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Provided that developing nations are assured of debt relief (however it be agreed upon) and the world’s leading agricultural exporters can ensure the continuance of their operations (preferably subsidized by the state as emergency aid to the Global South), then it’s possible that this looming catastrophe can be averted. If that doesn’t happen for some reason, then not only could countless people perish, but the geopolitical stability of this broad swath of the planet could be shattered if domestic and/or international unrest follows as a result.

In December, China agreed to buy an additional $200 billion worth of US goods and services over 2017 levels in the next two years (in 2020 and 2021).

In return, the Trump regime partially rolled back tariffs on Chinese imports that range from 15% to 25%.

A snapback provision calls for reimposing tariffs in full if Chinese purchases aren’t fulfilled as agreed on.

According to Beijing’s official People’s Daily broadsheet, “(t)he deal covers intellectual property rights, technology transfers, food and agricultural products, financial services, exchange rates and transparency.”

Despite what was agreed on, the toughest bilateral differences remain unresolved, agreement on them perhaps never to be reached because they involve Washington’s aim to undermine China’s economic, industrial, and technological development.

The bilateral deal agreed on came before COVID-19 outbreaks and collapse of global economies occurred.

Given dire current conditions that may likely be protracted, can China buy what it agreed to? The deal did not factor in what’s going on?

It makes fulfillment of the deal highly unlikely despite Trump’s threat to terminate it and reimpose tariffs if Chinese purchases from the US aren’t in amounts agreed on.

In early April, Beijing’s US envoy Cui Tiankai said his government remains committed to the deal.

China’s soft economy and weakened export market reduced its foreign purchases.

Despite being the world’s largest crude oil buyer, Beijing imported half as much oil and other fuels from the US in Q I compared to 2019, far more from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.

According to an unnamed state-operated China National Petroleum Corporation official, the cost of US oil is marginally higher than from other countries.

While China bought large amounts of US agricultural products in Q I, since March they declined sharply.

Weeks earlier, former Chinese Commerce Ministry-linked think tank head Huo Jianguo said it’s “impossible” for Beijing to fulfill agreed on purchases from the US given current conditions that won’t likely improve for some time.

Reportedly, trade negotiators from both countries will discuss the status of the bilateral deal by phone next week, their first official contact since January.

Through April, Chinese exports to and imports from the US are down significantly because of current conditions.

If little or no economic improvement occurs in the coming months, what’s most likely, will Trump scrap the trade deal?

Will he reimpose tariffs, making strained economic and political relations with China worse, harming the US economy at the same time?

His tenure has been marked by bad domestic and geopolitical decision-making.

His war on China by other means threatens to rupture relations already greatly strained.

He surrounded himself with a cadre of extremists and individuals unqualified figures for the positions they hold — notably in dealing with the current public health and economic crisis.

Last year, UK envoy to Washington Kim Darrock called Trump’s White House “dysfunctional,” labeling him “inept” and “incompetent,” warning that his regime could collapse in “disgrace” — remarks coming from a leaked cable.

At the time, a UK Foreign Office statement said “(t)he British public would expect our ambassadors to provide ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their country.”

His pressure, bullying, threats, and intimidating tactics alienate allies and adversaries alike.

At least four bankruptcies revealed a failed businessman.

Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said he wasn’t a great dealmaker…He’s never responsible. It is always someone else’s fault.”

According to Trump’s 1987 “Art of the Deal” ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, “most of the deals in the book were failures,” adding:

“And the number of deals he’s made over the years since then have overwhelmingly been failures.” He’s “one of the worst” dealmakers Schwartz ever came across.

He bungled relations with other countries, bungled domestic policies, bungled his handling of the ongoing public health crisis and economic collapse.

He’s close to rupturing relations with China.

Will he try distracting attention from dire economic hard times by starting another war — a wag the dog reelection campaign strategy?

He manages to fool diehards most of the time, others some of the time.

The harder and more protracted hard times get, the less able he’ll likely be to fool a majority and win enough support for a second term.

Honest historians will likely remember him as corrosive, narcissistic, and racist, an enemy of the earth, and a belligerent opposed to peace.

He’s a failed president, bombastic and brazenly opposed to what public service is supposed to be, indifferent toward public health and welfare, inept and incompetent on the job, a disgrace to the office he holds.

He flagrantly breached every consumer-friendly promise he made from day one in office.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader predicted he’d be a one-term president in 2018.

Calling him “so ignorant that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, (he’s) destroying norms and conventions of a sane society.”

He exceeds the worst of his hardline predecessors.

He’s “a clear and imminent danger not just to the American people, but to the world,” said Nader.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Stansberry Churchouse

The Palestinian Authority has threatened to cut all agreements signed with Israel and the US, if the annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank goes ahead.

During a meeting in Ramallah with the Fatah Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday evening said PA would not accept the annexation of any part of the occupied West Bank.

“I want to tell you here that if the Israeli government begins annexation, whether in the Ibrahimi Mosque, in the settlements or in the Jordan Valley, we consider ourselves absolved of all the agreements we signed with them and with the American administration because it is the one who brought the Deal of the Century,” Abbas said.

“They are the ones who motivated the Israelis to carry on the annexation, and they are the ones who pushed them into this matter. They cannot tell us that they have nothing to do with it and that it is an Israel decision.”

The so-called Deal of the Century was rolled out by US President Donald Trump in 2019, which broke international protocol and heavily weighed in favour of Israel.

Trump’s overt favouritism towards Israel has been criticised across the world, which has seen Washington going against the foundations of the two-state-solution – an internationally endorsed deal to the Palestine-Israel conflict.

“The Deal of the Century came from the Americans. They talked about it on more than one occasion. All officials, including the Secretary of State and others, said that this deal will be implemented. We will not wait for its implementation,” he said.

“The minute this is done, we will be absolved of all the agreements we have signed and which we were fully committed to without exception,” he told his top Fatah members, calling on them to decide on this matter “so that we will start implementing this decision”, Abbas added.

Soon after Abbas’ comments, US Ambassador David Friedman to Israel said Tel Aviv will start to annex Palestinian land in weeks.

He added that the US would be “ready to recognise” the annexation of the Palestinian lands once Israel had “declared sovereignty” over them.

Expansion of illegal occupation

After unilaterally recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 and its annexation of the Golan from Syria in March 2019, Trump in late January 2020 unveiled a peace plan for the Middle East that included many concessions to Israel.

The peace plan says it would let Israel annex a third of the West Bank, inside which are hundreds of illegal settlements along with the Jordan Valley.

It would give Palestinians limited autonomy in a small archipelago of territory with a capital on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but only if they meet the near impossible conditions set out by Trump.

Under the plan, Israel would retain control of the disputed city of Jerusalem as its “undivided capital”, and annex settlements on Palestinian lands. Palestinians, however, want all of East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future state.

Initial maps released by the White House as part of its peace proposal indicated plans for Israel to annex all Israeli settlements and the fertile Jordan Valley, which makes up around a third of the occupied West Bank.

It also includes plans to give Palestine control of a slim stretch of the arid Negev desert alongside the border with Egypt.

The demilitarised Palestinian statelet would lack territorial continuity and instead be linked by special roads and tunnels, according to initial plans.

It has been widely condemned by the rest of the international community, with many comparing it to the bantustans created under the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

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All images in the body of the article are from the author unless otherwise stated; featured image is from Nurphoto

The effects of the global pandemic of the new coronavirus on large cities are well known and occupy the news all over the world. However, little is said about infection in rural areas and among isolated peoples. In South America, where a large part of the planet’s indigenous populations still live, the virus is posing a real threat to the existence of these peoples, with the rapid spread of the infection and a high mortality rate.

In the Brazilian state of Amazonas – the largest in the country and with the largest indigenous population – the pandemic is doing real damage. The state already has more than 10,000 confirmed cases and more than 800 deaths. More than 90% of the municipalities in Amazonas already have confirmed cases. It is speculated that there will be more than 1,200 dead by the next Tuesday. It is also worth remembering that Brazil has a very serious underreporting situation, according to which some scientists say there are 12 unidentified cases for each infected person reported. The scenario is truly catastrophic, with the state of Amazonas having already recorded the complete funerary collapse.

Official data point to “only” six deaths of Brazilian Indians by coronavirus so far, in addition to dozens of confirmed cases of infection – 95% of the cases recorded in Amazonas. However, the situation is a real time bomb. There is very little left to trigger the catastrophe. The state of Amazonas is home to the largest Brazilian indigenous city, São Gabriel da Cachoeira, where 23 different indigenous ethnicities live and where the infection has already arrived. The geographic conditions of the state and of the entire Amazonian forest are extremely unfavorable to the management of a biological risk, especially when we take into account the terrible public health structure in Brazil: the treatment unit closest to São Gabriel da Cachoeira – city that has the same size as Bulgaria – is more than 850 kilometers away from the municipality. Once the disease has reached the site, it is predictable that in a few days it will spread and jeopardize the survival of more than 20 indigenous ethnic groups, as they will not be able to count on close and accessible medical treatment.

The situation of Brazilian Indians is also dire in other states. The first death in indigenous communities was recorded in the state of Roraima; it has been the case of a young Yanomami Indian, only 15 years old, infected by white illegal prospectors who had invaded the lands of his people. The neglect with which the Brazilian State historically treats native peoples now has its highest point. This is not the first time that deadly diseases have been brought to indigenous communities by people from outside them. Previous epidemics, such as flu, malaria, yellow fever and dengue, have wiped out thousands of Indians over decades, having been introduced into indigenous villages through illegal invaders who were never punished for their crimes by the State, which remains inert in the face of the genocide of native peoples. These peoples have, in general, little immunity to diseases from outside their housing zones, being easily exterminated by small infections, such as the influenza virus. What about something as devastating as COVID-19?

The problem is not restricted to Brazil. In Colombia, there are more than 300 dead. In the municipality of Letícia, the southernmost city in the country, there are already 13 fatal cases, including António Bolívar, an internationally recognized indigenous actor. The infection reached the region through Brazil, due to the large flow of people on the border. As an answer, Colombia closed its borders, however, in practice, this is an extremely difficult measure, since, in the middle of the dense forest, the demarcation of the territory of each country is not perfect. In Ecuador, where 1,600 people have already died from COVID-19, the Siekopai ethnic group – which has about 700 members – has already confirmed dozens of cases, with two deaths of community leaders due to the disease.

The quarantine and social isolation measures have already reached indigenous communities; however, they are being imposed in an incorrect way, which can aggravate the situation. The Indians are being isolated in their villages, prevented by armed patrols from moving through the forest. The result of this type of policy is an increase in hunger and the emergence of a new difficulty, not the solution to the virus. The correct thing to do would be to eliminate the presence of mining companies, oil companies and all forms of foreign and non-indigenous presence in these regions, considering that the focus of the infection is still outside the Amazon and that the first cases among the indigenous people were due to transmission through contact with non-indigenous people. The presence of people from outside the villages should be restricted to essential medical and professional teams, however, the neoliberal governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia remain inert before the performance of exploration companies in the Amazon and thus contribute to the effectiveness of a genuine genocide against native populations.

In a few months, we will see the predictable outcome of the situation that is developing in the Amazon: a social catastrophe, with the extermination of entire ethnic groups by a virus which was carried to the forest by people from outside it. If governments continue to omit, they will be participating in genocide.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Washington-backed Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaido has been accused of hiring mercenaries responsible for two foiled terror attacks, as more details of the plot begin to emerge.

Venezuelan communications minister Jorge Rodriguez confirmed that the former president of the National Assembly signed a contract with the US private-security company Silvercorp.

It was this company which provided two US citizens, Airan Berry and Luke Denman, who were detained on Monday among a number of other US-backed paramilitaries as they attempted to enter Venezuela by boat from neighbouring Colombia.

“Some elements are perfectly clear and others will be clarified even more as the investigations on the dismantled incursion — which had the participation of mercenaries, deserters, drug traffickers, and former green berets —- continue,” Mr Rodriguez said.

“There is testimonial evidence about the absolute and real commitment of Juan Guaido and his close partners with aggressive actions,” he added.

Silvercorp was founded in Florida with the mission statement of “providing governments and corporations with realistic and timely solutions to irregular problems.”

It boasts of operating in more than 50 countries and its leader, Jordan Goudreau, a US military veteran, confirmed that Mr Berry and Mr Denman were “working with me. These are my guys.”

Company founder Jonathan Harisch has previously stated:

“The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we know nothing about.”

Testimony from US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent Jose Alberto Socorro Hernandez, alias “Pepero” previously exposed links between the US and Colombian governments in an assassination attempt on Bolivarian President Nicolas Maduro.

Mr Guaido and his allies have denied links with Silvercorp. He said in a statement on Monday:

“We demand the human rights … of the people captured in recent hours be respected.”

The attacks were part of Operation Gideon — a plot which involved the training and funding of paramilitaries in Colombia aiming to start an armed insurrection and overthrow the Venezuelan government.

It was led by retired Venezuelan army general Cliver Alcala who surrendered himself to US authorities in Colombia last month. He was quickly whisked away to the US, leading Mr Maduro to declare him a Washington asset.

“He signed a contract with mercenaries against Venezuela. We knew all his movements and details of the camps and the plans,” Mr Rodriguez confirmed.

Vice President Delcy Rodriguez condemned attacks on the country’s electricity network yesterday. Large parts of Venezuela were affected but power was quickly restored.

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In the midst of a massive global pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people and wrecked economies all over the world leaving millions jobless, some terrorists and mercenaries allegedly backed by certain governments had on 3^rd May 2020 attempted to invade the independent, sovereign state of Venezuela. Organised and trained in neighbouring Colombia, they had landed on the coast of Macuto close to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. The invasion was foiled by the Venezuelan military and police with the support of the people. Several of the invaders were killed and a couple captured. The captured, both Americans, confessed on Venezuelan TV, that their aim was not only the overthrow of the legally constituted government but also the assassination of the president, Nicolas Maduro. Though the invasion has been thwarted, the captured Americans made it clear that the ouster of the Maduro government was an on-going operation.

It will be recalled that a year ago, in 2019, there was a coup attempt led by an opposition political leader which failed miserably. In April 2002, a coup against the then president, the late Hugo Chavez succeeded momentarily but the people through mass mobilisation restored Chavez to his seat of power. It was the most dramatic expression of genuine ‘people power’.

Coups against leaders who are determined to preserve the independence of their nation and defend the sovereignty of their people orchestrated and engineered by the Deep State in the United States often with the connivance of their allies in the region is the sad saga of Latin American politics. A number of governments have been subjected to this manipulation over the decades. One of the most infamous was the ouster of president Salvador Allende of Chile on the 11^th of September 1973. The most recent was the overthrow of the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales in November 2019. There is no need to repeat that the Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, was the target of numerous such attempts during his long stewardship all of which failed spectacularly.

Cuba, like Venezuela, is also the victim of all-encompassing economic sanctions initiated and imposed by the US. As a result, both economies and the people have suffered immensely. It is remarkable that in spite of the sanctions, both Cuba and Venezuela have managed to protect their people in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed they have done a million times better than the nation that has punished them with sanctions which incidentally has the highest number of fatalities and infections in the world. Cuba has not only maintained a low number on both scores but has also extended generous medical assistance by way of medical personnel and equipment to numerous countries including those in Europe to enable  them to fight the pandemic. In the case of Venezuela it is important to observe that as of 4^th May it had only 10 deaths and 357 infections. Apart from help from Cuba, Venezuela has also benefitted from the supply of equipment and the cooperation of medical personnel from China and Russia.

The success of this cooperation is one of the factors that has emboldened president Maduro to propose at the recent virtual Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) chaired by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, that NAM help to organise the distribution of medical equipment and medicines among its member states. NAM he suggested could even set up an international humanitarian fund for this purpose — an idea first mooted by Chavez years ago. A humanitarian fund whose primary goal would be financing not only the purchase of medicines and equipment especially for NAM’s poorer members but also sponsoring doctors and nurses  if the need arises.

When NAM is directly involved in a concrete programme of this sort in an emergency situation, it would have a tangible role. The citizens of NAM would be able to identify with the movement. The Venezuelan proposal should be pursued until it becomes a reality. It is actual manifestations of cooperation that will bring people together in the post coronavirus era and establish the basis for a new just and compassionate global civilisation.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Activists gather in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC in March, 2019.

Detroit has been disproportionately impacted by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in early-to-mid- March.

Almost no preparation by the municipal administration was made in advance of such a tremendous healthcare and subsequent social crises.

The majority of the African American population in the city, constituting nearly 80% of the overall residents, is working class. There are large numbers of people living and working without adequate health insurance. Several thousand households do not have running water in their dwellings. Environmental degradation due to industrial production and waste mismanagement is linked to the proliferation of respiratory illnesses.

These living and working conditions cannot be excluded from any assessment of the rate of infections and deaths since the advent of COVID-19 in the city and the state of Michigan. These same factors are also relevant in other major urban areas throughout the United States.

Moreover, the U.S., with the largest capitalist economy in the world, is now the epicenter of the worst pandemic to inflict North America and Western Europe in over a century. The current administration of President Donald Trump had ridiculed the notion of a potential pandemic and utilized racism in an attempt to stigmatize the People’s Republic of China. Daily White House briefings led by Trump and Vice President Michael Pence often degenerated into denunciations of China along with the World Health Organization (WHO), to which the administration suspended funding amid an international medical emergency.

Trump has accused the WHO of being biased in favor of Beijing. He also falsely asserted that the Geneva-based United Nations affiliated agency did not inform the U.S. of the severity of COVID-19 infection rates. However, these allegations have been discredited by both China and the WHO. Information on the character of the virus and data related to its spread and effect on patients was widely shared with the international community beginning in late 2019 and early 2020.

The accusations made against China cannot conceal the hard facts that the U.S. has 1,193,813 COVID-19 cases and 70,802 deaths. With pressure by the capitalist ruling class to “reopen” the economy, therefore, forcing people back to work in the remaining jobs and businesses, without an organized resistance movement, it is inevitable that there will be another surge in infections and deaths.

COVID-19 graph showing US surpassing China in number of infections

Detroit and Michigan Rates of Infections and Deaths

As of May 7, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state of Michigan is 43,950 and some 4,135 people have died from the illness. There has been a higher concentration of infections in larger urban and metropolitan areas around Detroit and Flint.

In Wayne County there are 17,667 cases of COVID-19. Detroit is the seat of the county with 9,566 cases and 1,147 deaths. Data on the racial identity of those infected indicate that African Americans, whom make up 14% of the state’s population, are represented in 32% of the cases and 41% of the deaths.

Nonetheless, the rate of infections and deaths are declining significantly in Detroit. The majority of people appear to be abiding by the social distancing and other preventive measures guidelines. Many businesses are closed along with schools, colleges, universities, office buildings, plants, construction site, etc. in abidance to the stay-at-home orders issued by Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Economic Toll of the Pandemic: Markets and the Masses

There have been approximately 34 million people who have filed for unemployment benefits in the U.S. within less than two months. Automotive production, service sector jobs, educational institutions and even healthcare facilities are furloughing and laying-off employees.

In Michigan, over one million more people are jobless due to the existing crisis. The City of Detroit administration has already instituted an austerity budget for the next two fiscal years in anticipation of the drastic reduction in tax revenue fueled by long term structural unemployment.

Untold numbers of workers applying for unemployment benefits have undergone bureaucratic barriers to payment. The State websites for jobless claims are often stalled and phone calls go unanswered for hours. Others have been denied benefits for spurious reasons which are “non-monetary.” The hostile posture and character of State government in Michigan adopted as policy under the previous administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder have not been adjusted by the Democratic successor Gretchen Whitmer.

The automotive companies are planning to phase in production beginning after May 11. These decisions come with profound risks. If there are COVID-19 outbreaks in the plants which exceed previous cases, the facilities will be forced to close down again. Moreover, with more than 34 million without employment, the demand for consumer goods will decline drastically.

Image on the right: Detroit Receiving Hospital during the COVID-19 outbreak in the city

A much nationally-championed public relations campaign suggesting that Detroit is undergoing an economic resurgence is largely based upon developments in the service and hospitality sectors. Obviously a major setback for this narrative is the closing of the casino hotels downtown which will remain shuttered for many months to come depriving the municipality of millions in tax revenue.

Many people’s healthcare coverage is linked with their jobs. As a consequence of rising unemployment and poverty, more workers and their families will be forced out of medical insurance plans furthering the burden being placed on hospitals.

Public transportation will undergo cuts in service routes while the schools have no plans to reopen anytime soon during 2020. Plans have been announced to provide lap top computers and tablets to K-12 students for the purposes of online learning.

Prior to the Great Recession of the 2000s and the subsequent imposition of Emergency Management and Bankruptcy during 2012-2014, Detroit was transformed from a majority city of homeowners to one of renters. As a direct result of the lack of legal guarantees for renters related to price controls, moratoriums on payments and the lack of available housing for low and moderate income residents, many people are being forced out of the city center and into the suburbs, rural areas or other states. This pattern, on the ascendancy for many years, will accelerate in the coming period.

The economic imperatives of the ruling class are to force people back to work irrespective of the failure to provide safeguards from infection. We have witnessed with dismay the spread of the pandemic in the meat processing plants around the country. Even in the auto plants in Michigan, several workers died as a result of COVID-19. Those workers speaking out against the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other safety issues are routinely disciplined and terminated without due process.

Moving Forward: The Political Questions of the Period

Moratorium NOW! Coalition was formed in 2008 amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929-1941. At that time we demanded an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions while fighting in the courts and on the streets to save the homes of people living in the city and the state.

Later we expanded our focus to challenging DTE Energy and their profit-making objectives which ignore the fundamental human rights of the people facing utility shut-offs and the subsequent peril associated with such measures. By 2014, when water shut-offs reached epidemic proportions as a direct result of the illegal Emergency Management regime and bankruptcy, we exposed the link between the financial institutions and the denial of tens of thousands of working people their right to water.

