited a priceless editorial from The Financial Times. Like James Brown in the 1980s Blues Brothers pop epic, the City of London seems to have seen the light, or at least giving the impression it really means it. Neoliberalism in reverse. New social contract. “Secure” labor markets. Redistribution.

Cynics won’t be fooled. The cryogenic state of the global economy spells out a vicious Great Depression 2.0 and an unemployment tsunami. The plebs eventually reaching for the pitchforks and the AR-15s en masse is now a distinct possibility. Might as well start throwing a few breadcrumbs to the beggars’ banquet.

That may apply to European latitudes. But the American story is in a class by itself.

Mural, Seattle, February 2017. (Mitchell Haindfield, Flickr)

For decades, we were led to believe that the world-system put in place after WWII provided the U.S. with unrivalled structural power. Now, all that’s left is structural fragility, grotesque inequalities, unpayable Himalayas of debt, and a rolling crisis.

No one is fooled anymore by the Fed’s magic quantitative easing powers, or the acronym salad – TALF, ESF, SPV – built into the Fed/U.S. Treasury exclusive obsession with big banks, corporations and the Goddess of the Market, to the detriment of the average American.

It was only a few months ago that a serious discussion evolved around the $2.5 quadrillion derivatives market imploding and collapsing the global economy, based on the price of oil skyrocketing, in case the Strait of Hormuz – for whatever reason – was shut down.

Now it’s about Great Depression 2.0: the whole system crashing as a result of the shutdown of the global economy. The questions are absolutely legitimate: is the political and social cataclysm of the global economic crisis arguably a larger catastrophe than Covid-19 itself?  And will it provide an opportunity to end neoliberalism and usher in a more equitable system, or something even worse?

 ‘Transparent’ BlackRock

Wall Street, of course, lives in an alternative universe. In a nutshell, Wall Street turned the Fed into a hedge fund. The Fed is going to own at least two thirds of all U.S. Treasury bills in the market before the end of 2020.

The U.S. Treasury will be buying every security and loan in sight while the Fed will be the banker – financing the whole scheme.

So essentially this is a Fed/Treasury merger. A behemoth dispensing loads of helicopter money.

And the winner is BlackRock—the biggest money manager on the planet, with tentacles everywhere, managing the assets of over 170 pension funds, banks, foundations, insurance companies, in fact a great deal of the money in private equity and hedge funds. BlackRock — promising to be fully  “transparent” — will buy these securities and manage those dodgy SPVs on behalf of the Treasury.

BlackRock, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, may not be as big as Vanguard, but it’s the top investor in Goldman Sachs, along with Vanguard and State Street, and with $6.5 trillion in assets, bigger than Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank combined.

Now, BlackRock is the new operating system (OS) of the Fed and the Treasury. The world’s biggest shadow bank – and no, it’s not Chinese.

Compared to this high-stakes game, mini-scandals such as the one around Georgia Senator Kelly Loffler are peanuts. Loffler allegedly profited from inside information on Covid-19 by the CDC to make a stock market killing. Loffler is married to Jeffrey Sprecher – who happens to be the chairman of the NYSE, installed by Goldman Sachs.

While corporate media followed this story like headless chickens, post-Covid-19 plans, in Pentagon parlance, “move forward” by stealth.

The price? A meager $1,200 check per person for a month. Anyone knows that, based on median salary income, a typical American family would need $12,000 to survive for two months. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in an act of supreme effrontry, allows them a mere 10 percent of that. So American taxpayers will be left with a tsunami of debt while selected Wall Street players grab the whole loot, part of an unparalleled transfer of wealth upwards, complete with bankruptcies en masse of small and medium businesses.

Fink’s letter to his shareholders almost gives the game away: “I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

And right on cue, he forecasted that, “in the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant reallocation of capital.”

He was referring, then, to climate change. Now that refers to Covid-19.

Implant Our Nanochip, Or Else?

West Virginia National Guard members reporting to a Charleston nursing home to assist with Covid-19 testing. April 6, 2020. (U.S. Army National Guard, Edwin L. Wriston)

The game ahead for the elites, taking advantage of the crisis, might well contain these four elements: a social credit system, mandatory vaccination, a digital currency and a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This is what used to be called, according to the decades-old, time-tested CIA playbook, a “conspiracy theory.” Well, it might actually happen.

A social credit system is something that China set up already in 2014. Before the end of 2020, every Chinese citizen will be assigned his/her own credit score – a de facto “dynamic profile”, elaborated with extensive use of AI and the internet of things (IoT), including ubiquitous facial recognition technology. This implies, of course, 24/7 surveillance, complete with Blade Runner-style roving robotic birds.

The U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Russia and India may not be far behind. Germany, for instance, is tweaking its universal credit rating system, SCHUFA. France has an ID app very similar to the Chinese model, verified by facial recognition.

Mandatory vaccination is Bill Gates’s dream, working in conjunction with the WHO, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Big Pharma. He wants “billions of doses” to be enforced over the Global South. And it could be a cover to everyone getting a digital implant.

Here it is, in his own words. At 34:15: “Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who’s a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person…Because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around.”

Then comes the last sentence which was erased from the official TED video. This was noted by Rosemary Frei, who has a master on molecular biology and is an independent investigative journalist in Canada. Gates says: “So eventually there will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global reopening up.”

This “digital immunity proof” is crucial to keep in mind, something that could be misused by the state for nefarious purposes.

The three top candidates to produce a coronavirus vaccine are American biotech firm Moderna, as well as Germans CureVac and BioNTech.

Digital cash might then become an offspring of blockchain. Not only the U.S., but China and Russia are also interested in a national crypto-currency. A global currency – of course controlled by central bankers – may soon be adopted in the form of a basket of currencies, and would circulate virtually. Endless permutations of the toxic cocktail of IoT, blockchain technology and the social credit system could loom ahead.

Already Spain has announced that it is introducing UBI, and wants it to be permanent. It’s a form insurance for the elite against social uprisings, especially if millions of jobs never come back.

So the key working hypothesis is that Covid-19 could be used as cover for the usual suspects to bring in a new digital financial system and a mandatory vaccine with a “digital identity” nanochip with dissent not tolerated: what Slavoj Zizek calls the “erotic dream” of every totalitarian government.

Yet underneath it all, amid so much anxiety, a pent-up rage seems to be gathering strength, to eventually explode in unforeseeable ways. As much as the system may be changing at breakneck speed, there’s no guarantee even the 0.1 percent will be safe.

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This article was originally published on Consortium News.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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When revolutionary change is most needed, it’s nowhere to be found in the US land of the free and home of the brave in name only — a fantasy democracy, never the real thing, so-called elections part of the charade.

Sanders pretended to be a serious presidential contender in 2016 and in the current race to become Dem nominee.

It was Hillary’s turn to pursue the brass ring twice before. Now it’s Biden’s time, both rock solid establishment figures — their anointment as party standard bearers pre-determined by party bosses. Voters have no say whatever.

That’s how the US system works. If elections produced positive change, especially when most needed like now, they’d be banned.

Throughout his House and Senate tenure in Congress since 1991, Sanders’ voting record belied his public advocacy, largely along Dem party lines.

Like the vast majority of others in Congress, past and present, his soul was and remains for sale at the right price.

He fools many people some of the time, his supporters most always.

A progressive socialist in name only, he’s never been the real thing throughout his public life, including as Burlington, VT mayor in the 1980s.

Abandoning his 2020 campaign, Sanders said:

“I have concluded that this battle for the (Dem) nomination will not be successful. So today I’m announcing the suspension of my campaign.”

“I could not in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot not win and which would interfere with the important work required by all of us in this difficult hour.”

“Today I congratulate Joe Biden, a very decent man (sic) who I will work with to move our progressive ideas forward.”

A formal endorsement of Biden will follow. It’ll likely be similar to his announced support for Hillary in 2016, saying at the time:

“I am endorsing Hillary Clinton…(S)he must become our next president.”

She “understands that we must fix an economy in America that is rigged and that sends almost all new wealth and income to the top one percent.”

Hillary and Biden are two unacceptable sides of the same coin — pro-war, pro-business, anti-government of, by, and for everyone equitably.

In 2016, Sanders falsely added that that the Dem party platform was “the most progressive in the history of the (Dem) party (sic).”

Dem New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs are a shadow of their former forms, regressive, not progressive — social justice in the US targeted for elimination by both right wings of the one-party state, notably since the neoliberal 90s.

When most needed at a time of growing mass unemployment, human misery, and public angst, compounded by a public health crisis, progressive rule in America is more urgently needed than any time since the 1930s decade-long Great Depression.

Franklin Roosevelt led the nation at the time. Today it’s Trump, an anti-populist serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary Americans he’s dismissive toward.

FDR and Congress established an alphabet soup of progressive policies — designed to help Americans in need and revive the economy. They included:

The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to refinance homes and prevent foreclosures.

The Blaine Act that repealed Prohibition, a failed experiment.

Something similar today is vitally needed to end the war on drugs that’s largely a war on Blacks, Latinos, and the poor that created the humanly destructive US prison/industrial complex, the world’s largest by far.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that gave unemployed workers jobs to build roads, bridges, dams, state parks, plant trees, and pursue various forestry and recreational programs.

The Civilian Works Administration (CWA) to provide funds to states to reduce unemployment — later replaced by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), an initiative to revive economic growth, encourage collective bargaining, set maximum work hours, minimum wages, at times prices, and forbid child labor in industry.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide emergency relief for the unemployed.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) — federally controlled to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, economic development, and promote agriculture in the depression-impacted Tennessee Valley area covering most of Tennessee as well as parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) — a counterproductive initiative to decrease supply when badly needed to raise prices.

The Farm Credit Act to help farmers refinance mortgages at below-market rates so they could stay solvent.

The National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act that let labor bargain collectively on equal terms with management for the first time in US history — its benefits largely gone today.

The landmark Social Security Act — the single most program ever enacted for ordinary Americans along with Medicare in the 1960s for seniors and others who qualify.

The Revenue Acts of 1934, 35, and 36 established tax rates for high-income households and corporations to pay their fair share.

The Revenue Act of 1937 aimed to curb tax evasion.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established a minimum wage, a 40-hour week, and time-and-a-half pay for overtime.

The National Housing Act aimed to make housing and mortgages more affordable through FHA and Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) financing.

The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) aimed to bring electrical power to rural and remote areas.

A later in the decade Housing Act provided subsidies to local public housing agencies.

The Railroad Retirement System, separate from Social Security, administered a social insurance program for railroad workers and their families.

The National Youth Administration (NYA) provided grants to high school and college students in return for work, along with on-the-job training.

The Securities and Exchange Act enforced securities laws and the industry. The aim fell far short of fulfillment.

The Bank Act (Glass-Steagall) created the FDIC, insured bank deposits up to $5,000, and separated commercial from investment banks and insurance companies, among other provisions to curb speculation.

Clinton co-presidency era Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation repealed Glass-Steagall.

Along with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) around the same time, a Pandora’s Box of unregulated Wall Street excesses became the new normal that contributes to creating artificial booms and busts like what’s unfolding now.

While New Deal initiatives didn’t end the Great Depression because greater spending was needed, they provided important financial and other support at a time when only government had the resources to help millions of people in dire need.

Dismissive toward public need, Trump and Congress provided little for ordinary people in the corporate bailout bill.

Based on his record in Congress since the 1970s, Biden is like Trump with a rhetorical difference.

While a Sanders presidency would surely fall short of his lofty rhetoric, instead of dropping out of the race at a time of unprecedented economic duress for ordinary people, he should have stepped up his campaign and stayed the course.

Like the 1930s, now is the time for leadership that’s dedicated to helping ordinary Americans in need with a current-day alphabet soup of progressive policies when most needed.

Trump or Biden are neanderthal politicians whose records show indifference toward public need in deference to privileged interests they support exclusively.

A progressive giant is needed to guide the US through unprecedented troubled waters.

Sadly, there’s no one in the race for the White House that remotely meets this standard.

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While NATO countries are mostly being devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, a statement by the Alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg about deepening partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia demonstrates that pressure on Russia will continue unabated and remains a priority. Despite the provocative attitude of the NATO head, many European states such as Italy, France, Serbia are still taking steps to become closer with Russia, ignoring the frustrations of the U.S.

While Atlanticist U.S. and United Kingdom claim there is a Russian threat, we can now see increasing efforts among European countries to improve relations with Russia, which is, of course, to the dismay of Washington. NATO has now completely transformed into an organization to try and completely control its members and run them according to their own geopolitical program and ambitions.

One should not forget the comment by French President Emmanuel Macron who declared NATO is “brain dead.” This is as he continues his ambition for a European Army to act independently of the U.S.-controlled NATO alliance. We also remember the condemnation that European states levelled against U.S. President Donald Trump for his unilateral withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, calling the action unnecessary and provocative. This shows that Europe are taking steps to become more independent and sovereign from U.S. domination.

There is little doubt that the liberal globalized order is collapsing under pressure from coronavirus, however, despite this reality, NATO will continue to fight for its domineering position on the global stage. NATO has lost its unity in terms of its own sense of security. It becomes increasingly obvious there is no future in NATO.

Despite this reality, NATO continues on its ambition to encircle and isolate Russia by wanting to advance Georgian and Ukrainian membership into the Alliance. This is another desperate attempt by NATO to appear relevant in a changing world system that is no longer Atlanticist. Although the U.S. and United Kingdom continue to behave in an Atlanticist manner, European leaders are increasingly accepting the reality that the 21st century is Eurasianist. Both Ukraine and Georgia desperately want to attain NATO membership, but there is a high risk that NATO in the coming decade will become obsolete.

As the world’s system is shifting its power poles from the West to the East, Ukraine and Georgia have more to gain by having strong relations with its immediate neighbors, including Russia, that can serve the basis for a Black Sea cooperation. Russia, Ukraine and Georgia are all Black Sea states, as well as neutral Moldova and NATO members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey – and all have much to gain by creating a peaceful ‘lake’ in the middle of Eurasia. The Black Sea plays an important role as it is connecting Europe with Western Asia and the U.S. needs full access to it to pressurize Russia.

It is for this reason that the issue of Ukraine and Georgia is also important for NATO, but especially for Washington. NATO members have been completely unwilling to help Italy as over 16,000 people have died. Ironically, it was Russia who sent health specialists, doctors, nurses and medical specialists to Italy who is not only a NATO member, but also a European Union one. Therefore, while NATO does not have a unity in itself, its expansion efforts are not only futile when the system it protects inside has collapsed. Rather it is an attempt to regain legitimacy and credibility to other future potential members of the Alliance.

If Black Sea states created a harmonious region, it will become one of the main economic, transportation and energy hubs in the 21st century. By wilfully serving NATO interests, Ukraine and Georgia only merely delay, rather than prevent, a new guiding and rules-based system. With the U.S. having over 10,000 deaths and over 130,000 coronavirus cases, it will not slow down or begin ignoring the structures of NATO to achieve its anti-Russian goals. As the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated NATO is unwilling to help its own allies in times of crisis, who have instead had to rely on Russia for medical assistance.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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Yesterday Mark Sommers QC, the extremely erudite and bookish second counsel for Julian Assange in his extradition hearing, trembled with anger in court. Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser had just made a ruling that the names of Julian Assange’s partner and young children could be published, which she stated was in the interests of “open justice”.

His partner had submitted a letter in support of his Covid 19 related bail application (which Baraitser had summarily dismissed) to state he had a family to live with in London. Baraitser said that it was therefore in the interests of open justice that the family’s names be made public, and said that the defence had not convincingly shown this would cause any threat to their security or well-being. It was at this point Sommers barely kept control. He leapt to his feet and gave notice of an appeal to the High Court, asking for a 14 day stay. Baraitser granted four days, until 4pm on Friday.

I am in lockdown in Edinburgh, but received three separate eye witness reports. They are unanimous that yet again Baraitser entered the court carrying pre-written judgements before hearing oral argument; pre-written judgements she gave no appearance of amending.

There have been two Covid-19 deaths in Belmarsh prison so far. For obvious reasons the disease is ripping through the jail like wildfire. The Department of Justice is admitting to one death, and refuses to give statistics for the number of cases. As even very sick prisoners are not being tested, the figures would arguably not mean much anyway. As the court heard at the bail application, over 150 Belmarsh prison staff are off work self-isolating and the prison is scarcely functioning. It is the most complete definition of lockdown.

The Prison Governors’ Association submitted to the House of Commons Justice Committee (which yesterday morning considered prisoner releases in closed session) that 15,000 non-violent prisoners need to be released to give the jails any chance of managing COVID-19. The Department of Justice has suggested releasing 4,000 of whom just 2,000 have been identified. As of a couple of days ago, only about 100 had actually been released.

The prisons are now practising “cohorting” across the estate, although decisions currently lie with individual governors. Prisoners who have a cough – any cough – are being put together in segregated blocks. The consequences of this are of course potentially unthinkable. Julian has a cough and chronic lung condition for which he has been treated for years – a fact which is not in dispute.

Yesterday Baraitser again followed her usual path of refusing every single defence motion, following pre-written rulings (whether written or merely copied out by herself I know not), even when the prosecution did not object. You will recall that at the first week of extradition hearing proper, she insisted that Julian be kept in a glass cage, although counsel for the US government made no objection to his sitting in the body of the court, and she refused to intervene to stop his strip searching, handcuffing and the removal of his court papers, even though the US government joined the defence in querying her claim she had no power to do this (for which she was later roundly rebuked by the International Bar Association).

Yesterday the US government did not object to a defence motion to postpone the resumption of the extradition hearing. The defence put forward four grounds:

1) Julian is currently too ill to prepare his defence
2) Due to Covid-19 lockdown, access to his lawyers is virtually impossible
3) Vital defence witnesses, including from abroad, would not be able to be present to testify
4) Treatment for Julian’s mental health conditions had been stopped due to the Covid-19 situation.

Baraitser airily dismissed all these grounds – despite James Lewis QC saying the prosecution was neutral on the postponement – and insisted that the May 18 date remains. She stated that he could be brought to the cells in Westminster Magistrates Court for consultations with his lawyers. (Firstly, in practice that is not the case, and secondly these holding cells have a constant thoughput of prisoners which is very obviously undesirable with Covid19).

It is worth noting that the prosecution stated that the US government’s own psychiatrist, appointed to do an assessment of Julian, had been unable to access him in Belmarsh due to Covid 19 restrictions.

This is getting beyond me as it is getting beyond Mark Sommers and the defence team. Even before Covid 19 became such a threat, I stated that I had been forced to the conclusion the British Government is seeking Assange’s death in jail. The evidence for that is now overwhelming.

Here are three measures of hypocrisy.

Firstly, the UK insists on keeping this political prisoner – accused of nothing but publishing – in a Covid 19 infested maximum security jail while the much-derided Iranian government lets Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe out and hopefully will release her altogether.
Which is the inhumane regime?

Secondly, “open justice” allegedly justifies the release of the identities of Julian’s partner and kids, while the state enforces the secrecy of Alex Salmond’s busted accusers, even though the court heard evidence that they specifically colluded to destroy him using, as a deliberate tool, the anonymity afforded to people making sexual accusations.

Thirdly, nobody cultivates her own anonymity more than Vanessa Baraitser who has her existence carefully removed from the internet almost entirely. Yet she seeks to destroy the peace and young lives of Julian’s family.

Pieter Evert sent me this rather good cartoon, for which many thanks:

Keep fighting for Julian’s life and for freedom.

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Originally published in September 2016:

Parliamentary Report Confirms What the Alternative Media Has Been Saying for Years

The UK Parliament just confirmed what the alternative media has been saying for years.

Specifically, a new report from the bipartisan House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee – based on interviews with all of the key British decision-makers, review of documents, and on-the-ground investigations in Africa – found that Libyan war was based on lies, that it destroyed the country, and that it spread terrorism far and wide.

The War Based On Bogus Intelligence … Like the Iraq War

Initially, the report finds that the threat to civilians from Libyan  government forces was dramatically overstated:

Former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, who introduced Resolution 1973 [imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, and laying the groundwork for overthrowing the government], asserted in his speech to the Security Council that “the situation on the ground is more alarming than ever, marked by the violent re-conquest of cities”. He stressed the urgency of the situation, arguing that “We have very little time left—perhaps only a matter of hours.” Subsequent analysis suggested that the immediate threat to civilians was being publicly overstated and that the reconquest of cities had not resulted in mass civilian casualties.

