Global Research

Sometimes it isn’t all that hard to predict the future. All you have to do is listen to what the social engineers are telling you they’re going to do.

For example, when the neocons tell you that we need a “new Pearl Harbor” to justify a transformation of America’s military, you can bet a new Pearl Harbor is going to arrive as soon as they get into office.

And now, after years of Bill Gates warning us that a pandemic was going to strike and utterly transform the world as we know it. He even went so far as to “simulate” the exact scenario we’re living through just before we started living through it.

So, you see my point. Sometimes seeing what’s coming next is just a question of listening to what the planners are telling us. Keeping that in mind, let’s look at four predictions for how the coronavirus crisis is likely to proceed from here.

1. The “Second Wave” Will Be Blamed on the Protesters

There is a second wave of Covid-19 coming in the next few months. We don’t have to speculate about this. Not only have we heard this from all manner of politicians and health “authorities” over the past few months, but it was an integral part of MIT Technology Review’s now-infamous “We’re not going back to normal” article, which revealed how the waves of lockdown and release were going to restructure our lives and condition us into the Corona World Order. And, lest there be any doubt that this is an important part of the plandemic narrative, Bill Gates just reaffirmed it in his latest “GatesNotes” on “The first modern pandemic.”

In fact, the pandemic planners have warned the public of a second (and third and fourth and fifth . . .) wave of this crisis so many times now that we can virtually guarantee that such a “second wave” will occur. Now, such a second wave of sickness could actually occur, if only because—as Dr. Dan Erickson notes in his recent Covid-19 briefing—people emerging from their lockdown isolation will have lowered immune systems and thus be more susceptible to pathogens of all kinds. But this dreaded “second wave” doesn’t even have to take place in reality; the statistical chicanery of the fraudsters can always be relied on to conjure up the impression of a fresh round of infections in the minds of the public. Heck, if the Japanese government can magically conjure a “surge” of SARS-CoV-2 infections into existence the very same day they announced the postponement of the 2020 Olympics (precisely as I predicted), you better believe governments around the world can deliver on the “second wave” narrative regardless of how many people may or may not be ill.

Here’s the rub: Whatever happens, the plandemic agenda-pushers are going to blame this second wave on those evil, dastardly protesters who complained about being put under house arrest. You know, those horrible, heartless grandma-killers who dared to oppose the orders to shutter the business they’ve spent their entire lifetime building up and those detestable, disgusting disease-spreaders who refused to meekly accept their sudden enforced unemployment.

You can see the outlines of this narrative already being planted in the type of coverage surrounding the growing lockdown protest movement. It’s those stupid, ignorant yokels who are out there protesting to “open Fuddruckers” who are putting the lives of those valiant medical heroes on the line by daring to exercise their right to peacefully assemble and demand a redress of their grievances!

So when things are opened up eventually (even just a little bit), you better believe that “second wave” is going to hit full force . . . at least in the media. And every single death in the daily death tally is going to be blamed on people who complained about their house imprisonment and forced unemployment.

2. The Alt Media Are Being Given the Rope to Hang Themselves

This next prediction is based on some observations:

1. About a year ago, YouTube instituted a new system for displaying subscriber counts that corresponded with a flatlining in new subscribers for many alt media channels (including mine).
2. Around the same time, they began implementing changes to the recommendation algorithm ensuring that “harmful content” (read: alt media) would not be recommended to viewers nearly as often.
3. Around the time that the corona crisis really began to kick off six weeks ago, these restrictions seem to have been lifted, with my own channel’s subscriber count surging and my work being routinely recommended by the YouTube algorithm.

Now, I have no insider information about any of these changes here. I can only work with the observations that I (and some of the other alt media figures I’ve talked to) can confirm from my own experience. But there is no doubt in my mind that some of the filters that were artificially suppressing my channel and alt media content in general have been removed.

Yay! Score one for alt media truth, hey?

If only. No, I believe that what we are seeing is actually a push by YouTube and other tech companies to ensure widespread promotion of certain views questioning the official Covid-19 narrative precisely so that they will have the excuse to move ahead with the online purge, probably during that second (or third or fourth or fifth . . .) wave of the crisis. My theory is that we are being set up for a “deadly second wave” not only in the “viral pandemic” narrative, but also in the “deadly infodemic” narrative, and this sudden “flowering” of online conspiracy theorizing is going to be used as an excuse for purging any and all information that does not comport with the official government narrative of the pandemic.

Think of it as an information warfare false flag: push all sorts of “conspiracy” content—from the well-grounded to the utterly outrageous—so that it is a very visible presence in people’s online experience of this crisis. Then, as the pain deepens and things go south, the conspiracy theorists can be blamed (much like the lockdown protesters) for having muddied the waters with “misinformation.”

We’re already seeing the beginning of this narrative playing out. The social media giants have already committed to “combating fraud and misinformation” regarding Covid-19, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has just outlined exactly what they mean by “fraud and misinformation,” namely, anything that challenges the pronouncements of the World Health Organization.

Personally, I’m going to take advantage of this brief window of opportunity to reach as many new people as I possibly can, but I’m under no delusion that the promotion of truth-related information on the controlled Big Tech social media platforms will continue for very long. As I predicted back in New World Next Year 2020, this is likely to be the year that the internet as we’ve known it ends for good.

3. China Will Be Blamed

Isn’t it funny how just a few weeks ago it was a verboten thoughtcrime to suggest that this novel coronavirus could have anything whatsoever to do with the biosafety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan, and now such theories are mainstream headline fodder? Why do you think that is?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because this is World War III.

If that assertion sounds familiar, that’s because it’s exactly what I wrote in these pages last month. I know you’ve heard me say it before, but it bears repeating: Historians of a future age may just mark the great “coronavirus crisis” of 2020 as the first salvo in the Third World War.

As I’ve also said before, those historians would be wrong. At least, assuming they are writing about the surface-level 2D-chess version of “WWIII,” the one involving “China” vs the “US.” As I laid out here last month, the real World War III is already underway and it’s a war on free humanity by the oligarchs who seek to rule over us. But one can rest assured that if and when those oligarchs decide to truly plunge the world into chaos and let slip the dogs of war, the mis-leaders will use a “coronavirus-was-made-in-a-lab” narrative to justify that war.

The war of words is already underway. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has already raised the possibility that the US Army brought the virus to Wuhan during last October’s Military World Games. In return, Senator Tom Cotton is suggesting that the virus is a leaked Chinese bioweapon, a claim that is now being doggedly pursued in certain parts of the American mockingbird media.

Now, a number of lawsuits are proceeding on the theory that this is a Chinese biological weapon and that the Chinese government should be held liable for all damages caused by Covid-19 and the ensuing shutdown of the global economy (a cool $20 trillion in one suit’s estimation). Naturally, no one is expecting that Beijing would (or would be able to) fork over $20 trillion on a US judge’s order, but if such a ruling were ever made, one can bet that it would add significantly to the case of the China hawks dwelling in Trump’s swamp.

For the millionth time, let me hasten to add that any such China-US war that develops will be a contrived and manipulated conflict, much like the contrived and manipulated Soviet-US conflict of the 20th century. But the lives lost in such a squabble would be all too real.

Make no mistake, you have not heard the last of the squabble between Beijing and Washington over who is to blame for this mess.

5. The Real Bioweapons Are Waiting in the Wings

Speaking of bioweapons, let us not rule out the possibility that we aredealing with a bioweapon of some sort. In fact, there are compelling reasons to believe that, and the knee-jerk dismissal of the idea from the usual crowd is easily debunkable as unscientific claptrap.

Yet another interesting clue along that particular cookie-crumb trail is emerging in the work of Li Lanjuan at Zhejiang University, who is now reporting the discovery of 30 separate strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Some of these strains, including the one prevalent in parts of Europe and in New York City, are capable of producing 270 times the viral load of the weaker strains. The research also uncovered an unusual development in one of the patients studied:

The researchers also found three consecutive changes—known as tri-nucleotide mutations—in a 60-year-old patient, which was a rare event. Usually the genes mutated at one site at a time. This patient spent more than 50 days in hospital, much longer than other Covid-19 patients, and even his faeces were infectious with living viral strains.

Take this research—along with everything else we’re hearing about this virus—with a hefty grain of salt. But, if true, it certainly could add more weight to the theory that we are not dealing with a naturally occurring virus.

Whatever the case, we know that every major military power has spent vast amounts of money developing biological weapons of various sorts. Officially, these biological weapons programs are always done under the pretense that they are for “defensive” purposes. After all, if we don’t develop these weapons then how will we ever be able to defend ourselves against them . . . you know, if the enemy also develops them? (Don’t think about it too hard.)

Of course, Corbett Report listeners know better. The truth is that biological warfare programs are pursued for offensive purposes, too. The fact that the anthrax that terrorized America in the fall of 2001 came from Fort Detrick is just one indication that these programs exist. Heck, the Project For A New American Century even put race-specific bioweapons” on their wishlist in the “Rebuilding America’s Defenses document (see page 60).

The sad truth is that the possibility of a bioweapon being released—and, inevitably, used in a bioterror false flag event to blame on an enemy—has always been there. But now that we are transitioning from the “age of terror” into the “age of bioterror,” that possibility has become orders of magnitude more likely.

So, on that note, I leave you with this bone-chilling observation: Remember that latest “GatesNotes” that I mentioned way back up in Prediction #1? You know, “The first modern pandemic“? Well, here’s how Bill  Gates talks about this current crisis in his conclusion:

Melinda and I grew up learning that World War II was the defining moment of our parents’ generation. In a similar way, the COVID-19 pandemic—the first modern pandemic—will define this era. No one who lives through Pandemic I will ever forget it. And it is impossible to overstate the pain that people are feeling now and will continue to feel for years to come.

Yes, not only does he liken this “fight” against the “invisible enemy” to World War II—as every politician and pundit seems to be doing these days—but he even goes so far as to call this Pandemic I. Yes, “Pandemic I.” As in part one. The obvious implication here is that, just like World War I was followed by World War II, so, too, will Pandemic I be followed by Pandemic II.

Kind of makes you wonder what else he has up his sleeve, doesn’t it?

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‘Take an injection of a strong disinfectant like Dettol or Listerine and call me in the morning.”

President Donald Trump has clearly gone off the rails with his crazy suggestion that the public might try injecting potent disinfectants to combat COVID-19. He sounds increasingly like the late Rev. Jim Jones of toxic Kool-Aid fame and former TV evangelist Jim Baker who is now hawking his own miracle cure for COVID-19.