Today these demands remain relevant to the situation in Detroit, the state of Michigan and the U.S. as a whole. In a daily briefing from New York Governor Cuomo on May 7, he extended a moratorium on evictions for another two months in that state.

In Detroit and the state of Michigan no one should be foreclosed or evicted in this period. This same moratorium should apply to water and utility shut-offs. Rents and payments should be waved until the economic situation in the state reaches some level of stability.

These demands extend to the request for Cuban medical assistance to the people of Detroit and the U.S. The socialist orientation of Cuban healthcare methodology is much needed in a city where racism and national oppression has rendered hundreds of thousands jobless and threatened with financial ruin.

Judging from the history of resistance in Detroit, the workers and oppressed will rise to the occasion. Prior to the pandemic, there was already a rising political ferment related to housing demolition projects, tax captures and over taxation.  Undoubtedly, the economic and social crisis will spark more layers of society into political action and organization.

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Author’s note: The above remarks were delivered during an online public webinar sponsored by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition based in Detroit.

The event was designed to raise the demand for Cuban medical assistance in Detroit in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city and the state of Michigan. Detroit and other municipalities around the state have been designated as “hot spots” due to high rates of infections and deaths.

Others participating in the program were musician and activist Sarah Torres; Lisa Valanti of the Cuba Caravan from Pittsburgh; Maureen Taylor, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization State Chair and member of Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities; and Gail Walker, Executive Director, Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) based in New York City.

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

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

In response to recent media speculation that as the blame game over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic escalates the US may cancel some of its $1.1 trillion debt owed to China, the South China Morning Post reported today that China may “move to reduce its vast holdings of US Treasury securities in the coming months” in response to a resurgence in trade tensions and a war of words between the world’s two largest economies.

While analysts have also said that the US was highly unlikely to take the “nuclear option” of cancelling Chinese-held debt, with Larry Kudlow himself refuting this suggestion on several occasions last week, the “mere fact that the idea has been discussed could well prompt Beijing to seek to insulate itself from the risk by reducing its US government debt holdings”, the SCMP writes.

And while the SCMP then suggests that this “could spell trouble for the US government bond market at a time when Washington is significantly ramping up new issuance to pay for a series of programs to combat the pandemic and the economic damage it is causing”, nothing could be further from the truth: yes, the US Treasury will issue over $4 trillion in new debt this calendar year, but now that the US officially lives under central planning, courtesy of helicopter money, the Fed will monetize not just every dollar the Treasury issues, but will monetize double the net issuance.

Which means that not only does the US not need China to buy its debt ever again, the US in fact does not need anyone outside the Fed, now that open debt and deficit monetization is the endgame, with the only unknown is when this will lead to currency collapse.

Surprisingly, the Chinese still don’t get that any tactical advantage they may have had is now gone:

any move to cancel the debt owed to China – effectively defaulting on it – would be counterproductive to US interests because it would likely destroy investors’ faith in the trustworthiness of the US government to pay its bills, analysts warned.

This would send US interest rates soaring, making borrowing more costly for the government, as well US companies and consumers, and in turn strike a sharp blow to America’s already very weak economy.

Again: no. Maybe this idea had some validity when the Fed was pretending it wouldn’t do unlimited QE, but now that the Fed is purchasing hundreds of billions in US paper every month, what China may or may not do with its holdings of US debt is completely irrelevant.

“It’s such a crazy idea that anyone who has made it should really have their fitness for office reconsidered,” said Cliff Tan, East Asian head of global markets research at MUFG Bank. “We view this as largely a political ploy for [Donald Trump’s] re-election and a cynical one because it would destroy the financing of the US federal budget deficit.”

Uhm, Cliff, yes it is insane, but not because China has any leverage left: in case you missed it, the Fed purchased $2.5 trillion in debt in the past 6 weeks.

That’s more than double what China owns. So yes, if Beijing wants to dump its Treasuries, bring it on: it will cause yields to spike for an hour or two, at which point everyone will frontrun the Fed which will activate the turbo POMO and purchase every last penny that China had to sell.

China’s desperate fearmongering – as if it tries to convince itself that it has some leverage over the US continued:

China could trigger a crash in the US dollar and financial markets by flooding the market with US Treasuries for sale, which would push down US bond prices and cause yields to spike. But that would also ignite a global financial catastrophe, hurting China as well.

A sale of a mere $1.1 trillion in Treasurys now that the total US debt just surpassed $25 trillion…

… of which the Fed owns $6.66 trillion, would have absolutely no impact on anything, besides long-end yields, and even there the spike would be brief as the market realizes that the Fed can and will buy everything China has to sell.

Oh, and a third thing: if China could actually crash the US dollar, both Powell and Trump would be giddy with happiness. In case someone still hasn’t figured it out, the Fed is desperate to crash the dollar because the longer it remains elevated (as a result of the infamous $12 trillion dollar margin call), the more likely it is that the coming global emerging markets collapse will crush the US as not even the Fed will have power to deflect that particular meteor.

Alas, none of this has registered with China which is dearly holding on to the myth that its sales of US paper could still have some impact:

“There’s a strong urge for countries like China, and Russia, to move away from US dollar settlements.  This is simply because the US dollar can be weaponised by the US government,” said Xu Sitao, chief economist at Deloitte China, referring to the recent practise by the US government of cutting off foreign individuals, companies and governments from the global US dollar financial transaction settlement system, greatly complicating their ability to conduct business.

“ Clearly there’s more willingness for certain countries just to diversify and move away from US dollar settlements.”

Right, sure, and just what currency does China propose to exchange its dollar-denominated reserves, which account for some 58% of its total FX holdings, into?

Maybe China is just confused because it has yet to activate a full-blown QE of the type the Fed has perfected for the past decade. Which is apropos because in a follow up article, the same SCMP reports that China’s top economic policymakers have been “engaged in heated debate over whether the country’s central bank should directly buy special bonds issued by the finance ministry to help the government’s economic support measures.”

Which, of course, is preciely what the Fed has been doing on tilt for the past two months.

According to the report, the discord reflects the differing schools of thought in China over how best to help the world’s  second largest economy recover from the coronavirus. The National People’s Congress which is due to meet in less than three weeks, is expected to provide clearer signals on Beijing’s economic policy. Liu Shangxi, president of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, a finance ministry-affiliated think tank, kicked off the debate after he recently proposed issuing 5 trillion yuan (US$700.5 billion) in special Treasury bonds to help stabilise the economy

He called on the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to buy them in tranches at an interest rate of zero.

It gets funnier: in China purchases of bonds are technically taboo as central bank law forbids it from directly bankrolling government spending. Well, guess what: there is another central bank whose charter forbids it from engaging in state financing and debt/deficit monetization: the ECB. And here is its balance sheet.

And while for now China is stopped by the threat of soaring inflation once it too triggers monetary financing, it is only a matter of time before China realizes that the initial phase of the coming hyperinflation only affects asset prices, while sparking broader economic deflation (of course, eventually goes vertical as faith in the currency is extinguished). So once China realizes that by starting QE, it too can achieve all of its goals, it will do precisely that.

Which also gives us a glimpse of the endgame: the four biggest economies in the world: the US, Europe, China and Japan, all directly monetizing their own debt, all hoping to crush their own currency before their peers as the only remaining way to stimulate the global economy. Then one day, something will finally snap and the entire financial system will disintegrate overnight. Until them, however, just BTFD because when every central bank in the world is telling you that fiat paper in your hand will soon be worthless so best spend it now, well, you listen.

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The global coronavirus pandemic is affecting every aspect of human life on earth. The challenge is awesome in its scale and scope.

To date we have no cases of the virus on Samos. But still its impact on life here is huge with businesses and schools closed, the tourist industry completely stalled, and deeply engrained social activities such as drinking coffee and church going prohibited. All this is further compounded for as common with much of Greece, Samos has not come through the social and economic crisis that has crippled so many here for the past 12 years. It is only access to gardens and land on the island with islanders growing and producing food for themselves and their families and neighbours that has kept hunger at bay for many here. (Not all are so fortunate). The loss of any income, however small, is a disaster.

But even worse is in store should the virus come to Samos. People here know that their health care system is weak and that respecting the lock down and the other protocols is essential for their well-being. Many here are very proud by their response, and Greece to date has one of the lowest rates of infection and deaths from the virus in Europe.

This makes it all the more shocking to see how the authorities both here on Samos and in Athens are treating the refugees who continue to be detained in conditions that “make them particularly vulnerable to respiratory infections, including COVID-19. These include situations such as  overcrowded living and working conditions; physical and mental stress; anddeprivation due to lack of housing, food and clean water” (WHO). Every single recommendation made by WHO (Europe) on March 25^thconcerning the treatment of refugees during the pandemic is ignored on Samos and is highlighted by the relocation of the 400 or so people who lost their homes to the recent fires in the jungle. Look at the photo!

Photo from Samos Chronicles

Whilst much of the world is being told to keep a 2 metre distance, here we find some of the most vulnerable people on the island being expected to live like this! All of us on Samos now face a greater risk by this action.

What makes this action even more reprehensible is that it need not be like this. Why for example was the stadium not pressed into service with its space and toilets and showers. What about the empty hotels and army barracks?

One truth we all know is that coronavirus attacks people without any discrimination. We also know that it is more deadly for those who are vulnerable either through ill health or poverty. In the fight against the virus we are only as strong as our most vulnerable. We are so used to the official neglect of the poor and the vulnerable that it has come as a welcome surprise to see deeply unequal societies reach out to its most excluded which in the UK included offering accommodation to all homeless people and the distribution of a million food parcels. Portugal has gone further in extending its health care system to embrace every refugee even those without papers. A spokesman for Portugal’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, Claudia Veloso, summed up the logic behind her government’s decision:

“People should not be deprived of their rights to health and public service just because their application has not yet been processed. In these exceptional times, the rights of migrants must be guaranteed.” (Counterpunch 4 May 2020)

But this is not happening on Samos. The rights of the refugees are not guaranteed and this is a threat to us all. It is surely time that here at least we start to do things differently and better. Whether you like it or not we are all in this together. But by neglecting and even worsening the vulnerabilities of refugees here, the authorities are acting irresponsibly.

As we see across the world, the pandemic is compelling states to act in completely new ways. We must take similar brave actions. Throw out the old and cruel approaches and start afresh in a spirit of human togetherness. We know that we cannot expect much support from Athens. Last week the government broke its promise to remove from the frontier islands 2,500 refugees deemed to be at the greatest risk from the virus. If the situation here is to be improved it will depend on us in Samos. I believe that here on the island we have many of the human and physical resources to make massive improvements which will protect all of us. And this time we will stand shoulder to shoulder with the refugees who for weeks now have been doing what they can to protect themselves including holding classes for the children on hygiene, making masks and distributing food. Working together to fight the virus and to protect all the people of Samos could and would be inspirational! Imagine no longer being seen as the place where refugees suffer but as a beacon of humanity. We can do it. Divided we are in danger. Together we stand a chance.

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On Tuesday, the Greek Foreign Ministry finally announced a restoration of relations between Greece and Syria and assigned former ambassador to Syria and Russia, Tasia Athanassiou, as a Special Envoy of Greece’s Foreign Ministry for Syria. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias confirmed this from his Twitter. The appointment of Athanassiou is extremely strategic as she was Greece’s ambassador to Damascus from 2009 to 2012, meaning she is already familiar with Syria and their authorities.

The Greek Foreign Ministry said that contacts will be made for the “international aspects of Syria and related humanitarian action, as well as coordination of actions in view of the ongoing efforts to rebuild Syria.”

Although the Foreign Ministry claims that the suspension of diplomatic relations “was dictated by the security conditions,” we know it was ordered by former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in December 2012 under orders from NATO and the European Union who were, and in some instances, still backing jihadists against the secular government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Greece became a country ruled by European banker, EU, and NATO puppets from 2010 onwards when on May 2 of that year, the so-called socialist government of George Papandreou signed the first of three bailout packages with the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF. This caused a 25% contraction of the Greek economy, an unemployment rate of 27% and skyrocketed poverty. Any semblance of Greek independence in domestic and foreign policy was lost.

However, moving to 2020, the economic and geopolitical situation in Greece and its surrounding region has drastically changed. Diplomatic sources quoted by Kathemirini, one of Greece’s oldest and most respected newspaper, said that the decision to appoint a Special Envoy for Syria is part of Greece’s steady activity in the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider region. According to the sources, Greece’s increased desire in contributing to efforts in resolving the Syrian crisis was stated by Dendias in his meetings with the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Otto Pedersen.

Therefore, a major reason for the reopening of relations with Syria is to further tilt the balance of power in the East Mediterranean in Greece’s favor against Turkey, especially at a time when Ankara does not have a single ally in the region, with the exception of the besieged Muslim Brotherhood government in Libya that is nearly collapsed because of the Libyan National Army’s assault.

The reopening of relations between Athens and Damascus comes at a time when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is making a strong push for a “Blue Homeland” that aims to annex Greece’s Eastern Aegean islands and maritime space. Turkey for nine years attempted to oust Assad from power through various means, including an unsuccessful invasion attempt of Idlib province earlier this year, as well as its continued support for terrorist organisations. In addition, Erdoğan is propping up the Muslim Brotherhood government in Libya by importing jihadists from Syria to the North African country.

Although Erdoğan has failed in all of these endeavours, Turkey still remains a major threat, even at a time when it is facing economic catastrophe with the Turkish lira at a near record low to the U.S. dollar and Turkey’s three largest banks, Garanti, Akbank and İşbank, on the verge of bankruptcy. Even with this looming economic disaster, Turkey still manages to find the funds to violate Greek airspace on a daily basis, send weapons to Libya and fund terrorist organizations in Syria.

As the Eastern Mediterranean becomes a potential major warzone because of Turkey’s aggression, Greece is now renewing relations with old friends. Hafez al-Assad, previous president of Syria and father to Bashar al-Assad, pledged that if Turkey was ever to go to war with Greece, Syria would automatically open a new front in southern Turkey in support of Greece.

Athens however is not completely independent from NATO and the EU. This suggests that although renewing relations with Syria is absolutely critical in protecting its sovereignty, perhaps Greece has gotten approval from the EU and/or NATO to do this.  Greece is perhaps the most important of the very few European countries that have maintained or reopened relations with Syria because of its history of friendly relations, as well as thousands of years of religious, cultural, financial and ethnic ties.

It can be suggested that as the war in Syria begins to end, continued only by Turkey’s refusal to stop backing terrorist organizations in Idlib, the EU wants to try and take advantage of lucrative reconstruction contracts that will be on offer and investment opportunities. It is unlikely that European companies will win reconstruction contracts, but the reality is that Assad has survived the near 10-year efforts to have him removed, and is not going anywhere. Greece could be used as an outlet for the EU to open dialogue and relations with Damascus again.

This is only speculative, but what is for certain is that by reopening relations with Syria, Greece is consolidating the emerging East Mediterranean order and opposes Turkish hegemony in the region. Greece will always have close relations with Cyprus, and has also entered a military alliance with Egypt, supports the Libyan National Army against Turkish-backed forces, and has strong military and energy ties with Israel. Relations with Syria has essentially finalized the strangulation of Turkey’s attempted hegemony of the Eastern Mediterranean and made it the most isolated country in the region – despite Athens’ insistence on improving ties with Ankara if it finally abandons its aggressive foreign policy.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

By the end of 2020 more people will have died from hunger, despair and suicide than from the corona disease. We, the world, is facing a famine-pandemic of biblical proportions. This real pandemic will overtake the “COVID-19 pandemic” by a long shot. The hunger pandemic reminds of the movie the Hunger Games, as it is premised on similar circumstances of a dominant few commanding who can eat and who will die – by competition.

This hunger pandemic will be under-reported or not reported at all in the mainstream media. In fact, it has started already.

In the west the attention focuses on the chaos created by the privatized for-profit mismanagement of the health system. It slowly brings to light the gross manipulation in the US of COVID-19 infections and death rates – how allegedly hospitals are encouraged to “admit”  COVID19 patients – for every COVID19 patient the hospital receives a US$13,000 “subsidy” (under Medicare), and if the patient is put on a ventilator (average death rate 40% to 60%), the “bonus” amounts to US$ 39,000. According to Dr. Senator Scott Jensen, Minnesota in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham:

“Right now Medicare is determining that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you get $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do.”

(Dr. Sen. Scott Jensen, from Fox Interview)

In real life, poor people cannot live under confinement, under lockdown. Not only have many or most already lost their meager living quarters because they can no longer pay the rent – but they need to scrape together in the outside world whatever they can find to feed their families and themselves. They have to go out and work for food and if there is no work, no income – they may resort to ransacking supermarkets in the city or farms in the country side. Food to sustain life is essential. Taking the opportunity to buy food away from people is sheer and outright murder.

“Every child who dies from famine in the world – is a murder” – Jean Ziegler, former UN-Rapporteur on Food in Africa.

Whoever the architects behind this COVID-19  pandemic –who have the universal order to instruct national governments to follow strict total lockdown– are wittingly or unwittingly responsible for “crimes against humanity”.

This process is committed on a worldwide scale.  It is unprecedented in the history of humanity. Only few countries have not or only partially following the total lockdown tyranny, and thereby saving a considerable segment of their social wellbeing and economy.  Is the objective to dominate the world under a New World Order, aiming at a totally controlled and massively reduced world population?

Who will live and who will die? The stated objective of the depopulation agenda is to reduce world poverty. How? through tainted toxic vaccinations, rendering African women infertile. (The Gates Foundation with support of WHO and UNICEF have a track record of doing so in Kenya and elsewhere, see here  Kenya carried out a massive tetanus vaccination program, sponsored by WHO and UNICEF); or letting the “under-developed”, the already destitute, die by famine – preventing them from access to sufficient food and drinking water. Privatizing water, privatizing even emergency food supplies – is a crime that leads exactly to this: lack of access due to unaffordable pricing.

Should this not be enough, “Lock Step” has other solutions to trigger food shortages. HAARP can help. HAARP (HAARP = High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) has been perfected and weaponized. According to US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, weather modification can be used defensively and offensively, i.e. to create droughts or floods, both of which have the potential of destroying crops – destroying the livelihood of the poor.

And if that is not enough, the 2010 Rockefeller Report also foresees food rationing, selectively, of course, as we are talking about eugenics. Let’s not forget Henry Kissinger’s infamous words he uttered in 1970: “Who controls the food supply controls the people – the quote goes on saying,

“Who controls the energy can control whole continents;    

who controls the money can control the world.” (see this).

A recent Facebook entry (name and location not revealed for personal protection) reads as follows:

“….. In the poorer country, where I live, the entire village is on lockdown since March 16. Here the people have nothing to eat … The wife of my main worker was raped and beaten to death. She was of Chinese descent. In spite of not being allowed to go outside, the people were starving and rampaged walking miles from farm to farm destroying everything. I have lost my entire livestock, fruits, vegetables. The houses were burned and the vehicles, tools etc. stolen. I am bankrupt with nobody around who can give money to rebuild. My workers cannot be paid. Their families are also starving. More malnutrition and undernourishment which will lead to a higher starvation rate or death from other diseases. How many will commit suicide through landing on the streets completely impoverished? – How many died in India trying to walk literally up to thousands of miles to get back home in the hope of finding refuge, after all public transportation was shut down and all had to go into lockdown. I am sure that these numbers will be a lot higher than the number who have died from the virus as well as will increase the numbers for those dying of next year’s flue due to a weakened immune system.”

And as an afterthought …. “Maybe the elites are planning depopulation. It sure looks like it.”

This happened somewhere in the Global South. But the example is representative for much of the Global South, and developing countries in general. And probably much worse is to come, as we are seeing so far only a tiny tip of the iceberg.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that worldwide unemployment is reaching never-seen mammoth proportions, that nearly half of the world’s workforce – 1.6 billion people -may be out of work. That means no income to pay for shelter, food, medication – it means starvation and death. For millions. Especially in the Global South which has basically no social safety nets. People are left to themselves.

The New York Times (NYT) reports (1 May 2020) that in the US millions of unemployed go uncounted, as the system cannot cope with the influx of claims. Add these millions to the already reported more than 27 million unemployed, the tally becomes astronomical. The same NYT concludes that the millions who have risen out of poverty since the turn of the century, are likely to fall back into destitution along with millions more.  Latest FED forecasts predict unemployment could reach up to 50% by the end of 2020.

Dying of famine – mostly in the Global South, but not exclusively – is an atrocious death for millions, maybe hundreds of millions. Dying in the gutters of mega-cities, forgotten by society, by the authorities, too weak to even beg, infested with parasites due to lack of hygiene – rotting away alive. This is already happening today in many metropolitan areas, even without the corona disaster. These people are not picked up by any statistics. They are non-people. Period.

Imagine – such situations in large cities as well as in rural areas, under the Rockefeller “Lock Step”, the death toll could be even higher.

The current lockdown – brings everything to halt. Practically worldwide. The longer it lasts the more devastating the social and economic impact will be. Irretrievable.

Not only production of goods, services and food – comes to a halt, but vital supply chains to bring products from  A to B, are interrupted. Workers are not allowed to work. Security. For your own protection. The virus, the invisible enemy could hit you. It could kill you – and your loved-ones too. Fear-Fear-Fear – that’s the motto that works best – it works so well that people start screaming – gimmi, gimmi, gimmi- gimmia vaccine! – which brings a happy grin on Bill Gates’ face. As he sees the billions rolling and his power rising.

Bill Gates along with WHO “he bought” will become famous. They will save the world from new pandemics – never mind, their side effects – 7 billion people vaccinated (Bill Gates’ dream
)  and nobody has time to care or report about the side effects, no matter how deadly they may be. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) may be slated for the Peace Nobel Prize – and, who knows, Bill Gates may become one of the next Presidents of the dying empire. Wouldn’t that be an appropriate reward for the world?