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The proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi  [which was the basis for the West’s war to overthrow Gaddafi]was not supported by the available evidenceThe Gaddafi regime had retaken towns from the rebels without attacking civilians in early February 2011 ….Gaddafi regime forces targeted male combatants in a civil war and did not indiscriminately attack civilians. More widely, Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year record of appalling human rights abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.

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On 17 March 2011, Muammar Gaddafi announced to the rebels in Benghazi, “Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and they are safe. We never pursued them at all.” Subsequent investigation revealed that when Gaddafi regime forces retook Ajdabiya in February 2011, they did not attack civilians. Muammar Gaddafi also attempted to appease protesters in Benghazi with an offer of development aid before finally deploying troops.

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An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could not corroborate allegations of mass human rights violations by Gaddafi regime troops. However, it uncovered evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that

much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge.

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In short, the scale of the threat to civilians was presented with unjustified certainty. US intelligence officials reportedly described the intervention as “an intelligence-light decision”.

Just like the ginned up intelligence used to justify the Iraq war. And the “humanitarian wars” waged over the last couple of decades.

The Libyan Government Was Fighting Terrorists

The report also notes that the Libyan government really was – as Libyan dictator Gaddafi claimed at the time – fighting Islamic terrorists:

Intelligence on the extent to which extremist militant Islamist elements were involved in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion was inadequate.

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Abdelhakim Belhadj and other members of the al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group were participating in the rebellion in March 2011.

Secret intelligence reports from 2011, written before and during the illegal US-led attack on Libya and recently obtained by the Washington Times, state:

There is a close link between al Qaeda, Jihadi organizations, and the opposition in Libya…

Indeed, the Libyan rebel commander admitted at the time that his fighters had links to Al Qaeda.  And see this.

We reported in 2012:

The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terroristsAccording to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:

The Hindustan Times reported last year:

“There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times.

It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.

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(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion.  But NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.)

The Daily Mail reported in 2014:

A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.

‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline.

She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants.

‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed..

‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’

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‘The White House and senior Congressional members,’ the group wrote in an interim report released Tuesday, ‘deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler [Muammar Gaddafi] who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.’

‘Some look at it as treason,’ said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who participated in the commission’s research.

The West and Its Allies Directly Supported and Armed the Rebels

The UK report confirms that the West and its allies directly supported and armed the rebels:

The combat performance of rebel ground forces was enhanced by personnel and intelligence provided by states such as the UK, France, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. For example, Lord Richards told us that the UK “had a few people embedded” with the rebel forces.

Resolution 1973 called on United Nations member states to ensure the “strict implementation of the arms embargo”. However, we were told that the international community turned a blind eye to the supply of weapons to the rebels. Lord Richards highlighted “the degree to which the Emiratis and the Qataris … played a major role in the success of the ground operation.” For example, Qatar supplied French Milan anti­tank missiles to certain rebel groups. We were told that Qatar channelled its weapons to favoured militias rather than to the rebels as a whole.

The REAL Motivation for War

The real motivation for the war?  The Parliamentary report explains:

A further insight into French motivations was provided in a freedom of information disclosure by the United States State Department in December 2015. On 2 April 2011, Sidney Blumenthal, adviser and unofficial intelligence analyst to the then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported this conversation with French intelligence officers to the Secretary of State:

According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

  1. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
  2. Increase French influence in North Africa,
  3. Improve his internal political situation in France,
  4. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
  5. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.

The sum of four of the five factors identified by Sidney Blumenthal equated to the French national interest. The fifth factor was President Sarkozy’s political self-interest.

Gaddafi Tried to Step Down … But the West Insisted On Violent Regime Change

Gaddafi had offered to hand over power, but the West instead wanted violent regime change. (The British report notes: “By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change.”)

The Parliamentary report notes that Gaddaffi may have been attempting to flee the country when he was killed:

Muammar Gaddafi might have been seeking an exit from Libya in February and March 2011. On 21 February 2011, for example, Lord Hague told reporters that he had seen credible information that Muammar Gaddafi was on his way to exile in Venezuela. Concerted action after the telephone calls conducted by Mr Blair might have led to Muammar Gaddafi’s abdication and to a negotiated solution in Libya. It was therefore important to keep the lines of communication open. However, we saw no evidence that the then Prime Minister David Cameron attempted to exploit Mr Blair’s contacts.

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Political options were available if the UK Government had adhered to the spirit of Resolution 1973, implemented its original campaign plan and influenced its coalition allies to pause military action when Benghazi was secured in March 2011. Political engagement might have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at lesser cost to the UK and to Libya. If political engagement had been unsuccessful, the UK and its coalition allies would not have lost anything. Instead, the UK Government focused exclusively on military intervention. In particular, we saw no evidence that it tried to exploit former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s contacts and influence with the Gaddafi regime.

The U.S. and France were also hell-bent on regime change.  And the New York Times confirms thatHillary Clinton is largely responsible for the violent regime change in Libya.

Why Should We Care?

Why should we care?

Well, the House of Commons report confirms that the Libyan war has wrecked the country:

The Libyan economy generated some $75 billion of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010. This economy produced an average annual per capita income of approximately $12,250, which was comparable to the average income in some European countries. [The former Indian representative to the U.N. notes that, before the war, Libya had less of its population in poverty than the Netherlands.  Libyans had access to free health care, education, electricity and interest-free loans, and women had great freedoms that were applauded by the U.N. Human Rights Council]. Libyan Government revenue greatly exceeded expenditure in the 2000s. … The United Nations Human Development Report 2010—a United Nations aggregate measure of health, education and income—ranked Libya as the 53rd most advanced country in the world for human development and as the most advanced country in Africa.

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In 2014, the most recent year for which reliable figures are available … the average Libyan’s annual income had decreased from $12,250 in 2010 to $7,820.  Since 2014, Libya’s economic predicament has reportedly deteriorated. Libya is likely to experience a budget deficit of some 60% of GDP in 2016. The requirement to finance that deficit is rapidly depleting net foreign reserves, which halved from $107 billion in 2013 to $56.8 billion by the end of 2015. Production of crude oil fell to its lowest recorded level in 2015, while oil prices collapsed in the second half of 2014. Inflation increased to 9.2% driven by a 13.7% increase in food prices including a fivefold increase in the price of flour. The United Nations ranked Libya as the world’s 94th most advanced country in its 2015 index of human development, a decline from 53rd place in 2010.

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In 2016, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that out of a total Libyan population of 6.3 million, 3 million people have been impacted by the armed conflict and political instability, and that 2.4 million people require protection and some form of humanitarian assistance. In its World Report 2016, Human Rights Watch stated that Libya is

heading towards a humanitarian crisis, with almost 400,000 people internally displaced and increasing disruption to basic services, such as power and fuel supplies. Forces engaged in the conflict continued with impunity to arbitrarily detain, torture, unlawfully kill, indiscriminately attack, abduct and disappear, and forcefully displace people from their homes. The domestic criminal justice system collapsed in most parts of the country, exacerbating the human rights crisis

People-trafficking gangs exploited the lack of effective government after 2011, making Libya a key transit route for illegal migration into Europe and the location of a migrant crisis. In addition to other extremist militant groups, ISIL emerged in Libya in 2014, seizing control of territory around Sirte and setting up terrorist training centres. Human Rights Watch documented unlawful executions by ISIL in Sirte of at least 49 people by methods including decapitation and shooting. The civil war between west and east has waxed and waned with sporadic outbreaks of violence since 2014. In April 2016, United States President Barack Obama described post-intervention Libya as a “shit show”. It is difficult to disagree with this pithy assessment.

The Parliamentary report confirms that the Libyan war – like the Iraq war – has ended up spreading terrorism around the globe:

Libyan weapons and ammunition were trafficked across North and West Africa and the Middle East.

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The United Nations Panel of Experts appointed to examine the impact of Resolution 1973 identified the presence of ex-Libyan weapons in Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Gaza, Mali, Niger, Tunisia and Syria. The panel concluded that “arms originating from Libya have significantly reinforced the military capacity of terrorist groups operating in Algeria, Egypt, Mali and Tunisia.” In the 2010-15 Parliament, our predecessor Committee noted that the failure to secure the Gaddafi regime’s arms caches had led to “a proliferation of small arms and light weapons, and some heavier artillery, across North and West Africa”. It identified that Libyan small arms had apparently ended up in the hands of Boko Haram militants.

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In January 2014, Egyptian Islamist insurgents used an ex-Libyan MANPAD to shoot down an Egyptian Army helicopter in the Sinai.

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The FCO told us that “Political instability in Libya has led to a permissive environment for terrorist groups in which to operate, including ISIL [i.e. ISIS] affiliated groups”.  Professor Patrick Porter, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Exeter, agreed with the FCO analysis, stating that “a lack of effective government is creating opportunities for the Islamic State.”

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ISIL has used its presence in Libya to train terrorists. For example, Sefeddine Rezgui, the gunman who killed Western holidaymakers in Tunisia in June 2015, was trained by ISIL at its base in Sabratha along with the two gunmen who killed 22 tourists at the Bardo museum in Tunis. ISIL’s plans may extend beyond terrorism. Vice-Admiral Clive Johnstone, a Royal Navy officer and NATO commander, commented that

We know they [ISIL] have ambitions to go offshore … There is a horrible opportunity in the future that a misdirected, untargeted round of a very high quality weapons system will just happen to target a cruise liner, or an oil platform, or a container ship.

And the UK report confirms that the Libyan war has created a tidal wave of refugees:

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that some 1 million migrants were present in Libya in June 2016. This estimate comprised 425,000 internally displaced Libyans, 250,000 non-Libyan migrants and 250,000 returnees. Most non-Libyan migrants travelled from West Africa, the Horn of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. The most common countries of origin for non-Libyan migrants were Niger, Egypt, Chad, Ghana and Sudan. Between 1 January and 31 May 2016, 47,851 migrants arrived in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. A similar number of migrants attempted the crossing over the same period in 2015. Despite the increased resources committed to Operation Triton, however, crossing the Mediterranean is becoming increasingly hazardous for migrants transiting through Libya. The IOM recorded 2,061 migrants as dead or missing between 1 January and 31 May 2016, which showed a 15% increase in fatalities compared with the same period in 2015.

In other words – just like the Iraq war – the Libyan war was based on fake intelligence, was carried out for reasons having little to do with national security or protecting civilians, destroyed a nation and created a “shit show”, spread terrorism far and wide, and created waves of refugees.

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‘Collateral Murder’ and the My Lai Massacre

April 8th, 2020 by Joe Lauria

To gauge the transformation in the response by the U.S. military, the mainstream media and the public to a U.S. war crime, one need only compare the reactions to two of the most heinous American crimes:  the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the gunning down of innocent Iraqis on a Baghdad street in 2007.

The latter was captured on a cockpit video from attacking Apache helicopters and revealed in a video released by WikiLeaks ten years ago today. Wikileaks obtained the video from a conscientious U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning.

The My Lai incident was revealed to the public in Nov. 1969 through the reporting of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. An army veteran whistleblower, Ronald Ridenhour, had first written in early 1969 to the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and members of Congress revealing credible details about the massacre. It lead to a military investigation.

The probe found that U.S. Army soldiers had killed 504 unarmed people on March 16, 1968  in the village of My Lai, including men, women and children. Some women were gang-raped by the soldiers.  The military investigation led to charges against 26 soldiers.  Just one, Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a C Company platoon leader, was convicted. He was found guilty of the premeditated murder of 109 villagers. (Given a life sentence, he ultimately served only three and a half years under house arrest.).

But Calley’s conviction was largely covered up by the military.  The New York Times ran only a short Associated Press story on Sept. 7, 1969, with few details. Hersh, however, heard something about the incident from a military source in Washington and started poking around. Eventually he got to see Calley in his cell in Georgia and was even allowed to look through classified notes on his case.  Hersh had his story. He pitched it to Look and Life Magazines, but was turned down. Eventually the freelancer published his story at the obscure Dispatch News Service.

Hersh’s Dispatch News Service story picked up by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Nov. 14, 1969.

There was a public outcry after Hersh’s revelation. It was picked up by newspapers across the nation, including on the front pages of The New York Times and Washington Post.  It fueled anti-war sentiment and hatred of President Richard Nixon. Two days following Hersh’s story about 250,000 anti-war protestors gathered at the Washington Monument. “It surpassed in size the civil rights March on Washington in 1964 and was easily the largest — and was perhaps the youngest — antiwar crowd ever assembled in the United States,” the Post reported.

Forty years after the My Lai incident, Apache helicopter gunships patrolling the skies of Baghdad on July 12, 2007 opened fire on a group of civilians on a street below, killing a number of people, including two Reuters journalists, and the driver of a van who had come to pick up the wounded.

During the My Lai incident one brave American serviceman, Hugh Thompson, landed his helicopter between cowering civilians and advancing GIs and told the Americans his gunship would fire on themif they didn’t stop. In Baghdad, one U.S. soldier, Ethan McCord, saved the lives of two Iraqi children over the orders of his superiors.

Where the Similarities End

Some similarities between the two incidents are uncanny. But the outcomes were wholly different.  Both were stories of a U.S. military massacre of innocent civilians, just two instances of many such massacres across Vietnam and Iraq. Both began with a whistleblower, Ridenhour on My Lai and Manning on Baghdad. Both stories were turned down by major media, and later accepted by obscure publications (which then made WikiLeaks well-known). (Manning was first turned down by the Timesand The Washington Post).

But that’s where the similarities end. The My Lai story led to a military investigation and a conviction of a U.S. soldier for mass murder. It caused a global outcry when all the facts became known. It contributed to the growing anti-war movement in the U.S. And it catapulted Hersh into prominence. As a result of his story, the freelancer was hired by The New York Times. 

The Baghdad massacre led to no military investigation or charges against any soldier involved, despite video evidence that was stronger than what came out of My Lai. (The Army photographer who took the photo up top admitted to destroying pictures of the murders being committed.) The whistleblower was not jailed, as Manning was, but was listened to, and it led to an investigation.  The ‘Collateral Murder’ video caused a stir, but hardly a global outcry, and it did not contribute to a U.S. anti-war movement. While WikiLeaks was catapulted into prominence, its publisher did not win a Pulitzer Prize, as Hersh did, but instead is languishing in a London prison on remand pending an extradition request by the United States to stand trial for espionage.

It bears repeating:  At least one American soldier was imprisoned in My Lai. Hersh and the whistleblower did not go to jail.  Not one U.S. soldier has gone to jail for the Baghdad massacre and the whistleblower and the journalist who revealed the crime were both imprisoned.

Manning’s 35-year sentence was commuted in 2017. She was again imprisoned for more than 250 days for refusing to testify to a grand jury against Assange, before she was released last month. Assange remains in a maximum security prison for doing the same job Hersh did.

These fundamentally different outcomes to a strikingly similar situation shows how far American society has sunk into the mire of authoritarianism and obedience.

Ellsberg and Assange

There is another Vietnam-era story that contrasts sharply with WikiLeaks, demonstrating how much the U.S. has changed for the worse in half a century. During the 1973 trial of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers it became known that the government had broken into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and bugged his phone to dig up dirt on him. The judge in the case was also offered the FBI directorship if Ellsberg were convicted.

When this serious prosecutorial misconduct became known, Ellsberg’s case was immediately thrown out and he was a free man.  Fast forward nearly 50 years to Assange’s case. It is now publicly known that a Spanish company, UC Global, was contracted by the Ecuadorian government to conduct 24/7 video surveillance of Assange in the London embassy and that this audio and video–including of privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers–was sold to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In other words, the prosecuting government eavesdropped on the defense preparations. This is even more egregious misconduct than in Ellsberg’s case, though it has not led to the extradition request on espionage charges being immediately tossed out.

At a rally for Assange in London in February I asked Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, why this was so. “The difference is that Dan was tried in a normal court,” he said. “Julian will never be given this opportunity. Julian is going to disappear into a system where not even his lawyers will know what the charges are. Habeas Corpus does not exist for him.  Things are getting worse. Far worse.”

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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe

Featured image: Photo by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on March 16, 1968 in the aftermath of the My Lai massacre. (Wikipedia)

Bureaucrat: Stay Home and Starve

April 8th, 2020 by Kurt Nimmo

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House “coronavirus response coordinator,” said on Saturday all plebs must stay out of grocery stores. She didn’t offer an alternative. Instead, she repeated the hand washing and 6-foot “social distancing” mantra.

“This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the pharmacy, but doing everything you can to keep your family and your friends safe and that means everybody doing the 6-feet distancing, washing their hands,” said the life-long bureaucrat. 

I am reminded of President George H.W. Bush confronting a grocery store scanner on display at the National Grocers Association convention in D.C. in 1992. Bush probably hadn’t seen the inside a grocery store in decades and this new technology struck him as remarkable. He was bedazzled by that red scanner light, part of a mundane reality for millions of Americans.

I seriously doubt Ms. Birx does her own shopping. As a top-level flunky of the state and its preferred transnational corporate crony clients, Brix likely dispatches servants to do the shopping and cooking. She has more important tasks at hand, such as frightening the public into subservience with scary worst-case speculation minus hard data, pushing house arrest, and repeating ad nauseam the hand-wash-social-distance mantra. 

Like Bush, this woman is seriously out of touch. How many Americans will now be frightened out of their wits by the necessity to buy food and feed their families? Does she believe all Americans have the ability and money to employ others (maybe adorned in hazmat suits) to buy food and deliver it—that is if the delivery services have not gone on strike for fear of the virus, an unknown quantity we are told blows in the wind, lays in wait on all surfaces and effuses invisibly from toilet bowls. 

Birx’s insane suggestion—with the full weight of the state behind it—is naturally ignored by millions of Americans that have no choice but to queue up inside grocery stores and pharmacies, daring a virus they are propagandized into believing is everywhere, lethal as the Black Death. 

The Centers for Disease Control, where Ms. Birx formerly worked, has told the nation all Americans must wear face masks, never mind you would be hard-pressed to actually find a medical mask (and if you did, be scorned for denying an N95 mask to “frontline” doctors and nurses). Instead, the CDC wants you to DIY masks out of cloth, or buy one online. 

According to Dr. Dena Grayson—praised by the globalist Aspen Institute for her work with big pharma—the DIY homemade mask craze may help spread the virus.

Like her counterpart Birx, Ms. Grayson—who is married to former Florida Democrat “representative” Alan Grayson—does not offer an alternative. Maybe she is simply too busy playing politics like everyone else in the swamp (she is, after all, a failed Democrat candidate).

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

Featured image is from CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey

End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

April 8th, 2020 by Rep. Ron Paul

For many millions of Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others may celebrate the arrival of spring and the promise of new life. Whatever one’s beliefs, after several weeks of mandatory “stay at home” orders and the complete shutdown of the US economy over the coronavirus, this self-destructive hysteria must end and we must reclaim the freedom and liberty that has provided us so much opportunity as Americans.

To do that we should first understand that much of the hysteria is being generated by a mainstream media that has long prioritized sensationalism over investigating and reporting the truth. Government bureaucrats are also exaggerating the threat of this virus and appear to be enjoying the power and control that fearful people are willingly handing over to them. One “coronavirus” bureaucrat even told us that we can no longer go to the grocery store! So we should just starve?

It is certainly possible to believe that this virus can be dangerous while at the same time pointing out that radical steps are being taken in our society – stay-at-home orders, introduction of de facto martial law, etc. – with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease.

On March 24th, the CDC issued an alert stating that doctors should classify “probable COVID-19” or “likely COVID-19” as Covid-19 deaths. Perhaps that explains the seeming drop-off of pneumonia deaths this year and the simultaneous spike in Covid-19 deaths as some researchers have reported.

The BBC reported last week that, “At present in the US, any death of a Covid-19 patient, no matter what the physician believes to be the direct cause, is counted for public reporting as a Covid-19 death.”

Does that sound like a scientifically sound way of determining how deadly Covid-19 really is?

What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus.

The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”?

Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick”? Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place.

Our country is far less at risk from the coronavirus than it is from the thousands of small and large authoritarians who have suddenly flexed their muscles across the country. President Trump would do well to end this ridiculous shutdown so that Americans can get on with their lives and get back to work.