The difference is that Jim Baker’s nostrum is not lethal while Rev. Trump’s certainly is.

Where did the world’s most powerful elected official – who now threatens war against Iran and Venezuela – get this loopy notion? Likely via Fox News and from some of his circle of louche business cronies.

These cronies were also the likely source of Trump’s infatuation with the potent anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19. He has been urging Americans to take this drug despite evidence that it does not work against the disease and may cause serious damage.

Senior French doctors have been warning of chloroquine’s dangers for the past month. They say it can provoke dangerous heart arrhythmias. It’s not even that effective against malaria.

Furthermore, this drug can induce seizures and psychotic episodes. I took chloroquine while in the bush country in southern Africa covering fighting between the South African military (SADF) and African National Congress fighters. After a few days I started to hallucinate and go paranoid. I avoided it thereafter.

Chloroquine was developed by German chemists as a direct descendant of quinine, which is derived from the bark of the Amazonian cinchona tree. Spanish conquistadors learned from native people to use cinchona bark to combat malaria. Mixed with gin, favored by the British, it became a West Indian afternoon staple – gin and tonic.

During World War II, American soldiers and marines were fed another cinchona offspring, atabrine, which made them sick from liver damage and turned some GI’S blue.

Vanity Fair magazine claims in its current issue that some of Trump’s business cronies had a plan to flood the greater New York City area with the two chloroquines after the president promoted its anti-COVID properties. This would not be surprising, given Trump’s use of his hotel and golf clubs for ‘official’ business.

On a curious sidebar, Trump’s biggest fan, Brazil’s loopy new right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, is in hot water at home for dismissing COVID-19 as a ‘cold’, promoting quack remedies and opposing social distancing. His most respected minister was just fired for contradicting Bolsonaro’s health schemes. The same thing just happened in Washington, where the senior administration official in charge of vaccines, Dr. Rick Bright, was just fired for opposing Trump’s quack cures.

The only thing of possible merit being said by Trump is his claim that strong light may help fight COVID-19. In South Africa, Boer farmers told me they would get local farm workers who fell ill to go lie in the sun for hours to cure their ailments. It worked surprisingly well – or the workers were feigning illness. But injecting light into the body, as Trump suggested, is fantasy.

Trump’s wacky health panaceas won’t fool most educated Americans, but they are a danger to his many credulous supporters who see Queens New York property developer Trump as some sort of Christian holy prophet and follow his medical quackery.

Trump is a gifted politician and entertainer but he’s no saintly Albert Schweitzer. Alarmingly, this man’s finger is on the nuclear button. Now that’s a real worry.

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

First published April 10.

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

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

The apparent policy of Minnesota – to report any and all pneumonia or “flu-like illness” decedents as Covid19 cases, with or without a test – ties in with the US policy as described by the CDC’s official memos.

This is not new information, we covered the guidelines from the CDC, here.

In fact the governments of Italy, Germany, the UK and Austria all doing the same thing.

So, while Dr Jensen’s revelation isn’t as shocking as it would have been just 10 days ago, it does at least demonstrate that, within the medical world, these guidelines are not normal. In a separate interview with Lauran Ingraham, Jensen described the guidelines as “ridiculous”.

According to Jensen, citing a colleague, it is not usual practice to ever put “presumptions or probabilities” on a death certificate, but rather to “stick to the facts”.

The question still hangs in the air: Why do national and regional governments appear to be going out of their way to inflate the Covid19 death statistics?

Dr Jensen has his own idea:

Well, fear is a great way to control people, and I worry about that. I worry that sometimes we’re just so interested in jazzing up the fear factor, that…you know, sometimes people’s ability to think for themselves is paralyzed if they’re frightened enough.

Thoughts to consider.

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With billions across the world under lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic, one country stands almost alone. In Sweden, daily life has been continuing largely as normal as authorities have taken a radically different approach to tackling the virus.

Though gatherings of more than 50 were banned on Sunday, down from 500 previously, restaurants, bars and shops are still serving customers.

And while high schools and universities have closed their doors, the country is one of the few places in western Europe where primary schools remain open.

Sweden has recorded more than 4,400 coronavirus cases and 180 deaths. But the government has asked only those who are sick or in at-risk groups to stay home

France 24

To Read Complete Commentary by France 24, Click Here

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The United States has launched a propaganda campaign by accusing Damascus of its inability to effectively combat the spread of COVID-19 in Syria, the Russian and Syrian coordination centres said in a joint statement.

According to the statement, the United States has influenced the development of a UN plan for sending a humanitarian medical mission to the camp.

“We believe that the document proposed by the UN was developed under the influence of the United States that had launched a propaganda campaign to accuse Damascus of its inability to effectively counter the spread of coronavirus in the [Syrian Arab] Republic. Obviously, the delivery of humanitarian aid to the [Rukban] camp is necessary for the US solely to achieve its goals..” the statement said.

According to the statement, the reception centre for people in the Al-Waha region is equipped with everything necessary to organise quarantine for Rukban residents before they are transported to temporary accommodation centres in the province of Homs.

Moreover, given the critical humanitarian situation in the Rukban refugee camp, and in order to study the real situation with the spread of COVID-19 there, the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent an official request to the UN to conduct an evaluation of medical mission in the camp.

Russia Blames OPCW for Sacrificing Reputation for West’s Ambition in Syria

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has sacrificed its reputation to serve the West’s geopolitical ambition in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

“The OPCW reputation as an authoritative expert body in the field of chemical disarmament has actually been sacrificed to the Middle East geopolitical ambitions of a small group of countries”, the Russian ministry said in a statement.

It argued that the investigative body had been set up in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only the UN Security Council has the right to apportion blame for chemical attacks.

“[The] activity of this quasi-prosecutor structure, which is dominated by representatives of Western countries, encroaches on the exclusive powers of the UN Security Council and is aimed at the solution of odious political tasks to discredit legally elected authorities of Syria”, it said.

Russia sees the decisions to create the investigative team and fund it with money from the OPCW’s regular budget as illegitimate, the ministry said. It refuses to cooperate with the investigators or finance their activities.

The OPCW published the first report of its newly created investigation and identification team two weeks ago, blaming the 2017 chemical attacks in the Syrian town of Al Lataminah on the country’s government, which denied ever using chemical weapons.

Syrian Ceasefire Guarantors to Hold Ministerial Meeting Via Video Conference on Wednesday

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will discuss the latest developments in Syria in an online meeting with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts, Mevlut Cavusoglu and Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed that the sides would hold the meeting in the Astana format.

The previous summit in this format was held in December when the three Syrian ceasefire guarantors reaffirmed the importance of preserving the country’s sovereignty and the implementation of the 1998 Adana agreement between Turkey and Syria, which allows Turkish troops to temporarily enter Syria as far as 5 kilometres (3 miles) to fight the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Another meeting in the Astana format was scheduled to be held in Iran in March, but it was cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Zarif met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Monday and informed him that the trilateral talks would focus on Syria’s Constitutional Committee and the situation in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday said that tensions in Idlib were again on the rise, accusing the Syrian government of being behind it and warning of a potential military response to the developments.

The Syrian Constitutional Committee is a product of long-standing efforts by international mediators to reconcile the Syrian government and opposition. The 150-member body with equal representation of the government, opposition, and civil society was launched on 30 October to work toward drafting a new constitution.

The committee failed to reach a mutually beneficial solution to the Syrian crisis during the two sessions convened so far due to disagreements between various factions. A third round of talks is currently being planned.

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Featured image is from The Nation

A Canadian political analyst praised Iran’s improved military situation after the IRGC successfully launched the country’s first military satellite into the orbit, and said US will suffer heavy casualties in case of any war in the Persian Gulf.

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“US Navy Commanders are probably aware that if there is war in the Persian Gulf, it will be bloody and they will suffer heavy casualties, so saner heads might prevail. Let’s hope so,” Mark Taliano told Tasnim.

Taliano is an author and independent investigative reporter who recently returned from a trip to Syria with the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria. In his new book titled “Voices from Syria”, he combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives about the dirty war on Syria.

Following is the full text of the interview.

Tasnim: US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he’s instructed the US Navy to “shoot down and destroy” any Iranian gunboats “harassing” American ships, in the wake of a tense encounter in the Persian Gulf. “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” Trump tweeted. What is your take on this?

Taliano: Empire is crashing and desperate. It seeks to continue its policy of permanent warfare. But it is overextended. Its terrorist proxies in Syria and beyond are losing and will continue to lose. US Navy Commanders are probably aware that if there is war in the Persian Gulf, it will be bloody and they may suffer heavy casualties, so saner heads might prevail. Let’s hope so.

Tasnim: The threat came after Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday successfully launched and placed the country’s first military satellite into the orbit. Do you think Trump wants to undermine this? What are your thoughts on the launch?

Taliano: I applaud Iran’s improved defense situation. Strength against oppressors, particularly Empire, is the only road to peace and successful diplomacy

Tasnim: It seems he is trying to divert attention from his poor handling of the COVID-19 crisis. What do you think?

Taliano: The COVID-19 crisis is a manufactured crisis. The US economy is crashing and police state measures are ramping up. Poverty in the US is climbing exponentially. Trump appears to be trying to put people back to work, to lift the lockdown, but other forces are at play which are prolonging the crisis. Will he seek diversions?  Yes.  Will he blame other countries for the crisis?  Yes.

Tasnim: There are reports and concerns that China could win over the post-coronavirus world and leave the US behind. How this could happen?

Taliano: The COVID-19 crisis is undermining global economies, including China’s powerful economy. This is likely one of the goals behind the manufactured crisis. China does not have military bases all over the world, and it does not seek world domination, unlike Washington. So, I do not think that China seeks to “win over” the post-coronavirus world.  China is a trading nation and will continue to expand trade to benefit global economies. That being said, China will resist US military hegemony if necessary, and it is equipped to do so.

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This interview was originally published on Tasnim News Agency.

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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Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

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If several weeks of state-imposed house arrest and unemployment have maxed out your stress level, wait until you hear what the experts have in mind to “mitigate” a bad seasonal influenza. 

Here is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm, the former mayor of Chicago and a Clintonite: 

Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications,” he said. “I know that’s dreadful news to hear. How are people supposed to find work if this goes on in some form for a year and a half? Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice.

You may remember Mr. Emanuel. He’s a “bioethicist” in favor of so-called death panels. He advocated denying medical assistance to old folks who are not “participating citizens,” that is to say sickly retired elders no longer working and paying mandatory financial tribute to the state and its corporate owners.