Meanwhile the rather cold-blooded IMF maintains its awfully unrealistic prediction of a slight “economic contraction” of the world economy of a mere 3% in 2020, and a slight growth in the second half of 2021. The IMF’s approach to world economics and human development – to social crisis, is  fully monetized and lacks any compassion – and thus, becomes utterly irrelevant in the age of corona.  Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, mere extension of the US treasury, they are passé in the face of an economic collapse, for which they are also in part responsible.

“Debt Jubilee”

What they should do – perhaps IMF and WB combined – is call for a capital increase of up to 4 trillion SDRs (as was suggested by some of the IMF Board Members) and use the funds as a special debt relieve fund, a “Debt Jubilee Fund” for Global South Nations. Handed out as grants. This would allow these nations to get back on their feet, back to their sovereign national monetary and economic policies, recovering their internal economy, with a national currency, public banking and a government-owned central bank, creating jobs and internal autonomy in food, health and education.

Why is this not happening? – It would require a change in their constitution and a redistribution of voting rights according to new economic strength of nations. China would become a much more important player – with a more important share and decision-making role. Of course, that’s what the US does not want to happen. But the unwillingness to adapt to new realities, makes these institutions irrelevant to the point that they should and might fade away.

Interestingly, though, two of the three economic projection scenarios of the IMF, foresee another pandemic, or a new wave of the old pandemic in 2021. What does the IMF know that we don’t?

Juxtaposed to the insensitive approach of the global financial institutions and the globalized private banking system, the World Food Program warns (25 April 2020) that the COVID19 pandemic will cause “famines of biblical proportions”; that without urgent action and funding, hundreds of millions of people will face starvation and millions could die as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As it is, every year about 9 million people die from famine in the world.

The WFP Executive Director, David Beasley, told the UN Security Council that in addition to the threat to health posed by the virus, the world faces “multiple famines within a few short months,” which could result in 300,000 deaths per day—a “hunger pandemic.”

Beasley added that even before the outbreak, the world was “facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II” this year due to many factors. He cited the wars in Syria and Yemen, the crisis in South Sudan and locust swarms across East Africa. He said that coupled with the coronavirus outbreak, famine threatened about three dozen nations.

According to the WFP’s “2020 Global Report on Food Crises” released Monday (20 April ), 135 million people around the world were already threatened with starvation. Beasley said that as the virus spreads, “an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”

The famine pandemic is further exacerbated by the ongoing refugee crisis – which is also a catastrophe of misery – hunger, disease, lack of shelter – total lack of hygiene in most of the refugee camps.

Professor Jean Ziegler, Sociologist (University of Geneva and Sorbonne, Paris), Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Committee, recently visited the refugee camp of Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos. He described a situation where 24,000 refugees are cramped into military barracks that were built for 2,800 soldiers, live under calamitous circumstances – lack of potable water, insufficient and often inedible food, clogged and much too few stinking toilets…. diseases no end. COVID19 would just be a sideline.

These people who fled Europe-and-western-caused warzones, destroyed livelihoods – are being pushed back by the very European Union, as most countries do not want to host them and give them a chance for a new life. This atrocious xenophobic behavior of Europe is against the Human Rights that all EU countries signed and against internal EU rules. They are a sad reminder of what Europe really is – a conglomerate of countries with a history of hundreds of years of colonization, of merciless exploitation, plundering and raping of the Global South.

This abjectly atrocious characteristic – shamelessly continuing to this day – seems to have become an integral part of the European DNA. These wars and conflicts are willfully US-NATO made, for power, greed – to maintain the US military industrial complex alive and profitable – and as a stepping stone towards total world hegemony.

The refugees emanating from these conflict zones, their fate and famine will be added to those starving from the also man-imposed corona crisis. The death toll from sheer hunger and famine-related causes, may become astronomical by the end of 2020, way-way outweighing and dwarfing the doctored and manipulated COVID-19 figures.

Is there hope? Yes, there is hope, as long as we live.

The world has to wake up.

Seven billion people under lockdown- wake up! Realize, what is happening to you, all under false pretenses to control humanity, to digitize and robotize your very lives.

What better way to do this than under the pretext of locking you away “for your own safety”? – Defy these rules, stand up against these invisible omni-powerful self-appointed rulers, who only have the power, we, the People, give them, or allow them to take from us. Because all they have is money, and corrupted media that spread fear and more fear to keep locking you down.

My final words: follow you heart. Open your heart to love and beyond your five given and media-manipulated senses and enter a higher consciousness.

Get out of FEAR, get out of the lockdown, stand up for your rights, for your freedom. Because freedom and liberty cannot be bought with money, nor trampled by the media. They are inherently within us all. If enough of us open our hearts to LOVE, to an all-englobing love, we will overcome this small psychopathic elite.

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

Featured image is from Shropshire Star

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Mercenary Confesses Failed Plot Was to Bring President Maduro to US

By Telesur, May 07, 2020

Former United States ex-green beret Luke Denman, that was captured Monday by Venezuela’s Armed Forces, confessed Wednesday that his group aimed at kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro as part of ‘Operation Gedeon’.

“I was expecting anywhere between US$50,000 to US$100,000,” Denman admitted, confessing he arrived in Colombia on Jan. 16 in Rioacha in order to train Venezuelan deserters.

Venezuela: Trump’s Failed Mini-Bay of Pigs Fiasco

By Kurt Nimmo, May 07, 2020

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—the former CIA director who admitted the US government lies, cheats, and steals—wants you to believe the Trump neocon-infused administration had nothing to do with the failed coup plot in Venezuela. 

Standard Pontius Pilate response. Of course, the US government and its private sector “partners” in the subversion business (in this case, Silvercorp USA) are behind this miniaturized Bay of Pigs operation. 

The fall guy is Jordan Goudreau, “a former member of the US Army special forces” who has, according to the BBC, “been quick to claim an association” with the captured US mercenaries. 

The Hybrid War on Venezuela Moves to a New Stage of Aggression

By Nino Pagliccia, May 07, 2020

In the early morning of last May 3 Venezuela has witnessed the first attempt of a raid by speedboats with armed mercenary forces on the central coast of Venezuela, just a few kilometres from the capital city, Caracas. The response by the Venezuelan armed forces and the almost continuous updates about the action including photos and videos were quick.

Anatomy of a Fake News Campaign: Media Spreads Lie From US Govt-funded Korean Outlet that Kim Jong-un Died

By Ben Norton, May 07, 2020

Many of these fake news stories originate with Korean opposition groups that are funded to the hilt by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout created by the Ronald Reagan administration to push regime change against foreign countries that don’t sufficiently kowtow to Washington.

The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal published a documentary demonstrating how the NED bankrolls a global network of regime-change activists, whose unsubstantiated accusations against the DPRK, China, Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, and other nations targeted by the US are spun into unquestionable truths. North Korean defectors are a particularly unreliable source of information, and many of their claims have been proven to be false. They are highly incentivized, however, with offers of nearly $1 million to continue cranking out the disinformation.

Kim Jong Un Is Still Alive. What About Peace with North Korea?

By Catherine Killough, May 07, 2020

The second anniversary of the 2018 Inter-Korean Summit has just passed. Marking the moment, South Korean President Moon Jae-inlamented, “We have been made keenly aware once again that peace will not come overnight.” Images of the two Korean leaders walking hand-in-hand to cross the demarcation line seem a distant, if not surreal memory in a world now overtaken by a global pandemic and sensational false rumors about Kim Jong Un’s health. Nevertheless, another significant milestone—the 70th anniversary of the Korean War—is fast approaching, and the prospects for peace still tug at the hearts of many.

Bay of Pigs 2.0 – Armed Invasion of Venezuela?

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, May 06, 2020

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

Juan Guaidó Is Trying to Overthrow the Venezuelan Government Again. Calls on Military to Support Him

By Alan MacLeod, May 04, 2020

Exactly one year since his audacious coup attempt failed spectacularly, self-declared Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó is once again trying to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. “Today I speak to the patriotic soldiers of our Armed Forces who rebelled against hunger and destruction and sided with the constitution,” he announced on social media last night, “To the majority of patriotic soldiers who are still in each branch of the Armed Forces: today, more than ever, there are obvious reasons for them to act and support the formation of a National Emergency Government…we are going to liberate all of Venezuela.” In a separate video published today, Guaidó addressed Maduro directly: “Every political agreement to save Venezuela begins with your departure from power,” he said, demanding his immediate resignation.

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These lyrics were from a song, written by Dino Valenti (AKA William Chet Powers Jr), of the music group Quicksilver Messenger Service in, ready for this, 1970!

Amazing how everything Valenti mentioned 50 years ago is resonating still.

Sadly, NOTHING  has changed! Matter of fact, with this current pandemic, society’s troubles will get really WORSE than they are already!

We are standing on the precipice of a Depression as ghastly as the one we had in the 1930s. One major difference is that then, for whatever flaws many on both the left and right had focused on FDR, we had someone like an FDR to do whatever he could, within reason, to ease our pain (and sadly, to save Capitalism). Now, we don’t even have ANYONE  from either of the Two Party/ One Party scam to institute common sense policies to counteract the poison of this new Gilded Age.

Lyrics

You poisoned my sweet water.
You cut down my green trees.
The food you fed my children
Was the cause of their disease.

My world is slowly fallin’ down
And the airs not good to breathe.
And those of us who care enough,
We have to do something…….

(Chorus)
Oh…….oh What you gonna do about me?
Oh…….oh What you gonna do about me?

Your newspapers,
They just put you on.
They never tell you
The whole story.

They just put your
Young ideas down.
I was wonderin’ could this be the end
Of your pride and glory?

(Chorus)

I work in your factory.
I study in your schools.
I fill your penitentiaries.
And your military too!

And I feel the future trembling,
As the word is passed around.
“If you stand up for what you do believe,
Be prepared to be shot down.”

(Chorus)

And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live like an outlaw.
An’ I’m always on the run……………………..

An Im always getting busted
And I got to take a stand……..
I believe the revolution
Must be mighty close at hand…………………..

(Chorus)

I smoke marijuana
But I cant get behind your wars.
And most of what I do believe
Is against most of your laws

I’m a fugitive from injustice
But I’m goin’ to be free.
Cause your rules and regulations
They dont do the thing for me

(Chorus)

And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live just like an outlaw.
An’ I’m always on the run.

***

This writer has already used the lyrics of this tremendous song twice before, first when mentioning the folly of Amerika circa 1970 with the Vietnam debacle. I refuse to call it a ‘War’ other than a Civil War between the Vietnamese. Valenti’s lyrics addressed the situation for many Amerikans, working stiffs like you and me, who were being held hostage by the evil of this empire. Decades later, after our disgraceful and immoral/illegal attacks and invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, cemented by our (still to some degree) occupations of both sovereign nations, I wrote episode Two of this series. Once again, NOTHING  really had changed for we working stiffs in this new 21st Century. And as the Tom Cruise character in ‘A Few Good Men’ put it, when getting **** in his defense case: “And the hits just keep on comin!!”

Forget all the rhetoric as to this pandemic, which, for we conspiracy minded folks, was only the ‘Icing on the cake’ of an economic pandemic that was going to eventually happen, with or without the virus. You see, greed is NOT GOOD, except for the less than 1% of us who make out like Bandits at a school for the blind! Sadly, too many of our fellow working stiffs are just that, blinded by the laser attacks by the two parties who do the bidding of that 1/4 of 1% of us. They apparently always have. It’s just that the proverbial fan that has to catch the shit is soaked with it already!  Chaos is coming folks!!

There is only one solution that HAS  to be implemented ASAP to stop this bleeding. That being a UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME  of at least $1200 or so every month, TAX FREE  for every citizen (with children receiving half). This is something that should not only be instituted NOW, but forever and a day, if we wish to give relief to the mega millions of us. Ellen Brown, and her interview with yours truly, makes the case that this UBI is NOT inflationary. She also shows how the Fed, and Uncle Sam, can create money electronically, as they just did for the big banks and big corporations, not only a few weeks ago, but in 2008-09 as well. The time is NOW for us working stiffs to contact the ‘ Gang of Three’ who are our Congressional representatives. They need to be told, regardless of whichever of the Two headed monster they belong to, that if they do NOT come out publicly, and on the floor of Congress, for this UBI, then they do NOT get your vote… period!! We know that Green Party candidates will support this UBI.. let’s see if these jokers will!!

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Cross Currents and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

Will historians one day look back at unfolding events related to today’s public health crisis and economic collapse as a post-coronavirus new normal that’s grimly different from what preceded it?

Do ongoing events mark the beginning of an unacceptable dystopian future — combining the worst of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World?

Will unacceptable US-led Western militarism and neoliberal harshness seem no worse than mildly irritating compared to what’s coming?

These are no ordinary times. What’s unfolding in real time could hardly have been imagined pre-New Year’s day.

There’s never been anything remotely like it in our lifetimes.

Most worrisome is that the worst of times may only have just begun, worse still to come, a protracted nightmare for the vast majority of people in the West and elsewhere.

Economic hard times like nothing ever before experienced may continue longterm for ordinary people in the West and elsewhere.

Will unprecedented unemployment, poverty, food insecurity, and human misery for countless millions in the US and West be part of the the new normal?

Economist John Williams projects US unemployment at “around 41% for April 2020, versus 22.9% in March” — based on how it was calculated pre-1990, after which the model was reconfigured to conceal the US labor market’s dismal state. Official U-3 numbers are meaningless.

At the height of the Great Depression, US unemployment was around 25% at a time when the nation’s ruling authorities instituted jobs creation programs — their actions world’s apart from Trump regime and congressional indifference to the public welfare.

Economic Collapse.com noted that April 2020 US job losses were double the number experienced during the 2008-09 Great Recession, adding:

What’s unfolding in real time “is truly, truly horrifying, and many believe that what we have experienced so far is just the beginning” of protracted harder than ever hard times with no end of them in prospect for ordinary Americans.

Without jobs there’s no income for food, rent or mortgage payments, medical care, and other essentials to life and well-being — at a time when US ruling authorities and lawmakers care only about themselves, their cronies, and the nation’s privileged class, ordinary Americans left largely on their own.

Hundreds of thousands or more shut down small and medium-sized businesses, along with some large ones, may never reopen — millions of jobs permanently lost.

Traumatized Americans from daily COVID-19 fear-mongering won’t likely resume former normal activities when lockdowns are eased and ended.

If professional sports competition resumes, it’ll be in empty or near-empty stadiums, a surreal prospect.

Restaurants, shops, theaters, airline and other transportation terminals will likely be partially patronized at most for some time to come.

When people have money, they spend it. Unprecedented US/Western unemployment perhaps for years to come means reduced sales and profits for businesses along with no end to widespread human misery.

Economist Richard Wolff projects a “Greater Depression than the 1930s…hundreds of millions thrown out of work” in the US, West, and worldwide.

He minced no words, saying: “Capitalism is a broken, unstable system that is beyond repair…”

Lessons learned from the Great Depression were ignored, promises made broken. The result is an untenable situation in the US and elsewhere.

Predatory capitalism exploits ordinary people to benefit the privileged few.

The system is beset by instability, recessions, depressions, speculation, market bubbles and crashes.

Economist John Maynard Keynes once said the following:

“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise.”

“But the position is serious when enterprise become the bubble on a whirlwind of speculation.”

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”

In the US and West, a government/business partnership manipulates markets in ways most people don’t understand or know is happening.

Current US equity prices match peak excess of the dot.com bubble.

In his book on the 1929 Wall Street market crash, John Kenneth Galbraith said the following:

“The fact was that American enterprise in the twenties had opened its hospitable arms to an exceptional number of promoters, grafters, swindlers, impostors, and frauds.”

“This, in the long history of such activities, was a kind of flood tide of corporate larceny.”

Predatory capitalism virtually assures that what goes around, comes around.

What’s ongoing today is shaping up to be the worst of hard times with no end of them in prospect for ordinary people.

It’s a perfect storm of recession becoming depression, unprecedented unemployment, mass impoverishment, failing businesses, crushing public and private debt, ruinous militarism, antipathy to social justice, and creeping totalitarian control.

All of the above is happening in combination with a public health crisis.

Thailand Medical News (TMN) has been ahead of the curve in accurately predicting COVID-19 events before they unfolded.

It called US and UK ruling authorities “incompetent to control the” current public health crisis, ominously warning the following:

“(A)bout 230,000 Americans would die by the end of August 2020 and the death toll would hit about 2.7 million by the end of May 2021 if things go on as the way it is,” adding:

“This is but a conservative estimate based on an optimistic outlook, but the situation could be far worse.”

TMN slammed failed policies of the Trump and Boris Johnson regimes, including reckless promotion of “drugs like chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and now remdesivir.”

Science know-nothing Trump and his White House COVID-19 task force “have no clue what they are doing and some are even more dangerous and should not be even listened to (like) Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and (HHS head/former Big Pharma executive) Alex Azar.”

“It’s shocking to the world that a highly developed country like America with the most highly qualified medical professionals and medical researchers in the world is the country that has most badly managed the COVID-19 crisis.”

Establishment media coverage is “ridiculous” and harmful to human health. Things are as bad in Britain as in the US.

TMN: “The next (COVID-19)  wave is even going to get much worst and everyone has to be fully prepared in order to survive it” — a chilling prediction.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from UK Column

Antibodies aren’t COVID-19 cures, but the discovery by Utrecht University researchers of a “human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 virus (that produces COVID-19 disease) from infecting cultured cells” is a positive development.

It’s a step toward finding an effective treatment that may still be a long way off.

None so far exist despite claims by science know-nothing Trump, days earlier recommending disinfectants that can cause serious illness or death if ingested.

Despite many years of research, no vaccines were ever developed for malaria, dengue, HIV/AIDS, or coronaviruses.

If ever developed, their toxicity would be hazardous to human health and should be avoided — especially anything rushed to market by Big Pharma, prioritizing profits over human health.

Utrecht University research co-leader Professor Berend-Jan Bosch said work conducted by his team built on earlier efforts in “targeting the SARS-CoV that emerged in 2002/2003,” adding:

“Using this collection of SARS-CoV antibodies, we identified an antibody that also neutralizes infection of SARS-CoV-2 in cultured cells.”

“Such a neutralizing antibody has potential to alter the course of infection in the infected host, support virus clearance or protect an uninfected individual that is exposed to the virus.”

The antibody works by binding “to a domain” in SARS-CoV and SARS-COV-2, neutralizing and preventing them from spreading.

Bosch hopes that his team’s discovery will mitigate diseases caused by known and future coronaviruses that emerge from mutations.

Co-study leader Professor Frank Grosveld said the team’s discovery “provides a strong foundation for additional research to characterize this antibody and begin development as a potential COVID-19 treatment,” adding:

“The antibody used in this work is ‘fully human,’ allowing development to proceed more rapidly and reducing the potential for immune-related side effects.”

German-based test and measurement products firm HBM’s CEO Dr. Jingsong Wang called the antibody discovery “groundbreaking,” further research needed to learn if “can protect or reduce the severity of disease in humans.”

His company is eager “to advance development of the antibody with partners” by using the firm’s technology.

Research team member virologist Luka Cicin-Sain hailed the antibody breakthrough “that shows that we are on the right track for the development of a drug against Covid-19,” adding:

“In repeated experiments, we were able to show that this result is sustainable.”

Thousands of human antibodies were tested. Over 750 docked with both coronaviruses, preventing their further spread in infected patients.

Additional tests are underway to find the most effective ones in blocking infection.

Utrecht University researchers worked with biotech company Yumab, antibody clinical trials expected to begin this fall.

According to Science Magazine,

“(m)any researchers are optimistic that antibodies will relatively quickly prove their worth as a preventive or remedy that buys the world time until a” coronavirus cure is found.

High cost will limit their use when brought to market. For the uninsured and underinsured in the US and elsewhere, they’ll be too expensive when available.

Monoclonal antibodies are used to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, few developed for infectious diseases.

Researcher James Crowe believes that in around “five years, (lower-cost) antibodies will become the principal tool used as a medical countermeasure in the event of an epidemic,” like what’s going on now.

Dozens of research teams are working on developing effective coronavirus antibodies.

Utrecht University’s team apparently succeeded first, additional work continuing as explained above.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The situation of the new coronavirus on the African continent worsens day after day. Although the pandemic has not yet reached its peak of infection in Africa, the figures remain alarming and without due attention from the media and authorities. Adding all the African countries, the number of infected people is already approaching 50 thousand, with almost 2,000 deaths registered in 43 countries (which means 80% of the continent). In fact, the situation has not yet collapsed and in some regions there has even been a little fall in infections – as we can see in the case of South Africa – but the scenario remains worrying, especially if we take into account the cyclical nature of the epidemics. There are, proportionally, only 10 hospital beds for every 10 million Africans, which reveals the total lack of structure to fight the disease.

However, infection itself is not the greatest challenge facing Africans, but an old problem already well known across the continent: misery. Structural hunger and extreme poverty tend to worsen in epidemic settings, being even more worrying in a context of a global pandemic, where food production and circulation are profoundly affected. Africa is the poorest continent in the world, with an extremely fragile food security structure, prone to collapse by any weather. The pandemic comes as the most profound disgrace for Africans, who remain divided between the dangers of infection and hunger.

Deprose Muchena, director of Amnesty International for East and Southern Africa, recently made a series of statements about the hunger situation on the continent in the midst of the pandemic. These are her words: “There are millions of people in South Africa who are at risk and vulnerable to hunger because their income is reduced due to confinement. (…) With such high levels of unemployment and inequality across the African continent, most people actually live on a daily basis, which means they can’t be isolated for another week”. The director stressed the danger that social isolation can pose for these countries, since these sanitary measures tend to take a long time and endanger the entire food production of a country.