Americans should remember the tyrants who locked them down next time they go to the ballot box. Let’s demand an end to the shutdown so we can resurrect our economy, our lives, and our liberties!

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Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) is releasing a series of dispatches from Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists reflecting on life in Gaza and the West Bank under the COVID-19 pandemic. As the world grapples with the outbreak, and as we organize mutual aid and solidarity in many cities, we must keep Palestine in both our minds and hearts.

We can inspire ourselves and draw important lessons from experiences of Palestinian life under military curfew, siege and travel restrictions. Far from drawing an equation between self-isolation and occupation, we hope to learn from the strategies Palestinians have employed for decades, and hear their advice for the world in these difficult times.

Now more than ever, Palestine must be free. The brutal siege of Gaza, and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, are tinderboxes for the Coronavirus. The Gaza Strip just confirmed its first cases of the virus. Medical aid must get in, people must have access to testing, and Israel must end its daily restrictions on Palestinian life.

The first dispatch here comes from Asmaa Tayeh. Asmaa lives in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in the north of the Gaza strip, and works as the Operations Manager for We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a citizen journalism project for Palestinian youth in Gaza.

The second dispatch comes from Weeam Hammoudeh. Weeam is a professor and researcher at the Institute of Community and Public Health of Birzeit University, just outside of Ramallah. She coordinates the mental health unit within the institute, and much of her work relates to well-being and quality of life issues within populations. Her research interests are focused on how broader structural and political factors affect health and well-being. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Weeam was part of a research team looking at the concept of uncertainty in the Palestinian context, and how uncertainty impacts people’s lives and mental health.

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Curfews and Mutual Aid: Asmaa Tayeh

Aaron Lakoff (AL): How are you feeling? Are you scared with the Coronavirus now in Gaza?

Asmaa Tayeh (AT): For at least two months, we’ve been hearing news about the whole world suffering from COVID-19. When we first started hearing the news about it from China, I was sure it wouldn’t be a problem for us, because China is so far away, and it would take so much time to get here. Maybe by then there will be a cure.

Then the whole world started to suffer from the Coronavirus, and people started to envy us, saying that the Gaza Strip is one of the only places with no reported cases. They started to say that maybe this is an advantage of the Israeli blockade. I really hated this notion, because the whole world was thinking we were safe, while we’re actually not. Just because you’re in an enclosed place doesn’t mean you’re safe. Because if we have any cases inside the Strip, our enclosure will help the virus spread even more.

We live in a very crowded area, especially in my camp, Jabalia. In each building or flat, there are a minimum of 5-10 people living there. This helps the virus to spread. The world thinks we’re safe, but I really don’t. It means that if we get one case, we could all die.

AL: She says this with a laugh, which I imagine is a coping mechanism in these grim times.

AT: We don’t have the capacity or equipment to keep us safe from this virus. It will spread very easily, and we will start to see the numbers here that we’ve been seeing in Italy and Spain. And after the world thought of us as the luckiest people on Earth, they will think of us as the unluckiest. Because all these other countries at least have emergency plans, the technology and the medicine to fight it.

So I was in fear, to be honest. But I kept going to work, and tried to convince myself that we are going to be safe. Most of us are religious people. We thought, ‘God is merciful. He won’t make us live under two things at once: the Israeli blockade and the Coronavirus.’ One problem at a time!

I actually wanted to stay home, to be honest, but it’s so hard. We’re not used to this. The Gaza Strip is the only area where we can go. We can’t go outside of it. So how can we cope with not moving around inside of it? We can’t just lock ourselves inside our rooms and get used to it. I know it’s hard for other people around the world right now, but it’s much harder for us.

AL: It’s hard for many of us to imagine life in Gaza – being confined to a territory 365 square kilometers in size. That’s smaller than Toronto or the Island of Montreal. Many have called Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison.

At some point in the interview, she mentions casually that today is her birthday.

AT: I just turned 24 today, and for 24 years, I have never been outside of Gaza. I have never seen the world beyond. So it’s gonna be much harder for me to stay home rather than those in the West who are used to getting around and then have to stay in one place. It’s different.

AL: Asmaa said that she celebrated her birthday today with a friend who came over to her place, although her friend said they would soon be quarantined. Her sister did go out and get a birthday cake, and they managed to have a little celebration in the evening.

Are any protective measures being taken in Gaza? For example, are people being asked to not leave their homes?

AT: To be honest, before the first two cases were reported, most people in Gaza used to think about the Coronavirus like me: this is far away from us, we’re safe, and we don’t need to go crazy with protective measures. But after these first cases were reported, we can see some people getting serious about it. We see some people wearing medical masks, using hand sanitizer, or not going to work. But there are still huge amounts of people who are still going out because they think the virus is a lie. I’m trying to understand their psychology. Maybe it’s because they’re used to being unsafe for so long. Maybe they’re numb. They have no feelings of fear because they are just used to this.

AL: Gaza has been under blockade for over a decade, and it’s been such a struggle for people to meet their daily needs. How have the people of Gaza dealt with meeting their day to day needs over the years?

AT: We have this proverb in Arabic that says, loosely translated in English, ‘dying with others makes death easy’. So when you live in these hard circumstances and everything is deteriorating around you, you have to think that you’re living with two million other people [in Gaza] who are also experiencing this, so you have to cope like they do.

I don’t like thinking that people around the world are suffering. It sucks, and I don’t want this for anyone. But to be honest, a part of me is happy that maybe after we’re done with the Coronavirus, people will understand us more.

What saddens me though is also that once this is over, each country will try to come to the aid of its citizens. Maybe through economic aid, and they will again have the ability to move around, buy things, and get on with their daily lives. But we in Gaza will still suffer because nothing will change. The blockade will stay in place, the high unemployment rate will remain, there will be less goods and the prices will be higher.

AL: Do you have advice for people in other parts of the world who are facing isolation and quarantine?

AT: People need to seize this opportunity to be better people. Quarantine is giving us more chances to sit with ourselves, to understand ourselves, and to try to figure out what we need to develop or change so that we can be better people. It’s a really good chance to get in touch with the people we have quarrels or problems with, and make up with them. It’s also a chance to develop better relationships with our families, because at the end of the day, it makes you realize how important your family is. So sit with your family, understand them, and develop your relationships with them.

Finally, it is a good chance for you to study more, and learn more about the world. If you’re in quarantine right now and have access to the internet, you can seize the opportunity to learn and read more about other people who are suffering. But we must think of them as humans. Because once this is over the whole world is going to need to work together to solve these problems.

For me, I’m going to read more. I’m going to learn a lot, and study! It’s a chance from God to do the things I have delayed.

I also really love writing. For me, it releases stress. So I would advise everyone to write something. Some people might think that they don’t know how to write, but if you just try to write what’s on your mind, it can be a great way to release stress, make you feel better, and discover some new things about yourself.

Indeed, Asmaa is an amazing writer. You can find many of her wonderful writings on the WANN site, or follow her on Twitter. She also participated in a webinar for IJV with her colleague Issam Adwan from WANN in December, 2019, which you can watch here.

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Curfews and Mutual Aid: Weeam Hammoudeh

Weeam Hammoudeh (WH): We had just started doing the analysis, and then the whole COVID-19 situation broke out, so we might need to go back and do more data collection.

AL: Uncertainty is certainly a phenomenon being experienced by many around the world right now, from borders being closed, to schools being shut down, to thousands upon thousands of people losing their jobs.

What is the atmosphere like in Ramallah and the broader West Bank?

WH: I think there is a lot of uncertainty, and people are starting to get more worried. Yesterday, there was a woman who died of COVID-19. She was diagnosed the same day, and died later that evening. This heightened a lot of the worries and fears.

In the beginning, people didn’t fully understand the magnitude of the problem. But ever since the first cases were confirmed in Bethlehem on March 5th, you could sense people were starting to get more worried. But that was also when the Palestinian Authority (PA) began to take stricter measures to try to contain the spread. They wanted to contain the problem before it got out of hand, because we don’t actually have the infrastructure to deal with a wide scale spread.

The PA took strict preventative measures early on, which I think was responsible. It’s also a recognition of how things could get if the virus were to be left alone, such as has been suggested by other global leaders.

AL: We can think of leaders like Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro, who balked at concerns around COVID-19 earlier on in the outbreak.

We know about the difficulties in Gaza with the blockade… what is the situation in the West Bank with hurdles due to the Israeli occupation?

WH: If you look at the development of the healthcare system broadly speaking, it has faced a lot of obstacles related to the political context. We don’t have control over our borders, so Israel dictates what’s allowed in and what isn’t. There are certain services, and certain medical equipment, that are prohibited. Israel designates certain items as ‘dual use’. So if there is anything that could potentially be used to breach security, then it isn’t allowed. For example, if we’re talking about oncology services within the West Bank or Gaza, Palestinians are only allowed to have equipment for chemotherapy. Anything related to radiotherapy or radiation isn’t allowed, because the equipment is prohibited. Therefore patients need to be transported to East Jerusalem, Jordan, Israeli hospitals, or Egypt. This is one example of constraints on the healthcare system, aside from the broader challenges to health. And because of these constraints and structural issues, we have a fragmented, aid-dependent health system unable to fully realize its potential.

Some might say that with regards to health conditions, Palestine is in a better situation than other countries in the Middle East. But as the occupying power, under international law, Israel has the responsibility for the health and well-being of the occupied population. So the point of comparison shouldn’t be other countries in the region, but rather with the Israeli health system, which is actually allowed to thrive.

You see differences in the Israeli and Palestinian populations in terms of life expectancy, child mortality and maternal mortality rates. There is a discrepancy in the quality of the services. Even among Israeli citizens, you often see many disparities between the Palestinian-Israeli population, and the Jewish-Israeli population. These disparities are entrenched within that system.

AL: How are you coping with the changes brought on by the Coronavirus?

WH: They closed down the schools and universities in the West Bank as soon as the first cases were discovered in Bethlehem. For me, I had to shift all my classes online. It was difficult, but I think it was very important they did this. They also closed down places where there could be large gatherings of people, such as mosques. It’s hard to focus on work, just because there’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about how things can go moving forward.

Everyone is worried. I’m constantly tracking the news on the ministry’s website. It’s taking a lot of headspace. But at the same time, you do see people trying to support each other, even if it’s remotely. My colleagues and family are very supportive, and we all check in with each other. We’re seeing initiatives such as people preparing food baskets for families in need.

A situation like this lays bare a lot of the inequities that exist on a global scale. It’s highlighting who is more vulnerable. I think it’s important not simply to say who is more vulnerable, but also to recognize why these vulnerabilities exist. These vulnerabilities exist because of structural issues – the way that economies function, and the way that society is set up.

Here in Palestine, it’s very much intertwined with the political context of ongoing occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid. It’s important to keep this in mind. But also, we can’t lose sight of the source of all of this. What happens in these situations is that you get caught up in the urgency of the situation, in either containing the problem, or providing quick solutions to the immediate problems. And I think this is important. It’s important to take all the measures that we can to save people’s lives, or to stop this disease from spreading.

There are more immediate needs, such as providing testing, or building up our emergency infrastructure to deal with this situation. But in the end, it would be very unfortunate if we only focused on the emergency response without asking ourselves why these vulnerabilities and structural inequities continue to exist. That’s why we need to shift the focus of the conversation to justice and freedom. There are a lot of lessons that need to be learned on a global scale, and the solution needs to exist beyond national borders. Global solidarity needs to push agendas that have the well-being of populations as a key priority, rather than discrimination and profit.

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Aaron Lakoff is Communications and Media Lead at Independent Jewish Voices Canada.

Russian President Vladimir Putin tried yesterday to inspire his fellow citizens by ensuring that the situation with the spread of Covid-19 in the country “is complicated, but not hopeless.” Putin held a new meeting by videoconference with members of the Government, which this time also included virologists and medical experts. In his words: “Russia will go through this difficult stage with minimal losses, if we act competently, orderly and disciplined.”

According to the data provided today, in the last 24 hours in Russia 1,175 new cases of coronavirus have been detected, 21 more than the previous day, bringing the total to 8,672 infected. The death toll now rises to 63. In Moscow, the territorial entity most affected by the pandemic in all of Russia, 660 new infected have been registered since yesterday, giving a total of 5,841. In the Russian capital the death toll reaches 31.

On March 26, the top Russian leader said that it would be possible to defeat the coronavirus in less than two or three months. However, on April 1, he recognized that the spread of Covid-19 in Russia was sharpening and, the next day, extended non-working days until April 30 inclusive. “We are carefully monitoring the situation and taking into account the positive and negative experiences of other countries,” Putin said yesterday before the participants in the videoconference. He also underlined the fact that “we have not yet reached the peak of the epidemic and it is very important now to avoid mistakes made by others.”

In the opinion of the head of the Kremlin, the opinion of the experts is essential “to determine whether the number of days with closed companies can be reduced” and the total confinement decreed in most regions of the country, starting with Moscow, which was the first to introduce the measure on March 29.

Putin was also interested in the progress of the investigations to find a vaccine. “I know that our industry institutions along with virologist scientists, pharmacists and doctors work on a special prophylaxis system, including the creation of a vaccine and effective treatment methods,” he said.

During the meeting, the director of the scientific center “Vector” in Novosibirsk, Rinat Maksiútov, announced that three different vaccines will start to be tested on 180 volunteers starting in June. There are also another 120 people, he assured, who also want to participate in the experiment and will remain in reserve for the moment. However, the director of the Federal Agency for Medicine and Biology, Veronica Skvortsova, has pointed out that the vaccine will not be available to users until at least the end of the year.

Putin chaired the meeting by videoconference from his residence in Novo-Ogariovo, on the outskirts of Moscow, where he has been confined since the beginning of the month and from where he leads the country and the entire operation to fight the coronavirus and its economic and social consequences. He has taken such precautions after a case of Covid-19 occurred in the Kremlin Administration, suspicions arose regarding the spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, who attended a party with people who tested positive, and, above all , after meeting with Denís Protsenko, director of the main Russian health center for the fight against coronavirus, the hospital on the Moscow periphery of Kommunarka, who also turned out to be infected. That meeting took place precisely in Kommunarka.

According to Peskov, all people who are currently in direct contact with Putin have previously undergone a coronavirus test. The president himself, said his spokesman, “is also regularly undergoing tests to detect the virus when doctors deem it appropriate.” “All precautionary measures are being taken,” he added in telephone statements to the Russian media.

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Responsibility for pandemic preparation was privatized under the Obama and Trump administrations. It’s time to face down the national security state that wasted trillions on imperial wars and abandoned Americans to fight coronavirus alone.

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Donald Trump’s failure to act decisively to control the coronavirus pandemic has likely made the Covid-19 pandemic far more lethal than it should have been. But the reasons behind failure to get protective and life-saving equipment like masks and ventilators into the hands of health workers and hospitals run deeper than Trump’s self-centered recklessness.

Both the Obama and Trump administrations quietly delegated state and local authorities with the essential national security responsibility for obtaining and distributing these vital items. The failure of leadership was compounded the lack of any federal power center that embraced the idea that guarding for a pandemic was at least as important to national security as preparing for war.

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

At the heart of the growing coronavirus crisis in the US is a severe shortage of N95 respirators and ventilators. Those items should have been available in sufficient numbers through the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), which holds the nation’s largest supplies necessary for national emergencies. But the stocks of crucial medical have not been maintained for years, largely because Congress has not provided the necessary funding. 

Congress has been willing to dole out load of cash after pandemics hit the US. When the H1N1 flu crisis hit the United States in 2009, and close to 300,000 Americans were hospitalized, Congress appropriated $7.7 billion in special funding, including support for building up the SNS. That allowed the stockpile to provide 85 million respirators and millions of ventilators to hospitals around the country, especially during the second half of the yearlong crisis. 

But since that 2009-10 crisis ended, the stockpile of such vital equipment has never been replenished. In 2020 the stockpile holds only 12 million N95 respirators – as little as 1 percent of what is now needed by health workers – and just 16,000 ventilators, compared with the estimated 750,000 people at minimum who will need a ventilator because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These numbers are so scandalously low in relation to what is needed that senior officials Department of Health and Human Services have refused to reveal publicly how many they have in stock.

The failure to maintain those items in the stockpile was not the result of any lack of warning about the serious risk of a global pandemic that could be worse than any since the 1918 Spanish flu. It has been obvious that the frequency and ferocity of such rapidly spreading flu pandemics has been steadily rising throughout the 21st century.

The parade of recent pandemics began with SARS in 2002-3, continued with the much more serious H1N1 pandemic in 2009, and escalated with the spread of MERS IN 2012. Each one involved influenza viruses.

The H1N1 pandemic infected nearly 61 million Americans and hospitalized 274,000, causing 12,500 deaths. Another epidemic of the Ebola virus spread across much of Africa in 2014-16 but made only a slight appearance in the United States.

George Poste, a former director of Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute with close ties to the US military-intelligence apparatus, warned in 2018 that even though the horror of the 1918 flu epidemic had not been repeated, it was “inevitable that a pandemic strain of equal virulence will emerge.”

The awareness of the threat of a pandemic even reached into the National Security Council. In 2015, once the Ebola crisis had passed, the Obama administration’s departing Ebola coordinator convinced the White House to create an National Security Council (NSC) office for the threat from pandemics.

Then, a week before Trump’s inauguration, Obama’s outgoing homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, organized a simulation based on how the administration would respond to what she called a “nightmare scenario”: a flu pandemic that forces a halt to international travel and causes a stock market crash and for which there is no effective vaccine.

In May 2018, Luciana Borio, the director for medical and biodefense preparedness on the NSC staff, declared publicly that a flu pandemic that we “know cannot be stopped at the border” was the leading health security threat, and that the United States was not prepared for it.

But neither the NSC office nor the NSC itself produced a major initiative to focus political attention on the pandemic threat. The office’s role, as described by Beth Cameron, who oversaw it, was limited to closely monitoring global health threats to provide early warning of any potential pandemic.

So when arch-militarist John Bolton promptly downgraded the office after becoming Trump’s national security adviser, it made little difference.

Responsibility for domestic preparedness for a pandemic has always belonged not to NSC but to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS organized a month-long simulation in 2019 involving a number of federal offices that ultimately demonstrated how seriously unprepared the government was to cope with a pandemic. Following such an exercise, it should have been obvious that a new stockpile of necessary medical gear was urgently needed.

However, the HHS made no serious effort to replenish the country’s diminished stockpiles of masks, ventilators, and other critical supplies. And even if it had, it would have had to have competed with a much more powerful military-industrial complex for funding, and almost certainly would have failed.

Deeply entrenched bureaucracies and defense contractors dominate the federal government. Thanks to hefty campaign contributions and other benefits to members of Congress who control budgetary decisions, the national security state is easily able to secure its demands. In contrast, no such lobbying complex exists to ensure the country is adequately prepared for a pandemic.

In fact, as Greg Burel, the director of the US strategic stockpile from 2009 to 2021, explained, HHS and the Strategic National Stockpile lost all responsibility for sending N-95 masks and ventilators to state and local health services and hospitals in a national health emergency. Hospitals and state and local health departments must therefore compete with one another to obtain limited commercially available suppliers after they are already knee-deep in a pandemic. 

Responsibility for the preparation for the most significant threat to US security – a pandemic that would upend the economy and society as a whole – was thus privatized under both the Obama and Trump administrations.

At the same time, a bipartisan consensus emerged around shoveling $15 trillion in taxpayer money into wars that had little to do with national security in any true sense, and focused instead on the perpetuation of American empire.

The catastrophic human consequences of the failure to provide these essentials for a minimally adequate response should become the basis of nationwide political movement that takes on the national security state and its deadly grip on Congress.

Multi-billion-dollar weapons systems may have provided lucrative kickbacks to members of Congress and spacious Northern Virginia McMansions to arms industry lobbyists, but they have not provided an iota of security from coronavirus.

Such a movement would have seemed impossible only a few weeks ago. But after decades of preemption of resources for the parochial interests of a self-serving national security bureaucracy and its elite political allies, it is clear that most Americans have been abandoned before a pandemic their leaders dismissed and ignored.

A simple insistence that the actual security interests of the American people be served, rather than those of militarists who have hijacked the concept of national security for their own self-interest, is paramount.