It probably shouldn’t be surprising a guy who believes dementia and elderly cancer patients must be left to die advocates a year and a half of a freeze-frame economy that will ultimately kill thousands, far more than a seasonal coronavirus. 

Meanwhile, New York governor Andrew Cuomo believes those demonstrating in opposition to mandated confinement and enforced unemployment and eventual impoverishment and homelessness are crybabies. 

A reporter asked Gov. Cuomo what he’d say to New Yorkers who want to go back to work because they’re running out of money, to which he replied, “economic hardship doesn’t equal death”

“You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker” he added https://t.co/BgwoOZsQRy pic.twitter.com/WxGQxtg49p

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 22, 2020

This sort of contempt for the folks who pay Cuomo’s handsome salary is a common trait shared by psychopathic control freaks. It’s fair to say the gov doesn’t really care about New Yorkers who will end up destitute. He is solely focused on what appears to be a nasty influenza and an endless iron-fisted lockdown, never mind the death toll from a nearly moribund economy will far outpace anything produced by COVID-19 (or any other virus).

The political class and technocrats like Ezekiel Emanuel still have time to build fortresses between themselves and an outraged and violent hoi polloi. Maybe that’s why the National Guard and Army have been mobilized. In six months, will every American know who Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy is?

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Live music is illegal.

Anyone who has been self-employed understands how difficult it is to make a living do so, let alone as a musician. Lives of many musicians are being destroyed as a result of being banned from working and thus without income. 

One would hope that the music community would harbor a few free thinkers who might say, “Enough! Freedom is essential to the human spirit.” 

As I scour the internet for any sort of dissent coming from musicians regarding the government’s heavy authoritarian response to coronavirus, I am saddened and deeply disappointed. Most everyone is content to push for a government solution to a government-caused problem. I perked up momentarily when I saw an article about Christian McBride’s recent Civil Rights Suite, which pays homage to Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – brave people who risked and gave their lives for freedom! Alas, the interview was published in JazzTimes on March 16, just as “flattening the curve” was reaching fever pitch and local governments began shutting down businesses across the country. There was no mention of an impending nationwide loss of civil liberties – a poignant moment for jazz’s modern irrelevance. 

Instead of providing much-needed commentary or going on strike to protest ridiculous authoritarian measures imposed without discussion or evidence, musicians race to the bottom by streaming music out of their living rooms, obediently following “mass-telecommuting” orders from their governors and purchasing expensive new microphones and audio interfaces. Many consider themselves lucky that Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom are here to enable them to “connect” with fans in “this new reality”. Even the musicians who are “speaking out” about their plight and recognizing that streaming performances are not sustainable ultimately agree with the statists that the economy needed to be shut down. 

Everyone did such a good job towing the liberal line on Facebook all this time; now is not the time to speak out and ruin what fledgling career you might have left after coronavirus is over (as if it ever will be). Hopefully your live-streamed living room concert doesn’t contain anything that calls into question the state of emergency or the government’s response, since the same internet and media behemoths who trained society to replace open civilized debate with internet likes and comments are now happily charged with censorship. 

The media-hyped narrative surrounding coronavirus has intentionally induced mass hysteria instead of logical discourse and action. Since the controlled media dominates the narrative of holy essential workers fighting the invisible enemy while the rest of us howl in support, would-be dissenters feel pressured to stay silent. Artists are being punished in the same way as other “nonessential” workers, but are also expected to champion the lockdowns in order to stay in line with their “liberal” friends and fans, in direct conflict with their self-interest. 

Government and media are waging psychological and economical warfare against the public. Where are the minority and civil rights advocates who were once outspoken about the police state? Where are the choirs of virtue-signalers and women’s marchers that were “absolutely terrified” of a Trump presidency? Is anyone calling out or resisting the media’s psychological terror program? Now that all of our constitutional rights have been suspended and a lying authoritarian is in charge, the response from the creative left, other than digging their own grave, is crickets. 

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Ann has made a living as a pianist and music teacher for almost 15 years. She is passionate about collaborative live music, freedom, and peace.

TRASMESSO DA BYOBLU e PANDORATV

Sabato 25 Aprile 2020 DALLA ORE 15

In Diretta Streaming, 25 Aprile 2020

Click to VIEW at 15pm (Italia, CET), 9am (EST, USA, Canada)

April 25, 2020

https://www.byoblu.com

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Il 25 aprile è una data importante nella storia dell’Italia. Commemora il 75 ° anniversario di Liberazione, che è anche l’anniversario della resistenza.

L’anno scorso ci siamo incontrati a Firenze il 7 aprile, in coincidenza con il 70 ° anniversario della fondazione della NATO.

Il tema della nostra conferenza dell’anno scorso era USCITA NATO. NATO EXIT

L’evento è stato organizzato dal Comitato italiano No Guerra, No NATO, in collaborazione con il Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

La Dichiarazione di Firenze è stata redatta dal Comitato italiano e dal CRG.

Il 25 aprile 2020, commemorando la liberazione dell’Italia. Esprimiamo la nostra solidarietà al popolo italiano. Allo stesso tempo, esprimiamo la nostra preoccupazione per le basi militari statunitensi stabilite in Italia, immediatamente istituite dopo la seconda guerra mondiale.

Dobbiamo riflettere sulla nostra storia. Era una liberazione o un’occupazione?

L’Unione europea è militarizzata. Il Pentagono è attivamente coinvolto sotto bandiera della NATO in Europa occidentale e orientale.

L’Italia come molti altri paesi sta attualmente attraversando una grave crisi. Quest’anno, il 25 aprile, che commemora la liberazione dell’Italia, non siamo in grado di incontrarci a Firenze per discutere e discutere della “crisi del coronavirus” che sta colpendo milioni di persone in tutto il mondo.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 25 aprile 2020

Andremo in onda online, accogliendo numerosi oratori.

Il tema della nostra conferenza online:

Liberiamoci del Virus della Guerra

L’anno scorso ci siamo incontrati a Firenze. Quest’anno a partire dalle 15:00 CET, 9:00 (EST).

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The 25th of April is an important date in Italy’s history. It commemorates the 75th anniversary of  Liberation, which is also the Anniversary of the Resistance.

Last year we met in Florence on the 7th of April, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO.

The theme of our conference last year was NATO EXIT.  

The event was organized by Italy’s Comitato No Guerra, No NATO, in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). The Florence Declaration was drafted by Italy’s Comitato and the CRG.

On April 25, 2020, Commemorating the Liberation of Italy. We express our solidarity with the people of Italy. At the same time we express our concern regarding the US military bases established in Italy immediately established after World WarII.  

We must reflect on our history. Was it a Liberation or an Occupation?  

The European Union is militarized. The Pentagon is actively involved under banner of NATO in both Western and Eastern Europe. 

Italy like many other countries is currently experiencing a major crisis. This year on the 25th of April which commemorates Italy’s Liberation, we are not able to meet in Firenze to debate and discuss the “coronavirus crisis” which is affecting millions of people Worldwide.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 25 April 2020

We will be airing online, welcoming numerous speakers.

The Theme of our online conference:

Lets Get Rid of the War Virus. Liberiamoci del Virus della Guerra

Last year we met in Florence. This year starting at 3pm CET, 9am (EST) 

TRASMESSO DA BYOBLU e PANDORATV

Sabato 25 Aprile 2020 DALLA ORE 15 In Diretta Streaming, 25 Aprile 2020

Click to VIEW on 15pm (Italia, CET), 9am (EST, USA, Canada)

https://www.byoblu.com

 

 

Questa crisi è un atto di guerra economica

C’è una grave crisi sanitaria che deve essere debitamente risolta. E questa è una priorità numero uno.

Ma c’è un’altra dimensione importante che deve essere affrontata.

Milioni di persone hanno perso il lavoro e i risparmi. Nei paesi in via di sviluppo prevalgono la povertà e la disperazione.

Mentre il blocco viene presentato all’opinione pubblica come unico mezzo per risolvere una crisi globale di salute pubblica, i suoi devastanti impatti economici e sociali vengono casualmente ignorati.

La verità non detta è che il romanzo coronavirus fornisce un pretesto a potenti interessi finanziari e politici corrotti per far precipitare il mondo intero in una spirale di disoccupazione di massa, bancarotta e povertà estrema.

L’anno scorso ci siamo incontrati a Firenze. Quest’anno a partire dalle 15:00 CET, 9:00 (EST), trasmetteremo online in diverse lingue.

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This crisis is an act of economic warfare

There is a serious health crisis which must be duly resolved. And this is a number one priority.

But there is another important dimension which has to be addressed.

Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail.

While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis, its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty.

Last year we met in Florence. This year starting at 3pm CET, 9am (EST) we will be broadcasting online in several languages.

Below is the text of Florence Declaration

 

Text of The Florence Declaration

Adopted by more than 600 participants to the Florence No War No NATO Conference, April 7, 2019.

Original in Italian. Translations into English, French, Russian, Spanish. The debates and discussions were chaired by renowned author and geographer Manlio Dinucci.

The event was organized by Italy’s Comitato No Guerra, No NATO, in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). The Florence Declaration was drafted by Italy’s Comitato and the CRG.

The risk of a vast war which, with the use of nuclear weapons, could mean the end of Humanity, is real and growing, even though it is not noticed by the general public, which is maintained in the ignorance of this imminent danger.

A strong engagement to find a way out of the war system is of vital importance. This raises the question of the affiliation of Italy and other European countries with NATO.

NATO is not an Alliance. It is an organisation under the command of the Pentagon, and its objective is the military control of Western and Eastern Europe.

US bases in the member countries of NATO serve to occupy these countries, by maintaining a permanent military presence which enables Washington to influence and control their policies and prevent genuine democratic choices.

NATO is a war machine which works for the interests of the United States, with the complicity of the major European power groups, staining itself with crimes against humanity.

The war of aggression waged by NATO in 1999 against Yugoslavia paved the way for the globalization of military interventions, with wars against Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and other countries, in complete violation of international law.

These wars are financed by the member countries, whose military budgets are increasing continually to the detriment of social expenditure, in order to support colossal military programmes like that of the US nuclear programme which costs 1,200 billion dollars.

In violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the USA is deploying nuclear weapons in five non-nuclear NATO States, under the false pretext of the ”Russian menace”. By doing so, they are risking the security of Europe.

To exit the war system which is causing more and more damage and exposing us to increasing dangers, we must leave NATO, affirming our rights as sovereign and neutral States.