As Muchena points out, malnutrition can greatly aggravate the effects of the infection, further weakening the sick and decreasing the immunity of the entire population. There is also the question of other infections that are already structurally plaguing Africa, such as HIV and tuberculosis, which present themselves as comorbidities to the new coronavirus, which can aggravate its effects and lead patients to death. Adding these infections to hunger, the population of all African countries finds themselves in a situation of extreme vulnerability.

Undoubtedly, Africa urgently needs pandemic control measures; however, such policies must be very well thought out and discussed, since the situation in Africa differs completely from the existing scenarios in other regions of the planet where lockdown measures have been adopted. According to Muchena, “it is important that African governments do not copy and capture what they are doing in European countries, but adopt specific response measures that meet the needs of their own population.”

On April 28, the World Food Program (WFP) reported that more than 40 million people in nine African countries are at risk of starvation in the next three months due to the spread of the coronavirus. In addition to the dangers caused by social isolation, there is also the issue of natural pests. Currently, several countries in Africa face a terrible infestation of locusts. These animals destroy all crops and deplete food stocks for the African population, destabilizing the economy and food security. The plague still seems to be far from over. The only way to quickly resolve the infestation is through strong pesticides; however, such products have circulation affected by the pandemic. According to locust expert Keith Cressman, “the plague will last at least until June in East Africa, and maybe even longer, depending on current and future rains (…) There should be (due to the coronavirus and isolation) small delays in delivery of equipment and pesticide”.

The biggest lesson that is clear for the African continent is the urgent need for industrial development, which provides countries in the region with true food autonomy, breaking the link of dependence on foreign relations. Being cruelly victimized by misery and hunger, many African countries survive primarily on donations and “humanitarian aid” by Western nations, which prevent the collapse of these states by awaiting certain benefits as a reward. Such resources have now ceased and the humanitarian aid is no longer provided to Africa. So what will Africans do? We only have to face the crisis and, when everything is over, undertake strong projects of industrialization and income distribution, in order to avoid a new collapse. Africa now realizes that the eternal receipt of humanitarian aid cannot be trusted and that there is no sovereignty without food autonomy.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The Pennsylvania researcher “was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie” COVID-19, his university said.

Below  are selected quotes fro NBC report  together with a statement from the the University Research Unit to which he was affiliated.

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A medical researcher said to be on the “verge of making very significant” coronavirus findings was found shot to death over the weekend in Pennsylvania, officials said.

Bing Liu, 37, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was found dead Saturday inside a home in Ross Township, north of Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County medical examiner said.

He had been shot in the head and the neck, the agency said.

An hour after Liu’s body was discovered, a second person, Hao Gu, 46, was found dead inside a car less than a mile away, the agency said.

Ross Township police Detective Sgt. Brian Kohlhepp told NBC News that the men knew each other. Investigators believe Gu killed Liu before returning to his car, where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The investigation has been forwarded to federal authorities because neither of the men were U.S. citizens.

In a statement, the University of Pittsburgh described him as an excellent mentor and prolific researcher who had co-authored more than 30 papers. His work focused on systems biology.

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The Following are excerpts from a text by the Department of the School of Medicine, which confirms the nature of his scientific work (emphasis added)

“Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following complications,” the school said. “We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence.”

It is with deep sadness and shock that we learned of the untimely passing of Dr. Bing Liu, Research Assistant Professor in our department on Saturday, May 2nd, 2020.

Dr. Bing Liu was an outstanding researcher, who has earned the respect and appreciation of many colleagues in the field, and made unique contributions to science. His area of expertise was computational modeling and analysis of biological systems dynamics. He had developed high-performance computing techniques and advanced machine-learning approaches for modeling the time evolution of complex cellular interactions, Bayesian network models and methods, and statistical model checking and sensitivity analyses.

Dr. Liu received his BS and PhD in Computer Science, at the National University of Singapore, under the supervisions of Drs. P.S. Thiagarajan and David Hsu, and did his postdoctoral studies in the lab of Professor Dr. Edmund Clarke at  Carnegie Mellon University, after which he joined the Bahar lab, as a Research Associate, and was recently promoted to a Research Assistant Professor position within our department.

Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following complications. We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence.

His loss will be felt throughout the entire scientific community. Please keep his family, friends, and colleagues in your thoughts. Thank you.

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Tim Stelloh is a reporter for NBC News, based in California.

Doha Madani contributed.

Featured image is from University of Pittsburgh

May 7, we commemorate the surrender of Nazi Germany.

An earlier version of this article was published by Global Research on May 6, 2015. Updated May 7, 2018 by Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels

In 1943, the Americans, British, and Soviets had agreed that there would be no separate negotiations with Nazi Germany with respect to its capitulation, and that the German surrender would have to be unconditional. In the early spring of 1945, Germany was as good as defeated and the Allies were getting ready to collectively receive its unconditional submission. But where would that capitulation ceremony take place – on the Eastern Front, or on the Western Front?

If only for reasons of prestige, the Western Allies preferred that Nazi Germany would acknowledge defeat somewhere on the Western Front. Secret talks with the Germans, which the British and Americans were already holding at that time (i.e. in March 1945) in neutral Switzerland in flagrant violation of inter-allied agreements, under the code-name Operation Sunrise, promised to be useful in that context. They could produce a German surrender in Italy, which had actually been the original objective of the talks, but could also yield an agreement with respect to the coming general and supposedly unconditional German capitulation. Intriguing details, such as the venue of the ceremony, might possibly be determined in advance and without input from the Soviets. There actually existed many possibilities in this respect, because the Germans themselves kept approaching the Americans and the British in the hope of concluding a separate armistice with the Western powers or, if that would prove impossible, of steering as many Wehrmacht units as possible into American or British captivity by means of “individual” or “local” surrenders, i.e. surrenders of larger or smaller units of the German army in restricted areas of the front. 

The Great War of 1914-1918 had ended with a clear and unequivocal armistice, namely in the form of an unconditional German surrender. The capitulation was signed in the headquarters of Marshal Foch in het village of Rethondes, near Compiègne, on November 11 shortly after 5 a.m., and the guns fell silent on that same morning at 11. (The German negotiators had asked for an immediate cease-fire, but that request had been turned down.)  The Second World War, on the other hand, was to grind to a halt, in Europe at least, amidst intrigue and confusion, so that even today there are many misconceptions regarding the time and place of the German capitulation. The Second World War was to end in the European theatre not with one, but with an entire string of German capitulations, with a veritable orgy of surrenders, and in even after the signings it sometimes took quite some time before the hostilities were terminated.

It started in Italy on April 29, 1945, with the capitulation of the combined German armies in southwestern Europe to the Allied forces led by Alexander, the British field marshal. The ceremony took place in the town of Caserta, near Naples. Signatories on the German side included SS General Karl Wolff, who had conducted the negotiations with American secret agents in Switzerland about sensitive issues such as the neutralization of the kind of Italian anti-fascists for whom there was no room in the American-British post-war plans for their country. Stalin had found out about this “Operation Sunrise” and expressed misgivings about the arrangement that was being worked out between the Western Allies and the Germans in Italy, but in the end he gave his blessing to this capitulation. The armistice was signed on April 29, but provided for a cease-fire only on May 2. This purported to allow sufficient time for American or British troops to hurry all the way to Trieste, where German troops were fighting off Tito’s Yugoslav partisans; the latter had good reason to believe that this city might become part of Yugoslavia after the war and undoubtedly had in mind the dictum that possession is ninety percent of the law. But the Americans and British wanted to prevent this scenario. A New Zealand unit reached Trieste “after a hectic dash up from Venice” on May 2 and helped to force the Germans in the city to surrender the next day, in the evening. A Kiwi chronicle of this event euphemistically relates that their men “arrived just in time to liberate the city together with units of Tito’s army,” but admitted that the objective had been to prevent the Yugoslav communists from seizing Trieste on their own and putting in place their own military administration, thus solidifying their claim to the region.

Many people in Great Britain firmly believe even today that the war against Germany ended with a German surrender in the headquarters of another British field marshal, namely Montgomery, on the Luneburg Heath in northern Germany. Yet this ceremony took place on May 4, 1945, that is, at least five days before the guns finally fell silent in Europe, and this capitulation applied only to German troops that had hitherto been battling Montgomery’s British-Canadian 21st Army Group in the Netherlands and in Northwest Germany. Just to be on the safe side, the Canadians actually accepted the capitulation of all German troops in Holland the next day, May 5, during a ceremony in Wageningen, a town in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland. To the British, it is of course important and gratifying to believe that the Germans had to beg for a cease-fire in the headquarters of their very own “Monty”; to the latter the prestige associated with the event provided some compensation for the fact that his reputation had suffered considerably from the fiasco of Operation Market Garden, the September 1944 attempt to cross the Rhine in the Dutch town of Arnhem, an undertaking of which he had been the godfather.

In the US and also in Western Europe, the event on the Luneburg Heath is rightly viewed as a strictly local capitulation, even though it is recognized that it served as a kind of prelude to the definitive German capitulation and resulting ceasefire. As far as the Americans, French, Belgians, and others are concerned, this definitive German surrender took place in the headquarters of General Eisenhower, the supreme commander of all allied forces on the Western Front, in a shabby school building in the city of Reims on May 7, 1945, in the early morning. But this armistice was to go into effect only on the next day, May 8, and only at 11:01 p.m. It is for this reason that even now, commemoration ceremonies in the United States and in Western Europe take place on May 8.

However, even the important event in Reims was not the final surrender ceremony. With the permission of Hitler’s successor, Admiral Dönitz, German spokesmen had come knocking on Eisenhower’s door to try once again to conclude an armistice only with the Western Allies or, failing that, to try to rescue more Wehrmacht units from the clutches of the Soviets by means of local surrenders on the Western Front. Eisenhower was personally unwilling to consent to further local surrenders, let alone a general German capitulation to the Western Allies only. But he appreciated the potential advantages that would accrue to the Western side if somehow the bulk of the Wehrmacht would end up in British-American rather than Soviet captivity. And he also realized that this was a unique opportunity to induce the desperate Germans to sign in his headquarters the general and unconditional capitulation in the form of a document that would conform to inter-Allied agreements; this detail would obviously do much to enhance the prestige of the United States.

In Reims it thus came to a byzantine scenario. First, from Paris an obscure Soviet liaison officer, Major General Ivan Susloparov, was brought over in order to save the appearance of the required Allied collegiality. Second, while it was made clear to the Germans that there could be no question of a separate capitulation on the Western Front, a concession was made to them in the form of an agreement that the armistice would only go into effect after a delay of forty-five hours. This was done to accommodate the new German leaders’ desire to give as many Wehrmacht units as possible a last chance to surrender to the Americans or the British. This interval gave the Germans the opportunity to transfer troops from the East, where heavy fighting continued unabatedly, to the West, where after the signing rituals in Luneburg and then Reims hardly any shots were being fired anymore. The Germans, whose delegation was headed by General Jodl, signed the capitulation document at Eisenhower’s headquarters on May 7 at 2:41 a.m.; but the guns were to fall silent only on May 8 at 11:01 p.m. Local American commanders would cease to allow fleeing Germans to escape behind their lines only after the German capitulation actually went into effect. It can be argued, then, that the deal concluded in the Champagne city did not constitute a totally unconditional capitulation.

The document signed in Reims gave the Americans precisely what they wanted, namely, the prestige of a general German surrender on the Western Front in Eisenhower’s headquarters. The Germans also achieved the best they could hope for, since their dream of a capitulation to the Western Allies alone appeared to be out of the question: a “postponement of execution,” so to speak, of almost two days. During this time, the fighting continued virtually only on the Eastern Front, and countless German soldiers took advantage of this opportunity to disappear behind the British-American lines. However, the text of the surrender in Reims did not conform entirely to the wording of a general German capitulation agreed upon previously by the Americans and the British as well as the Soviets. It was also questionable whether the representative of the USSR, Susloparov, was really qualified to co-sign the document. Furthermore, it is understandable that the Soviets were far from pleased that the Germans were afforded the possibility to continue to battle the Red Army for almost two more days while on the Western Front the fighting had virtually come to an end. The impression was thus created that what had been signed in Reims was in fact a German surrender on the Western Front only, an arrangement that violated the inter-Allied agreements. In order to clear the air, it was decided to organize an ultimate capitulation ceremony, so that the German surrender in Reims retroactively revealed itself as a sort of prelude to the final surrender and/or as a purely military surrender, even though the Americans and the Western Europeans would continue to commemorate it as the true end to the war in Europe.

Image on the right: General Keitel signs Germany’s unconditional surrender in Berlin

It was in Berlin, in the headquarters of Marshal Zhukov, that the final and general, political as well as military, German capitulation was signed on May 8, 1945 or, put differently, that the German capitulation of the day before in Reims was properly ratified by all the Allies. The signatories for Germany, acting on the instructions of Admiral Dönitz, were the generals Keitel, von Friedeburg (who had also been present in Reims) and Stumpf. Since Zhukov had a lower military rank than Eisenhower, the latter had a perfect excuse for not attending the ceremony in the rubble of the German capital. He sent his rather low-profile British deputy, Marshal Tedder, to sign, and this of course took some luster away from the ceremony in Berlin in favour of the one in Reims.

As far as the Soviets and the majority of Eastern Europeans were concerned, the Second World War in Europe ended with the ceremony in Berlin on May 8, 1945, which resulted in the arms being laid down the next day, on May 9. For the Americans, and for most Western Europeans, “the real thing” was and remains the surrender in Reims, signed on May 7 and effective on May 8. While the former always commemorate the end of the war on May 9, the latter invariably do so on May 8. But the Dutch celebrate on May 5, date of the ceremony in the Canadian headquarters in Wageningen. That one of the greatest dramas of world history could have such a confusing and unworthy end in Europe was a consequence, as Gabriel Kolko writes, of the way in which the Americans and the British sought to achieve all sorts of big and small advantages for themselves – to the disadvantage of the Soviets – from the inevitable German capitulation.

The First World War had ended de facto with the armistice of November 11, 1918, and de jure with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. The Second World War came to an end with an entire string of surrenders, but it never did come to a peace treaty à la versaillaise, at least not with respect to Germany. (Peace treaties were in due course concluded with Japan, Italy, and so on.). On February 10, 1947 all the victorious powers thus officially reconciled themselves in Paris with the countries that had been allies of Nazi Germany, namely Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland. And a peace treaty with Japan was concluded by the US and almost fifty other countries – but not the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China – in San Francisco on September 8, 1951; that treaty went into effect on April 28 of that same year. The so-called State Treaty signed between the four great victors of World War II – the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union – in Vienna on May 15, recognizing Austria as an independent and neutral country, may also be considered to have been a peace treaty.

The reason why no real peace treaty was ever signed with Germany, is that the victors – the Western Allies on the one side and the Soviets on the other side – were unable to come to an agreement about Germany’s fate. Consequently, a few years after the war, two German states emerged, which virtually precluded the possibility of a peace treaty reflecting an agreement acceptable to all parties involved. And so a peace treaty with Germany, that is, a final settlement of all issues that remained unresolved after the war, such as the question of Germany’s eastern border, became feasible only when the reunification of the two Germanies became a realistic proposition, namely, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. That made the “Two-plus-Four” negotiations of the summer and fall of 1990 possible, negotiations whereby on the one hand the two German states found ways to reunify Germany, and whereby on the other hand the four great victors of the Second World War — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — imposed their conditions on the German reunification and cleared up the status of the newly reunited country, taking into account not only their own interests but also the interests of other concerned European states such as Poland. The result of these negotiations was a convention that was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990, and which, faute de mieux, can be viewed as the peace treaty that put an official end to the Second World War, at least with respect to Germany.

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Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels is the author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, new edition, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2015.

Evidence suggests that one or more COVID-19 outbreaks likely first occurred in Hawaii late last summer, what a previous article discussed.

Did outbreaks begin in France before Wuhan, China?

According to a French hospital, a COVID-19 patient was treated on December 27. Reportedly, two of his family members were infected.

Yet the Macron regime failed to report coronavirus outbreaks until weeks later.

According to Reuters,

“French researchers led by Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals (near Paris), retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who had tested negative for flu before COVID-19 developed into a pandemic,” adding:

“The results, published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, showed that one patient — a 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who had lived in France for many years and worked as a fishmonger — was infected with COVID-19 ‘one month before the first reported cases’ by French authorities.”

Where there’s one case, most likely there are others.

Because some individuals infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, many others with mild symptoms, there may have been many cases in the US, France, and other European countries last year before any were publicly reported.

In 2018, around 160 million people visited China, including 63 million tourists.

Was the mischaracterized Trump regime “Wuhan virus” imported from abroad? Beijing believes so.

Was it made in the USA as a bioweapon for pursuing diabolical objectives by US dark forces now unfolding?

Time and again, things aren’t as they seem, notably not how establishment media report them — a collective lying machine mouthpiece for wealth and power interests, serving them exclusively at the expense of journalism the way it should be and the public welfare.

At a UN briefing in Geneva, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier noted “more early (2019) cases (may) be found.”

Millions of seasonal flu/influenza cases occur annually worldwide, unaccompanied by mass hysteria.

Because its symptoms are similar to COVID-19 and testing for the coronavirus has been inaccurate at times, individuals with one disease may have been misdiagnosed with the other.

Perhaps it was most likely before widespread COVID-19 outbreaks this year. It may also be happening now.

It’s unlikely that the virus originated in China. Most likely it was in the US or Europe, and chances are it was manufactured for diabolical aims, not natural — what future investigative work will hopefully explain.

Like Trump, Pompeo is a congenital liar. Nothing either of them say should be accepted at face value.

The same goes for the entire US criminal class in Washington, the enemy of ordinary people at home and abroad.

In a series of articles, China’s Global Times (RT) ripped Pompeo — a warmongering thug, masquerading as a diplomat.

GT slammed his hostility toward China, “spreading lies or misleading the public.”

He falsely claimed “enormous evidence” shows COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab, never presenting any because none exists.

When he, Trump, and other regime officials are pressed to provide facts backing their accusations, they falsely claim it’s classified and can’t be publicly discussed.

Along with wanting Beijing vilified, weakened and isolated geopolitically, the China blame game is all about distracting attention from the Trump regime’s failures to deal with COVID-19 and economic collapse responsibly.

According to GT, the anti-China blame game aims to “agitate US public antagonism” toward the country in hopes “that voters will hold (Beijing) accountable for mishandling the epidemic,” adding:

Deception by Pompeo and other Trump regime officials “will eventually come to light, and, worse, make them pay an enormous price.”

China leads the world in containing COVID-19 outbreaks, in contrast to the bungled Trump regime response.

New cases in the US keep rising. In China, they’re largely contained.

Make your own judgment about which country handled things best.

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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.

Former United States ex-green beret Luke Denman, that was captured Monday by Venezuela’s Armed Forces, confessed Wednesday that his group aimed at kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro as part of ‘Operation Gedeon’.

“I was expecting anywhere between US$50,000 to US$100,000,” Denman admitted, confessing he arrived in Colombia on Jan. 16 in Rioacha in order to train Venezuelan deserters.

While Maduro said there is no doubt that Colombia’s President Ivan Duque was involved in the military incursion that U.S. mercenaries attempted to accomplish on Sunday.

He also confirmed that Duque ordered the expulsion from his country of people involved in acts of destabilization in Venezuela

“Juvenal Sequea, Hernan Aleman, and Alexander Russo -the one who armed the drone to kill me- are now in Bogota. Ivan Duque will expel them because he wants nothing to do with those who failed,” the Venezuelan leader said at a press conference from Caracas.

#BREAKING | #lukedenman, a captured mercenary involved in the latest coup in Venezuela, reveals that their plan included to take President @maduro_en to the U.S. in a plane. pic.twitter.com/6iWBM3W9vm

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 6, 2020

The U.S. mercenaries are “convicted and confessed,” he stressed and explained that his country’s institutions will judge them according to the due process.

The head of state recalled that the U.S. President Donald Trump, who receives a report every day on Venezuela, affirmed he knew nothing of the foiled armed infiltration in his country.

“It is impossible that Trump did not know what happened in Venezuela this weekend. Mike Pompeo said they have not had direct participation, but have they had indirect participation?”

The Venezuelan president also reiterated that the former U.S. green beret Jordan Goudreau, who is the head of the Silvercorp company, has worked with Trump for several years.

Brother of ex-Green Beret in failed Venezuela coup pleads for help from US https://t.co/k3zk7HrCeM pic.twitter.com/vt2ZCdHMwF

— Melissa Pedersen (@MelissaPederse) May 6, 2020

“He has served as Donald Trump’s bodyguard for many years. Jordan Goudreau was named by the State Department as the security chief for the show they put on in Cucuta,” recalled Maduro, referring to the concert that the opposition Juan Guaido organized in such Colombian city to disguise the first attempt to invade Venezuela in 2019.

The Bolivarian leader explained that the U.S. mercenary established negotiations with the State Department and with the Venezuelan opposition led by Guaido, who delegated to J.J. Rendon and Sergio Vergara the hiring of a company to carry out a military invasion.

The negotiation process, which ended in September 2019, led to the preparation of a contract worth US$212 million, which was signed by Goudreau.

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Featured image: Former United States ex-green beret Luke Denman that was captured Monday. | Photo: VTV

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dafna Tachover, Director of 5G and Wireless Harms Project of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), signed onto the UK EM Radiation Research Trust  (RRT) letter calling on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and political leaders to protect the public from the proven harms of wireless radiation and 5G.

The Open Letter of Complaint was written in response to an article published by First News in their children’s online newspaper titled “There is no 5G Conspiracy”, claiming 5G is absolutely safe. RRT, which is a trusted and leading UK group dedicated to education about wireless radiation health effects, has been receiving emails and phone calls from parents, school children and teachers asking RRT to respond to the article.