A movement demanding this radical shift could be driven by very reasonable expectation that untold hundreds of thousands could die during a series of viral outbreaks throughout the next decade. As Dr. Peter Daszek, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance and a leading expert in predicting their impact of pandemics, recently told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re going to be hit with a much bigger one sometime in the next 10 years.”

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

As we previously warned, this pandemic will bankrupt and kill more people from suicide than the virus will. When you sacrifice people’s livelihoods, you create a difficult situation of desperation for many who will see no other way out.

We are about to have a mental health crisis during an economic depression that will be tough to live through.  The virus is no longer the problem.  The government’s reaction has been the problem and even some politicians have figured it out. Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs revealed in a weekly update that our solution to this pandemic has not been a good one.

“Thus far, our reaction to COVID-19 has been to sacrifice the global economy,” said Jacobs. “The truth is: a sick economy produces sick people.”

Most people don’t want to hear the truth, unfortunately, and the longer state governments insist on businesses being closed and an economy shut down to combat what’s looking like a fairly insignificant virus for most of the population, the aftermath will worsen.  Each day that drags on will make the next few years more difficult.

“Last year, our medical examiner performed autopsies for 199 confirmed or suspected suicides from across the region, with 83 of those coming from Knox County. Over the past 48 hours, that office has now examined nine suspected suicides, eight of which are from Knox County alone. For Knox County, that’s almost ten percent of last year’s total number in the past two days alone,” Jacobs added.

We’ve said it before and it needs to be said again, we should no longer be preparing for a pandemic, but social unrest, violence, and economic depression, the longer the economy is shut down, the more horrific the future social unrest will be. Jacobs is questioning the tyrannical measures and authoritarian power grabs by politicians.

Jacobs called the suicide numbers “utterly shocking” and said he is questioning if the government is taking the right approach in responding to COVID-19.

“Is what we are doing now really the best approach? How can we respond to COVID-19 in a way that keeps our economy intact, keeps people employed, and empowers our people with a feeling of hope and optimism, not desperation and despair?” he said.

“That’s startling and disturbing and really, really challenging to think about how some of the things we have to do as a community right now could be contributing to these things,” he said. “The more important message today that I want to deliver is that now more than ever we need to be kinder and gentler with ourselves and with each other. If there’s anybody out there who’s struggling, I encourage you to reach out.”

We want to thank Jacobs for standing up against all the other tyrants out there using this virus as an excuse to commit economic suicide and impoverish millions of people. Now let’s face reality: it’s time to reopen the economy and salvage what’s left if we can.  The longer this drags on, the direr our situation becomes.

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For many years on Wall Street, stock prices and true valuations diverged sharply — according to a Sanford Bernstein report.

When companies spend billions of dollars on earlier issued stock, their valuations are artificially inflated.

It’s one of the performance metrics used to determine executive compensation comprised of salaries, bonuses and stock options, including for directors.

According to Investopedia, bonuses linked to performance encourage executives to work harder for shareholders that includes themselves.

Stock options encourage short-term performance, including by manipulating numbers to meet targets.

When CEOs ask finance executives how profits look for the current quarter, the response is likely to be how much do you want?

When stock valuations rise, executives profit greatly, giving them an incentive to elevate them artificially.

Investopedia: “Worse still, the incentive to keep the share price motoring upward so that options will stay in the money encourages executives to focus exclusively on the next quarter and ignore shareholders’ longer-term interests.”

“Options can even prompt top managers to manipulate the numbers to make sure the short-term targets are met.”

On Monday, Bloomberg News headlined: “The No. 1 Source of Stock Demand Is a Goner, for Years to Come,” saying:

According to Sanford Bernstein (SF), the biggest driver of higher stock prices for many years is now sidelined because of current economic and market conditions that negatively affect bottom line performance.

Because sales and profits are down, companies are less able to issue high-yield debt that enables them to buy back stock that inflates valuations.

SF believes buybacks could become “socially unacceptable” though it’s too soon to tell.

“For at least several years, buybacks will be severely curtailed,” SF predicts, adding:

Stocks will “unlikely return to their pre-crisis valuation multiples” any time soon.

For at least the past five years, buybacks added up to 1.5% to earnings-per-share growth, boosting their price that’s unrelated to true value based on performance.

Further, “(a)s governments take a larger role in economies, this could turn the tide away from shareholders-first views of economies for some time.”

“Government’s role in financial markets cannot just be packed back into the box once this is all over.”

“The absence of risk-free instruments that can deliver positive real return and at least a risk of higher inflation further bolster the case for gold.”

Buybacks were the key driver behind rising markets since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, around $730 billion were spent on buybacks last year alone. In 2018, a record $806 billion was spent, fueled by the great 2017 GOP tax cut heist.

Big business got hundreds of billions of dollars in free money – used mostly for stock buybacks and generous handouts to executives.

Workers got shortchanged. Thousands got pink slips the past two years. Now it’s millions, while handouts to business is elevating the federal deficit exponentially.

The corporate bailout enacted last month is another restraint on buybacks that could be short-or-longer-term.

In return for free government money, corporate recipients are not to use it for buybacks or dividends until one year after borrowed amounts are repaid or written off, the latter option the most likely.

Whether recipients intend following this stipulation is another matter entirely. Hindsight will explain best.

Companies hurt by downturn will be forced to use government and Fed money to stave off bankruptcies and possible shutdowns in some cases.

As in 2008-09 and earlier economic crisis periods, strong companies will likely consolidate to greater size by buying weaker ones at fire sale prices.

SF said in recent days, buybacks “moved from being a purely economic question to an ethical question,” stigmatizing repurchases.

Companies not in need of government bailout help that are cash-strong will likely maintain buybacks, others in weaker condition likely to delay them for years, SF believes.

The Wall Street Journal quoted S&P Dow Jones Indices senior index analyst Howard Silverblatt, saying buybacks are “an endangered species. During bad times, you don’t do discretionary spending.”

Chief market strategist Brian Reynolds of the firm bearing his name said buybacks were the only net source of money entering the market since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

He estimates that they added about $4 trillion in market valuation since 2009.

The Journal reported that “(i)n the decade through 2019, S&P 500 companies poured $5.29 trillion into buyback programs, according to data from S&P.”

“That was more than double the $2.59 trillion from the (prior) 10 years. Dividends saw a similar increase, nearly doubling to $3.53 trillion from $1.89 trillion.”

Other sources combined “netted out to roughly zero,” said the Journal, citing him, based on the Fed’s quarterly flow of funds reports.

“It’s going to be like riding a bucking bronco in the stock market for the next six months,” Reynolds believes.

The Journal quoted Economics Professor Emeritus William Lazonick, saying:

“Companies that retain and reinvest profits, that have an incentive to build better products, they do better.”

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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.

We are all shocked by the Covid-19-related carnage in Western Europe and the US in particular and fervently hope for an early end to the disaster. However it is timely to note huge avoidable deaths from deprivation in the Developing World (minus China) prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Best-case Covid-19 Suppression scenarios for the rich UK and rich Australia  predict “annual Covid-19-related deaths as a percentage of population” of  about 0.03% pa. In contrast, “annual avoidable deaths from deprivation as a percentage of population” is already a shocking 0.30% pa for the Developing World (minus China), 0.60% pa for indigenous Australians, and variously about 0.1% pa – 0.4% pa for  Developing Countries  that have been popular holiday destinations for relatively rich British and Australian tourists.  

(1) Covid-19 Case Fatality Rate (CFR), Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), and age-specific risk

The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) measures the deaths  as a percentage of diagnosed cases per unit time. However there are shortcomings  in Covid-19 testing, sampling, diagnosis and other matters.  A better quantification  is Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) which measures deaths as a percentage of all those with infection i.e. those with detected disease (Cases) plus those with an undetected disease (asymptomatic and not tested people) [1, 2]. Thus the IFR is always lower than the CFR. However the media typically report each day on the number of deaths and the numbers of Cases detected, this allowing calculation of  the Case Fatality Rate (CFR).

Indeed the  Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) sets out a very useful critique of its own CFR reportage:

“It sets out the current Case Fatality Rate (CFR) estimates, the country-specific issues affecting the CFR, and provides a current best estimate of the CFR, and more importantly, the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR)… What is affecting the case fatality rate? The number of cases detected by testing will  vary considerably by country; Selection bias can mean those with severe disease are preferentially tested; There may be delays between symptoms onset and deaths  which  can lead to underestimation of the CFR; There may be factors that account for increased death rates such  as coinfection,  poorer healthcare, patient demographics (i.e., older patients might be more prevalent in countries such as Italy); There may be increased rates of smoking or comorbidities amongst the fatalities; Differences in how deaths are attributed to Coronavirus: dying with the disease (association) is not the same as dying from the disease (causation)… In China,  CFR was higher in the early stages of the outbreak (17% for cases from 1 to 10 January) and reduced to 0.7% for patients with symptom onset after 1 February” [1].

While deaths are accurately reported, the total number of symptomatic and asymptomatic infections is difficult to determine for a whole population (although one supposes that this would be possible through very large, sophisticated, inclusive and expert sampling of populations). Nevertheless the CEBM provides useful CFR-based data for all countries and in particular the following useful CFR-based estimates for China (21 March 2020):

The CFR was 2.3% (1023 deaths/44 672 confirmed cases). Reported CFRs by age were ≤ 9 years, 0%;   10 to 19 years, 0.18%; 20 to 49  years, 0.32%;   50 to 59 years, 1.3%; 60 to 69 years, 3.6%; 70 to 79 years, 8.0%; ≥80 years, 14.8%… Patients with comorbid conditions [multiple illnesses] had much higher CFR rates. Those with no comorbidities had a CFR of 0.9%. Critical cases had a  CFR of 49%, no deaths occurred among those with mild or even severe symptoms” [1].

As a 75-year old I am in a high risk group but, ever the optimist,  I take some comfort from these CFR statistics because I am in reasonable health and am self-isolating at home, washing my hands, coughing into my elbow, and only going out to buy food and other necessities while strictly maintaining social distancing orders (1.5 metres between people outside  and 4 square metres of personal space inside).

(2) Annual avoidable mortality from deprivation

The Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that people grow old and eventually die. Consequently in rich countries that can afford top quality medical services there is an increasingly older population with an increased overall death rate because of this demographic imbalance.  Thus annual mortality in Australia as a percentage of age-based sub-group population is 0.15% (0-4 years), 0.02% (5-9), 0.02% (10-14), 0.06% (15-19), 0.08% (20-24), 0.09% (25-29), 0.12% (30-34), 0.17% (35-39), 0.24% (40-44), 0.36% (45-49), 0.52% (50-54), 0.78% (55-59), 1.18% (60-64), 1.85% (65-69), 3.05% (70-74), 5.38% (75-79), 10.00% (80-84), 27.12% (80+) [3]. These age-specific mortality statistics  for Australians parallel the Covid-19 age-specific statistics for China  set out above in section 1 i.e. the annual probability of dying increases with age after infancy,  and the annual probability of dying from Covid-19 increases with age [1].

In wealthy countries there is a high life expectancy because of top medical services and in many cases universal health care for everyone. However in poor Developing  Countries deprivation through war or hegemony can have a big impact on mortality rate. Avoidable mortality from deprivation (avoidable death, excess death, excess mortality, premature death, untimely death, death that should have happened)  can be defined  as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics (i.e. birth rate and percentage of children). Using UN Population Division data  it is possible to estimate avoidable mortality for all countries (for a detailed account of the methodology as applied to Developing Countries or Developed Countries see Chapter 2 [4]).

The “annual avoidable mortality from deprivation” can be expressed as a percentage of the population and has been estimated as follows for various parts of Humanity (2003): 0.0% (Overseas Europe), 0.01% (East Asia),  0.03% (Latin America and Caribbean), 0.05% (Western Europe), 0.25% (Arab North Africa and Middle East ), 0.26% (Central Asia, Iran and Turkey), 0.26% (South East Asia), 0.31% (Eastern Europe),  0.38% (South Asia), 0.39% (Pacific), and 0.97% (Non-Arab Africa).

The “annual avoidable mortality from deprivation as a percentage of the population” is effectively about 0% for Overseas Europe (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Apartheid Israel), China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, the wealthy Arab Gulf States and Cuba. In contrast, this parameter is 0.35% for India (2003 data) [4]. Assuming a baseline mortality of 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year one can calculate from current UN data that  presently each year 15.2  million people die avoidably from deprivation in the Developing World (minus China), this representing 15.2 million x 100/ 5,050.2 million = 0.30% pa [4]. Annual avoidable deaths from deprivation presently total 4.55 million for capitalist ostensible democracy India i.e. 0.33% pa. In contrast annual avoidable death from deprivation as a percentage of population is 0.0% pa  for pluralist and One Party State China (2020) and 0.04% pa for the UK (2003 data).

Covid-19 is theoretically largely preventable with rapid total lockdown, testing, contact tracing,  and the very best medical intervention. The following section compares expertly predicted Covid-19 deaths in the UK in various scenarios with   pre-Covid-19 avoidable mortality in the UK and other regions.

(3) UK annual Covid-19 death rate (as percentage of population per year) versus “annual avoidable mortality from deprivation as a percentage of the population”

On 16 March 2020 eminent epidemiologist  Professor Neil Ferguson and his colleagues at Imperial College, London,  released an important  research document  entitled “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and health care demand” [3]. This research paper  has compelled the UK Government to take drastic action to suppress the COVID-19 epidemic via a “Suppression” scenario involving hygiene and social distancing, case detection and isolation, household quarantine, and the closing of schools and universities.  This “Suppression” strategy is modelled to result in much fewer  Covid-19-related UK deaths over 2 years  (circa 40,000) as compared to a less stringent “Mitigation” strategy not involving  school and university closure  (210,000 deaths) or Inaction (510,000 deaths) [5-7].

Assuming that everyone eventually gets the Covid-19 disease then the 1-year deaths per 1,000 of population for the UK are predicted to be (1) about  0.02 million  x 1,000/67.5 million = 0.30 per thousand (0.03% pa; aggressive Suppression), (2) 0.105 million x 1,000 0/67.5 million = 1.56 per thousand (0.16%; less aggressive Mitigation), and (3)  0.255 million  x 1,000/ 67.5 million =   3.78 per thousand  of population. (0.38%, Inaction).

It has been estimated that annual avoidable deaths from deprivation per 100 of population were 0.04% pa(UK), 0.05% pa (Western Europe), 0.36% pa (South Asia) and 0.97% pa  (Non-Arab Africa) (2003 data) [4]. Presently in 2020 annual avoidable deaths from deprivation per 100 of population are 0.11% pa (Morocco), 0.30% pa (Developing World minus China) and 0.33% pa (India).

Thus in terms of UK Covid-19 deaths as a percentage of total population per year, (1) aggressive Suppression would yield an awful 0.03% pa (similar to  the 0.04% pa avoidable mortality in the UK in 2003),  (2) less aggressive Mitigation  would yield a disastrous 0.16% pa (as compared to the  0.11% pa present avoidable mortality in cheap British holiday destination Morocco), and (3) Inaction would yield  0.38% pa avoidable mortality (as compared to the 0.33% pa present avoidable mortality for impoverished India, a nation that is still recovering from 2 centuries of genocidally exploitative  British rule [8-14]).

Thus aggressive Suppression of Covid-19 in rich First World  UK (per capita GDP $42,491 [15]) would yield a death rate (0.03% pa) similar in magnitude to the existing very low avoidable mortality rate occurring in the UK (0.04% pa) (2003 data).   However mere Mitigation of Covid-19  would yield a Covid-19-related  death rate in the UK  of 0.16% pa,  about 50%  higher than the avoidable death rate of 0.11% pa in relatively  poor Morocco (per capita GDP $3,238 [15]). Inaction would yield a catastrophic Covid-19-related death rate in the UK of 0.38% pa, comparable to the present avoidable death rate of 0.33% pa in impoverished ostensible democracy but corrupt plutocracy India (per capita GDP $2,016 [15])

The Covid-19 pandemic has been spread throughout the world by international travel and specifically largely by air travel. The irony of the present catastrophe is that while aggressive Suppression will yield a death rate comparable to the 2003 avoidable death rate in the UK,  insufficient Mitigation will yield a UK death rate 50% higher than the pre-Covid-19 avoidable death rate in the cheap UK tourist  destination of Morocco. Inaction (a policy initially contemplated by a sangfroid UK Tory Government) would yield an even higher  death rate similar to the present huge avoidable death rate in the distant UK tourist  destination of  impoverished India.

In our new  Coronavirus World the adage that “You are what you eat” is in danger of becoming “You are who you visit” for  rich, tourism-mad European countries.

(4) Australia, Indigenous Australians  and tourism contribution to Covid-19 deaths

Australia (population 25 million, per capita GDP $51,663) is culturally and politically  similar  to the UK (population, per capita GDP $42,491) [15], and it would be reasonable in the absence of other data  to assume  much the same epidemic outcomes of Covid-19-related death rates as a percentage of population of  0.03% pa (aggressive Suppression), 0.16% pa (less aggressive Mitigation) and 0.38% pa (Inaction). Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, on  a global comparative basis the overall Australian avoidable death rate was  about 0.02% pa but the Indigenous Australian avoidable death rate was a shocking 0.6% pa, this lying between that in impoverished India (0.33% pa) and that in Non-Arab Africa (1.0% pa) [4] but occurring in one of the richest countries on earth [15]. Thus the Indigenous Australian avoidable death rate (0.6% pa) (for detailed analysis see [16]) is already 50% bigger than the overall Australian Covid-19-related death rate expected in the absence of any emergency action (0.38% pa) and 30 times greater than that for Australia as a whole (0.02% pa). In addition to this huge avoidable mortality disparity,  overcrowded housing and other huge socio-economic and health deficits [16] already put Indigenous Australians  at a much higher risk from Covid-19 than non-Indigenous Australians.

The Australian Government reports (7 April 2020):

As at 6:00am on 7 April 2020, there have been 5,844 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia. There have been 100 new cases since 6:00am yesterday. Of the 5,844 confirmed cases in Australia, 42 have died from COVID-19. More than 304,000 tests have been conducted across Australia” [17].

Australians love travelling notwithstanding the inherent expense, inconvenience and pointlessness of the pursuit. Covid-19 infections in Australia have primarily derived from plane-borne or boat-borne travellers from overseas. Calla Wahlquist of the Guardian reports (31 March 2020):

The age group most represented in Australian statistics for confirmed cases of Covid-19 are people in their 20s, because they are the group most likely to travel or party with returned travellers, experts have said. Data updated daily by the federal health department shows that 11.3% of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Australia are among people aged 25 to 29, followed by 9.5% in those aged 60 to 65 – the cruise ship cohort – and 9.3% in those aged 20 to 25. People aged 80 and older account for just 2.7% of the confirmed cases of Covid-19 but 47% of the deaths” [18].

As a person aged 75 and thus in one of the higher risk groups I am modestly indignant that people such as myself who travel rarely are now at high risk because of this pointless national obsession with overseas travel in rich but “culturally cringing” Australia. The disastrous world-wide coronavirus epidemic illustrates the dangers of the modern mass travel obsession in rich countries like Australia  with international or intranational travel for travelling’s  sake. Australian Literature Nobel laureate Patrick White condemned this  pointless and indulgent mass movement in a 1988 speech at La Trobe University on the occasion of national celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the genocidal British invasion of Australia in 1788: “They are flogging camels from East to West and from West to East, and running from the  City to Surf and from the Surf to City.  Why don’t they just stay home, cook themselves a nice meal and curl up with a good book?” [19].

Resolutely ignored are the deadly consequences  of this endless travelling. Thus 9 million people die annually from air pollution, about 50% from indoor pollution (cooking and heating) and 50% from outside pollution (electrical energy and transport). About 10,000 Australians die annually from air pollution and a further 75,000 people die annually around the world from the long-term effects of toxic pollutants from the  burning of Australia’s world-leading coal exports [20]. However now we have the mounting death toll in Australia from Covid-19 infection brought to island continent Australia  by Australian and non-Australian travellers. Notwithstanding being an atheist, I tell my travelling friends and relatives: “You can’t escape your immortal soul … stay home and read a good book”.