In this way, it becomes possible to contribute to the dismantling of NATO and all other military alliances, to the reconfiguration of the structures of the whole European region, to the formation of a multipolar world where the aspirations of the People for liberty and social justice may be realised.

We propose the creation of a NATO EXIT International Front in all NATO member countries , by building an organisational network at a basic level strong enough to support the very difficult struggle we must face in order to attain this objective, which is vital for our future.

Video: 70 Years of NATO. The Florence Declaration Calls for NATO-Exit

Video:  70 Years of NATO; The Historical Significance. (Florence, April 7, 2019)

NATO: THE NEED TO EXIT “THE WAR SYSTEM”

 

 

At President Trump’s April 18 press briefing on the Covid-19 Pandemic, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the US response to the outbreak, criticized China’s reports on the Covid-19 data.  

She did so by showing a chart with data from the following countries.  (I have updated the chart with data[1] from the New York Times of April 19, but the two data sets differ by only a small and negligible amount.)

.

Mortality, Deaths per 100,000 population

• Belgium: 49.8
• Spain: 43.8
• Italy: 39.2
• France: 29.4
• UK: 24.2
• Netherlands: 21.4
• USA: 10.9
• Iran: 6.3
• Germany: 5.2
• China: 0.3

Dr. Birx called China’s low number “unrealistic,” saying, “I put China on there so you could see how basically unrealistic this could be.”  That was after President Trump pointed at China’s number and interrupted Birx to ask rhetorically, “Excuse me. Does anybody really believe this number? Does anybody really believe this number?”  (Transcript here; see minute 37:08 and following.)

The argument that Blix and Trump were making was clear.  China’s number was way out of line with the others, lower by more than a factor of 10.  Therefore, China’s report was a lie.

But in her chart Dr. Birx omitted data coming from countries of East Asia and nearby which have been praised by the US media for their performance and whose data are unquestioned in the West.  Here are some relevant omitted data, taken again from the New York Times of April 19, with China included again for comparison

Deaths per 100,000 population

• South Korea: 0.5
• Japan: 0.5
• Australia: 0.3
• China: 0.3
• Singapore: 0.2
• Taiwan: <0.1
• Hong Kong: <0.1

China’s number falls right into line with that of neighboring countries!  Birx’s exercise in fact is a classic example of lying by omission, a half truth being a full lie.

Either Dr. Birx was aware of this data and dishonestly withheld it, or she was not aware of it and she is incompetent.  Neither conclusion is very comforting.  Trump is to be criticized both for his jumping in to bash China and for tolerating someone like Birx with the direction of the government’s response to the pandemic.

These data make it quite clear that countries of East Asia and Australia have performed better than the US and Europe.  Why is this?  Two categories of explanation suggest themselves.  First different strains of the virus may differ in lethality. There is no proof for this, but there is some suggestion of it in laboratory tests.

A second reason for the better performance of East Asian countries and Australia is that they paid attention to what China was doing, perhaps because they are neighbors and better informed of what was going on in China.  Much news about China is simply not reported by the mainstream media in the US and among US “allies.”  In this case, however, concern about a developing pandemic right next door may have lofted news from China over information blockade.  These countries may have seen that China had accumulated considerable experience with the virus and at great cost in life and suffering was having success in stopping its spread.  As a result, they followed what China did in many respects.

But no matter the reason, China’s data fall right in line with many of its neighbors. That is the main point. The bottom line is that these data provide us with no reason to doubt China’s reporting. And the correspondence between the data China released and other regional data is consistent with the fact that China reported Covid-19 deaths accurately.

Since so much attention is devoted to fact checking Trump’s press conferences, I thought surely the press would have picked up on this obvious manipulation of data.  I checked on the fact check of the press conference by CNN, no friend of the Trump administration, and there was no mention of this lie by omission.  Next, I checked PBS, a pillar of probity and respectability and also no friend of Trump.  PBS does a brief online look at each press conference with anchor Hari Sreenivasan and Zachary Green.  They showed Birx’s chart and noted Trump’s comments but made no criticism of the omitted data.  A check of the NYT, another arch-foe of Trump, on the following day disclosed no mention of the Birx-Trump deceit.

How can this be explained?  One cannot help but feel that the idea of Chinese malfeasance in all things has become so deeply embedded in the body politic that to challenge charges made against China is now beyond the pale.  No charge, no matter how unfounded or contrary to actual fact, is too brazen to report without a moment’s consideration.  In fact, to tell the truth in such a situation may damage the career of a rising journalistic “star.”

Why are we to be concerned about this matter? Because China’s experience has had much to teach us.  And since China is now emerging from the recession caused by the pandemic, it may have more to teach us as we move to economic recovery.  For example, to get back to normalcy, China has now rolled out large scale testing on a territory roughly the size of the US.  How is that working and how might it be improved?  To ignore China’s experience without careful evaluation at a time like this could well end up as a self-destructive act.

But there is an even bigger danger here.  There has been a growing antagonism between China and the US since Obama’s ill-advised “Pivot” against China followed by Trump’s equally ill-advised trade war.  Now we find Trump and Biden competing to be the number one China basher.  The press conference of April 18 falls into this pattern, allowing Trump to parade as tough on China and escape from a thrashing by a China-hostile media for his earlier praise of Xi and China for their response to Covid-19. To take the route of hostility to China can lead to a clash between two economic giants and nuclear powers, which could lead to a disaster for all humanity.  As Henry Kissinger reminded us some time back, armed conflict between the two giants could bring the same level of devastation to all the world that WWI brought to Europe.  And that is likely to be an underestimate. Let us step back from this path before it is too late.

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John V. Walsh can be reached at [email protected]  He has written about issues of war, peace and empire, and about health care, for Antiwar.com, Consortium News, DissidentVoice, CounterPunch, The East Bay Times, The Mercury News and others. Now living in the East Bay, he was until recently Professor of Physiology and Cellular Neuroscience at a Massachusetts Medical School.

Note

[1] Data is taken from this site: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html  Data is refreshed several times daily so the latest data will be posted there.

Hold mouse arrow over the country and the deaths per 100,000 will appear.  Data is refreshed several times daily.

Singer/Songwriter Neil Young wrote the song ‘Four Dead in Ohio’ for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:

Four Dead In Ohio Lyrics

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.

It was a beautiful Spring day in May of 1970 when four Kent State University students, protesting the illegal bombing of Cambodia and the entire Vietnam (so called) War, were gunned down by Ohio National Guard troops, many the same age as them. The event made national headlines and ignited a mass of students from literally hundreds of universities to go on strike. This writer was in my third or fourth year at Brooklyn College, who remembers, and I finally became outraged. Up until then, at my own admission, I only cared about playing on our soon to be first year football team, and of course, chasing women. Oh yeah, and enjoying the pot that my friends and I smoked each  and every Friday and Saturday night. I was just 20 years of age and really ‘feeling my oats’. Yet, when the news made the daily headlines about those four kids, well, just like ME, I swayed over to the campus looking for action. A large group of us literally chased the military recruiters from our campus. No violence. Those guys probably knew deep down that the shit was gonna eventually hit the fan over this ongoing Amerikan tragedy.

The social shock from the dual killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy still filled many of our young minds two years after the fact… Or should I say facts? Two well respected leaders gunned down and by now, 1970, the conspiracy theories were holding lots of water.

I had already known about The Beast, ever since, believe it or not, I read the 1967 Playboy magazine interview with New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison about the JFK assassination. It opened my eyes to what probably happened, as compared to what my government was telling us. The more I read of that fateful day in November of ’63 the more I knew, intuitively, that The Beast was real. So, we closed down the campus, took over the school  president’s office, and waited for the cops to come. That event never occurred (to my satisfaction) and we ended the strike after a few days. There were some concessions made, nothing of major importance, but enough to make us say that ‘We Won!’. Those four kids at Kent State didn’t bask in our glory, did they? They say, from historians looking back , that President Nixon was affected enough to start realizing that he had to get out of this mess called Vietnam. Of course, when it comes to The Beast and how it operates, it only reacts when it already has the table turned. So, Nixon waited it out until he won re-election 30 months later to then slowly use the ‘Get out of jail free’ card beginning the process… of course his impeachment/resignation left it to another. Point is, the Kent State killings, coupled with the illegal bombing of another sovereign nation, slowly woke up our Moms and Dads to the truth of it all: This (so called) war was not worth it! I can recall, at an Easter dinner a few weeks earlier, with all my aunts and uncles present, the famous words of my father, who voted for Nixon in 1960, Goldwater in ’64 and Nixon again in ’68: “Let me make this clear. Before I see either of my two sons being sent to Vietnam, I’m gonna personally drive them to Canada!! And that’s that!”

Perhaps it was when a guy a few blocks away from me, Tommy L., joined the Marines and came home in a box. I didn’t know him well at all, but I knew his mom. She was our crossing guard on Ocean Ave, which was right by our church, St. Edmunds. Each Sunday after Mass we would see Mrs. L. as we crossed Ocean Ave. She always had this beautiful smile and greeted everyone with it. After her son died in the Nam, you could see how she now had what I always called ‘The Mona Lisa smile’ from that famous DaVinci portrait. It had that look, to me, of someone who was saying ‘If you only know what I am going through’. Then, a year later, another guy from our neighborhood, a Polish born son of my friend’s building superintendent, Vito P., was killed on some famous (for whom?) hill in Vietnam. The last time I saw Vito was, coincidentally, at Mass in St. Edmunds. He was home on leave from the Army, standing there in his Ranger uniform, replete with beret tucked onto his shoulder. Months later we got the word. I used to see his kid brother, who I knew adored Vito, at the school yard where we played softball. He would be hanging out with characters that I would always warn him against. He ignored me, and got into glue sniffing, Quaaludes and finally horse (heroin). Sometime later, maybe a few years after Vito’s death, his brother OD’d and died. What is it they say ‘When the war comes home’? Well in May of 1970 it had… and transformed me into the activist anti empire and anti war writer and street corner protestor  I have been since then.

And what about ‘Feeding the beast’? Well:

1933 Germany: Reichstag fire and Enabling Laws to snuff out political parties and dissent

1964 Amerika: Gulf of Tonkin resolution based upon imaginary attack by North Vietnam on our ship

1991: Saddam Hussein encouraged by US non commitment to Kuwait to invade Kuwait over oil drilling dispute. War on Iraq followed

2001, September 11th- Twin Towers and Pentagon attacked in highly suspicious manner, leading to the Patriot Act, increased military spending and 2nd war on Iraq to follow

March 19th , 2003 – Illegal and immoral war on Iraq over WMDs to this day never found. More increases in military spending along with occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and NATO servicemen dead or damaged for life.