The letter was written by RRT’s Chairwoman, Eileen O’Connor, and the group’s US based advisor, Susan Foster, and responds to the unsubstantiated and false claims by First News of the absolute safety of 5G. The letter provides ample scientific evidence of proven harms by wireless radiation and addresses how Big Telecom is defrauding the public.

“The RRT believes that it is one thing to comfort children with respect to the lockdown and the corona virus,” said Ms. O’Conner, “but not at the cost of the truth about the very real harms from these dangerous exposures.”

Since 5G infrastructure is based primarily on 4G, and on pulsed and modulated radio and microwave frequencies that have been proven harmful in thousands of studies, harms that have been confirmed by courts around the world, there is no doubt that 5G is harmful as well.

“Children need to be told the truth: cell phones and cell towers emit radiation,” commented Ms. Foster. “It is ludicrous and shameful to tell children that a great deal of research has been done to prove 5G safe when decades of science on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation have proven it harmful.”

5G deployment is exponentially increasing our exposure to this harmful radiation and technology. Of special concern is the installation of cell phones antennas in close proximity to people’s homes and children’s bedrooms. As a result, growing numbers of countries and municipalities around the world have banned the deployment of 5G.

Children’s Health Defense joined this effort as it is aligned with the organization’s mission to protect children from environmental toxins. 5G and wireless radiation constitute toxins which are significantly involved in the increase of sickness in children. Sadly, in the UK, a 15 y/o girl, Jenny Fry committed suicide after becoming sick from wireless and as a result of the mistreatment she has experienced because of her sickness.

RFK, Jr., Dafna Tachover and CHD are calling for the protection of those who have already been harmed by wireless technology radiation including many children, and for the prevention of further and imminent harm by halting 5G deployment.

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Featured image is from CHD

The people who define “legacy systems” are the billionaires like Gates, and the monopolies like Big Pharma. “They” define the problem, and “they” “fix” the problem. The Corona shock gave them all the power and opportunity to fast track it all. “They” will benefit. “We” will be further disempowered. “They” will engineer consent for it all.

The Corona operation is already undermining “Legacy” systems like healthcare and education. Neoliberal economic schemes and tectonic shifts in operating systems are being fast-tracked in both of these domains.

John Pilger explains that the National Health Service is being sold off “piece by piece” .

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is further weakening public services, and, significantly, Bill Gates, neither a medical expert nor an expert in education, is exercising disproportionate influence in the domain of public education.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be working with the State of New York to “develop a blueprint to reimagine education.”

The shock of the Corona Operation has accelerated and made possible all of these tectonic shifts to our lives, and Big Media continues to play a key role.

NDAA legislation and the repeal of Smith Mundt legislation made fabricated spectacles, pretending to be “news”, legal, so it comes as no surprise that Media operatives are also exploiting this “freedom” to enslave us all with extraordinary Corona-related staged productions.

Fake news, fake patients, and fake tests are all the rage.

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

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—the former CIA director who admitted the US government lies, cheats, and steals—wants you to believe the Trump neocon-infused administration had nothing to do with the failed coup plot in Venezuela. 

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Operacion Gedeon “if we were involved it would have gone differently”#Venezuela pic.twitter.com/B63hAnKdVR

— CNW (@ConflictsW) May 6, 2020

Standard Pontius Pilate response. Of course, the US government and its private sector “partners” in the subversion business (in this case, Silvercorp USA) are behind this miniaturized Bay of Pigs operation. 

The fall guy is Jordan Goudreau, “a former member of the US Army special forces” who has, according to the BBC, “been quick to claim an association” with the captured US mercenaries. 

As should be expected, the BBC watered down the significance of the event by characterizing it as a “speedboat incursion.” 

From the UPI:

Jordan Goudreau, an ex-Green Beret and owner of private security company Slivercorp USA for which the two captured Americans worked for, has claimed responsibility for “Operation Gideon,” a plan of insurrection against Maduro he said is connected to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has the support of the United States and more than 50 countries.

There are 195 countries in the world and most have not found it necessary to declare Juan Guaidó president of oil-rich Venezuela.

Recall former US president Jimmy Carter said in 2012 “of the 92 elections that [the Carter Center] monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

“We just heard about it,” said Trump from the South Lawn on Tuesday. “But whatever it is, we’ll let you know. But it has nothing to do with our government.” 

President Trump denied any involvement by the US in what #Venezuela's officials have called a failed armed incursion in the South American country that led to the capture of 2 American “mercenaries.” https://t.co/YWa1Vi9BgS

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 6, 2020

It’s called “plausible deniability,” however, in this case, it is not plausible at all. The US has tried numerous times without success to overthrow the government in Venezuela. Pompeo is an admitted liar. Trump is basically clueless and preoccupied defending his ego on Twitter, so he repeats what he was told by his neocon foreign policy operatives. 

Trump and his neocons will, of course, ignore Goudreau’s claim the US was on board with the latest illegal effort to stage a coup. The mercenary profiteer said he had a contract with Pompeo’s State Department. 

EXCLUSIVE: Green Beret vet who plotted botched Venezuelan coup boasted it was an OFFICIAL government operation https://t.co/vKBpvK4MCL

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) May 6, 2020

Short of bombing Caracas, terrorizing and killing thousands, and assassinating Maduro, there is very little the US can do to further destabilize Venezuela. 

Venezuela’s opposition needs military intervention if they want to overthrow Maduro in the future. #Venezuela #VenezuelaCoup pic.twitter.com/3ToezTayYG

— specialforceulm (@Specialforceulm) May 6, 2020

Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, understood the US will never accept rule in South America that rejects the neoliberal agenda. In response, Chávez organized civilian militias. 

It was people like the old woman pictured below who captured the Green Beret mercenaries. No wonder Pompeo and Trump didn’t acknowledge the obvious link to one of its contractors—the failed mini-Bay of Pigs operation demonstrated just how impotent the US has become in overthrowing disfavored governments. 

Local people with just basic militia training captured eight of #Trump's mercenaries in Chuao, Aragua. 😂🤣 #Venezuela https://t.co/tx57ZNuUN3 pic.twitter.com/DVGYw6mXDa

— tim anderson (@timand2037) May 6, 2020

Naturally, the admitted liar and former tank commander Pompeo demands Maduro send the captured American mercenaries home. In actuality, despite this windbag’s threats, the US has few “tools” to ensure the return of these for-profit trained killers. 

#BREAKING Pompeo says US to use 'every tool' to free Americans in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/Qi0vtT5xbj

— AFP news agency (@AFP) May 6, 2020

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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: Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on the last day of the #NoMoreTrump campaign to reject the unilateral measures against the country. | Photo: Venezuelan Ministry of Communication

A new, radical paradigm shift is in progress. The U.S. economy may shrink as much as 40% in the first semester of 2020. China, already the world’s largest economy by PPP for a few years now, may soon become the world’s largest economy even in exchange rate terms.

The post-Planet Lockdown world – still a hazy mirage – may well need a post-Planet Lockdown currency. And that’s where a serious candidate steps into the fray: the fiat digital yuan.

Last month, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) confirmed that a group of top banks started trials in electronic payment in four different Chinese regions using the new digital yuan. Yet there’s no timetable yet for the official launch of what is called the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP).

The man with the plan is PBOC governor Yi Gang. He has confirmed that apart from the trials in Suzhou, Xiong’an, Chengdu and Shenzhen, the PBOC is also testing hypothetical scenarios for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

While DCEP, according to Yi, “has made very good progress,” he insists the PBOC will be “cautious in terms of risk control, especially to study anti money-laundering and ‘know your customer’ requirements to incorporate in the design and system of DCEP.”

DCEP should be interpreted as the road map for China leading to an eventual, even more groundbreaking replacement of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. China is already ahead in the digital currency sweepstakes: the sooner DCEP is launched the better to convince the world, especially the Global South, to tag along.

The PBOC is developing the system with four top state-owned banks as well as payment behemoths Tencent and Ant Financial.

A mobile app developed by the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) is already circulating on WeChat. This is in effect an interface linked to DCEP. Moreover, 19 restaurants and retail establishments including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Subway are part of the pilot testing.

China is advancing fast on the whole digital spectrum. A Blockchain Service Network (BSN) was launched not only for domestic but also for global trade purposes. A large committee is supervising BSN, including executives from the PBOC, Baidu and Tencent, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Backed by gold

So what does this all mean?

Well connected banking sources in Hong Kong have told me Beijing is not interested for the yuan to replace the U.S. dollar – for all the interest across the Global South in bypassing it, especially now that the petrodollar is in a coma.

The official Beijing position is that the U.S. dollar should be replaced by an IMF-approved Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket of currencies (dollar, euro, yuan, yen). That would eliminate the heavy burden of the yuan as the sole reserve currency.

But that may be just a diversionist tactic in an environment of all-out information war. A basket of currencies under the IMF still implies U.S. control – not exactly what China wants.

The meat of the matter is that a digital, sovereign yuan may be backed by gold. That’s not confirmed – yet. Gold could serve as a direct back up; to back bonds; or just lay there as collateral. What’s certain is that once Beijing announces a digital currency backed by gold, it will be like the U.S. dollar being struck by lightning.

Under this new framework, nations won’t need to export more to China than they import so they have enough yuan to trade. And Beijing won’t have to keep printing yuan electronically – and artificially, as in the case of the U.S. dollar – to meet trade demands.

The digital yuan will be effectively backed up by the massive amount of Made in China goods and services – and not by a transoceanic Empire of 800 Bases. And the value of the digital yuan will be decided by the market – as it happens with bitcoin.

This whole process has been years in the making, part of serious discussions started already in the late 2000s inside BRICS summit meetings, especially by Russia and China – the core strategic partnership inside the BRICS.

Considering multiple strategies to progressively bypass the U.S. dollar, starting with bilateral trade in their own currencies, Russia and China, for instance, set up a Russia-Chian RMB Cooperation Fund three years ago.

Beijing’s strategy is carefully calibrated, like playing go long-term. Apart from methodically stockpiling gold in massive quantities (just like Russia) for seven years now, Beijing has been campaigning for a wider use of SDR while making sure to not position the yuan as a strategic competitor.

But now the post-Planet Lockdown environment is shaping up as ideal for Beijing to make a move. Even before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis the predominant feeling among the leadership was that China is under a full spectrum attack by the United States government. Hybrid War already reaching fever pitch implies bilateral relations will only get worse, not better.

So when we have China as the world’s largest economy by both PPP and exchange rate; still the strongest growing major economy, barring the first semester of 2020; productive, innovative, efficient and on track to reach a higher technological level with the Made in China 2025 program; and capable of winning the “people’s war” against Covid-19 in record time, all the necessary elements seem to be in place.

But then, there’s soft power. Beijing needs to have the Global South on its side. The United States government knows it very well; no wonder the current hysteria is all about demonizing China as “guilty” on all – unproved – counts of fostering and lying about Covid-19.

An “impeding arrival”

A key advantage of a sovereign digital yuan is that Beijing does not need to float a paper yuan – which by the way is being sidelined all across China itself, as virtually everyone is switching to electronic payment.

The digital yuan, using blockchain technology, will automatically float – thus bypassing the U.S.-controlled global financialized casino.

The amount of sovereign digital currency is fixed. That in itself eliminates a plague: quantitative easing (QE), as in helicopter money. And that leaves the sovereign digital currency as the preferred medium for trade, with currency transfers unimpeded by geography and, the icing on the cake, without banks charging outrageous fees as intermediaries.

Of course there will be pushback. As in non-stop demonization of neo-Orwellian China for straying away from the whole purpose of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies – which is to have freedom from a centralized structure via decentralized ownership. There will be howls of horror at the PBOC potentially capable of seizing anyone’s digital funds or turning off a wallet if the owner displeases the CCP.

China is on it, but the U.S., UK, Russia and India are also on their way to launch their own crypto-currencies. For obvious reasons, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the Central Bank of Central Banks, is very much aware that the future is now. Their research with over 50 Central Banks is unmistakable: we are facing an “impeding arrival”. But who will take the Biggest Prize?

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

There are tremendous economic and political pressures emanating from the White House and the corporate community to “reopen” the United States economy.

At present the U.S. has outstripped all other countries in the world in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

As of May 6, 1,171,510 people have been confirmed with the virus while 68,279 of this number lost their lives to the disease. On the international scale, there are 3,588,773 cases and 247,503 deaths spanning 215 countries, areas and territories. (see this and this)

In large municipalities such as New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Detroit, where the rapid spread of the pandemic alarmed the world during March and April, it appears as if the number of infections and deaths are declining. Governors and mayors of these states and cites enacted shelter-in-place orders and public emergencies minimizing the concentrations of people on the streets, in schools, businesses, religious institutions and workplaces.

Dallas shoppers amid COVID-19 pandemic

Nonetheless, people are still contracting the virus resulting in hospitalizations and deaths. Healthcare systems are overwhelmed in part due to the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), high infection rates among medical professionals and support staff along with the economic toll taken on the systems which are controlled by private interests.

The state of Michigan and the city of Detroit are considered “hot spots” in the pandemic where rates of infection and deaths have been some of the highest in the nation and the world. Michigan has confirmed 43,950 cases of COVID-19 resulting in 4,135 deaths. Detroit, the largest city in the state, leads in the number of infections with 9,424 and 1,108 fatalities. (see this)

Some of the highly-rated hospitals in the state of Michigan are laying-off employees. The most recent is the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Michigan Medicine, which administers the University Hospital, announced on May 5 that there would be 1,400 employees furloughed or laid off. This announcement comes at a time when the demands for quality healthcare services for COVID-19 patients and others requiring treatment for a host of ailments remains at historical levels.

The suspension of elective surgeries, annual physical examinations, lab work on patients for various reasons have had a tremendous impact on the finances of the healthcare systems throughout the U.S. In addition, many people within the U.S. are not covered by private medical insurance programs. Others have inadequate healthcare coverage which does not pay for the total costs emergency care and long term hospital confinements.

Moreover, many people in the state of Michigan and other regions of the U.S. have lost their jobs with an estimated figure of 30 million nationally. In Michigan, it is being said that more than a million people are out of work since the advent of the pandemic and the declaration of emergency orders since mid-March. Service sector jobs where a significant portion of growth within the labor market has occurred in the hospitality and restaurant sectors, the rising rates of unemployment, lack of public trust due to widespread infections and the decline in disposal income, will create the conditions for the dissolution of many of these businesses and institutions.

With specific reference to the situation involving Michigan Medicine, Marschall Runge, CEO for the hospital and dean of the medical school, said of decisions to downsize the workforce:

“While we are faced with continuing challenges as a result of this pandemic, we know that our collective effort will result in our successfully navigating this crisis and moving forward on a path of strength and sustainability. Our economic recovery plan will help us continue to provide hope and healing to our patients and support our clinical, educational and research missions.” (see this)

Texas and Georgia: Reopening and the Spread of the Virus

There have been major political and ideological differences related to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Republican and Democratic parties are both controlled by Wall Street and the leading industrial interests in the U.S. and globally. Any notion of a party platform independent of the banks and the Pentagon are off limits to the leadership of the Democrats and the Republicans within and outside of government.

Georgia graph on hospitalizations based on race

Nonetheless, the two ruling class parties embody varying positions on policy issues which are being implemented in states throughout the country. States such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, California, Washington, among others, are maintaining rigid stay-at-home mandates which are serving to reduce infection rates and deaths. These variations in views on the response to the pandemic are based upon the divergent constituencies embodied with each separate political party. African Americans, people of Latin American descent, other people of color communities, tend to vote Democratic in local, statewide, congressional and presidential elections.

Southern and certain Midwestern states have been reluctant to impose similar measures and are the first to “reopen” in the beginning of May. These contradictory responses to mitigation efforts aimed at stemming the impact of the virus will only prolong the current outbreak.

These inconsistent policies are taking a serious toll on public health nationally. In the state of Texas, a recent report noted that infection rates are starting to rise in parallel with the purported relaxing of Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines by the Governor.

A May 2 article in Newsweek stressed that:

“As the novel coronavirus outbreak continues in the U.S., Texas has reported its second, third and fourth highest daily spikes in cases since the outbreak began, within two days of the state easing lockdown measures on May 1. On May 2, Texas reported 1,293 new cases, the second-highest count of new cases, and 1,026 new infections on May 3, the fourth-highest number of new cases since early March in the wake of the outbreak. May 1 marked the third-highest figure on record, with 1,142 new cases, according to the latest report Monday from Texas state health authorities. Texas also recorded its highest daily death toll of 50 fatalities on April 30, just a day before the state’s reopening, Texas health authorities report. The state has reported at least 32,332 cases, including 884 deaths, while around 16,000 have reportedly recovered from infection and at least 1,533 are currently reported to be in hospital, as of Monday.”

Political groupings in support of the re-election of President Donald Trump are apparently in full agreement with the relaxation of COVID-19 preventative guidelines even those issued by the White House itself. Demonstrations advocating this position calling for a “reopening of the country” are echoed and praised in the White House COVID-19 Task Force briefings, previously held on a daily basis.

This division within political forces in the U.S. portends much for the future of public health and the national economy. Unless these contradictions can be resolved based upon scientific methodologies combined with the social interests of the majority of people in the country, the return to any sense of “normality” will remain elusive.

Another Southern state, Georgia, where an election during November 2018 further exposed the continuing phenomenon of voter suppression, national oppression and institutional racism, an outbreak among the African American population in the Southwest region of the state reveals the ongoing threat of COVID-19. The areas surrounding Albany, a hallmark of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, today is representative of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the oppressed people.

Governor Brian Kemp, who benefitted from the voter suppression of many African Americans during the 2018 election, has remained committed to the “reopening” despite the opposition from Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former Democratic House of Representative minority leader Stacey Y. Abrams, the candidate which ran against Kemp. Many businesses in Atlanta are refusing to reopen due to the impact of the virus on the city’s African American community.

A report in the Associated Press on May 6 noted in relationship to the heavily rural Southwest region of the state of Georgia that:

“The [local Phoebe Putney Memorial] hospital saw its first known coronavirus patient on March 10; within a few days, it had 60 and the ICU was full. Two weeks later, patients began flooding in from farther-flung rural communities. Helicopters buzzed from the top of the parking garage, flying patients to other hospitals that still had room to take them. They burned through six months of masks and gowns in six days, said Phoebe Putney president Scott Steiner. Then they were competing for supplies against wealthier, more politically powerful places; they paid $1 each for surgical masks that typically cost a nickel and were losing about $1 million each day. The patients were very sick. Some died within hours. Some died on the way, in the back of ambulances. The region is predominantly black, but still African Americans died disproportionately, Steiner said. African Americans accounted for about 80% of the hospital’s deaths.” (see this)

Even those who presumed that the threat of COVID-19 was mainly centered in the densely populated urban areas composed of many people of color communities should realize now that the virus is a threat to various regions of the U.S. If the ruling class and capitalist state does not develop an effective healthcare program to effectively address the pandemic the impact of the disease will further damage human society domestically and internationally.

Healthcare, the Economy and the Crisis of Capitalism

These social conditions related to the spread of COVID-19 are exacerbating the underlying problems related to poverty, worker exploitation and national oppression. The reason why the disease is having such a devastating impact on African Americans and other oppressed groups is clearly related to the character of the capitalist system in the U.S. which prioritizes profit-making over and above public health.

Environmental and structural crises prevailing in major urban areas have been lingering for decades. The failure of the current economic system to put in place safeguards against the disastrous consequences of the displacement of millions in the previous decade and the enhancement of the exploitation of labor, has left the majority within the U.S. endangered by public health emergencies compounded by economic uncertainty.

The present situation has exposed the capitalist system as being without any possible solutions to the present conjuncture. Socialism and its policies which guarantee annual minimal incomes, universal healthcare, housing, education and environmental security, is the only way forward within the U.S. and indeed the world.

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

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

In the early morning of last May 3 Venezuela has witnessed the first attempt of a raid by speedboats with armed mercenary forces on the central coast of Venezuela, just a few kilometres from the capital city, Caracas. The response by the Venezuelan armed forces and the almost continuous updates about the action including photos and videos were quick.

Just a couple of hours later, while the defensive operation was still underway, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Nestor Reverol issued an initial statement,

“A group of terrorist mercenaries attempted a maritime invasion, entering Venezuela with speedboats via the coast of La Guaira. Their aim was to assassinate leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution and carry out a coup.”

The suggestion that the raid – already a grave act of aggression – had such menacing consequences was not farfetched, given past attempts to overthrow the Maduro government, including attempted assassinations.

The Venezuelan Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino, in his official communiqué injected inspiring words,

“The Bolivarian National Armed Force categorically rejects these acts of irrational violence, before which we have always been victorious in defense of the Homeland, unfailingly clinging to the Constitution.”

Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Constituent Assembly and vice-president of the governing party PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) provided a conclusion of the initial defensive action that ended “with an unfortunate balance of eight deceased, two detained people who were there; a lot of significant weapons, in addition to vehicles that they had ready to carry out actions directly on institutions and authorities.”

Cabello also warned of more possible raids and launched a call to the population in general to be watchful for any suspicious or irregular activity particularly along the Venezuelan coast. Consequently, the following day, on May 4, more armed mercenaries were apprehended thanks to the quick reporting by fishers in the contiguous coastal area of Aragua State.

At his point, two important facts are to be noticed: The prompt documented official reporting of events, and more importantly the consistent concurrence on the facts from the different branches of the government including the population that has been qualified as a true civic-military-police success.

Full details of those facts with some analysis of the implied tactical strategies pursued by the mercenary attack can be read here and here for the May 3 and May 4 incidents respectively. But other side stories and revelations lead us to ask, what can we say about the coordination of this ongoing coup attempt, the coup plotters involved and the expected outcome were the coup to succeed?