Remote Indigenous communities are at risk from Covid-19 spread by endless touring Australian retirees (“Grey Nomads” ) from the cities,  just as Australia as a whole has been impacted by hundreds of thousands of returning Australian travellers. These “grey nomads”  obsessively touring remote parts of “outback” Australia with their caravans and campervans have been given the descriptive SAD  (“See Australia and Die”) , most memorably in Tim Winton’s novel “Dirt Music” [21]. Indigenous Australian’s have a life expectancy about 10 years less than that for non-Indigenous Australians and have a disproportionately  greater burden of chronic disease [16].

On a global comparative  scale the “annual avoidable mortality as a .percentage of population” is 0.6% pa for Indigenous Australians as compared to about 0.0% pa for non-Indigenous  Australians, 0.02% pa for Australians as a whole, 0.26% for neighbouring Indonesia (a major tourist  destination  for Australians),  0.33% pa for impoverished India (an exotic tourist destination for Australians), and 0.44% pa for Fiji  (another major tourist destination for Australians).  One notes by way of comparison that the “annual Covid-19 deaths as a percentage of population” if they are the same for Australia and the UK – 0.03% pa (aggressive Suppression), 0.16% (less aggressive Mitigation) and 0.38% (Inaction). On this basis, as observed with the UK, Australia’s “best case” Covid-19 action Suppression scenario” yields a death rate similar to the avoidable death rate for Australia, Mitigation yields a death rate similar to the avoidable death rate of tourist destination Indonesia,  and the worst case of Inaction yields a death rate similar to the avoidable death rate of Indigenous Australians, and of popular tourist destination Fiji.

Look-the-other-way Australians are happy to holiday in remote Australia, Indonesia and Fiji but ignore the huge differential avoidable mortality in these places (just as the findings of this analysis will be censored  by the mendacious Mainstream journalist, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes as coming from an Australian scholar rendered “invisible” by the Establishment and its presstitute  lackeys).  Australians have no formal legal obligations towards its neighbours Indonesia and Fiji but it does have a legal and moral  responsibility for its Indigenous subjects, noting that a Treaty has never been signed between the European  invaders and the First Peoples of Australia. Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War unequivocally state that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [22].

Indigenous Australians from the arid region of northern South Australia want to remove their Elders to safety from the extreme threat from Covid-19 infection to  the city of Adelaide,  but their urgent request has been denied by the Coalition South Australian government . Thus Stephanie Boltje of the ABC (Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC)  reports (31 March 2020):

Vulnerable Indigenous elders wishing to leave the remote South Australian Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands to self-isolate amid the coronavirus pandemic have been denied support from SA Health.” [23].  Ellen Fanning of the ABC reported (19 March 2020): “Indigenous health leaders are urging the Federal Government to declare special isolation zones patrolled by the police or the army in a radical move to prevent COVID-19 devastating remote Indigenous communities” [24].

The first case of Covid-19 in China may have been on 17 November 2019 but the Chinese Government notified the WHO that the first  confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December 2020,  and notified the world about human-to-human transmission of coronavirus on 21 January 2020 [25]. The first cases were detected in the UK in January 2020 but  were predicted because of regular flights to the UK from Wuhan that had been noted as a Covid-19 disease cluster by 31 December 2019. The UK Government adopted stringent controls after mid-March 2020 and UK schools were closed from 20 March 2020 [26]. The first case of Covid-19 in Australia was detected on 25 January 2020, 6 weeks ago [27]. However the incompetent, anti-science and neoliberal Coalition Government adopted an “evolving” response and has still declined to close schools in the face of mounting concern from numerous medical experts  [7]. If island continent Australia had acted in January 2020  to ban all foreign entries and to quarantine and test all Australian entries then Australia today would have zero cases of Covid-19. Such “ifs” aside, it is clear that action should ideally have been maximal and as early as possible given human-to-human transmission and exponential  growth of infection that threatens to overwhelm medical services.

Final comments

One fervently hopes that the stringent Suppression approach belatedly adopted by the UK Government on about 20 March 2020 will restrict annual  Covid-19 deaths to the 0.03% pa of the UK population as predicted by expert epidemiologists, a death rate commensurate with the 0.04% pa of avoidable deaths from deprivation in 2003. However the less aggressive Mitigation  approach would yield a disastrous 0.16% pa deaths (as compared to the  0.11% pa present avoidable mortality in cheap British holiday destination Morocco), and Inaction would yield  0.38% pa deaths (as compared to the 0.33% pa present avoidable mortality from deprivation for impoverished India). While Westerners are rightly concerned about potentially huge death rates from Covid-19 in European countries, there is no practical concern for high, pre-Covid-19 avoidable death rates from deprivation in the Developing World. Indeed Westerners are happy to holiday in poor countries such as Morocco and India suffering huge, pre-Covid-19 rates of annual avoidable  deaths from poverty of 0.11% pa and 0.33% pa , respectively.

European countries have closed down their economies and committed trillions of dollars to contain Covid-19 deaths but have effectively ignored the horrendous, continuing reality that 15 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with the rich First World in charge of the flight deck [4]. It was estimated in 2014 that  an annual  Global Wealth Tax of 4% would lift all countries to the modest, circa world average per capita  GDP enjoyed by China and Cuba, countries  for which avoidable mortality is zero [29, 30]. When this pandemic is over, rich European countries will no doubt renounce the current flood of Keynesian economic humanitarianism, attempt to restore their economies along neoliberal lines, consign immense government debt to future generations already saddled with $200-250 trillion of inescapable Carbon Debt [28],  and even more assiduously ignore horrendous avoidable death rates from deprivation  in the Developing World (minus China) as exemplified by 0.4% of population pa in South Asia and 1.0% of population pa in non-Arab Africa.

Australia under an anti-science, effective climate change denialist, neoliberal and Trumpist Coalition Government has adopted a strengthening “Mitigation”  approach to the Covid-19 pandemic that balances “lives” versus “livelihoods” and excludes variously medical expert-advocated and UK-adopted school  closure as a policy [7].  Nevertheless belated but stringent border control measures may mean that Continent Australia will escape the carnage happening in Western Europe.  However in an extraordinary  bungle Australian officials allowed 2,700 passengers to freely disembark in Sydney on 19 March from the “Ruby Princess” cruise ship despite passengers on board showing signs of respiratory illness – at least 662 people linked to this cruise ship have been diagnosed with Covid-19 throughout Australia, more than 10% of Australia’s total detected cases, and about 5 have died [31, 32].

As an Australian I fervently hope that Australia’s  unique island Continent nature and presently strong social distancing measures will save us from high Covid-19 death rates comparable to the pre-Covid-19 avoidable death rates from deprivation in neighbouring countries like Indonesia and Fiji in which look-the-other-way Australians happily holiday. However the pre-Covid-19 avoidable death rate from deprivation of 0.6% pa for Indigenous Australians means about 4,000 Indigenous avoidable deaths from deprivation each year and a continuing  life expectancy “gap” of about 10 years between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Successive Liberal Party-National Party Coalition and Labor Party (aka Lib-Lab) Governments have been unable or unwilling to close “the gap”. Covid-19 disproportionately threatens Indigenous Australians who disproportionately suffer from huge comparative health deficits and socio-economic deficits (notably crowded and substandard housing in remote communities).  Australia must act immediately to protect Indigenous Australians from the Covid-19 threat  –  the world is watching.

*

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Dr Gideon Polya taught Biochemistry at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, including a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/).

Notes

[1].  Jason Oke and  Carl Heneghan, “Global Covid-19 Case Fatality rates”, Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM), 17 March 2020: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/ ).

[2]. “Case fatality rate”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate .

[3]. “Your odds pf dying by age”, Finder, 3 March 2020: https://www.finder.com.au/life-insurance/odds-of-dying .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, this including an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .

[5]. Neil M. Ferguson and 30 colleagues. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and health care demand”, Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, 16 March 2020: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf.

[6]. Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart, John Burn-Murdoch and Alex Barker, “The shocking coronavirus study that rocked the UK and US”, Financial Times, 19 March 2020:  https://www.ft.com/content/16764a22-69ca-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75 .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “COVID-19 Pandemic & Coronavirus Suppression – Should Australian Schools Close? ”, Countercurrents, 22 March 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/covid-19-pandemic-coronavirus-suppression-should-australian-schools-close .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008 that  is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “Inglorious Empire. What the British did to India” by Shashi Tharoor”, Countercurrents, 8 September 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/09/08/review-inglorious-empire-what-the-british-did-to-india-by-shashi-tharoor/ .

[10]. Shashi Tharoor, “Inglorious Empire. What the British did to India”, Scribe, 2017.

[11]. Utsa Patnaik in Arindam Banerjee and C. P. Chandrasekhar, editors, “Dispossession, Deprivation, and Development. Essays for Utsa Patnaik, Columbia University Press,  2018.

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna,   Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire Indian Poverty”,  Countercurrents, 20 November, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[14]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[15]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[16]. “Aboriginal Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .  

[17]. Australian Government Department of Health, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) current situation and case numbers”, 31 March 2020: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers .

[18]. Calla Wahlquist, “Australians in their 20s have more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other age group”, Guardian, 31 March 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/australians-in-their-20s-have-more-confirmed-cases-of-coronavirus-than-any-other-age-group .

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne’s North East Link super-highway project – environmental vandalism and Australian-killing perversion””, Countercurrents, 9 March 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/melbournes-north-east-link-super-highway-project-environmental-vandalism-australian-killing-perversion .

[20].“Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths .

[21]. Donell Holloway, “See Australia and Die: shifting discourse about Grey Nomads”, Research Gate, January 2005: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270704183_See_Australia_and_Die_Shifting_discourses_about_Grey_Nomads .

[22]. Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War: https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/Geneva%20Convention%20IV.pdf .

[23]. Stephanie Boltje, South Australian Government refuses calls from APY Indigenous elders to relocate amid corona virus outbreak”, ABC News, 31 March 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-31/south-australian-health-coronavirus-indigenous-request-denied/12103434 .

[24]. Ellen Fanning, Aboriginal health organizations want Defence to contain coronavirus, warn PM of specific dangers” “”, ABC News, 19 March 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-18/aboriginal-health-organisations-call-for-defence-help/12068920 .

[25]. Helen Davidson, “First Covid-19 case happened in November [2019], China Government records show – report”, Guardian, 13 March 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/first-covid-19-case-happened-in-november-china-government-records-show-report .

[26]. “2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United Kingdom”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_Kingdom .

[27]. “2020 coronavirus pandemic in Australia”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Australia .

[28]. Gideon Polya, “Inescapable $200-250 trillion global Carbon Debt increasing by $16 trillion annually”, Countercurrents, 27 April 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/04/inescapable-200-250-trillion-global-carbon-debt-increasing-by-16-trillion-annually-gideon-polya .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[30]. “1% ON 1%: one percent annual wealth tax on One Percenters”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/1-on-1 .

[31]. Matilda Boseley, “Criminal investigation launched into Ruby Princess cruise ship coronavirus disaster”, Guardian, 5 April 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/criminal-investigation-launched-ruby-princess-cruise-ship-coronavirus-disaster .

[32]. “Ruby Princess”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Princess

The US gulag prison system is the world’s largest by far, the largely unreported in the mainstream shame of the nation. 

Official numbers significantly understate the true number of incarcerated inmates annually.

According to a Prison Policy Initiative analysis, nearly five million people in the US are behind bars in prisons, jails, or other lockup facilities annually.

Around two-thirds of the US prison population is comprised of poor Blacks and Latinos.

Around 25% of US prison inmates are jailed two more times annually. Most individuals imprisoned in the US are behind bars for nonviolent offenses, many minor, many illicit drug related, many wrongfully convicted.

Prisons are breeding grounds for infectious and other diseases. They’re far more prevalent than in the general population.

Even when seriously ill, inmates can wait days for woefully inadequate treatment.

Mentally ill prisoners exceed numbers in state psychiatric hospitals tenfold, according to one estimate, their numbers increasing, their condition worsening for lack of proper treatment.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly half of US inmates suffer from some form of mental illness. Over one-fourth have a severe condition.

Half or more of inmates are prescription or illicit drug addicted or dependent, notably from opioids.

Prison healthcare providers Corizon Health and Wellpath have been sued about 1,500 hundreds times in the past five years for medical neglect, negligence, and malpractice.

Numerous cases were for wrongful injury or death. In some US states, class-action lawsuits were brought against the entire system for inadequate healthcare, amounting to malpractice.

Arizona was held in contempt by a federal district court for “widespread and systematic failure” to provide proper healthcare for inmates.

In the US nationwide, inmates are vulnerable to healthcare neglect and malpractice.

In Estelle v. Gamble (1976), Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshal stated for an eight-to-one majority ruling that “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners” was inconsistent with Eighth Amendment guarantees against cruel and unusual punishments.

Even though this landmark ruling upheld the right of US prison inmates to proper healthcare, it’s not provided at a time of national indifference toward the nation’s most disadvantaged.

An American Medical Association survey of US prison conditions found dismal healthcare facilities, including poor equipment, none for emergencies, some prisons even lacking first-aid kits, an untenable situation.

A National Commission on Correctional Health Care established in 1983 failed to correct serious problems even though the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1987 that “adequate” care at a level “reasonably commensurate with modern medical science” must be provided to inmates.

It’s not throughout the US prison system at the federal, state, and local levels.

According to ACLU National Prison Project director David Fathi, private companies providing healthcare to prison inmates prioritize bottom line considerations over human health.

They commonly “deny care in what is literally a captive market,” adding:

“I don’t mean to suggest that government-run prison health care is perfect. It’s often appallingly deficient. But, at least when a government is providing the service, there is some measure of oversight.”

“You don’t have that with the private companies” — why firms are repeatedly sued for negligence and malpractice.

“Market forces don’t operate in the prison context for the reason that prisoners have absolutely no consumer choice.”

According to Prisoner Legal News, “(p)risons are incubators and spreaders” of infectious and other diseases.

They flourish because of over-crowding, poor sanitation, and unsatisfactory medical care.

Despite modern-day knowledge of what’s required for public health, improper healthcare for inmates threatens others incarcerated, especially because of prison population growth.

Social distancing is impossible to maintain. Tuberculosis (TB), influenza, and coronavirus strains, and other infectious can spread among prisoners if outbreaks occur.

In the US, around 90% of TB cases are in prisons. An estimated 40% of US prisoners are infected with Hepatitis C, many inmates with HIV/AIDS. Yet treatment is woefully inadequate.

During the US 2017-18 seasonal flu season, around 4,000 people died weekly — with no screaming headlines like currently about COVID-19 that caused about 12,800 deaths this year, about 43% of them in NY.

Along with 1,232 reported deaths in neighboring New Jersey, both states account for about 52% of US fatalities from the disease. Only 277 people died from COVID-19 in neighboring Connecticut.

Despite the risk of epidemic levels in US prisons, federal, state, and local facilities aren’t following guidelines for controlling outbreaks or properly treating infected inmates, risking the spread of the disease to others.

Prisoners are especially vulnerable to contagion from COVID-19 outbreaks.

Numbers of infected inmates are in low single digits so far in most parts of the country, Rikers Island, NY, an exception.

Other prisons could be affected the same way before numbers of infections nationwide decline significantly.

Infectious diseases are especially worrisome in closed prison environments.

According to ACLU criminal justice project director for northern California Lizzie Buchen, most inmates are housed two to a cell, though many are in open dormitories because of overcrowding.

“They sleep and live in very close proximity, sharing toilets, sharing showers. It is extremely unsanitary.”

Soap can be in short supply, hand sanitizers considered contraband because of high alcohol content.

In 2018, a new San Quentin inmate infected with influenza caused a mass outbreak in the prison population.

Prisoners are more likely to be in poor health overall, so are more susceptible to diseases than the general population.

If COVID-19 outbreaks occur in prisons, they’re ill prepared to treat them because of lack of proper equipment, including limited respiratory support.

Most California prisons are under federal medical receivership because of inadequate treatment for inmates.

Prisons nationwide and abroad aren’t properly equipped to handle outbreaks of infectious or other diseases.

Large numbers of nonviolent prisoners are being released in the US because of concern about spreading COVID-19 outbreaks.

Yet seasonal flu/influenza is a far greater problem gone unaddressed.

Britain is releasing low-risk/nonviolent prisoners because of concern about spreading COVID-19 — Julian Assange not among them.

On April 5, WikiLeaks reported the following:

Assange “isn’t eligible to be temporarily released from jail as part of the UK government’s plan to mitigate coronavirus in prisons.”

“The Ministry of Justice confirmed with AAP that Julian Assange who is being held on remand in Belmarsh prison, will not be temporarily released because he’s not serving a custodial sentence and therefore not eligible.”

The “Coronavirus (Scoland) Bill contains a ‘Julian Assange clause’ which excludes prisoners in custody under the Extradition Act 2003.”

London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison where Assange is incarcerated under harsh conditions reported its first COVID-19 death.

According to WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson,

“(a) third of (Belmarsh prison guards) are not showing up to work either because they have the virus or because they are in isolation.”

Prison population COVID-19 outbreaks are “undoubtedly higher than reported” because no adequate testing is being conducted, Hrafnsson added.

“Assange is in very bad shape. He is a very vulnerable individual, especially to a virus like COVID-19.”

“He has an underlying lung condition and would be considered at great risk even if living normally in society.”

“He is in a situation when his life is in danger every day and every hour.”

His lawyers lost contact with him for several weeks.

If extradited to the US and tried in open judicial proceedings, lack of credible evidence against him would likely make for a messy affair the Trump regime might wish to avoid by letting him fester and perish behind bars in London.

Because judicial proceedings in  London’s Westminster Magistrates Court may continue into June or longer, Assange may not survive his ordeal because of deteriorated health gone improperly treated for months.

*

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Neoliberalism, Climate Change and the Future of Architecture

April 8th, 2020 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

Introduction

What is the future for architecture in these times of climate change and economic crises? Should sustainability and affordability be a major factor in the design and development of future buildings? What about aesthetics? There are many individual examples of modern buildings today that have positive aesthetic qualities, but can major future problems, like climate change, be resolved by individual efforts? Or will it take the role of the state with grand visions for the future? While architecture may not seem to be an important issue compared with unemployment or poverty, it is one of the most important of the arts in terms of longevity, function and expense. And its meaning can go beyond mere buildings to symbolism of the state and national values.

The question of aesthetics is complex as modern architectural design is “caught between the diminished architecture of the 99% and the austere architecture of the 1%”, while at the same time architecture is pulled between popular opinion of what is good design and elite views that often contradict.

It is also well know that the production of cement is polluting. Therefore, many architectural projects now emphasize sustainability, like housing schemes to be built from cross-laminated timber and powered by renewable energy, bricks made of recycled construction waste, schemes that will be carbon neutral and function off-grid, plans for the world’s first wooden football stadium, and other housing schemes that will be made from sustainably harvested local wood and save 100s of megatons of carbon in the process.

However, no matter how sustainable these projects are, there is no escaping the aesthetic values of design which will ultimately sustain the building into eternity or see it eventually blown up to the smiles of hordes of ill-wishers.

So why is design so important for something which is ultimately functional? Is it because we have to look at these buildings for a very long time once they are constructed? How do we decide what is beautiful and why?

The whole history of architecture is riddled with controversies. Often what is considered beautiful now was criticized during its own time. Buildings have been knocked down and blown up in many different kinds of situations. Indeed, some have even been rebuilt exactly as before under controversial circumstances or post-war.

Today the debate still goes on about aesthetics and architecture with functional styles overtaking decorative styles only to be overtaken by decorative styles again. What determines these changes? Do political and economic systems play an important role in the kind of aesthetics which become preeminent? And if so, why? Did socio-political-economic systems such as hierarchical feudalism, industrialized capitalism, or state socialism play important roles? Does Neo-liberalism today? How relevant have the opinions of the users and builders of these edifices been?

Maybe more than all the other arts, architecture has been highly affected by the conflict between Enlightenment and Romantic ideas ever since the Italian architect and designer Brunelleschi visited Rome to study the ancient ruins of classical Roman architecture in 1432. The Romantic reaction to Neoclassical architecture materialized later in the form of Neo-Gothic architecture from the 1740s onwards.

Renaissance architecture

The rise of the bourgeoisie in the form of the Medicis in Italy guided a major change in architecture from the Romanesque and Gothic styles of earlier times to the new Renaissance designs based on ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The earlier medieval styles had been largely used by feudal kings, and bishops of the powerful Catholic church for their castles and cathedrals. Gothic had grown organically out of Romanesque designs over time, for example, the small roof on medieval belfries became taller and thinner until it was eventually incorporated into the belfry as a Gothic spire.