2008-09 – Subprime scam costs taxpayers trillions of dollars to bail out failed Wall Street companies.

Meanwhile, health care system is still a joke as is the needs of infrastructure throughout Amerika.

2011 Libya- USA led NATO carpet bombing of Libya, causing death , destruction and refugee crisis that has still caused havoc throughout the region and Europe.

2020 Pandemic- Trump crew ignored the crisis for almost 2 months, even denying it as a HOAX. Our economy is teetering on default as the super rich get most of the bailout. Oh, but the increased military spending survives, eating up around HALF of our federal tax revenues.

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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].

After weeks of dismissing it as a liberal “hoax” designed to unseat the president, brushing the virus off as no big deal and under control, the Trump administration is clearly floundering in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite weeks of warning where it could have taken precautionary steps, the United States currently has four times the confirmed cases and twice the deaths of any other country. At the same time, the countries it is currently placing under economic siege, totaling around a quarter of the world’s population, are faring far better and leading the global fight against the coronavirus.

China, for instance, the first epicenter of the outbreak, has managed to slow its new COVID-19 cases to a trickle, reopening for business after losing 4,632 people – a number that, in the context of a stark April reality, appears impressively low. Although much of the discourse in the West condemns the Chinese government’s supposedly incompetent or slow response to COVID-19, the reality is that Beijing alerted the World Health Organization on December 31, when just 27 cases (and no deaths) had been identified, with authorities not yet even aware that the condition was a coronavirus.

The country is at the forefront of the production and distribution of protective and medical equipment throughout the world and, along with Russia (another sanctioned state) is one of the few nations to fly medical personnel around the world to help other countries. Russia even sent a planeload of cargo to the United States, despite the American sanctions hurting its economy. While their actions have been presented in corporate media as cynically trying to “curry favor” abroad, the aid has been much appreciated in countries suffering under the pandemic. In contrast, the U.S. has led the world in stealing or requisitioning supplies destined for other nations.

Another sanctioned state exporting doctors across the world during the pandemic is Cuba, the island nation is sending medical staff to neighbors like Haiti, Venezuela, Suriname and Jamaica and also further afield to Italy. “This is a global battle and we have to fight it together,” said nurse Carlos Armando Garcia Hernandez, capturing the medical internationalist spirit of Cuban medicine pioneered by Che Guevara, who quipped that, “The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.” A Cuban antiviral drug, Interferon Alpha 2b, has also proved successful in boosting patients’ immune systems, helping them fight off the coronavirus, and is now being used worldwide.

Venezuela, meanwhile, struggling under crippling U.S. sanctions that have claimed the lives of at least 100,000 people according to an American UN Special Rapporteur, has mobilized to fight the virus head on. The country has conducted twice as many tests as any other South American nation, but only 288 COVID-19 cases have been found, leading to only 10 deaths. Even before any cases were confirmed, President Maduro declared a health emergency, quickly closing public buildings like theaters and restaurants. His administration rapidly organized a huge online database where citizens could inform authorities of their symptoms. Medical professionals visited tens of thousands of people in their own homes, distributing test kits and advice. Maduro decreed the suspension of all rent and utility bills during the crisis, also banning the firing of workers.

A testament to the country’s efforts is that thousands of Venezuelan expats in the U.S., at least 92 percent of whom voted against Maduro in the 2013 elections, came back to the country during the pandemic, suggesting they are far more confident in Venezuela’s handling of the crisis.

Meanwhile, Vietnam, a country not currently sanctioned but having faced Washington’s wrath for decades, surely earns the top prize in handling the virus. Despite recording its first positive case just two days after the first American one, authorities have managed to limit the outbreak to just 268 cases and zero deaths. This is not because they are not testing, far from it. In fact, the country has designed, developed and mass produced multiple test kits all costing less than $20 each and giving dependable results in less than 90 minutes.

Those arriving from abroad are quarantined for two weeks while anyone coming to a major city or building has their temperature checked. Whole villages and towns have been fenced off due to one positive test. There is certainly an authoritarian element to their response; those lying about their past whereabouts or found to be spreading false information about the pandemic can face charges. However, the response has hinged upon the strong collective solidarity of the Vietnamese people, many of whom have likened the present events to the Tet Offensive, where millions united in secret to drive the American invaders back in a surprise attack.

In Iran, one of the first global hotspots and a country that planners in the U.S. were gleefully predicting would fall in on itself under the strain, has managed to get to grips with the pandemic. The number of new daily cases of COVID-19 has been falling day-on-day since March 30.

Ironically, Mohammad Morandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, claims the crippling sanctions that blocked Iranian oil exports have inadvertently better prepared them to deal with the total collapse in global oil prices than U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar.

Trump blocked Iranian oil exports & inadvertently prepared Iran for the collapse of the oil market.

Are others prepared? Will the Saudi regime survive? UAE? Kuwait? Qatar? US shale? What will happen to the US banking sector & oil industry?

The balance of power is shifting.

— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) April 20, 2020

While the sanctioned countries vary greatly in their level of human development and the democratic credentials of their governments, they all share one thing in common: they have refused to buy into a U.S.-led neoliberal economic order that appears totally unprepared and unable to come to terms with a globalized pandemic. Countries that have been the most enthusiastic adopters of neoliberalism have, not coincidentally, found their individualistic ideology that promotes greed and discourages collective solutions sorely lacking in tackling a public health crisis that threatens the entire world.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

First published on February 24, 2020 amidst the onslaught of the Financial Crisis and the “Economic War against China”

The Budget for the Future of America, presented by the US government, shows the priorities of the Trump Administration in the federal balance sheet for fiscal year 2021 (which begins on 1 October this year).

Above all, the intention is to reduce social spending – for example, the budget is cutting the allocation required by the Department of Health and Human Services by 10 %. While the same authorities tell us that in the USA, from October to February, approximately 10,000 deaths out of a population of 330 million were caused by colds. An information carefully gagged by the major medias, which launched a world alarm for the 770 deaths caused by the coronavirus in China, a country of 1,4 billion inhabitants which proved capable of deploying exceptional measures to limit the damage caused by the epidemic.

We cannot avoid suspicion about the real objectives of the invasive media campaign, which is spreading terror about everything Chinese, when, in the motivation of the US budget, we read that “America is facing a challenge from rival national states, particularly China and Russia”.

China is accused of “waging an economic war against the United States and their allies with cyber weapons” and “seeking to fashion in its own image the Indo-Pacific region, which is critical for the security and economic interests of the USA”. So that “the region may be free from the evil Chinese influence”, the US government is giving 30 million dollars to the “Global Engagement Centre, in order to block the propaganda and disinformation from China”. In the context of “growing strategic competition”, the US government declares that “the Budget’s priority is to finance programmes which increase our military advantage against China, Russia and all other adversaries”.

For this purpose, President Trump has announced that “in order to guarantee internal security and promote the interests of the USA on the exterior, my budget requires 740,5 billion dollars for national Defense” (while it requires only 94,5 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services).

The military allocation includes 69 billion dollars for war operations overseas, more than 19 billion for 10 war-ships and 15 billion for 115 F-35 fighters and other aircraft, plus 11 billion to potentialise ground-based weapons.

The Pentagon’s scientific and technological programmes need 14 billion dollars, destined for the development of hypersonic and directed energy weapons, spatial systems and the 5G network.

These are only a few of the items in a long list of expenses (from public money), which include all of the most advanced weapon systems, bringing colossal profits to Lockheed Martin and the other war industries.

To the Pentagon’s budget must be added various expenses of a military nature listed in the budgets of other departments. For fiscal year 2021, the Department of Energy will receive 27 billion dollars for the maintenance and modernisation of its nuclear arsenal. The Department of Homeland Security will receive 52 billion for its own secret service. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA) will receive 243 billion (10 % more than the budget for 2020) for retired military personnel.

Taking into account these posts and several others, military expenditure for the United States in 2021 will exceed 1,000 billion dollars. US military expenditure has a stimulating effect on that of other countries, which nonetheless remain at much lower levels. Even if we take into account only the Pentagon’s budget, US military spending is three or four times greater than that of China, and ten times superior to that of Russia. So “the Budget ensures US military domination in all sectors of war – aerial, ground-based, maritime, spatial and cyber-spatial”, declares the White House, announcing that the United States will shortly be able to produce 80 new nuclear warheads per year in two sites.

Does “The Future of America” mean “The End of the World”.

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This article appeared on the Italian web newspaper, Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Milhões de pessoas perderam os seus empregos e as suas economias de toda a vida. Nos países em desenvolvimento, prevalece a pobreza e o desespero.

Embora o bloqueio seja apresentado à opinião pública como o único meio de resolver uma crise global de saúde pública, os seus impactos económicos e sociais devastadores são ignorados de modo irreflectido.

A verdade não dita é que o novo coronavírus fornece um pretexto para poderosos interesses financeiros e políticos corruptos, a fim de precipitar o mundo inteiro numa espiral de desemprego, falência e pobreza extrema maciça.

Esta é a verdadeira imagem do que está a acontecer.

Como é posto em prática? A campanha do medo desempenha um papel fundamental. O bloqueio é apresentado aos governos nacionais como sendo a única solução.

A economia é a base para a reprodução da vida real.

É também a base para sustentar os esforços da saúde pública.

Esta operação de encerramento afecta as linhas de produção e de fornecimento de bens e serviços, actividades de investimento, exportação e importação, comércio intermediário e retalhista, despesas dos consumidores, fecho das escolas, faculdades e universidades, instituições de pesquisa, etc.

Por sua vez, conduz quase imediatamente ao desemprego em massa, à falência de pequenas e médias empresas, ao colapso do poder de compra, à pobreza generalizada e à fome.

Video em inglês :

This incisive video by Lesley Kushner explains how the CDC COVID-19 figures are manipulated.

Presumptive vs. Confirmed Cases

According to the CDC the data presented for the United States include both “confirmed” and “presumptive” positive cases of COVID-19 reported to the CDC or tested at CDC labs.

The presumptive (PC) and confirmed cases (CC) are lumped together.  And the total number (PC + CC ) constitutes the basis for establishing the data for COVID-19 infection. It’s like adding apples and oranges. The total figure (PC+CC) categorized as “Total cases” is meaningless. And there often no lab report. The figures do not measure positive COVID-19 Infection. And among those “total cases” are “recovered cases”.

Fake Death Certificates. 