Let’s put the U.S. government on the side for a moment. We know about its long-standing goal for regime change. We all know that President Trump has denied any U.S. involvement in the raid. That was to be expected but not to be believed.

We would like to focus on some of the implications of this raid that come from three sources: self-appointed president Juan Guaidó and two videos with declarations from key players.

In a tweet communication on May 3 Guaidó dismissed the mercenary attack as a “false flag” by the Maduro government to hide social problems, although a day later he changed his tune in a video interview by suggesting that the “dictatorship” had infiltrated the armed group. This shows that Guaidó was not aware of the upcoming incursion on Venezuela.

Further evidence that he was not part of the planning can be inferred from a video where Venezuelan former National Guard Javier Nieto Quintero appears next to former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau. Nieto introduces Goudreau as a “member of the special forces of the U.S. army who also runs the Florida-based company Silvercorp USA to provide services to handle “the whole spectrum of crisis situations”, and is reported to “organize a military expedition aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro”. The video announces the raid as part of a so-called armed struggle “Operation Gedeon” and is a call to the Venezuelan military and people to join in the overthrow of the Maduro “regime”.

Cap. (GN) Javier Nieto Quintero informa sobre la OPERACIÓN GEDEON. pic.twitter.com/DvuzbxAQk8

— CARIVE (@Carive15) May 3, 2020

What is striking is that in the two minutes and a half long video not once there is a reference to Guaidó as the “legitimate interim president” of Venezuela, and that the incursion also intends to support his claim.

On the contrary, in another video Goudreau is interviewed from an undisclosed location by Miami-based Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo. The main thrust of the interview revolves around a contract shown and allegedly signed by Silvercorp Jordan Goudreau, Juan Guaidó and other representatives. The existence of such a contract was revealed several weeks ago but never shown before. Goudreau claims that Guaidó breached the contract for failing to pay the convened US$1.5 million for his “services”. That was mentioned to be the reason why “the ‘liberation’ of Venezuela was not achieved.” But surely Goudreau must have had his eyes on the larger “reward” of the multi million dollars promised by the Attorney General’s bounty for the capture of Nicolas Maduro and other high ranking Venezuelan officials.

Conclusion

The statements made by those who masterminded the recent mercenary armed incursion on Venezuela – that was quickly neutralised by the Venezuelan forces – do not seem to have had Guaidó in their minds in the event of a success of the attempted coup that they must have hoped for.

In fact, the coup plotters apparently never included Guaidó in their plans. A news item by Reuters states,

“In Washington, a source familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments described the incursion as a ‘private enterprise’ and said it was not believed to have been carried out with Guaido’s knowledge or approval.”

Not only was Guaidó absent from any consideration for involvement in the raid or in the future Venezuela envisioned by the coup plotters, but Guaidó was directly targeted by a disgruntled foreign mercenary claiming that he was not paid for his “work”. This widely distributed information was timely released by a Venezuelan journalist who is not a supporter of Maduro but a supporter of a more radical rightwing opposition. This can only be construed as intentionally meant to harm Juan Guaidó in the eyes of all Venezuelans, and any claim he might have to leading Venezuela.

This also occurs at a time when Guaidó seems to be losing international support for failing to be a catalyst force among Venezuelans and to bring the Venezuelan army to a mass mutiny. At the same time Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent release of a “Framework for a transition in Venezuela” seems to leave Guaidó out of a potential new government at least until new U.S.-suggested presidential elections in Venezuela.

Behind these events we observe a deepening of the division in the rightwing opposition but a more dangerous one that Washington will gladly use to its advantage. The escalation in Venezuela from violent riots to armed mercenary incursions and sabotages, likely aided by the U.S. and its proxy Colombian government, indicates that the Hybrid War on Venezuela is moving to a next stage of aggression that might degenerate into an armed civil confrontation. The strong and committed resistance of a united government, its Bolivarian defense forces and a patriotic population can defuse the aggression. However, Venezuelans and all Latin Americans in the region should be alerted and concerned about the human cost.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

African states across the continent have enacted stringent measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19.

From Kenya, to Egypt and South Africa, governmental leaders, labor unions, community organizations and professional groupings are contributing resources and talents to assist in the educational, testing and mitigation measures being implemented within their respective countries.

Although the number of COVID-19 cases have not reached anywhere near the levels prevalent in the Western countries of Europe and North America, efforts designed to halt such a high rate of infection are proving quite costly for the governments involved. Millions of workers and youth have been idled in the labor markets and the educational sectors.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nigerian counterpart Muhammadu Buhari on state visit

In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of emergency in late March, shutting down the country of nearly 60 million people. The president mobilized 3,000 members of the South African National Defense Forces (SANDF) along with 28,000 of healthcare workers in order to enforce the stay-at-home order while carrying out testing for COVID-19 on a mass level.

The South African approach to addressing the pandemic is based upon community outreach, education and testing. Makeshift field centers are being established to pursue active COVID-19 cases for treatment.

An article in the Financial Times says of the South African situation:

“Known as active case finding, the use of community health workers to identify patients with symptoms draws heavily on South Africa’s experience battling tuberculosis and HIV. It differs from the approach of most European governments that have relied on citizens coming forward for tests and then tracing their contacts. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has lauded South Africa’s aggressive strategy but has warned that Africa overall needs to test more.”

For an underdeveloped country which was liberated from apartheid colonialism 26 years ago, the government led by the African National Congress (ANC) has been able to mount an impressive campaign utilizing the military, media outlets and the medical system to work vigorously towards limiting the crisis. At the end of April the country shifted from level 5 to 4, allowing more movement during certain times of the day.

According to the same above-mentioned report:

“South Africa has increased its level of testing to more than 10,000 tests a day. All the while the number of positive tests has remained consistent at about 3 per cent, a sign that while infections are growing they are not outpacing efforts to find them.”

These extraordinary efforts of course require resources of an enormous magnitude. The outreach project is taking place at a time of high levels of unemployment and declining values for the national currency.

African countries are limited in the cash reserves available to governments to address crises of this magnitude. Some of these states have turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for loans running the risk of further deepening the historical debt burden which has been a major impediment to development since the 1960s.

The IMF and Responses to African States: Sudan and Zimbabwe

In the Republic of Sudan there has been tremendous political and economic upheaval over the last 15 months. A general strike and widespread unrest from December 2018 to April 2019 resulted in a military coup against former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Zimbabwe screening by healthcare workers for COVID-19

A coalition of political organizations and the military have established a Sovereign Council which is governing the country under an interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The new government has made serious attempts to stabilize the country and position the transitional regime to receive financial assistance from international finance capital.

Sudan has received pledges from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) aimed at assisting the oil-rich nation during its transition process. However, the IMF, after meeting with leading Sudanese officials, refused to grant loans to the country. The decision related to the denial of funds took place in December 2019, months before the COVID-19 pandemic threat in Africa.

Under the administration of ousted President al-Bashir, Khartoum was designated as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Al-Bashir and other leaders within his government were also wanted on criminal charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over allegations of human rights violations and genocide in relationship to their efforts designed to suppress a rebellion in the western Darfur region of the country.

The IMF wrote in its summary of their decision to deny resources to the country that:

“Sudan is in debt distress and is eligible for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. U.S. sanctions on trade and financial flows were revoked in October 2017, but Sudan remains on the state sponsors of terrorism list (SSTL), which blocks progress toward HIPC debt relief and the clearance of debt arrears. Moreover, the large external debt and arrears hinder access to external financing and weigh heavily on development. The team welcomes the authorities’ engagement with international partners to secure comprehensive support for debt relief and the delisting from SSTL, which would pave the way for foreign investment and financing for growth and poverty reduction. The team also welcomed Sudan’s efforts to strengthen cooperation with the IMF on policies and payments.”

Therefore, despite the dire economic and social conditions in Sudan which the IMF acknowledges, they cannot make loans to the interim government due to issues which arose during the previous administration. The notion of the SSTL is a U.S. construct while the IMF and the World Bank are based in Washington, D.C. Even with the advent of COVID-19, the IMF has not altered its decision in regard to Sudan.

Sudan agreement signed on July 5, 2019 by TMC and FFC along with African Union mediator

At the same time in the Southern African state of Zimbabwe, which has also been under the sanctions regime of Washington and other imperialist centers, has as well been denied assistance from the IMF. Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa beginning in March mobilized the country in order to contain the spread of COVID-19.

A delegation from the IMF issued a report on the country in February saying that the Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government had not met the necessary criteria to acquire loans. The IMF cited previous debt arrears to financial institutions and the ongoing problems of national debt along with currency stabilization.

This IMF report on Zimbabwe reads in part saying:

“Directors stressed the need to address governance and corruption challenges, entrenched vested interests, and enforcement of the rule of law to improve the business climate and support private‑sector‑led inclusive growth. Such efforts would be instrumental to advance reengagement efforts with the international community and mobilize the needed support. They noted with regret that the Staff‑Monitored Program was off‑track and underscored the importance of continued engagement between the Fund and the authorities, including through technical assistance, policy advice and other innovative ways, to help immediately stabilize the economy and address the humanitarian crisis.”

Zimbabwe came under western sanctions due to a radical land reform program initiated by the parliament and the national government under former President Robert Mugabe two decades ago in 2000. The land was returned to the African people whom were expropriated by European settler-colonialism during the late 19^thand 20^thcenturies. After independence in 1980, the ruling ZANU-PF party waited for twenty years for the British and U.S. governments to make good on their promises made during the Lancaster House negotiations beginning in 1979.

The Lancaster House talks between the national liberation movements and the colonialists led to an agreement on the terms of national independence. Yet the imperialists states refused to provide compensation to the settler-colonial minority in order to facilitate the transferal of land.

Although the IMF recognized the attempts made by the current Mnangagwa administration to re-engage with the imperialist states, there would not be any assistance forthcoming. These conditions are ultimately aimed at the further impoverishment and destabilization of Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF.

Strategic Questions and the Need to Break with the IMF

Undoubtedly the African Union (AU) member states must break with the IMF and the World Bank in order to release the economic potential of the region. The problem of IMF loan conditionality is not a new one on the continent.

Numerous states since the post-independence era have been strangled by IMF/World Bank policies. The measures required by these Washington-based financial institutions serve to heighten tensions between governments and their people as well as hampering the construction of sound state structures needed for national infrastructural development.

This pattern is obviously continuing in the era of COVID-19. Although the IMF has announced aid to certain African governments, others are excluded. These policies could easily create divisions among various states in the scramble for resources to address the looming healthcare and socioeconomic crises.

The U.S. and other imperialist countries became wealthy and dominant due to their exploitation of African people, resources, land and waterways. Only the total liberation of the African people from capitalism and imperialism can provide a path towards effectively addressing the challenges of the contemporary period.

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

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated; except for the featured image

Once upon a time in the United States there was a consensus among national politicians that there were two areas where there should be a unified approach to policy. They were national security and foreign policy, both of which involved other nations, which made desirable a perception of unity on the part of the president and his cabinet, no matter who was in power. That meant that dissent from individual politicians should never rise to the level of pitting one party against another on the basic Establishment view of what was desirable in terms of U.S. national interests.

That viewpoint has survived at least somewhat intact to this day, even weathering the turmoil of Vietnam, but the apple cart has been somewhat upset by new players in the game, namely the various federal bureaucracies, to include law enforcement, intelligence and the Pentagon. The 2016 election demonstrated that the FBI and CIA in particular were willing to get involved in the game of who should be president, and in so doing they compromised major foreign policy and national security norms, which produced Russiagate as well as the wildly inflated current claims being leveled against China and Russia and even Iran looking ahead to elections in November.

As noted above, the Establishment view on foreign and national security policy was based on the principle that there must always be a united front when dealing with situations that are being closely watched by foreigners. If a cabinet secretary or the president says something relating to foreign or military affairs it should be the unified view of both the administration and the loyal opposition. Unfortunately, with President Donald Trump that unanimity has broken down, largely because the chief executive either refuses to or is incapable of staying on script. The most recent false step involved the origin of the corona virus, with the intelligence community stating that there was no evidence that the virus was “man made or genetically modified” in a lab followed by the president several hours later contradicting that view asserting that he had a “high degree of confidence” that the coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China based on secret information that he could not reveal.

There has also been reports that the Trump White House has in fact been pushing the intelligence community (IC) to “hunt for evidence” linking the virus to the Wuhan laboratory, suggesting that the entire China gambit is mostly political, to have a scapegoat available in case the troubled handling of the virus in the United States becomes a fiasco and therefore a political liability. This pressure apparently prompted an additional statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence saying: “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has claimed without providing any details that there is “overwhelming evidence” that coronavirus came out of the Wuhan laboratory, is reportedly leading the push to demonize China. He and other administration officials have expressed their frustration over the C.I.A.’s apparent inability to come up with a definitive explanation for the outbreak’s origin. C.I.A. analysts have reportedly responded that there is no evidence to support any one theory with “high confidence” and they are afraid that any equivocating response will immediately be politicized. Some analysts noted that their close monitoring of communications regarding the Wuhan lab suggest that the Chinese government itself does not regard the lab as a source of the contagion.

To be sure, any intelligence community document directly blaming the Chinese government for the outbreak would have a devastating impact on bilateral relations for years to come, a consequence that Donald Trump apparently does not appreciate. And previous interactions initiated by Trump administration officials suggest that Washington might use its preferred weapon sanctions in an attempt to pressure other nations to also hold China accountable, which would multiply the damage.

Given what is at stake in light of the White House pressure to prove what might very well be unprovable, many in the intelligence community who actually value what they do and how they do it are noticeably annoyed and some have even looked for allies in Congress, where they have found support from the Pentagon over Administration decision making that is both Quixotic and heavily politicized.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith of Washington has responded to the concerns expressed to him by both the military and intelligence communities, admitting that he is “…worried about a culture developing” where many senior officials are now making decision not on the merits of the case but rather out of fear that they will upset the president if they do not choose correctly.

While the intelligence agencies are concerned over the fabrication of a false consensus over the coronavirus, similar to what occurred regarding Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction in 2002-3, the Defense Department is more concerned that fundamental mechanisms that have been in place since the Second World War are now under attack, including how the military maintains discipline and punishes officers and enlisted men who have deviated from established policies.

Appealing to his base of support, Trump has notoriously pardoned Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy seal who was clearly guilty of murder in Afghanistan, and even met with him afterwards in the White House. Regarding Gallagher, Senate Armed Services Committee Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island said in a November that

“The White House’s handling of this matter erodes the basic command structure of the military and the basic function of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

Trump is now meddling in the treatment of Navy Captain Brett Crozier, who was relieved of his command after he went public with complains about the spread of coronavirus on his ship. In early April the president said “I may just get involved.” In the military services such interference even has a name, “undue command influence.” Clearly, the White House is seeking to squeeze every bit of political advantage it can from the Crozier story.

Congressman Smith has also described the situation in a colorful fashion as

“The president has made it clear as far as he is concerned the single most important attribute that anybody in the federal government can have is a willingness to kiss the president’s ass as often as possible” which “undermines your ability to be competent, to make decisions based on what is the right thing to do as opposed to what is going to feed the president’s limitless ego.”

To be sure, Donald Trump is not about to change and if he is re-elected one can only expect four more years of the same, but public confidence in government can only be maintained if there is at least some belief that decision making is a rational process. Trump has clearly turned that axiom on its head in his tendency to blame other parts of the government for what are manifestly his own failings. His characterization of senior officials, many of whom he himself appointed, as “losers” casts the entire government in a bad light. Whether the strategy of divide and conquer within one’s own administration will work out for Trump will certainly be decided in November.

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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].

Featured image is from Morning Star

One of the readers of this blog recently asked me my views on topics such as the call by some left economists for a general debt forgiveness (Debt Jubilee), on Modern Money Theory (MMT or sometimes referred to as ‘Magical Money Tree’), and the Federal Reserve bank (central bank) pre-emptive bail outs of banks and non-banks underway and whether the latter will succeed in generating an economic recovery from the current deep Coronaviral impacted US economy. What follows are some of my quick reflections and commentary on these topics.

My views on monetary policy are somewhat summarized by the argument that in the current era of finance capitalism dominance, monetary policy has been the first and foremost choice of capitalist governments and policymakers. Push the bail out (and normal times economic stimulus as well) through the central banks and into the private banking system. The latter then distribute the money injection to the non-banks and financial investors of their preference.

What trickles down to the wage earners, consumers and households is a residual in terms of income. Fiscal policy in terms of taxation is focused on business-investor tax cutting and on expanding government fiscal spending on corporate subsidies. Deficits that remain are financed by global purchases of US Treasuries as the money capital is recycled back to the US from offshore where it accumulates due to US trade deficits with the rest of the world. Industrial policy is to compress real wages, weaken or destroy unions, incrementally shift the cost of benefits to workers, and deregulate and privatize what remains of public works and public goods. Monetary policy is designed to keep interest rates low and ensure a low dollar exchange rate to maximize US multinational corporations offshore repatriation of foreign profits into the maximum amount of US dollars.

In the 21st century both monetary and fiscal policy are about subsidizing capital, especially finance capital, and less and less about stabilizing or stimulating the economy. (See my recent book, The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020, for more of this argument in detail)

As a result of this view, needless to say I am not a big fan of capitalist central bank monetary policy. Nor of monetary policy in general, since it has always been about subsidizing and/or bailing out finance capital. Debt is a means by which financial assets are subsidized as well. Money and Debt are thus central to maintaining the current 21st century capitalist system which requires excessive money injections (liquidity) and corresponding Debt accumulation as means to further expand capitalist wealth. Since it is central, I argue that capitalists and their governments will not entertain either a ‘debt jubilee’, and MMT is a theory that attempts to invert capitalist monetary policy and employ it for fiscal income redistribution to workers, consumers and households; thus that too is a contradiction to the system and would not be allowed. In short, both a Debt Jubilee or MMT require a virtual political revolution first before they could ever be introduced. The advocates of both Jubilee and MMT are politically naive to advocate solutions that cannot be introduced in the era of 21st century global finance capital hegemony. They are impossible ‘reforms’ of the system without a fundamental political change that drives capitalist interests from the sources of institutional government and state power.

Reader’s questions

My questions for you (Jack) are about the ‘Magical Money Tree’ (i.e. MMT, my italics). Does it exist? Can the Fed create money to pay for whatever it decided was necessary for the economy? If the decision was to pay off all student debt, could the Fed do so? If so, who gets stuck with the bill. Could there be a complete debt repayment for personal debts and corporate debts? If there is not a Magical Money Tree could one be created? If so, how? What if the government took back the constitutional power to create money and a new Greenback-era developed?

My comments in reply

This is the old Modern Money Theory hypothesis, renamed ‘Magical Money Tree’. It assumes that monetary policy, as money creation, can stimulate economic growth. MMT is just QE flipped on its head. Instead of the Fed bailing out corporations and capitalists only (per its mandate) it can be used to bail out the rest of us. But there are limits to monetary solutions to a crisis, whether QE or a public interest QE that would transform the Fed into a kind of public bank. The problem with MMT is it is politically naïve. To create a Fed as Public Bank it will take a political revolution. The banks and investors behind the Fed (they’ve controlled it ever since 1913) won’t allow that without a political fight that changes the nature of the capitalist system itself.

Beyond that, the problem with monetary solutions is that it holds that the redirecting the money supply is sufficient. It ignores the role of money demand and money velocity. You can provide all the money supply you want by creating money electronically, as the Fed does, but that doesn’t mean there’ll be the demand for money or that money demanded will eventually be used for investment, employment, and real growth. In times of deep crisis like this, much of the money supply might be ‘borrowed’ but will be hoarded, redirected offshore, distributed to shareholders, or invested in financial assets that are more profitable but produce no real growth.

Can debt be ‘expunged’? Yes, but all the talk of debt jubilee is again political naivete. Why? Because it means the finance capitalists that ultimately ‘own’ the debt will not just take a haircut but will have their heads shaved at the neck. They will resort to any undemocratic violent response necessary with the help of their politicians to stop it. All private debt forms, including credit card debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, revolving debt, and private bank provided student debt are owned by big capitalist investors. Debt forgiveness means their assets would collapse to zero. What about public held debt? US government, government held student debt, fannie mae-freddie mac government held mortgage debt, state-local government debt? While that could technically be expunged since the government (taxpayers & citizens) own it, to do so would cause a collapse of private debt markets’ price values and, in turn, mean a major loss of asset values for capitalist investors. So the latter resist that as well. A progressive government might be able to introduce a staged reduction in student debt. Or as I have argued, stretch out the 10 yr. normal term of student debt to 30 yrs and reduce the rate of interest to no more than that for the 30 yr. Treasury bond, or forgive one tenth of the principal per yr. over ten years for all student debt holders. That might pass but not with the Neoliberal governments we’ve had. Again the concern of capitalists is that even student debt expunging will have a negative impact on the values of other assets held by the capitalists.

What about relief from rents and mortgages.? Same story here. Who puts up the money capital for multi-family apartments, and for both residential and commercial property mortgages? It’s the rich private investors and their financial institutions (hedge funds, private equity, etc.). They take major losses if there’s a rent or mortgage forgiveness. A moratorium for rent and mortgages is different. It just means they move the payments to the back of the term of the debt payment schedule. On paper it doesn’t change the value of their assets significantly. But forgive it, or expunge it, and it destroys their values.

The current crisis has only just begun, both in health terms and economic. The virus is a precipitating causal force, not the fundamental driver of the current crisis–which is still unfolding both in health effect terms and independent dynamics of economic contraction. There will be a second virus wave, likely worse than the first which always happens in these severe pandemics. The present reopening of the economy by Trump and business interests behind him demanding it will exacerbate the contraction in a second wave, moreover. It’s certainly not a V shape recovery; it will be more like a ‘W’ shape, with successive contractions after short shallow recoveries. And if defaults lead to general bankruptcies it will mean a financial crisis at some point that will exacerbate the contraction still deeper.