The revival of Classical learning in Rome went along with Renaissance humanism and the development of science and engineering. It is interesting to note that Brunelleschi’s first architectural commission was the Ospedale degli Innocenti (1419–c. 1445), or Foundling Hospital, designed as a home for orphans. His next project was the Basilica of San Lorenzo the location of the tombs of the Medici family who sponsored the church – rather than castles or cathedrals.

Brunelleschi, in the building of the dome of Florence Cathedral (Italy) in the early 15th century (1296-1436), not only transformed the building and the city, but also the role and status of the architect.

The study of the ancient ruins in Italy (Rome and Pompeii) and Greece (Athens) led to a clearer understanding of the difference between Greek and Roman architecture and subsequently to consciously Greek, Roman and Greco-Roman hybrids of Neoclassical design.

This knowledge was expressed in the Renaissance style, a style which was consciously brought to fruition through learning and a desire to revive the ideas of the ‘Golden Age’. The humanistic learning of the time set forth a positive conception of man (in opposition to the ‘fallen man’ of the established church) and was seen in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (7 CE), where he describes the lost Golden Age as a time in which nature and reason were aligned and produced naturally good men:

“The Golden Age was first; when Man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted Reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc’d by punishment, un-aw’d by fear.”

This view reflected the new learning that man could have an optimistic view of the future and control nature to create a better life for all. In Renaissance architecture, “symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts”, would reflect a more dignified mode of existence combined with concepts of equality, citizenship and republican organization of society. Renaissance architecture depicted “orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters [rectangular columns] and lintels [horizontal supports], as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches [shallow recesses] and aediculae [small shrines] replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.”

Palais des études of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1830

Neoclassical architecture

By the mid eighteenth century Renaissance architecture developed into full blown Neoclassicism and became an international style as it was adopted by progressive circles in other countries particularly for the design of public buildings. The Neoclassical style incorporated many decorations such as mascarons [symbolic faces], cartouches [oval or oblong designs], festoons [wreaths or garlands], corbels, various leaves and branches, rustications [contrasting textures], trophies, horns of abundance, lion heads and female faces or from other applied arts. An important form of Neoclassicism was the Beaux-Arts architecture which originated in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It was very popular in the United States from 1885 to 1920, and its very last, large public projects included the Lincoln Memorial (1922), the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. (1937), and the American Museum of Natural History’s Roosevelt Memorial (1936). The most important aspect of Beaux Arts architecture, aside from its study of Greek or Roman models, was its sculptural decorations which (aside from its balustrades, pilasters, festoons, and cartouches) included “statuary, sculpture (bas-relief panels, figural sculptures, sculptural groups), murals, mosaics, and other artwork, all coordinated in theme to assert the identity of the building.”Neoclassicism also influenced city planning as “the grid system of streets, a central forum with city services, two main slightly wider boulevards, and the occasional diagonal street were characteristic of the very logical and orderly Roman design” as well as highlighting important public buildings.The growing secularism and the rise of evangelicalism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did not go unnoticed by philosophical movements associated with Catholicism and high church or Anglo-Catholic beliefs. The influence of Romanticist medievalism and anti-industrialism could be seen in the Gothic Revival that began in the late 1740s in England. Figures like the conservative architect, Augustus Pugin, believed that Christian values were being destroyed by Classicism and industrialization. These reactionary ideas took on political connotations:

“with the “rational” and “radical” Neoclassical style being seen as associated with republicanism and liberalism (as evidenced by its use in the United States and to a lesser extent in Republican France), the more spiritual and traditional Gothic Revival became associated with monarchism and conservatism, which was reflected by the choice of styles for the rebuilt government centres of the UK Parliament’s Palace of Westminster in London, the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, and the Hungarian Parliament Building.”

However, by the beginning of the twentieth century the “academic refinement of historical styles” was beginning to be perceived as the architecture of a declining aristocratic order. The move away from Gothic decoration could be seen in the Modernist architects favouring of functional details over historical references. Their designs exhibited and revealed functional and structural elements such as steel beams and concrete surfaces.

Modernist architecture

As Romanticism changed into Modernism, the Romantic interest in the medieval and feudal craft form of production changed into its opposite as formalism and an anti-human aesthetic took its place instead. Modernism, in its dismissal of tradition, rejected classical notions of form in art (harmony, symmetry, and order) and, like Romanticism, rejected the ‘certainty’ of Enlightenment thinking. Modernism emphasized form over political content and rejected the ideology of Realism and Enlightenment thinking on liberty and progress.

The Bauhaus school building in Dessau, Germany, 1919

The epitome of this style in architecture became most developed in the Bauhaus art and design movement that began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. It was a style which “championed a geometric, abstract style featuring little sentiment or emotion and no historical nods”, an austere aesthetic which threw the baby out with the bathwater:

“The Bauhaus style of architecture featured rigid angles of glass, masonry and steel, together creating patterns and resulting in buildings that some historians characterize as looking as if no human had a hand in their creation. These austere aesthetics favored function and mass production, and were influential in the worldwide redesign of everyday buildings that did not hint at any class structure or hierarchy.”

The Bauhaus style (also known as the International Style) was consciously cosmopolitan in its ahistorical designs and principles of mass production. Many Germans of the time had been influenced by the cultural experimentation that was happening in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution, particularly Constructivism which had originated in Russia beginning in 1913.

Constructivist architecture

Constructivism was a form of Modernist architecture that developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It emerged out of broader art movements movements such as Futurism and Suprematism. Russian Futurism was a movement of Russian poets and artists who rejected the past and celebrated “machinery, violence, youth, industry, destruction of academies, museums, and urbanism”. These ideas were based on Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s (Italian poet, editor, art theorist) Futurist Manifesto, which was written and published in 1909. Marinetti wrote:

“We want to glorify war – the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill”, and later, in 1919, co-wrote the Fascist Manifesto with Alceste De Ambris. Suprematism was “characterised by basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colours”.

Thus we can see that Constructivism grew out of the highly individualistic, anti-historical, nihilistic, pared-down forms of Modernist art, typical of Romantic ideas.

Intourist Garage by Konstantin Melnikov, 1933 

By the end of the 1920s, Constructivism was the dominant architecture of the Soviet Union. Gradually a reaction to Constructivism started with a combination of Art Deco influenced Classicism and elements of Constructivism. However, in 1932, a major competition to design the Palace of the Soviets was won by Boris Iofan in a style which became known as Stalinist Architecture or Socialist Classicism.

The move away from Constructivist pared-down forms and back to decoration and craft could already be seen in Europe and America with the introduction of Art Deco influences from the mid-1920s. Art Deco buildings featured a lot of surface decoration around windows and doors, and especially around the tops of skyscrapers. This decoration was done in low relief and combined many geometric patterns and figures.

Thus the move to Classicism was not surprising as criticism of Modernist austerity took hold. The major projects of the time, skyscrapers, the Moscow Metro and apartment blocks, were all designed with Classical features that included much art and craft elements. These included sculpture, friezes, mosaics, molding, stucco, carved wooden panels, frescoes, bass relief, and carved wooden panels. After the death of Stalin the ‘luxurious’ style of Socialist Classicism was replaced by Khrushchyovka, the name given to a type of low-cost, concrete-paneled Modernist building style supervised by Nikita Khrushchev.

The central square. Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, Moscow, 1935 (Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva, abbreviated as VDNKh or VDNH)

By the late 1960s Modernism was falling out of favour in the West with many Modernist apartment blocks being eventually blown up. The harsh lines of Modernist architecture did not age well and something more artistic was in demand. The austerity, formality, and lack of variety in Modernist architecture was generally criticized for having no relation to architectural history, street plans, or the culture of individual cities. This also led to the re-introduction of craft and historical design elements into a new architectural philosophy called Postmodernism.

Postmodernist architecture

Unfortunately, Postmodernism, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, irreverence and parody, and a general suspicion of reason, was not not too different from the subjectivism, relativism  and general suspicion of reason in Romanticist and Modernist ideas. Postmodernist architects approached architecture with eclectic non-contextualized ideas resulting in diverse aesthetics, colliding styles, and form for its own sake producing some very self-indulgent designs. Asymmetric forms were one of the trademarks of Postmodernism as large buildings were broken into different structures and forms, ‘Camp’ humor was used on the basis that something could appear so bad that it was good, and the theatricality of absurd and exaggerated forms were common. As a style Postmodernist architecture has been criticized as vulgar and populist.

The Dancing House, Prague, Czech Republic, 1996

However, this diversification of styles subsequently led to varieties of architecture that reflect global political, economic and environmental issues with differing attitudes towards Neoliberalism, climate change, sustainability. These diverse architectural styles reflect the triumph and wealth of the 1%, but they also reflect the growing anxiety around climate chaos and they reflect those who want to design and build a better society into the future for all.

Neoliberal architecture

The influence of free market Neoliberalism on architecture globally has been critiqued by Douglas Spencer as “refashioning human subjects into the compliant figures – student-entrepreneurs, citizen-consumers and team-workers – requisite to the universal implementation of a form of existence devoted to market imperatives.” Spencer believes that the architecture of neoliberalism “serves mechanisms of control and compliance while promoting itself, at the same time, as progressive.” It does this through the social processes these “buildings enforce – displacement of the poor, privatisation of public space, the decimation of social housing.”

Reflections at Keppel Bay apartment complex in Keppel Bay, Singapore by Daniel Libeskind (2011)

It is not surprising that the Neoliberal privatization of the public housing stock on behalf of plutocrats could lead to a push for the privatization of all public space (including Hyde Park in London as suggested by one architect), just as when in the 18th century the aristocracy gradually enclosed the commons. As Bertrand Russell wrote:

“Each enclosure required an Act of Parliament, and the aristocrats who controlled both Houses of Parliament ruthlessly used their legislative power to enrich themselves, while thrusting agricultural labourers down to the verge of starvation.” [1]

Sustainable architecture

Other forces were concerned with the negative aspects of untrammeled capitalism and the environment. The desire to bring architecture in line with other ‘green’ movements since the late 1980s has led to the concept of sustainable architecture:

“Sustainable architecture designs and constructs buildings in order to limit their environmental impact, with the objectives of achieving energy efficiency, positive impacts on health, comfort and improved liveability for inhabitants; all of this can be achieved through the implementation of appropriate technologies within the building [and] making the space and materials employed completely reusable.”

Indeed in the United States “a vast ecosystem of green commerce has grown” up around sustainable architecture “spurring sales in products ranging from solar panels to low-VOC paints and low-flow toilets. “Green building is now a $1 trillion global industry,””

Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) is an environmentally friendly housing development in Hackbridge, London, England 2000–2002.

It is in the London Borough of Sutton, 2 miles (3 km) north-east of the town of Sutton itself. Designed to create zero carbon emissions, it was the first large scale community to do so. The distinctive roofscape with solar panels and passive ventilation chimneys.

However, this still leaves the problem of aesthetics, as the Neoliberal designs are highly individualistic architectural enterprises generally in post-modern states which do not have, or desire to have, ultimate control of the ownership or design of such projects.It is the public realm where the state does have the most control, despite Neoliberal desire to reduce it to nothing. The public realm generally refers to “those areas of a town or city to which the public has access. It includes streets, footpaths, parks, squares, bridges and public buildings and facilities.”

The public realm is a contested realm where aesthetics are lauded or criticised according to the inclination of the state or the desires of the public but at least broader integrated planning designs can be implemented, unlike Neoliberal ideology which “maintains that ‘the market’ delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.” Neoliberalism also “sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations [and] redefines citizens as consumers.”

Such ideology tries to naturalise the logic of capitalism by redefining people in its own image. However, it also reflects the power of elites and their political and economic grip on society as a whole. Styles of art and architecture in society also reflect elite hegemony. This can be seen in the very expensive apartments of luxury condominium towers (designed by ‘starchitects’) that have very little relationship with their urban neighbourhoods. It can be seen in the designs of skyscrapers for expensive hotels or headquarters of multinational companies. Contemporary designs for concert halls and art museums have had their praisers but also critics of some overwrought designs such as architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff’s comment on the Denver Art Museum that: “In a building of canted walls and asymmetrical rooms—tortured geometries generated purely by formal considerations — it is virtually impossible to enjoy the art.” Frank Gehry’s business school building at the University of Technology Sydney has been described as “a creased building […] which resembles a “squashed brown paper bag”.

Like the earlier Modernist designs of the Bauhaus, contemporary architectural design can be austere and alienating (or in some cases just asinine) reflecting the confidence and egoism of wealthy elites. It also reflects the economics of our time as the wealthy get to decide the individualistic designs of their residences, work places and entertainment centres much like the aristocracy of the eighteenth century.

Conclusion

It has been suggested that the world’s most popular architect is Antoni Gaudí (if measured by ticket sales for the Sagrada Família in Barcelona). As Edwin Heathcote notes, “It is not an accident that Gaudí is also the most obsessively decorative architect of modernity.” Ornament and decoration in architecture has been a popular aesthetic throughout the centuries. Heathcote also writes:

“Ornament is not essential to architecture but people continue to like it. Perhaps architects need to begin thinking why, after their best efforts to educate them otherwise, they still do. Perhaps the people are right and it is indispensable.”

Is it because people appreciate ornament, reflecting their love of applied arts and crafts, and respect for the skills that go into making them? We must not forget that decorative arts form an important part of national museum exhibitions around the world. As with any art it can be hard to understand what is popular and why, and what is considered alienating or ‘human’ in architecture. But it does seem that the Greeks and Romans hit on something in their combinations of art and architecture that has struck a chord with many people over time. As Rebecca Solnit writes:

“Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.” (Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking)

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Notes

[1] Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (Unwin, London, 1984)  p 611

Infighting among Turkish-backed groups has erupted near the town of Ras al-Ayn. According to local sources, conflicts over the captured houses and looted properties became the main reason of the conflict between members of the Sultan Murad armed group which attacked other Turkish-backed rebels. The situation rapidly escalated to the extent when the Turkish Army had to deploy additional troops and equipment in the area in order to put an end to the infighting. At the same time, the Turkish Army continued deploying additional troops and military equipment in the province of Idlib.

Last night, nearly 30 trucks and military vehicles entered Syria and reached the countryside of the town of Jisr al-Shughur, controlled by al-Qaeda-linked militants. Two days ago, the Turkish Army established 3 new observation points there.

A US military convoy consisting of 35 trucks laden with military and logistic supplies entered Syria from northern Iraq. The convoy entered the country via the al-Walid border crossing controlled by the US military and US-backed Kurdish armed groups and moved supplies to US military facilities in the countryside of al-Hasakah. According to Syrian sources, the US military is now working to reinforce its positions near the Khrab al-Jeer military airport.

Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV claimed that a US soldier and several members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had been killed in an attack by radical militants on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, in the province of Deir Ezzor. Earlier, similar claims were made by several pro-Kurdish and pro-opposition sources. The situation remains unclear. However, over the past 2 months ISIS cells have ramped up their operations in the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzor.

On April 6, a barrage of rockets struck near the oil-rich area near Iraq’s southern city of Basra. The strike hit the Zubeir oil field operated by the US company Halliburton in the Burjesia area. According to state-run Basra Oil Co., which oversees oil operation in the south, the attack had not affected production and export operations.

The April 6 strike became the first such attack since June 2019 and came only 2 days after Iraqi resistance groups released a joint statement calling US forces in Iraq occupants and in fact threatening them with a military action.

Since January 2020, there has been an increase in rocket attacks on US forces and facilities in Iraq. However, until now, all attacks were aimed against the sites affiliated with the US military and intelligence. The April 6 attack indicates that US energy giants that operate in Iraq are also in danger.

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Julian Assange and Lockdown Injustice

April 8th, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Scribes covering the Julian Assange case must surely gawk with a sense of horrified wonder at each proceeding unfolding at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London.  Assange is in a battle that can only be described as titanic, seeking to avoid the clutches of the US Justice Department, not to mention its legal system, and convince District Judge Vanessa Baraitser about the merits of that argument.  The gigantic canvass confronting all participants in this squalid tale of vexation and oppression is the nature of journalism itself, and the central point of sharing confidential state information that sheds light on impropriety, atrocity and corruption.

That canvas, however, eludes the judge.  Baraitser has insisted through the entire process, including the four days of extradition hearings now passed, that Assange deserves to remain caged and monitored.  The farcical show of hobbled justice must go on, including the risk posed to his frail being by the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, April 7, during the course of yet another court duel, Assange’s legal team attempted to convince the judge to grant legal anonymity to the WikiLeaks publisher’s partner.  As with so many efforts, it ended in heroic failure, which could only be put down to a judge who does her work in a hermetic chamber mute to the world.

The line taken by the defence was bog standard.  Both Mark Summers QC and Edward Fitzgerald QC insisted that the identity of Assange’s partner continue to be suppressed. This would also protect the privacy of her two young children yet to attend school.  Then came that unsettling issue of US officials having attempted to take a DNA sample from one of the children’s nappies. Surely, their safety would be compromised. 

The defence lawyers had not noticed a change in Baraister’s mood, whose hostility against fair proceedings in this matter is becoming legend.  There was a strong public interest, she found, in having contemporaneous reporting of extradition hearings.  She had become a transparency advocate.  Nor need Assange and his team have any worry at all about malicious intent on the part of the United States and its emissaries to his family.  “There is no evidence before court that any US agency intends harm to Assange’s partner.”  Along with this astonishing assessment resistant to history, Baraitser took to the grounds of pedestrian normality, holding firm to the idea that this entire extradition case is business as usual.  “The evidence provided by the witness is the sort routinely provided by a witness in application bail.  In my judgement, the balance falls in favour of open justice.”

The issue of furnishing Assange with adequate legal representation also remained a bone of contention.  As he has done so often before, Fitzgerald rallied and put the case for a delay of May’s proceedings that remain singularly unmoved before world events.  “This is not a case where second best will do, where we try to muddle through – it is a case where we are entitled to have his instructions.”

A delay till September was suggested, though even that might be looking optimistic.  “We say the only way he could have a fair hearing is to be present in court, and to see the witnesses.”  Globally, events have been cancelled and postponed with regularity in response to COVID-19; engagements, facilities and institutions are being put into hibernation.  “It is an exceptional situation we find ourselves in,” urged Fitzgerald.  “We cannot do justice to Mr Assange if the case goes ahead in May.”  Not in Baraitser’s court, where muddled existence remains unchanging despite the court itself being thinly occupied. 

In what can only be regarded as a reasonable point, the defence linked the poor access and means of putting their client’s case before the court with the coronavirus lockdown. “We have not been able to have any reasonable communications with him at present,” explained Fitzgerald despairingly.  “We can’t have access to him physically, can’t have any realistic access by video, and sending in correspondence involves long delays and – in some cases – he does not get it.”  The lockdown conditions meant that the defence team had not been able to take instructions.  Assange had been deprived of legal access, and the opportunity to see friends, family and his therapist. 

Going ahead with the case during the lockdown, argued the defence, would also violate the spirit of open justice.  Journalists could not be present in number.  The public would be effectively excluded. Keeping a court process open, something which chimes with the spirit of WikiLeaks’ own publication agenda, is not a trivial matter.  Many in the common law legal system wax lyrical about it.  Emma Cunliffe supplies a useful formulation: “Accessibility of information about courts and their activities is a necessary correlate to the principle that it should be possible to know the law, and helps safeguard the principle that citizens should be equally subject to law.”   

This did not concern the judge, whose reading of the equal-before-law idea has been generously tilted in favour of the prosecution.  She saw little problem revealing the identity of Assange’s partner to the glare of public and prosecutorial scrutiny in the name of open justice, but proved very much against the argument favouring postponement.  The case should be heard as a matter of haste, she insisted with reasoning most skewed, and Fitzgerald and the legal team need not be too worried: the second part of the extradition hearings were still five weeks away.  In this Baraitser showed the sort of confidence that’s very Trump-like: we shall all be open for business by Easter, or at any rate soon after.  Keep your barrister wigs and gowns handy, boys and girls; no postponement will be countenanced.   