“Presumed” or “Contributed” is to be put on the Death Certificate, when there is absolutely no proof that COVID19 was the cause of death, nor was there a lab test indicating COVID-19 positive.  (M. Ch. Editor)

 

Convegno internazionale nel 75° Anniversario della Liberazione

TRASMESSO DA BYOBLU e PANDORATV

Sabato 25 Aprile 2020 DALLA ORE 15

In Diretta Streaming, 25 Aprile 2020

Click to VIEW on

15pm (Italia, CET), 9am (EST, USA, Canada) 

 https://www.byoblu.com
 

 

 

 

In Diretta Streaming, 25 Aprile 2020

Click to VIEW on

15pm (Italia, CET), 9am (EST) 

 https://www.byoblu.com
 

 

Michel Chossudovsky (Canada), economista, direttore del Centro di ricerca sulla globalizzazione;

Peter Koenig (Svizzera), economista con lunga esperienza nella Banca Mondiale,;

Guido Grossi, già dirigente Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, ci diranno come potenti forze economiche e finanziarie sfruttano la crisi del coronavirus per impadronirsi dei nostri risparmi e soffocarci con la stretta del debito, e cosa dovremmo fare per risolvere tale situazione.

David Swanson (Stati Uniti), direttore di World Beyond War; Tim Anderson (Australia), docente di economia politica;

Giorgio Bianchi, fotogiornalista e filmmaker; Franco Cardini, storico e saggista, ci parleranno delle guerre in corso, funzionali agli interessi delle stesse potenti forze.

Vladimir Kozin (Russia), consigliere capo del Centro Studi Politico-Militari,

Diana Johnstone (Stati Uniti), saggista; Kate Hudson (Regno Unito), Segretaria Campagna per il Disarmo Nucleare, spiegheranno come e perché aumenta la probabilità di un catastrofico conflitto nucleare.

John Shipton (Australia), padre di Julian Assange,

Ann Wright (Stati Uniti), già colonnello US Army e funzionaria Dipartimento di Stato, ci parleranno delle condizioni disumane in cui è detenuto a Londra

Julian Assange, il giornalista fondatore di WikiLeaks, incarcerato per aver portato alla luce i crimini di guerra USA, che rischia di essere estradato da Londra negli Stati Uniti dove lo attende la pena dell’ergastolo o la pena di morte;

Giulietto Chiesa, giornalista, direttore di Pandora TV. ci parlerà della fondamentale battaglia per il diritto costituzionale di manifestare liberamente il proprio pensiero e per una informazione veritiera.

Conduce Manlio Dinucci, giornalista, analista geopolitico.

DURANTE IL CONVEGNO SARANNO TRASMESSI ALCUNI VIDEO DI INFORMAZIONE

Sarà in funzione una chat-line per domande e commenti.

Vi invitiamo a seguire il Convegno e a diffondere l’invito nella vostra rete di contatti.

 

A woman who organized last weekend’s protest in downtown San Diego opposing stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus is facing arrest and possible misdemeanor charges that could result in 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, the woman and her attorneys said Wednesday.

Naomi Israel, 27, was one of hundreds who demonstratively opposed California’s stay-at-home orders during a “Freedom Rally” Saturday afternoon in front of the Hall of Justice.

Israel is being represented by the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit organization that has also challenged the state’s stay-at-home order on various fronts, including filing a lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom last week for prohibiting in-person church services.

Israel took to Facebook on Wednesday to discuss the case, writing

“I will be arrested on Sunday for exercising my constitutional rights.”

The San Diego Police Department confirmed it has contacted the City Attorney’s Office “requesting their review to issue charges against the protest organizer for violating the county health order by organizing a gathering.”

The Center for American Liberty said it is not aware of any other protest participants facing potential criminal charges.

Following Saturday’s protest in San Diego and a related Sunday protest in Encinitas, many questioned why arrests or citations were not levied against the protesters for flouting public health orders prohibiting large public gatherings and asking people to stay six feet apart from one another.

Rev. Shane Harris, CEO of the People’s Alliance for Justice, asked San Diego officials to issue citations to those who gathered and questioned why churchgoers were not allowed to congregate in person without penalty, yet the protesters were.

“Are we protecting the constitutional rights of some while ordering the rights of others to be knocked down?” asked Harris, who also said the protests represented “racial entitlement” and that people of color would not be allowed to congregate in a similar fashion without legal repercussions.

In a joint statement issued Monday by the SDPD and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the agencies said that although the events were allowed to go forward, legal consequences would still be in order.

“While no citations were issued at the protests, that does not mean prosecution will not be sought, especially to the organizers of these events,” the statement read.

Center for American Liberty CEO Harmeet K. Dhillon called the possible charges “outrageous.”

“Our client is being charged with a crime for participating in constitutionally protected activity. The right to assemble and to petition the government does not exist if there are topics that are off limits,” Dhillon said.

Dhillon disputed that protesters did not practice social distancing, saying Israel and others took part “in a responsible protest adhering to social distancing guidelines. She, along with other protesters, stood six feet apart on a public sidewalk.”

“We intend to fight San Diego’s punishment of our client if the authorities decide to proceed with this ill-advised attempt to chill the speech of Americans,” she said.

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Featured image is from CNS

The Israeli leadership has not tired of trying to change the Rules of Engagement (ROE) with Hezbollah since its defeat in the 2006 war, in the hope of eliminating the organisation that rose to state level in military capabilities (and medical skills, as it showed its preparations to confront the emerging COVID-19 virus). Israel has tried to hit targets inside Syria to stop convoys coming into Lebanon loaded with advanced weapons. However, Israel, after pursuing a non-provocation policy with Hezbollah for many years, decided to improvise and attempt a sneak attack on Beirut with drones, in the hope of introducing a new ROE and hitting Hezbollah targets. Hezbollah, however, returned the Israeli attempt by creating another balance of deterrence, embarrassing and ridiculing Israel and its army. But that, it seems, did not deter Israel, which was searching for methods to break the existing Rules of Engagement. The breach came on the northern border. Did the tension bring a large-scale escalation between Israel and Hezbollah any closer?

Since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011 and the participation of Hezbollah in this war throughout the entire Syrian geography since 2013, Israel has not hit any Hezbollah target causing casualties in its ranks, with two exceptions. The first was in 2015 when hitting two cars roaming in the Quneitra – the occupied Golan area- killing an Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer and the person responsible for protecting VIPs in “Hezbollah”, Jihad Imad Mughniyeh, and their companions. Hezbollah responded by striking an Israeli convoy in the Shebaa Farms area, killing an Israeli captain and sergeant and wounding 7 others. Tel Aviv accepted the tit-for-tat and refrained from responding further.

In the same year, Israel assassinated Samir al-Quntarin in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Al-Quntar was in charge of the organisation and recruitment among the Druse of Suweida and the occupied Golan. After these two incidents, whenever Israel wanted to hit a truck bound for Lebanon, it would bomb the road in front of the truck to force it to stop and give time for passengers to evacuate to a safe distance before striking the cargo. This introduced an acceptable ROE between Israel and Hezbollah, as there were no casualties but only equipment lost which was eventually replaced.

Israeli soldiers repairing a fence at the borders with Lebanon

Indeed, after his return from a visit to Washington, Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett admitted that “Israel hits a Hezbollah truck loaded with weapons and leaves five trucks without intercepting them.” This indicates that Israel is aware it has failed to reduce the capabilities of Hezbollah and to prevent the supply of advanced weapons and precision missiles. Israel wishes to permanently eliminate Hezbollah and is still working hard to do so, but without finding a way to break the “deterrence equation” imposed on it by Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and without triggering a wider conflict which Israel is not ready for.

The last attempt was in August last year when Israel sent suicide drones to the southern suburb of Beirut. One of the drones exploded and another failed and was captured. This unusual Israeli violation required the response of “Hezbollah”, as its Secretary General promised, in an unprecedented step, striking not only in the occupied Shebaa Farms, but along the 125 km Lebanese border.

This humiliated Israel and its strong army, which withdrew and evacuated its military and observation positions at a depth of 5 km along the borders. Not only that, but Israel provided Hezbollah with fake targets to end the “distress” of Tel Aviv and thereby put an end to the embarrassment that afflicted the political and military leadership of the Israeli entity.

A blue bag containing an old vacuum cleaner with visible cables to confuse the Israeli soldiers, thrown on the other side of the borders.

This created a balance which effectively deterred Israel: it would not dare to attack Hezbollah after such a harsh and humiliating experience. Hence, Hezbollah wanted to prevent the installation of a new equation, which Israel was seeking, namely to start operations piloted by drones against multiple targets. This new cycle was broken before becoming established.

Recently in Jdeidet Yabous inside Syrian territory, a Cherokee vehicle belonging to Hezbollah members whose unit operates in Quneitra stopped in front of Al-Haidari station. It is not excluded that Israel had hit the road in front of the car to warn passengers to leave. Another method Israel has used often has been to hack the mobile phones of the personnel inside the car and send a message in Arabic asking them to leave before the car was destroyed. The car was stopped in front of the station, and the passengers, who did not panic, got out because of their familiarity with the Israeli method used for years, which aims not to cause human losses so as to prevent a symmetrical response.

After the operator of the drone confirmed that all passengers had evacuated the vehicle and removed their personal belongings and individual weapons, it launched a missile that hit close to it, to destroy it. The missile did not hit the vehicle directly due to the strong winds that were blowing at this time in the border area between Syria and Lebanon.

One of the three locations on the Lebanese borders where the fence has been cut, indicating a possible crossing.

Hezbollah, which has not yet officially declared responsibility for the operation, refrained from commenting. However, the following day, Israel found three breaches of its border fence cut in three different locations that fall under the responsibility of three different Israeli battalions on the border with Lebanon. Also, three closed blue bags with electrical wires inside were left on the other side of the fences for the Israeli to find them.

The goal of the operation was not to make Israeli snipers shoot the bags (they turned out to contain an old vacuum cleaner, an empty box, and a bag of water). Nor was the objective to see robots and drones dealing with the suspicious bags.  Rather it was to tell Israel that the tunnels that it uncovered last year crossing the borders would be useless. Hezbollah showed that crossing of the border above ground is simple and easy in many locations under the nose of the electronic surveillance devices and sensitive cameras installed by Israel very close to the place of the breach.

The second message is clear: any act of provocation against Hezbollah will be met with a response inside what Hezbollah calls “occupied Palestine” and not only in the Lebanese occupied Shebaa Farms.

The fences were cut under the watchful control of the most sophisticated electronic cameras of the Israeli towers spread along the borders.