And there’ll be no re-shutdown once a second viral wave happens, later this year most likely. Trump and broad sections of the capitalist class have already decided that they’ll accept the death toll and stay open throughout the second wave. (and the third, which also historically follows about 6-12 months later).

That’s been the pattern with the 1918 and 1958 pandemics. The second wave is always the worst.

Ditto for the economy. In other words, there are forces economic released that are now independent of the health effect, although the latter will also continue to wreck havoc economically. The massive $9T Fed-Treasury liquidity injection (so far, more coming) should be understood as a pre-emptive bank and non-bank bailout. Massive defaults are coming, already spreading from oil,energy and retail sectors, eventually to other service sectors and state and local governments. The bailouts are designed to flood the banks with liquidity and the contain the defaults in the non bank sectors. But once again, massive liquidity as money supply injection may slow down or even prevent some insolvency crises (i.e. defaults and bankruptcies) but that doesn’t mean stimulate economic investment and recovery. Once again, money solutions don’t necessary result in boosting the real economy, and that means jobs, and wage incomes that will collapse. Most of the liquidity will be hoarded on balance sheets or to make minimal payments on debt. It won’t go into real investment that generates real jobs, wages, consumption, and recovery.

Can the government, using MMT, engage in direct spending to restore the economy? Technically yes. But that kind of Treasury provided funding will add to the government debt at a time when business and capitalists are demanding more funds (and debt) for them (i.e. raise the government debt to bailout them out). So there’s a competition for who gets bailed out. Who do you think in the current Neoliberal era is going to get funded then: capitalists or consumers/households/workers? Corporations will come first, as we’ve seen in the bailouts of the last couple months: Trillions in loans and grants (mostly grants in the end since loans will be converted and forgiven eventually for businesses) for them vs. just $500b for workers. And there’ll be no more for extended unemployment benefits after July or supplemental income checks of $1200 forthcoming. That’s it. Go back to work and die. And if you’re on unemployment benefits now, if you don’t return to work you lose them.

The Fed ‘money tree’ is backed by US Treasury bonds sales. And those bonds add to the federal government debt. The Fed doesn’t simply create an electronic entry in its accounts from which banks and capitalists can withdraw funds. US Treasuries are created to allow the Fed to make those entries. And that adds to the government debt. You could have the US Treasury to perform the function of the Fed, as was the case before 1913. But the function remains the same, whether carried out by the Fed or by the US Treasury-Government. The Treasury was the Fed before 1913. So the problems of excess debt to bail out capitalism will continue even if the US Treasury took back the money supply creation function. Nothing really changes. The choice will always remain: create Treasury bonds for spending (or lending to banks, non-banks) for whom? Finance capitalists (bankers)? Non-bank capitalists? (airlines, oil frackers, etc.). Or consumers and workers? It again comes down to a political issue and whether the capitalist State will bail out capitalists or us. And who pays their politicians? So guess who they’ll bail first and foremost?

The Fed was created so that the politicians would not have to bail out the bankers and capitalists directly, by raising taxes. The bailouts funnel through the Fed, funded still however by T-bonds, which add to the national debt. How high can the US debt rise? It’s now well above 100% of annual GDP. But Japan’s is over 200%.

The US government is creating the money supply, but indirectly: by using T bonds to fund the Fed who injects liquidity into the banks (and now non-banks too). To say let’s get rid of the Fed as intermediary and use the Treasury itself only changes the structure but not the actual process. The Fed now in effect transfers the private capitalist debt on to its own balance sheet each time it bails out the banks and corps now. The Treasury would do the same without the Fed. But that would pose a political problem for the politicians with the electorate, so they prefer an intermediary like the Fed, central bank, to do it so folks don’t understand what’s really going on. Simply put, the government ultimately bails out the banks and capitalists. So ending the Fed and giving money creation back to the Treasury changes nothing but the appearances!

MMT simply creates the fiction that somehow, if the Fed or Treasury could directly fund social spending, that the liquidity injection to households could stimulate the economic recovery.

To sum up my view: it doesn’t matter if it’s the Fed or Treasury. Pure monetary solutions don’t work well in a deep contraction and crisis. Liquidity injections get hoarded not invested. And they don’t stop, only maybe slow, insolvency crises (defaults, bankruptcies). And what we have today is a Fed massive liquidity injection trying to hold off a general insolvency crisis. I predict it will fail. What we’ll need is another even larger ‘New Deal’ direct government spending, including government hiring (per WPA). But you don’t need an MMT program for that. You don’t need a Fed. The Fed is there to provide cover for the politicians and capitalist State so they don’t appear directly responsible for bailing out bankers and capitalists to the electorate. (Check out my 2017 book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’ for more on the limits of monetary policy in general).

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Those who have read Naomi Klein’s seminal book ‘The Shock Doctrine’ will remember how the ‘short sharp shock’ (primarily economic) was the tool fashioned by the Chicago School of Economics in order to create regime change in countries that resisted US hegemonic power grabs in the 1980’s and 1990’s. 

This neocolonial heist was administered to a number of South American countries, in the Middle East and also in Eastern Europe, where, in 1989, Poland’s Solidarity movement was undermined by the Chicago School’s Jeffrey Sachs posing as a libertarian anti communist bringer of gifts from the West.

A poisoned chalice, as it turned out, as Sachs infiltrated the hugely popular worker-led new political movement known as The Third Way and landed Poland with a draconian IMF loan whose repayment terms wrecked the country’s industrial base. 

A very similar scenario was repeated in Greece whose people are still struggling at the hands of the same treatment meated-out by The European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank, collectively known as The Troika.

Now ‘The Shock Doctrine’ is back with us again – with a vengeance. But this time it’s not just a national shock prescription, but a global one, executed on the concocted premise of a dangerous virus which is purported to have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, at the turn of the year.

The first move of this latest attempted grand heist has been to get around half the population locked-down in their own homes and induced into a state of fear paralysis. A formula that is activated by the ‘instructed’ mainstream media spreading a panic-warning of said virus spooking its way into all avenues of life and causing some form of untreatable sickness.

The effectiveness of this fear based indoctrination programme has been remarkable. A recent national opinion poll conducted in the UK suggests that more than 60% of the British public – believing what they are hearing and consequently suffering the Covid fear symptoms – do not want the lockdown measures to be lifted or even eased. This might be explained by the fact that the BBC – a masterful spreader of political disinformation – is regarded by many in the UK as ‘god’, followed closely by the Queen, on whose estate the Pirbright Institute is housed, a Coronavirus patent is officially registered and a Covid-19 vaccine is being developed.

The tactics currently being deployed rely upon deliberate deception, preplanned social engineering and applied behavioural psychology being trained on great swathes of the world population via a completely compliant media which works hand in hand with a corporate/ banker/political cabal whose sights are set on nothing less than totalitarian control of all avenues of human society as well as of the human brain.

As long as actions taken in relation to the grand Covid scam can continue to be sold as a genuine attempt to protect citizens, rather than screw them, the lockdown can be largely kept in place, enabling the implementation of a rapid desecration of the fundamental constitutional rights of citizens living in what are claimed to be ‘democratic’ countries.

But as soon as a critical mass see through the veil and cease to buy the lie, the tables will be turned; an event likely to lead to a showdown between a steadily emerging recognition of truth and a rapidly fracturing ‘fortress lie’. Our job at this moment of time is to catalyse this process.

Notwithstanding the fact that any and all preventable premature deaths carry with them a real sense of loss, the outrageous absurdity of pretending that the release of a virus recognised to be a strain of common flu, should constitute a valid reason for wrecking billions of people’s lives and income sources, from one end of the world to the other, has got to be revealed for what it is: an act of preplanned genocide.

Enough time has passed and enough evidence accrued to know that the death toll ascribed to Covid-19 – as farcically imprecise as the statistics are – is less than the average loss of life brought about by the standard annual winter flu cycle in Northern hemisphere countries – and just a fraction of the deaths resulting from cancer, heart disease and the other major sicknesses to which modern man typically succumbs.

So instead of pouring over oceans of epidemiological evidence as though training to acquire a PHD in virology, we need to turn to face the enemy and take direct action to halt the advance of the lie machine. Studying the small details of exactly what forms the constituent parts of this particular strain of sickness, is a deviation we cannot afford to indulge in. Let specialist doctors get on with this; but let the rest of us jump to our feet and slam closed the oak door that protects our most fundamental freedoms from being eviscerated right in front of our eyes.

Doctors, recognising that they are being deeply misled about the nature of this so called ‘pandemic’ must refuse to go along with the lies. They should form their own informal committees in which to share their knowledge and help those in need using best practice and common sense. Thousands are in danger of breaking the Hippocratic Oath by following directives that defy logic and rational thought.

Within the legal profession, let all those who retain some human judgement demand that an immediate emergency injunction be tabled in the high court of law in their country; leading to a court order being issued against all attempts to change national constitutions and other legal acts ‘on the hoof’ without any proper debate or opportunity for those under attack to put their case and defend their lawful rights.

Let all those who work in communications and media recognise that they carry a moral and ethical responsibility to do more than simply pass on a purely superficial repetition of what it is they are on hand to report. All too often journalists today act like robots – without ever exploring and reporting on the deeper issues that lie behind significant news events. Editors are equally culpable, if not more so. Both tend to land-up as hired hands to billionaires and bought-out governments.

May such individuals now wake-up to the realisation that they have a duty to inform the general public of whether those whose statements they report are acting in the interests or in abuse of the health and welfare of the greater public they are supposed to serve.

Journalists of all descriptions have a vital role to perform at this time. If acting responsibly means getting kicked-out of one’s job – so be it – one will at least regain a blessedly clear conscience and win the opportunity to club together with other members of the resistance, to form real and much needed new avenues of independent communication, thereby conveying words of enlightenment rather than being complicit in the further dumbing-down of fellow human beings.

Teachers; stop forcing locked-down children to sit behind computer screens for hours at a time. The harm this is doing far outweighs the value of the teaching and lands parents with the task of acting as psychologists for their own distracted children. This torture must cease, as indeed must all thoughtless compliance with State educational programmes.

To all those who are in any degree enlightened, regardless of what profession, job or other diverse interest one may feel aligned with – now is the time to rally to the cause.  The cause of saving families, friends and communities from being enslaved by what has increasingly shown itself to be a despotic, sinister and ruthless cabal fully intent on destroying the rule of law and replacing it with a fascistic police state. It’s no good hiding one’s head in the sand and praying it will never come to this. It already has – and we have to act accordingly.

As a senior member of the British House of Lords said recently “Historically tyranny isn’t imposed, people give away their freedom for safety”. Well, we’ve had quite enough of this sort of cowardice, and what’s more – there is no ‘safety’ on the other side of this particular coin. To fail to act in defence of life when it is obvious that every valuable aspect of life is under attack, is to be complicit in the crime.

Another prescient statement concludes “When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty”. Everyone of us must be primed for action now. Do not consent to being treated like a mindless automaton unless you are one. Hammer those who hold positions of office and don’t allow them to simply follow the script they have been told to adopt.

Remind them that their support for the Covid Shockdown plan to take a totally disproportionate wrecking-ball to the basic constitutional rights of the individual while using the excuse that they are protecting the health of the population, is a criminal neglect of duty which will not stand-up in a court of law. And while you’re at it – tell them you do not consent to being irradiated by WiFi 4/5G microwaves emitted by telecommunications networks, transmitters and masts erected without any public consultation or approval.

We have no option other than to take back control of our individual destinies and throw off the chains of hypnosis under which too many have been blindly operating for far too long.

This is an auspicious moment for mankind – so have no fear. Once on this new path we will find ourselves guided by powers far greater than those attempting to enslave us. This is the call we cannot turn away from. Step bravely forward and embrace its radical nature, we are coming together now in common commitment to light the fire of truth and justice – and to forever keep it lit.

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

Featured image is from Pixabay

Corporate media outlets spread fake news claiming North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had died. The lie originated with a Seoul-based website funded by the US government’s regime-change arm the NED.

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There may be no other country on Earth lied about more than North Korea. Western corporate media outlets have absolutely zero editorial standards when reporting on the country.

Absurd lies are routinely treated as newsworthy stories, from the cartoonish claim that Kim Jong-un executed his uncle by feeding him to pack of starving dogs (fake news), to the notion that all North Koreans are drones forced to choose from state-mandated haircuts (racist-tinged fake news), to the assertion that state media swore it uncovered a unicorn lair (insanely stupid fake news based on a mistranslation).

But these lies are not just innocuous errors that come out of nowhere; they are part of an insidious pattern, and a decidedly political one. They are a form of information warfare aimed at destabilizing North Korea’s government, known officially as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which has an independent foreign policy and geo-strategic location — and just so happens to be sitting on trillions of dollars worth of mineral wealth.

Many of these fake news stories originate with Korean opposition groups that are funded to the hilt by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout created by the Ronald Reagan administration to push regime change against foreign countries that don’t sufficiently kowtow to Washington.

The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal published a documentary demonstrating how the NED bankrolls a global network of regime-change activists, whose unsubstantiated accusations against the DPRK, China, Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, and other nations targeted by the US are spun into unquestionable truths. North Korean defectors are a particularly unreliable source of information, and many of their claims have been proven to be false. They are highly incentivized, however, with offers of nearly $1 million to continue cranking out the disinformation.

This April, we saw another textbook example of how NED-backed South Korean outlets notorious for spreading fake news are amplified by the international press corps to the point that their deceptions dominate the news cycle for days.

For nearly two weeks, dozens of major news networks across the globe provided a megaphone to unsubstantiated rumors that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was dead.

The disinformation campaign kicked off on April 20, when a little-known US government-backed media publication called the Daily NK ran a report claiming North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had just undergone heart surgery and was in bad health.

This story was later expanded into a shocking claim: Kim had died, at the young age of 36.

The Daily NK followed up with an article stating that a video confirming that the supreme leader was dead had been going viral inside North Korea.

These reports unleashed a firestorm. Dozens of media outlets across the globe published story after story claiming Kim was either dead or incapacitated after a botched surgery.

The anatomy of this fake news campaign is dissected below.

A Daily NK source in North Korea reported yesterday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently underwent heart surgery. https://t.co/ZhNQKNeHwt #DPRK #NorthKorea pic.twitter.com/rmKeBAXh8t

— The Daily NK (@The_Daily_NK) April 21, 2020

And it all began with the Daily NK. But what exactly is this obscure publication?

US government’s NED bankrolls anti-DPRK fake news mill

The Daily NK is a South Korea-based propaganda outlet funded by Washington to conduct information warfare against the government in the north. It was founded by anti-DPRK activists who coalesced around the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights.

This network has received millions of dollars in grants from the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA cutout.

NED funding for the Daily NK itself goes back well over a decade, to when it was founded. A search of the NED grants database shows that the Daily NK received $400,000 in US government funding in 2019 alone, and at least $1.2 million in American tax dollars between 2016 and 2019.

US government National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding for fake news mill the Daily NK

Ho Park, the head of North Korean research at Daily NK and one of the publication’s co-founders, is a grantee who has been publicly honored by the NED.

The US-backed Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights is also linked to another major grantee called the Unification Media Group, which was given at least $2.4 million from the NED between 2016 and 2019.

The NED notes on its website that the South-Korea based Unification Media Group consists of the Daily NK, Radio Free Chosun, and Open North Korea Radio.

In other words, the US government has over the course of several decades carefully cultivated a cadre of anti-DPRK propaganda outlets in Seoul, using them to grease the wheels of a disinformation machine that regularly spreads fake news and rumors from North Korean defectors. This media apparatus is the spearhead of the US government’s campaign of hybrid warfare against the DPRK.

Anatomy of a fake news campaign

Birthed from the belly of the US-funded disinformation network in Seoul, the global press corps enthusiastically adopted the fake news and delivered it to the Western public.

After the initial Daily NK reports first appeared on April 20, major media outlets in Hong Kong and Japan helped popularize the rumor.

The New York Post followed with a stunning headline: “North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un rumored to be dead.” (Like many other outlets, the Post later edited this headline, as it became clear that the story was unconfirmed, but the original titles of many of these false reports can be seen in their URLs or through internet archives.)

The New York Post based its claims on a report from a Hong Kong broadcast network (later identified as HKSTV – Hong Kong Satellite Television), which claimed it had a “very solid source” that Kim was dead.

The Post also amplified an article in a Japanese magazine insisting the North Korean leader was in a “vegetative state.” It even claimed that “senior Community Party sources in Beijing” had confirmed the rumor that Kim died in a botched surgery.

After the New York Post article, the fake news spread like wildfire through tabloids from TMZ to the Daily Express, to Metro, to The Sun (UK), to the Toronto Sun, to the Irish Post, and finally, The Mirror.

It was then picked up by numerous local media networks in the United States and other countries.

Next, seemingly “respectable” media groups fueled the fake news frenzy, including the National Interest, the International Business Times, Yahoo News, and Foreign Policy.

Neoconservative American politicians pounced on the rumors in predictable fashion. Republican Lindsey Graham, the most fanatically militaristic member of the Senate since the death of his friend John McCain, told Fox News with an air of confidence, “I pretty well believe he [Kim] is dead or incapacitated.”

Graham continued, “I’d be shocked if he’s not dead or in some incapacitated state, because you don’t let rumors like this go forever or go unanswered in a closed society, which is really a cult, not a country, called North Korea.”

Americans’ gut instincts that the fake news just “feels true,” after decades of consuming a steady diet of loony regime-change rumors, was taken as proof that it must be true.

On Twitter, the hashtag #KimJongunDead went viral as well, and millions of users swallowed the fake news whole.

Next, a photoshopped picture went viral on social media purporting to show Kim dead in a glass coffin. The image was reported on by Western media outlets like The Sun, a tabloid owned by the same right-wing Rupert Murdoch-owned media group that controls the New York Post.

As the fake news spread across the media ecosystem, Western journalists and professional Korea watchers began mulling the possibility that the presumably dead North Korean leader’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, was being groomed to replace him.

Without any solid evidence, dozens of outlets ran stories confidently asserting that Yo-jong was preparing to take her brother’s place. The Daily Beast even published a piece purporting to explain why she is so “feared” in the country.

The Washington Post printed an op-ed by Jung H. Pak, a former senior analyst at the CIA and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, with the title, “Why we shouldn’t rule out a woman as North Korea’s next leader.”

The Guardian, Foreign Policy, the BBC, the New Yorker, TIME, Deutsche Welle, The Australian, and Newsweek all added to the baseless speculation.

While some of these outlets amplified the phony story while feigning a tone of skepticism, VICE News threw all caution out the window. The “hipster arm of the empire” published an article trumpeting, “A Prominent North Korean Defector is ‘99% Certain’ Kim Jong Un Is Dead.” Its source was a defector trained and funded by the NED.

Days before, the US government-funded Daily NK had also praised VICE for producing a slick documentary that effectively amounts to fawning PR for the disinformation outlet, in a perfect circle of propaganda.

For more on what Daily NK does, check out a short documentary by VICE NEWS on the organization – including an interview with Editor-in-Chief Lee Sang Yong. https://t.co/duipZm3925

— The Daily NK (@The_Daily_NK) April 22, 2020

Yet another “dead” foreign bogeyman shows up on TV

Then on May 1 – the same day VICE News claimed there was a 99 percent chance Kim was dead – the house of cards came crumbling down, as DPRK state media published photos of the leader cutting a ribbon at a fertilizer plant.

Another US regime media fail https://t.co/AeyNBEfDXg

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 1, 2020

Now that it is indisputable that the rumors they amplified were totally unfounded, some of the aforementioned news outlets have scrambled to edit their headlines and leads to soften the language, noting there was still confusion at the time. But archived links do not lie.

And the fact of the matter is it was apparent from the beginning, to anyone with a brain, and the capacity to think critically outside of the corporate media bubble, that the rumors should not be trusted.

Actual experts, or even just expats in Korea who tweet in English, could tell from the get-go that this campaign was bogus.

In 2019 alone, Unification Media Group and its Daily NK affiliate took in $1,000,000 from US taxpayers via @NEDemocracy.

To stay on the gravy train, they must deliver sensational "scoops" for the Empire. When their sources are compromised, we Americans have a hand in their fate. https://t.co/psSke2VUHe pic.twitter.com/6agF1Y1ZZk

— King Baeksu (@KingBaeksu) April 24, 2020

Critics also pointed out out that “Hyangsan Hospital – the hospital where Daily NK said Kim had undergone heart surgery – ‘is similar to a community clinic and isn’t a facility where operations or surgeries can be performed.’”

Why I was right about Kim Jong-un:

1. Daily NK isn't a reliable source.
2. Kim was seen walking in Wonsan between April 15th and 20th.
3. There was no buildup of PRC troops along the DPRK border.
4. Hyangsan Hospital is unequipped for surgical operations.
5. I'm unowned.

Easy. https://t.co/JA4lPIctF7 pic.twitter.com/UQ0R49hCwI

— King Baeksu (@KingBaeksu) May 2, 2020

But one didn’t need to be a Korea specialist to recognize the pattern of disinformation. Anyone who is even mildly familiar with the practically non-existent standards of media reporting on North Korea knows how these fake news cycles work, and knew not to jump to conclusions.

In a refreshing albeit rare example of cautious skepticism, the media watchdog Fairness In Accuracy and Reporting (FAIR) called out corporate media outlets for spreading these rumors without any solid evidence, even before Kim appeared on state TV.

And while impressionable Western journalists were heavily circulating the fake news, South Korea’s government made it clear, “Kim Jong Un is alive and well. He has been staying in the Wonsan area since April 13. No suspicious movements have so far been detected.”