Fitzgerald was quick to remind the judicial head of the sheer improbability of this, and any cavalier assessments of how brief the state of emergency would be.  “We know the Prime Minister had predicted that the lockdown might continue as much as 12 weeks.  That will take us well beyond the start of the hearing, and any time we could reasonably prepare for a full hearing.” 

But the judge had been bitten by a sense of urgency, even having the temerity to feel she was doing the publisher a favour.  “It is my current contention to hear as much of this case as possible in May.  Mr Assange is in custody, there is some urgency for this to be heard.”

The impediments to justice cited by the defence had failed to impress the bench, though not the prosecuting team led by James Lewis QC.  “We recognise,” admitted Lewis, “there are considerable difficulties for defence, and considerable practical difficulties.”  It was another instance of the judge disagreeing with both sides.  For Baraitser, the patent inadequacies offered by restricted video links were simply not patent at all; Assange and the witnesses would still be able to participate.  “If there is a need for a third and final hearing that can take place in July.”  The reasoning of lockdown injustice, laid bare.

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

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

We, the undersigned organizations and prominent individuals, condemn the false claims of criminal charges by the US government against the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other high-ranking officials with the pretext of their alleged involvement in international drug trafficking.

The US government is offering a $15 million bounty for information that would lead to the arrest of Venezuelan President Maduro. Bounties of $10 million are offered for the National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, retired generals Hugo Carvajal and Clive Alcala, Minister for Industry and National Production Tareck El Aissami, and other Venezuelans. The US government indictments accuse the Venezuelan officials of participating in a “narco-terrorism conspiracy” with the Colombian guerrilla group FARC to “flood the United States with cocaine.”

The US has refused to recognize the democratically elected Venezuelan President Maduro and has been seeking to install one to its liking, currently Juan Guaido. What the US is doing is ordering the arrest of world leaders it does not approve of, putting a bounty on their heads.

This decision of the US constitutes a further escalation in coercive measures against a sovereign country, which has included sanctions so extreme as to create a blockade, costing Venezuela 40,000 lives in a period of just over a year and $116 billion in lost revenue.

It is well-documented that two close and long-time US allies in Latin America, the governments of Colombia and Honduras, have been heavily involved in narco trafficking. The last Latin American leader the US charged with drug trafficking was Panama’s Manuel Noriega (who was running drugs with the CIA). The US then invaded his country and later imprisoned him in Miami.

Actual evidence of Venezuela involvement in drug trafficking

The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), which is unfriendly to the Venezuelan government, finds:

“CCDB [US interagency Consolidated Counterdrug Database] data does not justify many of the claims made by those who advance the ‘narcostate’ narrative to describe organized crime in Venezuela today and to argue against efforts to achieve a negotiated path to democratic governance in Venezuela. As noted, US authorities estimate that 93 percent of US-bound cocaine is trafficked through Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes, not through Venezuela’s Eastern Caribbean coast.”

The WOLA study found that the US government data suggests that, despite these challenges, Venezuela is not a primary transit country for US-bound cocaine. The State Department reports that over six times as much cocaine passed through Guatemala in 2018 than through Venezuela. Around 90 percent of all US-bound cocaine is trafficked through western Caribbean and eastern Pacific routes⁠, not through Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean seas.

The US Department of Justice has not presented evidence to substantiate their narco-trafficking indictment. Washington’s case looks politically motivated. In the wake of over six years of US sanctions and over a year of failed attempted coups, the majority support of the Venezuelan people for their democratically elected government has not been shaken.

We the undersigned demand that the US government:

  • Drop the groundless indictments against President Maduro and others.
  • Lift the sanctions so that Venezuela can purchase life-giving medicines and medical equipment to fight the coronavirus pandemic that is threatening the entire world.
  • Restore normal relations with Venezuela based on peace and respect for national sovereignty.

Sincerely,

Chuck Kauman, National Co-Coordinator, Alliance for Global Justice

Terri Mattson, Latin America Coordinator, CODEPINK

Susan Sarandon

John Pilger

Noam Chomsky

Medea Benjamin

Ray McGovern

and 3000 other organizations and individuals

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Featured image is from AGJ

This week I spoke to Congolese native Jean-Claude Maswana, economics professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, about COVID-19 in DRC.

ANN GARRISON: Jean-Claude, reporting on your homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is always daunting. It’s not easy to contemplate so much suffering and so much international indifference, and now DRC is facing the COVID-19 pandemic with as little health infrastructure as any nation on earth.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in February 2020, there are five million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and half a million refugees from neighboring countries in DRC. Living in tent cities, they’ve neither any easy way to “social distance” nor to wash their hands off and on all day. And they’ll be the last to receive tests, masks, hand sanitizer, or medical care.

On top of all that, many in Congo’s cities and towns lack the most basic infrastructure. President Félix Tshisekedi’s government promised to ensure electricity and running water throughout the pandemic, but according to Energypedia, only 19.09% of Congolese have electricity in the first place, and a 2011 UN report—the most recent I could find—said that 3/4 of the population lack access to clean water, “even though the country holds over half of Africa’s water reserves.”

Before we talk about the national and global context of this, tell me what you’ve done to help from there where you teach in Japan.

JEAN-CLAUDE MASWANA: One of the most critical challenges in addition to everything you have just outlined is the lack of information, especially accurate information. So I have been trying to relay accurate information and correct the fake news that has been spreading around in social media about COVID-19. I see DRC’s lack of preparation and vulnerability during this pandemic as an extension of the ongoing violence and resource wars there. Most victims of this violence have been surviving thanks to humanitarian assistance, both local and international.

Actors including Nobel Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege have been at the front of the battle, as have the Congolese diaspora whose remittances keep families and refugees alive. I have been involved in many of these because of my deep conviction that a humane, truly civilized society is committed to the dignity and survival of all its members.

Those of us living in the industrial nations have been more fortunate than most Congolese people and we do this work quietly, without the publicity that often serves self rather than others. In recent weeks, I have been involved in ongoing efforts to connect actors preparing a response to the pandemic on the ground and organizations that can help.

AG: Dr. Mukwege no doubt sees what a hell within hell this could become. What are his best hopes of preventing it?

JCM: First, since early March, as the pandemic started reaching Africa, Dr. Mukwege has been relentlessly campaigning and inviting local folks to follow the protocols and hygiene recommendations that can help reduce the spread of the coronavirus in their communities. He has also called on the international community to work together to overcome this global and unprecedented health challenge.

Second, as the number of known coronavirus infections has climbed towards 200, he has again urged the Congolese to mobilize and urged them to prepare for the worst in order to avoid a massive spread of the virus.

AG: Did he have any hope that DRC might be less vulnerable than northern climes because of its tropical climate?

JCM: Here I can only speak for myself. Generally, as everyone can confirm, Dr. Mukwege is a man of hope. He would not have taken on the risky endeavor of treating women victims of sexual violence used as a weapon of war if he did not have hope that there is light at the end of the dark tunnel that DRC has been passing through since Rwanda invaded in 1996. Whether the DRC might be less vulnerable because of its tropical climate is not a question that such a man can ask. Rather, to me, his recent calls regarding the pandemic suggest that he is hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

AG: Could you talk about how the danger differs in the east, west, and central provinces? I believe that the greatest number of cases by far are still in Kinshasa, the capital, which sits on the Congo River, where it enters the Atlantic, and on DRC’s western border with the Republic of Congo.

JCM: In the east, the pandemic is coming into a zone that has already been fragile for decades because of violent clashes over its immense natural resources. In both the eastern and central provinces, the state is virtually absent. It is an area where roads, hospitals, and even a population census, are barely existent. This means that deaths caused by the pandemic are likely to occur without assistance of any kind, without any administrative record, and without acknowledgment in the news cycle.

Moreover, yes, the known cases of COVID-19 are in Kinshasa, but this does not necessarily reflect the reality in the country. There is much happening beyond Kinshasa that we cannot know because the only testing facility in the country, the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB), is in Kinshasa, where Japanese aid has recently been able to upgrade testing and research equipment.

Dr. Mukwege

AG: And what do you expect of the Tshisekedi government, which promised to sustain electricity to the 19.09% who have it, and running water to the 25% who have that? Can they do any better and, if so, will they?

JCM: Not much, unfortunately. Your question already suggests that there is not much one can reasonably expect from an executive branch which promises to provide electricity and water to the people while knowing that state utility companies are underfunded, operating at around 25% of their capacity, with outdated equipment, and thus barely able to provide services to the small segment of the population connected to a power grid or water pipes.

AG: In May 2007, the International Rescue Committee published a study in which they said that 5.4 million Congolese people had died of either military violence or hardship while fleeing their homes or sheltering in refugee camps since Rwanda and Uganda invaded DRC in August 1998. That figure and the IRC’s methodology have been questioned—one agency said the correct figure was closer to 3 and some million—but it’s hard to fathom either way. Nevertheless, the violence and resource theft has continued, and now the internally displaced population has risen to 5 million. (The last time I reported it here, just last year, the UNHCR was still estimating it at 4+ million.) Do you expect the “international community” to respond with any more compassion to COVID-19 in DRC, possibly even sweeping through the IDP and refugee camps?

JCM: It all depends on the severity of the death tolls in IDP and refugee camps and the extent to which they reach the international news cycle. So long as the media is silent, the tragedy will continue.

AG: It’s been reported that both DRC and Rwanda will participate in vaccine tests, as will some other African countries. This of course raises alarm about the possibility of African people being used as guinea pigs, although vaccine tests will also be carried out all over North America and Europe. What do you think?

JCM: One thing that this pandemic has revealed is that coronavirus is less deadly than “fake news” and the fears that spread it. I’m not an epidemiologist, but I am a scientist and I do understand the need for safeguards and ethical standards when carrying out research that involves human beings or animals. Uncertainty around this pandemic is telling us that we badly need to improve our knowledge about the nature of the coronavirus and its transmission in various settings.

AG: Renowned geographer Mike Davis seemed to agree when he wrote, in “COVID-19: The Monster is at the Door,” that the virus is constantly mutating and that ”the unknown consequences of interactions with malnutrition and existing infections — should warn us that COVID-19 might take a different and more deadly path in the slums of Africa and South Asia. The danger to the global poor has been almost totally ignored by journalists and Western governments.”

JCM: Yes, and as I said, the response will likely be a consequence of media coverage. It is hard to believe that researchers in Europe or the USA are hoping to use only Africans for testing the vaccine and the whole process in an unethical fashion without anyone noticing it. It is even more absurd when one considers the very simple fact that most, if not all, vaccines currently or recently used throughout Africa are made and tested in Africa too. So we cannot argue for the existence of a plot against Africans, insist that tests for the vaccine should not involve Africans, and paradoxically wait to receive vaccines and medicine in the forms of international assistance. We cannot close our borders like North Korea and claim the rest of the world is out there to get us. Or we should address our concerns by putting in place regulations, controls and rigorous standards when it comes to vaccine testing.

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On April 1, the Trump administration hijacked a COVID-19 press conference to announce the deployment of U.S. Navy vessels and other military assets towards Venezuela. According to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, “included in this force package are Navy destroyers and littoral combat ships, Coast Guard Cutters, P.A. patrol aircraft, and elements of an Army security force assistance brigade”, while General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that there are “thousands of sailors, Coast Guardsman, soldiers, airmen, Marines involved in this operation.” The pretext is a counter-narcotics operation to follow up on the Department of Justice’s March 26 indictment of President Nicolás Maduro and 13 others on narcoterrorism charges. This indictment is politically motivated and has been critiqued in depth.

In between the sticks of indictments and the deployment, the Trump administration seemingly offered a carrot: a proposed “democratic transition framework” that would progressively see the sanctions lifted after the resignations of Maduro and Juan Guaidó, the installation of a “Council of State” and elections in which neither Maduro nor Guaidó can participate. This proposal, which is more of a poison pill than a carrot, was immediately rejected by Venezuelan opposition politicians and the government. The plan is unconstitutional, it violates Venezuelan sovereignty (insofar as it is a tacit acceptance that illegal sanctions imposed on the U.S. should be allowed to dictate the country’s domestic affairs), and it runs counter to the ongoing dialogue in Venezuela that is getting closer every day to establishing a new National Electoral Council and setting a date for legislative elections. Henri Falcón – a former opposition presidential candidate – criticized the plan and said an agreement cannot be imposed, that a “solution in Venezuela is between Venezuelans.” It was also called into question by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel, who called the approach “an utterly incoherent policy”, as it came days after the Department of Justice said nothing would stop them from moving forward with the narcoterrorism case.

The Distraction from and Weaponization of COVID-19

It seemed as though Venezuela was finally moving forward towards a negotiated solution to its political crisis, yet the naval deployment may sabotage the dialogue, as it was partially designed to do. The other purposes of the deployment were to distract from COVID-19 at home and to take advantage of the epidemic in order to increase the pressure on the Maduro government.

It was a bizarre scene that played out on April 1 during the press conference announcing the deployment. CNN was covering the conference live, believing it to be about the pandemic; this belief was reasonable, as it was marketed as a coronavirus briefing and it came a day after that the government released an estimated COVID-19 death toll of anywhere between 100,000 to 240,000. As the White House argued that drug traffickers might exploit the virus, CNN cut away from the discussion of the “seemingly unrelated counternarcotics operations.” That night Twitter was flooded with #WagTheDog tweets, a hashtag indicating that Trump was trying to drum up a war to distract from the incompetent handling of the pandemic.

A senior Pentagon official even told Newsweek that Trump was “using the operation to redirect attention.” By April 3, the White House was pitching the idea that fighting the drug trade would somehow help fight the coronavirus, leading military officials to express “shock” at the conflation between the war on drugs and COVID-19. Of course, as shown by recent events onboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, whose captain was dismissed after the virus rapidly spread amongst his sailors, U.S. service members are being exposed to greater risk of contagion by this massive deployment to the Caribbean. They are exposed on crowded ships and they are exposed on land at the nine U.S. military bases in Colombia. This is especially true considering that in Colombia, the COVID-19 response has been so poor that in late March, one of the country’s two machines for analyzing the results of coronavirus testing was knocked offline for 24 hours.

Apparently, this risk is acceptable to the Trump administration, as it sees an opportunity to weaponize the pandemic, using the instability and chaos it is causing to further its regime change goals. William Brownfield, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and one of the architects of the regime change policy, characterized “the sanctions, the price of oil, the pandemic, the humanitarian crisis” and the migration of so many Venezuelans as a “perfect storm” to pressure Maduro with the “non-negotiable” offer that he must leave.

The Possible Consequences of the Naval Deployment

The Trump administration has not given details as to what “counter-narcotics operations” might look like off Venezuelan waters, but it is very clearly a provocation. There is also the possibility of false flag or false positives, in which any incident between the U.S. and Venezuelan navies could be used as a pretext to war, much like the Gulf of Tonkin incident was used to draw the U.S. into Vietnam.

There are other possible scenarios that could have devastating economic consequences. The Venezuelan government is concerned that everything from imports to oil exports could be intercepted or seized by the U.S. Navy. This is a valid concern, as the Pentagon has claimed – without offering any evidence – that drugs are trafficked “using naval vessels from Venezuela to Cuba.” Given the U.S. government’s targeting and sanction of ships that transport oil from Cuba to Venezuela, it hardly beggars belief that Venezuelan oil tankers could be boarded by the U.S. military.

As piracy is apparently back in fashion, with the U.S., among other countries, seizing COVID-19 equipment that has already been paid for by smaller countries, it would not be surprising to see the U.S. seize Venezuelan oil or other assets on the high seas, particularly given Trump’s penchant for saying that other countries will pay for U.S. military expenditures (whether it’s the wall on the Mexico border, NATO security spending or the threatened plundering of Iraqi or Syrian oil). It is an open question whether the world would allow the Venezuelan people to essentially be starved by this type of blockade.

The Danger of Military Action

Trump has been threatening military action against Venezuela since August 2017 and a naval blockade since August 2019. The deployment of the Navy towards Venezuela is the first step in backing up both threats. According to the AP, it is “one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama to remove Gen. Manuel Noriega from power and bring him to the U.S. to face drug charges.” The indictment of Maduro also draws comparisons to Noriega, himself indicted on similar charges. Senator Marco Rubio – arguably the biggest backer of violent regime change in Washington – tweeted pictures of Noriega in a not-so-veiled threat to President Maduro last year. The ties to Panama go even deeper: Attorney General William Barr and Trump’s Special Representative on Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, both worked for the Bush administration as it ramped the pressure up on Noriega.

Yet the overthrow of Noriega wasn’t achieved with sanctions, indictments or a naval deployment, it was achieved by a U.S. invasion. Furthermore, Venezuela isn’t Panama. It is a substantially bigger country, it is stronger militarily, it has important allies in China and Russia, and it counts with a 3-million-person militia.

This latter point is often overlooked or dismissed but understanding the seriousness of this militia is key to understanding the political landscape of Venezuela. In February 2019, as rumors swirled of a possible invasion from Colombia, members of the militia occupied key bridges along the border, fully prepared to risk their lives, as one militia member said in a recent documentary. The militia is part of the identity of chavismo, the left-wing revolutionary movement that backs Maduro and takes its inspiration from former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. For most on the left in Venezuela, there are no more than two degrees of separation from the militia: they either form part of it, they know someone in the militia, or they know someone who knows someone in the militia.

The implications of this should be evident: Venezuela has a substantial population that will resist any invasion or coup. This isn’t mere rhetoric; the biggest popular uprising in Venezuela of the past 30 years occurred on April 12 and 13, 2002, when Venezuela’s poor, working class, black, brown and indigenous people took to the streets to demand the return of ousted president Hugo Chávez, reversing a right-wing coup within 48 hours. (Of note: Elliott Abrams was in the George W. Bush administration at the time and “gave a nod” to the coup, according to The Guardian.)

What this all means is that Venezuela won’t be like Panama, where there was little resistance. If the worst happens and a war breaks out, more apt comparisons would be Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq, countries in which the U.S. spent billions for regime change at a disastrous cost to human lives and regional stability. The Trump administration’s dangerous deployment should be challenged by Democrats and Republicans alike, but so far, no major politician has criticized the maneuver. Hopefully the American people will read the message of peace sent by President Maduro and urge the U.S. government to fight covid, not Venezuela.

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Leonardo Flores is Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CODEPINK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Venezuelan soldiers prepare for war… against COVID-19. Photo: Twitter @Planifica_Fanb

Coverage of the COVID-19 epidemic in Nicaragua has become yet one more psy-warfare  battleground between supporters of the US government supported right-wing opposition and the country’s Sandinista government.

In the UK, “the Lancet” has long been a leading propaganda outlet for suppporters of Nicaragua’s right wing political opposition, making a mockery ot its status as a leading scientific medical journal. In 2018, it published two propaganda articles supporting the proponents of that year’s violent failed opposition coup attempt.: “Criminalisation of health care in Nicaragua’s political crisis” and “The Politicised and crumbling Nicaraguan health system“.

The context of the lies, distortions and omissions in those propaganda articles has been broadly addressed here and  here and also elsewhere on specific issues such as: violent damage to health infrastructure along with opposition attacks on hospitals and the health system’s experience of the coup attempt. More generally, Nicaragua’s health system has been highly praised internationally for its vaccination programs, its epidemiological work against mosquito borne diseases and for its maternal care programs that have dramatically cut maternal mortality rates since 2007.

However, rather than acknowledging the undeniable successes and advances of Nicaragua’s public health system and hospital infrastructure, the Lancet’s editors have decided to continue unjustified defamation of Nicaragua’s public health system with another deceitful hit piece called “Love in the time of COVID-19: negligence in the Nicaraguan response”. The article’s authors lazily repeat false opposition propaganda from US government funded opposition propaganda outlets like Confidencial.

They make no attempt to source possible contradictory evidence or views, preferring to write the same kinds of lies, misrepresentations and omissions that have become standard  practice now in practically all Western reporting on Nicaragua. For a true picture of Nicaragua’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic, this article and also this one offer a strong, well-sourced antidote to the Lancet’s venomous falsehoods. The first lie in this latest Lancet article is that the Nicaraguan government’s response to the COIVD-19 epidemic has been erratic.

To the contrary, the health authorities have been the most consistent, determined and serious in the whole region in terms of coordination with the World Health Organization, with other countries and with regional authorities like the Central American Integration System, in terms of applying protocols appropriate to national social and economic realities, preparation of infrastructure and material resources, education policy and preventive mobilization of hundreds of thousands of health workers and volunteer health promoters. All this has been thoroughly reported in multiple local news media whose reports the Lancet has chosen to omit.