The third message is that any attempt to turn the threat into an opportunity to change the ROE will be answered with a direct response commensurate with the size of the Israeli strike. Furthermore, any future Israeli aggression will be followed by a possible attack on the nearby settlements, or adoption of other measures ready, planned and prepared within the bank of objectives Hezbollah has.

Hezbollah has demonstrated the existence of a loose flank that it has removed from its sleeve, indicating that it has many options available as an appropriate response to Israeli aggression. The price of the Cherokee car struck by Israel is about 4000 dollars, while the price of the missile fired and the measures it took to search for a possible breach is much higher.

The three different locations where the fence on the borders was breached via @imadovisky11

Does Israel really believe that it is a superpower that can deal with the Corona virus and its spread even while striking Syria, Lebanon and Iraq (during its internal crisis), while lacking preparedness on the internal domestic front, at the same time confronting the growing strength of Hezbollah’s experience and advanced capabilities? If so, Israel is mistaken.

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

NHS laboratories are using a flawed test for coronavirus, according to a leaked Public Health England document seen by openDemocracy. Experts warn that the test fails to detect up to 25% of positive COVID-19 results.

Although the current test is known to be inconsistent, NHS labs are nonetheless being advised to continue using it, while an urgent “migration” or shift to a commercially available test takes place.

The leaked document from the National Infection Service (NIS) will put intense pressure on Health Secretary Matt Hancock to explain why the NHS has been using knowingly flawed tests for many weeks, as national death rates have spiralled.

Hancock – who promised 100,000 tests a week by the end of April – recently said that “no test is better than a bad test”. Yet the documents reveal that senior government advisers have known for some weeks that the UK’s critical coronavirus test was not entirely reliable.

Among the leading scientists who have seen the NIS document, the reaction has been one of outrage. One said: “There should be mass resignations, both at the top of PHE and in the government. We should expect better.”

For the first time in two months, South Korea’s new coronavirus cases have dropped to single digits. Seoul has not only demonstrated that it can contain the pandemic, but that it can safely hold elections, which last week led to a landslide victory for President Moon Jae-in’s party in the parliamentary elections. Having earned the trust of the South Korean public and the admiration of the global community, now is the time for Moon to claim leadership over another issue that the Trump administration has woefully mismanaged: relations with North Korea.

The Trump administration’s approach to North Korea has been characterized by the president developing a personal relationship with Kim Jong Un, while imposing ever-stricter sanctions and continuing to hold joint military exercises with South Korea. This has failed to move the needle on North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Pyongyang continues to test weapons — even in the midst of a global pandemic — and shows no signs of wanting to engage with Washington.

But the universal threat of the coronavirus has created a vastly different landscape for President Moon to make progress with North Korea. Moon has all the leverage he needs to resolve a 70-year-old conflict and create a model for peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

From the beginning of his presidency, Moon — a human rights lawyer and former soldier who served in the DMZ — has made more headway than past South Korean leaders in improving inter-Korean relations. Five months after signing the Panmunjom Declaration in April 2018, Moon and Kim met in Pyongyang for a second summit and signed an inter-Korean military agreement that set forth a demilitarization process, including disarming soldiers in the Joint Security Area and demining portions of the DMZ. South Korea took concrete steps to revive inter-Korean cooperation, such as establishing a diplomatic compound in Kaesong and seeking to link the inter-Korean railroad at Dorasan Station at the DMZ.

Unfortunately, Moon’s pro-peace diplomacy with North Korea fell victim to Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign on North Korea. In an October 2018 call to South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-Hwa, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rebuked Seoul for moving too fast with Pyongyang and failing to move in lock step with Washington on denuclearization. When asked about South Korea’s possible lifting of sanctions on North Korea, President Trump told reporters,

“They won’t do that without our approval. They do nothing without our approval.”

Since Trump’s colossal failure to reach a deal with Kim in Hanoi last year, talks have frozen, not just between Washington and Pyongyang, but also between the two Koreas. Not only does Moon now have a clear mandate domestically, the global context has changed, paving the way for him to pursue his inter-Korean peace agenda, with or without Washington’s approval.

For one, South Korea doesn’t have to continue conducting military exercises with the United States, which has been the ire of the North Korean regime. On March 23, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for a global ceasefire so that the world can address the pandemic. President Macron of France is pressing for the U.N. Security Council to back the Secretary-General’s call, securing the commitments of three of five permanent members: China, the United Kingdom and the United States. The American and South Korean militaries agreed to cancel this spring’s military exercises due to the pandemic; adhering to the global ceasefire gives President Moon cover to cancel them altogether.

In addition to the global ceasefire, there is growing consensus that sanctions must be lifted against particularly vulnerable countries such as North Korea. Michelle Bachelet, U.N. human rights chief and a physician, recently called for sectoral sanctions to “be eased or suspended” because they impede the delivery of vital medical and humanitarian aid. “In a context of global pandemic,” Bachelet explained, “impeding medical efforts in one country heightens the risk for all of us.”

With more than 2 million cases and nearly 150,000 deaths worldwide caused by COVID-19, the United States is acquiescing. On April 16, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions exemptions for humanitarian assistance to North Korea, including “testing kits, respiratory devices, personal protective equipment, and medicine used in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and recovery from COVID-19.”

With two years left in his presidency — and the U.S. and North Korea now entering the 70th year of being locked in a technical state of war — Moon should take this opportunity to advance peace on the Korean Peninsula. The brokenness of the U.S. approach in resolving the North Korean conflict begs for leadership, which President Moon must claim for the future of regional and worldwide security.

After all, if there is one key lesson to be taken away from the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that South Korea can do some things better — much better — than the United States.

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Featured image: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un embrace each other after releasing a joint statement at the truce village of Panmunjeom, Friday. / Korea Summit Press Pool

Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes by Peter Forster, Lucy Forster, Colin Renfrew, and Michael Forster published by the Proceedings of the  National Academy of Sciences of the United Sciences of America (PNAS) focuses on a study of the genomes of 160 covid-19 patients. 

As readers may know, viruses are RNA-based entities that periodically and regularly undergo mutations. One can study these mutations and almost like clockwork trace their evolution – i.e. their lineage and migration pattern.

The authors specifically employed a methodology known as “character-based phylogenetic networks”. The technique has been used as the “method of choice” to reconstruct prehistoric human population movements, language evolution, various ecological studies, and some 10,000 phylogenetic studies of diverse organisms – and now virology.

This is an early study – the sample size is only 160 humans – with 100 types. However, the results are stunning. Among the key conclusions:

1. There are three major types of coronaviruses, A, B, and C, with type A being the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 in humans and showing 96.2% similarly to a particular strain of virus in bats.
2. Most of the viruses in China and Wuhan are of type B while most of the viruses found in America, Europe and Australia are of type A and C. Type C is not found in Mainland China but is found in significant numbers in Hong Kong, S. Korea, and Taiwan.
3. While Type B is found in large numbers across Mainland China (including Wuhan), it is not found in significant numbers around the rest of the world.
4. The methodology used was successfully used to trace several clinically verified cases of virus travel from Wuhan out to various nations, including Brazil and Italy. As such, the authors concludes the “character-based phylogenetic networks” methodology was useful and appropriate for studying the spread and evolution of the coronavirus.
5. Yet, according to the methodology, the earliest sample of virus studied – collected on December 24 2019 in Wuhan – WAS NOT close to being the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2.

According to the authors:

Some observations…

First, most of the viruses in the West do not seem to have arisen from China. The authors identified Type B as the main virus type found in Mainland China, with that Type mostly confined to Mainland China and Types A and C predominant outside China – including U.S., Europe and Australia.

Two reasons given for why Type B variants (“China’s virus,” if you must) did not expand much beyond Mainland China: one being “complex founder scenario” and second “the ancestral Wuhan B-type virus is immunologically or environmentally adapted to a large section of the East Asian population, and may need to mutate to overcome resistance outside East Asia.”

Since I have yet to see any reputable studies that shows any strains of the coronavirus having any affinity or dislike to any ethnicity of people, let’s focus on “complex founder scenario” and “environment” resistance.

The authors have noted many perplexities in the study. But if we consider the possibility that coronavirus did not originate in Wuhan, those perplexities all go away. More specifically, let’s presume a scenario where the virus was already circulating under the radar in the West and were carried to Wuhan in December or some time before, where it then spread locally within China.

Consider the fact that the authors had noted that Type B variants outside China did not show the “one-month” variations that would have been expected were Type B variants and descents to have traveled out of China to infect the rest of the world.

But if Type B variants – including Type C “descendants” – were already communally established and transmitted outside China, then this paradox easily goes away.

Assuming the virus to have been brought to Wuhan instead of originating from Wuhan would also constitute a “complex founding scenario” that the author hypothesized could solve the riddle.

This assumption also provides an explanation for the “environmental resistance” the author hypothesized. If the virus arrived in Wuhan with the Chinese authorities quickly closing down the city soon afterwards, the virus would not have had chance to spread to the rest of the world. The Chinese government’s shutting down of Wuhan in January could easily form the “environmental resistance” the authors hypothesized for the Type B virus.

Finally, it is important to note that in this study, of the 160 samples, most are from patients in China, only a few from outside Asia. In this study, the authors had tentatively labelled Type C as a descendant of Type B found in China. But while Type B is found mostly in Wuhan, it has also been found in significant numbers outside China. As more data from outside China comes live (one hopes soon), the same methodology will probably reveal that the predecessor to Type B and Type C arose outside not inside China. Type A and Type C thus all arose outside China and independently of China.

While the current study is China-centric (most data are from China), it already has established that the virus did not arise in Wuhan. The authors noted importantly in the data supplement section, “the oldest isolate from 24 December 2019 (brown node, week 0) lies diagonally opposite to the bat virus outgroup root.”

As we get more data, studies such as this will shed a lot of light on the origins of the coronavirus. It is really too bad, such a shame that the U.S. and Europe has missed such critical times testing and tracking the viral flow. It is worth noting that U.S. officials are blaming China for the virus. But even with limited data, the authors have been able draw some preliminary conclusions regarding the geographic origins of the virus.

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The title of the PNAS article is 

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As each day passes by data pours in revealing the immense economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Most politicians and economic pundits will put the blame for up the economic hurricane, blasting tens of millions into unemployment, on coronavirus lock downs. Fitch Ratings has given a brief snapshot of the unfolding economic catastrophe which it predicts will last well into the 2020s:

“World GDP is now expected to fall by 3.9% in 2020, a recession of unprecedented depth in the post-war period. This is twice as large as the decline anticipated in our early April GEO update and would be twice as severe as the 2009 recession.”