Chinese media outlets also emphasized from the beginning of the disinformation campaign that it was clearly false. But their insistence was dismissed as “Chinese propaganda.”

This was not even the first time that rumors went viral claiming Kim Jong-un had died. Back in 2012, a strikingly similar similar fake news frenzy erupted when social media posts alleging Kim had passed away were momentarily amplified by mainstream outlets.

The latest paroxysm of propaganda was hardly the only regime-change disinformation campaign blown out of the water in recent weeks. In April, The Grayzone documented the wave of bogus corporate media stories claiming Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was dead – before he, too, appeared on TV very much alive.

Indeed, the deployment of fake news is of a part with a larger strategy of information warfare aimed at nations that refuse to bow to US domination.

From the waves of dubiously sourced reports about China’s supposed “concentration camps” full of millions of Uighur Muslims, to unhinged warnings of Russia’s supposed plans to hack the US electrical grid in the dead of winter, to lurid stories of $750 condoms in Venezuela, to breathless presentations of Iranian nuclear weapons files, the program is always the same: lie without shame and shrink away after the deception is revealed for what it is.

Because by then, the damage has already been done.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

Conservation groups sued the Trump administration today over its May 2019 renewal of two mineral leases that pave the way for a massive copper mine at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota.

The Wilderness Society, Izaak Walton League of America and Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The groups are represented by Earthjustice.

“Amidst the unprecedented public health crisis, the Trump administration continues its reckless march towards permitting a mine that would put public and environmental health at risk,” said Alison Flint, senior legal director at The Wilderness Society. “The underlying leases were unlawfully renewed, with the Trump administration working to suppress public input, science-based analysis, and transparency every step of the way. We have no choice but to challenge these actions in court.”

Today’s suit says the Department of the Interior violated the National Environmental Protection Act when it renewed two federal mineral leases for Twin Metals Minnesota, a Chilean-owned mining company.

“Putting a copper-sulfide mine upstream from the Boundary Waters is a horrifying proposal that’s already been rejected by the Forest Service,” said Marc Fink, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These world-class waters are too precious to put at risk. We’ll defend these spectacular glacial lakes and this critically important wildlife habitat with everything we’ve got.”

The lease renewals set the stage for potential sulfide-ore copper mining on the doorstep of the nation’s most-visited wilderness area. This type of mining in this watershed would inevitably lead to permanent contamination of the area’s abundant clean water and wilderness.

“The Trump administration has approved leases for a mine which the Forest Service previously refused to allow because of how damaging it will be to the environment,” said Elizabeth Forsyth, a staff attorney for Earthjustice. “Instead of grappling with the mine’s impacts, the administration has ignored them and rushed its approval with almost no environmental analysis. The Trump administration’s brazen disregard for the law, and blind eye towards the devastating impacts of what it is approving, cannot be allowed to stand.”

“The Boundary Waters is perhaps the last place on Earth that we should ever expose to a mining operation that will pollute pristine waters and harm the outdoor recreation economy that depends on a clean environment,” said Scott Kovarovics, executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America. “The scale of the threat and the blatant disregard for science and meaningful public participation demands a response.”

Today’s lawsuit also says the Forest Service failed to meet its obligation to ensure that the lease renewals do not threaten the Boundary Waters. The agency has failed to explain how its consent to the leases would avoid the severe harms it disclosed in 2016.

Also joining the suit are local conservation groups — the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness ― and nine wilderness-dependent businesses that include outfitters and guides, canoe manufacturers, a youth camp and a family resort.

Background

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness contains 1,200 miles of canoe routes and more than 1,000 lakes left by receding glaciers. The pollution resulting from the proposed Twin Metals mine would inevitably harm the water quality and ecology of these protected public lands and waterways.

The surrounding Superior National Forest holds 20% of the freshwater in the entire national forest system and provides habitat for imperiled species such as lynx, moose and wolves. The local economy ― which is sustained by tourism and jobs connected to this fishing, canoeing and camping mecca ― would also suffer if mining was allowed.

The U.S. Forest Service has recently opposed renewing the Twin Metals mining leases. In 2016 the Forest Service found that developing a copper-nickel sulfide ore mine in this location would pose an “unacceptable” risk and that the mine would “cause serious and irreplaceable harm” to the Boundary Waters.

The Trump administration has moved ahead with renewal of the leases for the mine regardless of these risks. Today’s lawsuit argues that the administration has abused the National Environmental Policy Act throughout the lease renewal process. The act requires scientific analysis and assessment of potential environmental harms, as well as public participation and consideration of alternatives to federal actions that could damage the environment.

In May 2019 the Trump administration renewed the mining leases on the basis of a cursory environmental assessment by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management that failed to consider the well-documented and devastating harm from sulfide-ore copper mining and failed to examine alternative options for lease renewal to increase protection. The assessment cited none of the dozens of scientific studies documenting those harms.

The BLM’s environmental assessment was released, and a short public comment period began over the 2018-2019 winter holidays and the partial government shutdown during that time. Because of the shutdown, federal agencies were unavailable to answer questions, maintain the online commenting portal, or ensure stakeholders had the information they needed to make their voices heard. A May 2 Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial described the secrecy around the proposed mine as a serious red flag.

In September 2018 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue canceled a proposed 20-year ban on mining activity in the watershed of the Boundary Waters. That decision paved the way for Twin Metals to build an industrial mining complex on the edge of the Boundary Waters. The Forest Service has refused to release documents from a nearly completed environmental review, despite numerous requests from conservation groups and members of Congress.

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Featured image is from Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune

The second anniversary of the 2018 Inter-Korean Summit has just passed. Marking the moment, South Korean President Moon Jae-in lamented, “We have been made keenly aware once again that peace will not come overnight.” Images of the two Korean leaders walking hand-in-hand to cross the demarcation line seem a distant, if not surreal memory in a world now overtaken by a global pandemic and sensational false rumors about Kim Jong Un’s health. Nevertheless, another significant milestone—the 70th anniversary of the Korean War—is fast approaching, and the prospects for peace still tug at the hearts of many.

Calls for the United States and North Korea to “make peace” tend to ring hollow in Washington. Peace is a nice sentiment until it is raised as a viable policy option, at which point it becomes a radical concept, cast as a form of appeasement or a slippery slope toward greater danger. Yet Korea peace activism remains active, not only in South Korea where the movement finds its roots, but also in the United States among a growing constituency of progressive Korean Americans and cross-movement allies. Campaigns like the recently formed Korea Peace Now! stand in a long history of women challenging militarism and war on the Korean Peninsula, and their mission to end the Korean War with a peace agreement is shared by several diasporic Korean groups today. Though their views may seem at odds with American foreign policy consensus, they offer a critical perspective for policymakers seeking a solution to the perennial US–North Korea problem.

A long-deferred peace. It should go without saying, but Korea peace activism exists in large part to draw attention to the fact that Korea is not at peace. That the Korean War never formally ended is not a mere technicality, but the source of an intractable impasse that has allowed antagonism and paranoia to fester since 1950. Although open conflict ceased in 1953 with the signing of an armistice, there has been minimal effort to “facilitate the attainment of a peaceful settlement” by the concerned governments. To make matters more complicated, South Korea was not a signatory to the armistice, and the United States and North Korea have accused one another of violating the agreement multiple times.

In this arrested and confused state of war, the Korean Peninsula is often called a tinderbox. This is no exaggeration; there have been one too many close calls for comfort, and the risks of miscalculation, as well as the stakes for renewed conflict, keep growing. In the “fire and fury” mayhem of 2017, the Congressional Research Service’s estimate of “300,000 dead in the first days of fighting” reverberated through cable news networks, think tank panels, and editorials. Most analysts would agree that seven decades of US policy to contain and constrain the North have failed to bring meaningful security to the region. Worse yet, the cumulative effect of sanctions and political isolation has left both sides with ever-diminishing prospects for reconciliation.

After 70 years, this is all made to seem normal. Perversely, even, maintaining the status quo is likened to keeping the peace. But this so-called peace includes a dividing line that separates hundreds of thousands of families; sweeping and punishing sanctions that exacerbate harm to an already struggling people; the expanding militarization of the Asia Pacific; and a costly arms race that could trigger nuclear war at a moment’s notice. For those who find the status quo unacceptable, peace activism becomes one mode of transformation—to heal, reconnect, and humanize a problem that has become fodder for pundits and wargame enthusiasts.

But skepticism abounds. Most people find it inconceivable to extend an olive branch to Pyongyang. The argument largely follows that making peace with North Korea is tantamount to legitimating its status as a nuclear power and turning a blind eye to human rights violations. This false equivalence has branded many a peace activist an apologist. Even President Moon Jae-in, who oversaw an $8.6 billion increase in South Korea’s defense spending, is habitually red-baited for his modest efforts to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Most peace advocates hew closely to the Sunshine Policy theory of change that was popularized by former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. They contend that a conciliatory approach is far more conducive to advancing human rights and denuclearization efforts than that of maximum pressure or regime change. Making peace with North Korea is not simply the endpoint, but a process by which resolving present-day crises is informed by a history of unresolved conflict and trauma. In practice, this has meant prioritizing a formal end to the Korean War with a peace agreement. Recalling this history is not intended to distract from today’s most pressing issues, but to fundamentally understand why those issues are so difficult in the first place.

Scholars can debate the different approaches endlessly, but policymakers in Washington too often and abruptly dismiss the pro-peace perspective. This is unfortunate, not least because it denies the voices of thousands of Korean Americans who have a personal stake in seeing US–North Korea relations improve in their lifetimes, but also because it limits the scope of creativity and the terms for engagement that are crucial to reducing tensions and closing gaps in understanding. One need only look to the missed opportunities of the last two years for reference.

In 2018, South Korea proposed that the United States sign a peace declaration—a political, non-binding statement—to move nuclear negotiations forward. The Trump administration had initially demanded that North Korea submit a full inventory of its nuclear arsenal, but when talks came to an standstill, South Korea urged the United States to accept an offer in which North Korea would “permanently dismantle” its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon for “corresponding measures, such as the end-of-war declaration.”

Critics were quick to oppose the proposal, fearing that it would prematurely lead to a peace treaty and dissolve the US–South Korean alliance. Others challenged the deal on reciprocity, arguing that a peace declaration would be too high a concession for Yongbyon. Alternatively, experts like Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who has personally toured some of North Korea’s nuclear facilities, argued that closing Yongbyon would have constituted “a major positive signal that they are serious” about denuclearization as it would have placed a cap on North Korea’s plutonium and tritium stockpile. That would have constrained North Korea’s ability to develop nuclear warheads that could fit on intercontinental ballistic missiles, and thus significantly minimize the threat to the United States.

Looking back now, one might conclude that the Trump administration missed a major opportunity. It is just one example of many in the history of US–North Korea diplomacy that demonstrates how withholding even a symbolic gesture of peace can foreclose real opportunities to advance relations and broker a deal that would tangibly roll back a nuclear program that so vexes policymakers.

Since the collapse of the Hanoi Summit, Koreans around the world have expressed their dismay at the souring of US–North Korea relations. It is not easy to capture that pain, but turning it into action is one way that people have managed to retain hope. Peace activists have helped to keep the best vision for Korea’s future in the realm of possibility. When critically engaged, they show that it is possible to hold the idealism of peace with the complexity of its pursuit. In fact, there is no other way forward.

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Catherine Killough is the Advocacy and Leadership Coordinator at Women Cross DMZ.

Featured image: Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in holding hands after signing the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity, and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula in April 2018. Photo credit: Cheongwadae/Blue House

In an unprecedented call for action on Lebanon’s turbulent domestic front, the UN Security Council has urged the Lebanese authorities “to respond to the aspirations of the Lebanese people by implementing meaningful economic reforms” and addressing security, humanitarian and coronavirus challenges. On the virus, Lebanon has, unexpectedly, done well, but it has stalled reforms, unwisely attempted to crack down on protesters, and delivered little aid to famished families.

Having successfully contained the coronavirus with lockdown, Lebanon began returning to business on Monday as divisions opened between the government and opponents over the handling over the long-awaited reform plan put forward on April 30. The plan lays out reforms that could secure $11 billion in funding from international lenders offered in 2018 and, on the basis of the plan, the government proposes that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) grant a second loan of $10 billion over five years. If Lebanon manages to get both, the total sum will amount to only 25 per cent of the $80 billion economists say is needed to exit the country’s economic crisis.

Despite Lebanon’s economic melt-down, the plan was promptly rejected by the powerful banking sector. The Sunni Future Movement objected to a role for President Michel Aoun in securing the approval of the plan by parliamentary parties. Shia Hizbollah praised the plan, accepted government dialogue with the IMF but warned against surrendering to IMF dictation. This is good advice because the IMF’s imposition of austerity measures often harms the poorest members of populations accepting IMF terms.

The banks object to the fact that they were not consulted when the plan was drafted as well as to the government’s appeal to the IMF for help in trying to rescue the country collapsing economy. The banks, which hold most of Lebanon’s debt, argue the plan will “further destroy confidence in the country.” The banks reject plan provisions to recoup financial sector losses by means of a bank bail-in that would harm shareholders and take cash from large depositors who would, perhaps, be repaid. The banks’ argument that confidence would be lost in Lebanon’s financial sector does not hold water at it has already been destroyed by decades of mismanagement, corruption and the refusal of the political and financial elite to carry out essential reforms.

The bankers have said they will present their own rescue package within two weeks when some sources report the IMF will give its reaction to the government’s plan; others say the IMF response will not come for six weeks.

Lebanese do not have six weeks to waste. Formerly, the hub of the revolution launched last October, the northern port of Tripoli has become the hunger protest capital of the country. Demonstrators who turned violent when confronted by the army last week compelled the weak technocratic government headed by Hassan Diab, a Sunni academic with no political faction behind him, to issue the rescue plan. Such a plan had been delayed since Saad Hariri resigned as prime minister at the end of October during the height of mass protests against mismanagement, corruption and the confessional political system imposed on Lebanon by France before independence in 1943.

For the protesters, banks represent inequality and exploitation. Lebanese focus, in particular, on the Central Bank which is blamed for the plunge of the Lebanese Lira from 1,500 to 4,000 to the US dollar. The costs of food, fuel, electricity and water have soared and banks have rationed money withdrawn by depositors since mid-October. Hotels, restaurants, cafes, shops, businesses and markets have closed, laying off or firing thousands of employees.

Returning to the streets after the government began to ease lockdown and closures restrictions imposed since Covid-19 took hold and spread in Lebanon, protesters say they have a choice of “dying from hunger or dying from coronavirus” by ending social distancing. They know full well that external funding depends on financial reforms, anti-corruption measures and effective management of the economy.

While the world Bank estimates that 45 per cent of Lebanese live below the poverty line, citizens of Tripoli, a once prosperous city and the north complain about 57-60 per cent unemployment and deepening deprivation. This is why Tripoli has revolted and Tripolitanians have smashed and burned banks and braved a crack-down by the army and security forces. Tripolitians cannot survive on soup kitchens and handouts from charities. They need jobs with decent incomes, good schools and health services, electricity, water, roads and affordable rents. Lebanese from all over the country have travelled to Tripoli to join its protests, projecting Lebanese nationalism over locality and sect.

To achieve their ends, Lebanese insist the country must abandon the sectarian system of governance which dictates that the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the parliamentary speaker a Shia. This being the case, it is certain that the deeply entrenched politicians will continue to do their utmost to scupper or postpone reforms that would deprive them of status and advantages. Lebanon cannot afford to tolerate this behaviour. Long ago dubbed the “Paris of the Middle East, Beirut cannot become the sad capital of a failed state.

To survive, Lebanon needs a revolution: not only a revolution of the hungry but a revolution that will deliver the awakened and angry Lebanese people from want and despair.

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A NYC nurse discloses the horrible scenario happening in a NYC hospital. 

She said patients are “left to rot and die”. “People are dying who do not have to die”.

There is a lack of critical thinking.  

“It is a nightmare”.  She has never seen so much neglect.

People are afraid to speak out.

The ventilators sometimes make things worse. 

Patients are scared.  No one is being held accountable. 

Watch the video below.

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The Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) Toronto, a group of 111 business leaders, who are owner, founder or controlling shareholder of companies with revenues of at least $1 million + a year, recently commissioned a survey to take a pulse check of Canadians and their attitudes on starting up businesses. Concerned with how businesses will bloom post-COVID-19, they found many Canadians hesitant to become entrepreneurs.

Key findings of the survey

1) Canadians in many major markets aren’t planning to start businesses post COVID

Asked if they be more or less likely to start a business after COVID-19, nationally – a combined 57.9% of Canadians said ‘no/less likely’ (39.9%) and ‘no way it’s too risky’ (18.0%). 20.8% said ‘maybe under the right conditions.’ Only 14.3% said ‘yes’ and 7.1% said ‘yes they are planning to.’

a) Atlantic Canada

At a combined 72.7%, Atlantic Canada had the highest number of respondents say that they would not consider starting a business (49.8%) or ‘no way it’s too risky’ (22.9%)

b) Ontario

At a combined 60.7%, Ontario had the second-highest number of respondents say that they would not consider starting a business (42.4%) or ‘no way it’s too risky’ (18.3%)

“As Ontario businesses, our membership finds this particularly concerning,” said Peter Demangos, EO President (Toronto Chapter) and President at PDF Financial Group. “We know that Ontario is an economic engine for the entire country, and we need to maintain the innovations that entrepreneurs and new business startups bring to the Province. While we are dealing with the current small business and Global pandemic crisis, we need also need to be ensuring the future of small business in this country.”

c) The Prairies

At 57.5%, the Prairies had a significant number of respondents who said they would not consider starting a new business.

d) British Columbia

At 56.8%, BC respondents were not far behind in saying they would not start up a new business post COVID.

2) Canadians are surprisingly NOT on board with the Canada Emergency Rent Assistance plan

Asked if the government should give commercial rent subsidies to business owners or landlords, Canadians responded surprisingly, by adding ‘neither’ as an option and seemingly not supporting the Canada Emergency Rent Assistance program.

Nationally, 47.4% of respondents said ‘neither,’ 41.0% said the relief should go directly to business owners, and only 18.9%  said that the money should go to landlords. Ontario had the highest number of respondents answering ‘neither’ at 48.3%.

“This is surprising to us as many Canadian small businesses may have to close their doors permanently without rent relief,” added Demangos. “We would have expected more support from Canadians for small business during the pandemic.”

Interestingly, 34.2% of Canadians were in favour of the government ordering commercial landlords to pause rent (without a subsidy.)

3) Canadians are okay with more loans and tax credits for small businesses

Asked what more the government could do to help small business during COVID-19, Canadians appear to be in favour of loans and tax deferments. 33.6% of respondents were in favour of ‘more low-interest loans to keep them afloat,’ 32.6% said ‘ongoing tax deferments,’ and 25.2% supported ‘more tax credits to companies who keep their doors open during the pandemic.’

4) The majority of Canadians think Trudeau is doing enough to help Canadian small business

Asked if they think Trudeau is doing enough to help small business, a combined 75.3% of Canadians said ‘yes’ (38.3%) or ‘sort of’ (37.0%.) Only 24.7% said ‘no.’

5) Canadians think that business owners are slightly better off than employees during COVID-19.

Lying is a money making activity and lies are commodities. There is a profitable global market for media and public figures committed to spreading disinformation.

Needless to say, “Telling the Truth”, on the other hand, Is Not a Money-Making Proposition. 

With this in mind, can you spare a dollar a day to keep disinformation away? Your support could make the difference and ensure that GlobalResearch.ca is here for a long time to come!

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Debt Cancellation for the World to Survive: Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed

By Lawrence Freeman, May 06, 2020

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

Civil Liberty Vanishes. Free Assange. Suppressing Legitimate Dissent

By Craig Murray, May 06, 2020

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

The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis Is Here

By Matt Taibbi, May 06, 2020

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

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

Sweden Is the Model

By Mike Whitney, May 06, 2020

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

Facebook Deletes Accounts of Palestinian Activists and Journalists

By The Palestinian Information Center, May 06, 2020

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

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

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

The Federal Reserve: More Lethal Than Coronavirus

By Rep. Ron Paul, May 05, 2020

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

COVID-19 Vs the Economy – The Trouble Britain Now Finds Itself in

By True Publica, May 04, 2020

There is no doubting to the observant, that the government of Britain has been negligent in its approach to the coronavirus threat. It is a matter of public record that they have failed in their primary duty to protect us all. Cemeteries and unemployment will be a stark reminder of this abject failure in the near future. Frankly, if the government was a company it would be facing corporate manslaughter charges and class-action lawsuits from the bereaved (which is already being threatened).

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

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

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

Russia has enough of its own warehouses to store gas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COVID-19 Worsens Food Crisis

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

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

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

Arif Husain, economist for the WFP said:

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

Mauritanian herders (Courtesy of UN-FAO)

Throughout his tenure, Trump showed indifference toward public health.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He faces an uphill struggle for another term in office.

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from ASPR Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last oral historian Studs Terkel corrected him, saying:

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing of the sort occurred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The letter said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hansard Public Administration Committee 24/11/2011

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

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

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

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

Chair: I have to take a point of order.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chair: Final question, Mr Flynn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

H.L. Mencken once said that in America,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We should de-escalate the war on coronavirus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Monday, Reuters said the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pompeo:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from High North News

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

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

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

Free Julian Assange!

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

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

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

All images in this article are from the author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Moscow Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We would much prefer September if possible.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giesecke answered,

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

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

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

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

Giesecke again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Luo Xuan/GT

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

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

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

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

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

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Featured image is from the author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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]

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

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

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

Roebuck designed the 2011 “Arab Spring” in Syria

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

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

Roebuck’s memo leaked

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

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

Two is the company, but three is a crowd

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

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

Roebuck pushes the Syrian Kurds to unite

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next UN peace talks in Geneva

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

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

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