The second lie the Lancet falsely asserts is that “contradicting mitigation strategies recommended by WHO, President Daniel Ortega has refused to encourage any physical distancing measures”. In fact from the very outset of the health alert in February the government has stressed proper handwashing, taking care to protect others when sneezing or coughing and keeping a physical distance of at least 1.5 metres as well as carefully cleaning constantly-used surfaces. People wanting to self-isolate have been free to do so, including school and university students. Even so, the Lancet has chosen to omit this reality or to note any of the abundant printed and audio-visual educational material that has proliferated in Nicaragua especially since February.

The Lancet article makes great play of the projected estimates of the Health Ministry’s Protocol for addressing the COVID-19 epidemic produced in February, but fails to acknowledge that this self-same document of over 50 pages of detailed analysis and exposition makes nonsense of the article’s opening claim and central argument that Nicaragua has been unprepared, erratic and negligent in addressing the epidemic. The Lancet states that the Protocol’s projected statistical estimates suggest the possibility of up to 813 fatalities, with possibly up to 1016 patients needing intensive care and the Lancet again cites the Confidencial opposition propaganda outlet, this time reporting that Nicaragua does not have enough ventilators to attend that number of patients.

Confidencial’s claim of a serious lack of ventilators is unsourced hearsay typical of opposition propaganda in Nicaragua, but the Lancet uses it anyway. However, in the first place, Nicaragua’s health authorities have clearly planned a strategy to spread out the number of any possible infections so that should the virus spread then affected patients will not all need attention in the country’s health system at once. Secondly, the health authorities are coordinating the resources of the public health system with all health care institutions in Nicaragua, including the well resourced private sector hospitals, the country’s Social Security health care system and the Nicaraguan army’s superbly equipped health facilities. The Lancet omits that crucial fact.

The Lancet goes on to express approval of neighboring countries like Honduras and El Salvador that have much worse health, social and economic outcomes to date in terms of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. The populations in both those countries are suffering acute economic hardship as a result of the suppression model applied there. This is in sharp contrast to the relative economic normality in Nicaragua, where the outcomes of its mitigation and monitoring model are undeniably optimal so far, given the overall context. But the scientific geniuses at the Lancet want the same failed policies adopted by its neighbors to be applied to people in Nicaragua.

In the end, the Lancet does finally get one thing right when the article states “This situation underscores the need for resource-limited countries to focus on early prevention and containment efforts as their main strength in the fight against COVID-19.” And that is exactly what the Nicaraguan authorities have done in the most successful way. To date, they have prevented the COVID-19 virus from breaking out into the general population and have successfully contained it.

Nicaragua is the only country in Central America that has mobilized its health workers and volunteer health promoters to undertake over 2.3 million house-to-house visits  educating people and monitoring the development of the COVID-19 virus. One might speculate that what aggravates the Lancet and its writers so much is that impoverished  Nicaragua’s community health care model has so far made rich-country health systems look disorganized and inadequate. That hypothesis is certainly more scientific than the Lancet’s drivel in support of Nicaragua’s right wing opposition.

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Featured image is from TCS

Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. the Flu

April 8th, 2020 by Lisa Lockerd Maragakis, M.D., M.P.H.

This comparative analysis by a prominent physician and scholar should reassure people. The media fear campaign tends to describe COV-19 as a dangerous and life threatening infection.

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Influenza (the flu) and COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, are both infectious respiratory illnesses. Although the symptoms of COVID-19 and the flu can look similar, the two illnesses are caused by different viruses.

Lisa Maragakis, M.D., M.P.H., senior director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins, explains how the flu and COVID-19 are similar and how they are different.

Similarities: COVID-19 and the Flu

Symptoms

  • Both cause fever, cough, body aches and fatigue; sometimes vomiting and diarrhea.
  • Can be mild or severe, even fatal in rare cases.
  • Can result in pneumonia.

Transmission

  • Both can be spread from person to person through droplets in the air from an infected person coughing, sneezing or talking.
  • A possible difference: COVID-19 might be spread through the airborne route (see details below under Differences).
  • Both can be spread by an infected person for several days before their symptoms appear.

Treatment

  • Neither virus is treatable with antibiotics, which only work on bacterial infections.
  • Both are treated by addressing symptoms, such as reducing fever. Severe cases may require hospitalization and support such as mechanical ventilation.

Prevention

Both may be prevented by frequent, thorough hand washing, coughing into the crook of your elbow, staying home when sick and limiting contact with people who are infected. Social and physical distancing can limit the spread of COVID-19 in communities.

Differences: COVID-19 and the Flu

Cause

COVID-19: Caused by one virus, the novel 2019 coronavirus, now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.

Flu: Caused by any of several different types and strains of influenza viruses.

Transmission

While both the flu and COVID-19 may be transmitted in similar ways (see the Similarities section above), there is also a possible difference: COVID-19 might be spread through the airborne route, meaning that tiny droplets remaining in the air could cause disease in others even after the ill person is no longer near.

Antiviral Medications

COVID-19: Antiviral medications and other therapies are currently being tested to see if they can address symptoms.

Flu: Antiviral medications can address symptoms and sometimes shorten the duration of the illness.

Vaccine

COVID-19: No vaccine is available at this time, though it is in progress.

Flu: A vaccine is available and effective to prevent some of the most dangerous types or to reduce the severity of the flu.

Infections

COVID-19: Approximately 1,131,713 cases worldwide; 278,458 cases in the U.S. as of Apr. 4, 2020.[1]

Flu: Estimated 1 billion cases worldwide; 9.3 million to 45 million cases in the U.S. per year.

Deaths

COVID-19: Approximately 59,884 deaths reported worldwide; 7,159 deaths in the U.S., as of Apr. 4, 2020.*

Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.

The COVID-19 situation is changing rapidly. Since this disease is caused by a new virus, people do not have immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away. Doctors and scientists are working on estimating the mortality rate of COVID-19, but at present, it is thought to be higher than that of most strains of the flu.

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[1] This information comes from the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases map developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

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I cannot say “I told you so” because I did not.  But I can say “They told us so” because they did.  “They” being the alternate media that provided news and views that the mainstream media (MSM) would not touch because it harmed their veneer of the world that all was running smoothly.

Certainly there were signs in the MSM that all was not well.  For a while forest fires were the rage in Brazil and Australia and California, soon to be forgotten as other news was created by the MSM. Greta Thunberg became a climate star or a conspiracy victim depending on how you wanted your views heard, but that only lasted for a short while.

A few mass murders here and there were big enough to make it into the MSM and the politicians and Hollywood were excited for a few days before gun fever died down.  A  few war threats flared up and died down, some rather serious political grandstanding that could have led to much worse but fortunately died down rather quickly.

The biggest distraction was and still is Donald Trump and his supposed Russian connections (hey, he’s a businessman, he’s bound to have some) and his impeachment on something that even now I cannot think of, and his many tariffs and sanctions being used to keep the supposed nastys of the world under control.  The sad part is, a lot of citizens could care less as long as their cozy distracted lives were allowed to proceed more or less as they had learned to live within the limits of their consumer oriented lives.

Otherwise, everything was copacetic, moving along nicely.  Unemployment numbers were at record lows, the stock market was at record highs, inflation was under control and was supposed to be even a bit higher for the neoliberal capitalist order to function properly.  The U.S. was the exceptional nation and its western allies in NATO, Israel, and the EU were more than willing and more or less able supporters.

Who told us so?

But then something happened and as if out of the blue skies a meteor struck earth, everything changed within weeks.  But this was not a strike out of the blue – it was foreseen and foretold numerous times by numerous authors and researchers working for numerous alternate websites that were ignored by the MSM.  There are many alternate websites that warned that what has happened was due to happen any time soon, although what also surprised many of them was how long the powers that be were able to sustain the veneer that all was well.

Those that I have followed over the last decade or more fall into two categories: those focused on political/global affairs; and those focused on domestic or foreign financial affairs.  The political ones include Counterpunch, Palestine Chronicle, Global Research, Countercurrents, USA Watchdog, Fort Russ News, RT News, and Axis of Logic.  There is often frequent overlap between these sites as they copy and print articles from each other, and from many other perfectly good alternate sites that others may have as their main sources.

The financial sites started with Max Keiser on RT News.  From there I started looking at other sites, again many which copy and print related articles from other good sites.  Among those on the alternate scale who speak most intelligently are people such as Egon von Greyerz, Peter Schiff, Bill Holter, Michael Pento, Jim Sinclair, Michael Hudson, Alasdair MacCleod – all on their own sites and quoted frequently on other sites.

I do not always understand what is being said as much of the financial world is filled with its own arcane lexicon, much of it meaningless except to those who have worked the system, as most of those listed above have.  Also I have a very dim view of economics anyway, there is nothing scientific about it, and its economic formulas have about as much legitimacy as astrology – which at least has the mathematical legitimacy of knowing where the stars and planets are at any given time.  But the fundamental message was consistent….

…what did they tell us (it is not the Covid-19 virus).

We were told it was all a great big bubble, built on the foundations of previous bubbles and all it needed was something to poke the bubble and drain it of air – or in this case phony digital money.  They hesitated to tell us when, although last fall some of the more observant saw something happening well before the COVID-19 virus hit.

And that is the main news – the economic woes most people are now facing have not been caused by the virus but by the economic bubble(s) popping rather loudly and quickly as the newly laid off ten million U.S. citizens and the many millions elsewhere can attest to.

But the bubble received a double prick.  The first was the Covid virus.  The second was the free for all in oil production instigated by our friends in Saudi Arabia who need a higher oil price in order to sustain their economy and their terror activities throughout the region and beyond.

And yes, they told us so.  The financial bubble was all ready to burst.  Covid and oil did the pricking.

So what now are they telling us

The MSM is concentrating as usual on the short term.  The virus will go away.  The markets will rebound.  The government will keep things going with their trillions of dollars of support.  Life will go on in a few weeks, a few months, maybe next fall.

Reading the alternate media presents a different story.  According to the financial analysts mentioned above, this is the start of the Greatest Depression.  The virus may go away – and then return in waves like the flu does seasonally.  The markets will have a few dead cat bounces (after all cats do have nine lives) and then fail almost completely.  Trillions of new dollars are and will be added to the debt to contribute to the largest future forecast of all – the demise of the U.S. dollar.

That is the really big news and it is both awful to consider and also awesome to consider.  As the U.S. does its best to reinflate the economic bubble, they are adding trillions of dollars to the already immense and unpayable global debt.  Of the many variations of what this then causes, all the analysts tend to agree that the US$ will become worthless, maybe not right away, but in a few years as more and more artificial fiat money is pumped into the system.

The implications are profound.

The U.S., already on its way to becoming a third world country, will dive deeper into that realm.

Many/most large corporations and banks will be bankrupt, taking along all the money robbed from the common masses over the years.

With a useless US$, bribery, graft, sanctions on the bad side and trade, investment, and payrolls on the good side will have to take place with another currency – thus the U.S. loses most if not all of its global financial power to control others.

Oil will no longer be sold in dollars, cratering the economies of a few countries (Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Canada) but not others (Russia, in particular as they are mostly clear of foreign debt and have large gold reserves and have elevated their domestic infrastructure and agricultural production).

Unfortunately, having one of the most belligerent, aggressive, egotistical militaries in the world, the U.S. could decide to go ballistic – literally – just to deprive everyone else of the ability to carry on without them.

The environment will receive a bit of a break as commercial and industrial demands fall off dramatically but it will probably be too little too late.  When it comes to short term demands for survival, the environment will probably not be much of a consideration.

I told you so.

Lastly, this will not be an “I told you so” statement.  It has already been postulated in different forms by the alternate media personnel.  We are entering a new world order, and it will be quite different from what it looks like now – let’s hope collectively we can learn from it and create a better world rather than an even more belligerent one.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Coronavirus: The Great Geopolitical Leveller

April 8th, 2020 by Johanna Ross

Coronavirus is indiscriminate. We have seen young and old affected, rich and poor. In the UK alone, we have seen the Prime Minister himself succumb to it and even Prince Charles. But this pandemic has repercussions beyond our nation states. In a short time, it has paralysed the ‘developed’ world and threatened its very existence.

The unipolar world as we know it is being questioned like never before. Nations demonised in the West – Russia, China and Cuba – have been the very countries sending aid to the West.

Never has one witnessed a more ironic act than the US accepting aid from Russia, its arch geopolitical enemy and ‘the primary threat to American interests’ – according to a survey published last year by a US think-tank. The Antonov An-124-100 cargo plane delivered vital medical equipment and masks from Moscow to the US on Wednesday at a time when the country is struggling to cope with coronavirus. There are already 333,173 cases and 9536 deaths in a nation whose leader Donald Trump initially refused to recognise the severity of the situation, claiming it was ‘like the flu’ before excusing his administration’s inaction by saying ‘Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion’.  The outlook is pretty grim for the US.

Russia has, on the other hand, as have many Asian countries so far, dealt with the virus efficiently and effectively – so much so that Russian watchers got suspicious and began penning articles on the subject that the country was covering up the real figures. There are still articles in western mainstream media claiming there is a cover-up, with people at a loss as to why the country of 146 million has fewer cases than Norway. In fact there are various possible reasons why Russia has reacted to the virus more slowly than other nations. Firstly, it closed its border with China very early in the crisis – back on 30th January – even before any cases were reported. Secondly, it set up strict quarantine rules to ensure that anyone travelling from abroad was isolated for two weeks. In addition, the government has undertaken a thorough approach to testing.  Although only just over 4000 infected to date, according to official statistics, over 575,000 tests have been carried out in Russia (there is an official website devoted to the outbreak where people can get up to date information and advice). In this regard the Russian government could not be more transparent. This number of tests could be compared to the UK at present, where only 150,000 tests have been carried out, despite the number of cases reaching over 47,000. Thirdly, it has been speculated that Russians may have greater immunity to the virus as a result of the Soviet vaccination programme for tuberculosis; it has been noted that in eastern parts of Germany there have been fewer cases, and suggested this is down to greater immunity which dates back to when German Democratic Republic existed.

Whatever the reason is for the delay of the pandemic in Russia, the country’s strict measures have clearly played a role. China, although initially unable to determine what it was dealing with, swiftly moved to implement a nationwide lockdown and massive testing programme. This has enabled the country to overcome the worst of the pandemic and drastically reduce the number of cases it sees on a daily basis – on Friday it was as low as 31.

The country has also taken part, as has Russia, in sending aid to other parts of the globe such as Italy, which is struggling to manage the disease, with over 15,000 deaths to date. The equipment came with a message ‘The friendship road knows no borders’, which very much expresses the spirit of this cooperation. And despite all sorts of theories being espoused by mainstream media as to the motivation behind China and Russia’s actions, politics and propaganda ought to be set aside at a time like this, and such gestures taken at face value. This is not a time for political points to be scored; people’s lives are at stake.

But even after this is over – and it will be, eventually – surely governments will have to rethink their strategies. For years now the security services in the US and UK have been obsessed with the ‘Russian threat’. But by focusing on this almost mythical monster of ‘Putin’s Russia’, painted as poised to invade Europe at any second and begin World War Three, real threats have surfaced and materialized to our detriment. Terrorism being one, pandemics another. It emerged recently that the British security services were aware that Taiwan was testing for coronavirus back in December, but failed to act – why? Why have western governments been so ill-prepared for a pandemic that epidemiologists have been warning about for years?

Surely, after this international effort to save our populations, governments will have to reassess their priorities. Surely, after this struggle, and the spirit of cooperation which has been generated, the West will have to recognize Russia, China and others as equal partners, and not nations to be sanctioned when they take geopolitical decisions the West doesn’t agree with. Surely, after this is over, the multipolar world will be born.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Although there seems to be a passive acceptance by citizens of the measures imposed due to the fake coronavirus epidemic, this resignation is largely the consequence of the absence of leaders leading an effective resistance against the disguised coup d’état. As always, the mainstream media does not cover anyone who challenges the official narrative. In Spain, many defied and violated the confinement order at first and were met with a resounding response from the repressive police forces.

I violate the quarantine myself on a daily basis, although I have not had the bad luck to meet with the police forces. I completely ignore the ins and outs of my country’s legal system or any other, but I wonder if it would not be possible to create a global platform to take legal action against illegitimate authorities, (illegitimate since they have betrayed the interests of their respective countries for the benefit of a reduced international elite) for conspiracy and arbitrary confinement.  It would not be very difficult to collect evidence of the existence of such a conspiracy since the criminals have not bothered in the least to erase the traces of their crimes. Those affected by the imposed curfew and martial law are legion and would surely welcome such a measure.

What we are living seems like the script for a bad catastrophic science fiction movie (in the same line of thought, most scientists seems to be now science fiction novelists). Could a Hollywood screenwriter be involved in the conception of the fiction that we are living against our will? Who is the ghost writer behind the ghost pandemic? It seems crazy but our daily life has become already crazy.

It is impossible to underestimate the role of the factory not of dreams, but of nightmares as a hypnotic platform for mass indoctrination and a source of propaganda at the service of global tyranny, the supervisory role and the censorship that the CIA, the Mossad or both exerts on Hollywood productions is notorious. In fact we could consider Hollywood as a front company of the Agency. The coronavirus epidemic is nothing more than an immense fiction in which the citizens are not more than involuntary extras. But I am afraid that when we wake up from this bad dream we will have become the extras of some ridiculous peplum working as slaves of the occasional pharaoh.

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  • Comments Off on The COVID-19 Catastrophe: A Global Platform to Take Legal Action against the WHO and Corrupt Governments

On April 5, a series of large explosions rocked the village of al-Kastan in southwestern Idlib injuring 8 people, including 3 members of the so-called White Helmets. According to local sources, an ammunition depot located in the civilian area inside the city became the source of the explosion.

Al-Kastan is located near the town of Jisr al-Shughur, controlled by the Al-Qaeda-linked Turkistan Islamic Party. The exploded weapon depot likely belonged to the terrorist group or persons affiliated with it.

On the same day, the Turkish military established three new ‘observation posts’ around Jisr al-Shughur. They are located at the villages of Baksariya, al-Z’ainiyah and Furaykah. Idlib militants see Turkish positions as an important defense line that would allow containing possible Russia- and Iran-backed anti-terrorist operations in the area.

The 46th Regiment Base of the Syrian Army in western Aleppo came under Turkish artillery shelling. In response, Syrian forces struck position of Turkish-backed militants near Kafr Amma. The attack on the 46th Regiment Base became a third incident between the Turkish military and Syrian troops in less than a week. On April 3, two Syrian soldiers were killed in a Turkish artillery strike on their positions near Tell Abyad.

On April 4, Iraq’s largest resistance groups released a joint statement calling the US military “occupation forces” that “respect the language of force only”. In the statement, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, Harakat al-Awfiy’a, Saraya Ashura, Harakat Jund al-Imam and Saraya al-Khurasani added that recent attacks on US forces and facilities in Iraq were only a “minor response” to the US aggression and the decision to carry out full-scale attacks was not taken then.

Two days earlier, on April 2, Usbat al-Tha’ireen, the armed group that claimed responsibility for rocket strikes on Camp Taji and other US positions, released a 3-minute long drone footage of the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone. This is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, and is nearly as large as Vatican City.

The US Central Command officially confirmed deployment of Patriot air defense systems in Iraq. However, the US military announced that it will not provide “providing status updates as those systems come online” for security reasons. At least two Patriot batteries are now located in at the US military bases of Ayn al-Assad and Erbil. Two more Patriot batteries will reportedly be deployed soon.

As part of its plan to redeploy forces to larger, more fortified bases, the US evacuated its troops from the al-Taqaddum Air Base in the province of al-Anbar. It became the fourth US military facility abandoned in Iraq within the last few weeks. The previous ones were located in al-Qaim, Kirkuk and al-Qayyarah.

Iraqi sources say that the US actions demonstrate that Washington is preparing for a new round of military confrontation with Iran and its allies in the region. Recently, President Donald Trump stated that the US was expecting attacks by Iranian-led forces on US troops and facilities, claiming that Iran will ‘pay price’ for this. Following the statement, Iran deployed additional anti-ship missiles and multiple rocket launchers on the Qeshm Island in the Strait of Horumz.

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