“The decline in GDP equates to a USD2.8 trillion fall in global income levels relative to 2019 and a loss of USD4.5 trillion relative to our pre-virus expectations of 2020 global GDP. Fitch expects eurozone GDP to decline by 7%, US GDP by 5.6%, and UK GDP by 6.3% in 2020.’’

Yet at the beginning of this year the financial media and political classes around the world were making rosy forecasts how we were going to experience moderate economic growth this year built upon solid economic foundations. There was no cause for worry or alarm just let global capital work its magic and trickle-down economics would ensure living standards would rise for all.

Fast forward 4 months and a global health pandemic has revealed how shallow, brittle and unstable were the economic foundations of global capitalism. These foundations were built upon infinitely low interest rates, an exponential rise in debt both public and private (sending global debt over the $250 trillion mark) and a massive increase in social and economic inequality.

The world economy was slowing down during 2019 and heading towards a global recession. Japan’s economy had already entered recession territory in the last quarter of 2019, meanwhile PMI data from China and Germany indicated that they were hovering just outside recession territory.

The global economy at the end of 2019 was teetering on the brink and just needed a catalyst or pin to pop the everything bubble which has seen massive inflation in the prices of paper assets across the globe ranging from stocks and bonds to derivatives such as collateralized loan obligations.

The anaemic economic growth experienced by global capitalism since the last financial crisis, which was a mere 12 years ago, has been based upon a gigantic expansion of the global money supply as central banks and governments mistakenly believe that the only way to sustain our debt fuelled economic system was to create ever more debt.

The last 12 years since the 2008 global financial crisis have witnessed an unparalleled wealth transfer from the working classes to the billionaire class which wields immense political influence over governments across the world. Central bank stimulus programs i.e. quantitative easing together with historically low interest rates fuelled a speculative bonanza which has pushed financial markets to all-time highs across the globe.

Meanwhile, governments across the world have sought to give the hard pressed billionaire class a helping hand by cutting capital gains, income and corporation taxes across the board. President Trump’s $1 trillion tax give away to the economic elites in 2017 is the most egregious example of this phenomena.

At the same time, wages for billions of ordinary people have stagnated or fallen whilst welfare benefits and health care have declined. We now have the utterly surreal situation whereby 26 billionaires control as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity amounting to over 3.8 billion people.

The working classes and underemployed poor of the developing world were made to pay for the costs of the 2008 global economic crisis. Once the coronavirus pandemic has finally burned itself out the working people of this world will be confronted with an economic depression which will rival and indeed may exceed in severity that of the 1930s. Governments across the board will once again seek to make ordinary people pay for the cost of the gigantic debts incurred by government and centrla bank bailouts.

In a desperate effort to prop up their system and protect the interests of their own class central bankers and corporate politicians across the globe are presiding over yet another wealth transfer that benefits the richest 1% in society. Bloomberg has noted how over $8 trillion has been printed out of thin air by global central banks and governments to prop up the capitalist system. The bulk of this horde of fiat money has gone to service the needs of Wall Street and its counterparts in London, Paris Frankfurt, Shanghai et cetera. The Wall Street Journal has openly acknowledged this truth in an editorial:

“The Fed may feel all of this is essential to protect the financial system’s plumbing and reduce systemic risk until the virus crisis passes, but make no mistake the Fed is protecting Wall Street first. The goal seems to be to lift asset prices, as the Fed did after the financial panic, and hope that the wealth effect trickles down to the rest of the economy.”

During the 2020s ordinary people across the globe face a simple but very stark question: can we have faith in a system whose primary motive is to service and protect the interests of the 1%? Maybe, it is time to begin the struggle for an alternative society, based on socialist principles, to consign the attendant failures of capitalism to the dustbin of history.

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Introductory Note

The 25th of April is an important date in Italy’s history. It commemorates the 75th anniversary of  Liberation, which is also the Anniversary of the Resistance.

Last year we met in Florence on the 7th of April, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO.

The theme of our conference last year was NATO EXIT.  

The event was organized by Italy’s Comitato No Guerra, No NATO, in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). The Florence Declaration was drafted by Italy’s Comitato and the CRG.

On April 25, 2020, Commemorating the Liberation of Italy. We express our solidarity with the people of Italy. At the same time we express our concern regarding the US military bases established in Italy immediately established after World WarII.  

We must reflect on our history. Was it a Liberation or an Occupation?  

The European Union is militarized. The Pentagon is actively involved under banner of NATO in both Western and Eastern Europe. 

Italy like many other countries is currently experiencing a major crisis. This year on the 25th of April which commemorates Italy’s Liberation, we are not able to meet in Firenze to debate and discuss the “coronavirus crisis” which is affecting millions of people Worldwide.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 25 April 2020

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Text of The Florence Declaration adopted by more than 600 participants to the Florence No War No NATO Conference, April 7, 2019.

Original in Italian. Translations into English, French, Russian, Spanish. The debates and discussions were chaired by renowned author and geographer Manlio Dinucci.

The event was organized by Italy’s Comitato No Guerra, No NATO, in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). The Florence Declaration was drafted by Italy’s Comitato and the CRG.

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The risk of a vast war which, with the use of nuclear weapons, could mean the end of Humanity, is real and growing, even though it is not noticed by the general public, which is maintained in the ignorance of this imminent danger.

A strong engagement to find a way out of the war system is of vital importance. This raises the question of the affiliation of Italy and other European countries with NATO.

NATO is not an Alliance. It is an organisation under the command of the Pentagon, and its objective is the military control of Western and Eastern Europe.

US bases in the member countries of NATO serve to occupy these countries, by maintaining a permanent military presence which enables Washington to influence and control their policies and prevent genuine democratic choices.

NATO is a war machine which works for the interests of the United States, with the complicity of the major European power groups, staining itself with crimes against humanity.

The war of aggression waged by NATO in 1999 against Yugoslavia paved the way for the globalization of military interventions, with wars against Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and other countries, in complete violation of international law.

These wars are financed by the member countries, whose military budgets are increasing continually to the detriment of social expenditure, in order to support colossal military programmes like that of the US nuclear programme which costs 1,200 billion dollars.

In violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the USA is deploying nuclear weapons in five non-nuclear NATO States, under the false pretext of the ”Russian menace”. By doing so, they are risking the security of Europe.

To exit the war system which is causing more and more damage and exposing us to increasing dangers, we must leave NATO, affirming our rights as sovereign and neutral States.

In this way, it becomes possible to contribute to the dismantling of NATO and all other military alliances, to the reconfiguration of the structures of the whole European region, to the formation of a multipolar world where the aspirations of the People for liberty and social justice may be realised.

We propose the creation of a NATO EXIT International Front in all NATO member countries , by building an organisational network at a basic level strong enough to support the very difficult struggle we must face in order to attain this objective, which is vital for our future.

Florence, April 7, 2019

Manlio Dinucci from Italy

Michel Chossudovsky from Canada

 

Zivadin Jovanovic from Serbia

 

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On April 22, the 41^st anniversary of the establishment of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), they launched the ‘Nour’ satellite, aboard the ‘Qased’ three-staged satellite launcher, during an operation located in the desert at Dasht-e Kavir.

IRGC commander General Salami said,

“Today, we gaze upon the Earth from skies. This honorable moment is the starting point of the establishment of new global power.” He added, “Today, the world’s powerful armies do not have a comprehensive defense plan without being in space, and achieving this superior technology that takes us into space and expands the realm of our abilities is a strategic achievement.”

His comments stressed the term ‘defense’ and described the multi-purpose satellite’s use in space in the realm of information technology and intelligence battles, including reconnaissance and safe communication capabilities.

The successful launch of the Nour gave the Iranian people a chance to feel pride and hope, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 5,290 people in Iran, with over 84,800 reported cases.  The satellite orbits 425 kilometers above Earth, while many around the globe are on stay-at-home orders, and dealing with the mental constraints of ‘cabin-fever’.  Iranians may see the satellite as a bit of good news despite the struggling economy and historically low oil prices.

Iran is now one of 15 countries that can put military satellites in space, and even though the US has placed the most severe sanctions in history upon Iran, still their engineers and scientists continue to produce technology “MADE IN IRAN”.  They have an advanced program that has launched satellites in the past, including joint research projects with other countries. ‘Omid’, was their first a domestically made satellite that was sent into orbit in 2009, and Iran launched imaging satellites in 2011 and 2012.

Tensions with the US

In 2018 President Trump pulled the US out of the international deal which the US was a partner to, designed to prevent Iran from making a nuclear weapon. Iran has continued to state they do not seek to create or use nuclear weapons. That action by Trump was the beginning of the tensions which are being felt in the Middle East today.

One of the main sources of tension between the Trump administration and Iran is the influence and pressure of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and some of the oil-rich ‘Arab Gulf’ countries, such as Saudi Arabia.  AIPAC and their Arab allies put pressure on Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and they tried to push the US military into aggression against Iran.

Trump’s decision to withdraw set off a series of attacks and Trump ordered the assassination by a drone attack in January of the top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. Iran answered back with ballistic missiles struck at US troops in Iraq.

The US says the satellite launch by Iran defies a UN Security Council resolution.

There is a political faction in the US, with close ties to Trump, who are pushing for a full-fledged war between the US and Iran. The two nearly went to war earlier this year after Trump ordered the assassination.  Experts have cautioned that a mistake or accident could plunge the region into a military conflict which could turn regional, if not global as allies of the US, and Iran would be forced to take sides.

The US Navy released a video last week which they claim shows Iranian speed-boats making harassing maneuvers close to US Navy warships in the North Arabian Sea, with one boat coming within yards of the US ship.  In the video, the Iranian-flagged boats are manned with a gun; however, the guns were never pointed at the US ship, which sounded its horn several times.

The IRGC acknowledged that events in the video happened; however, they downplayed the seriousness and felt the US was exaggerating.

“I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” Trump wrote.

Trump is facing a tough election in November, and his supporters demand he maintains his hard-line stance against Iran.  His supporters have been mentally molded into an opinion pattern that AIPAC has invested in for years. The option of negotiation and peaceful resolution of the tensions between the US and Iran is never discussed.  Sanctions, threats, and attacks are in the Trump diplomatic tool-box.

Iraq’s Parliament responded to the Trump ordered assassination by passing an order for all US troops to leave the country. Secretary of State Pompeo has a meeting in June slated to discuss the withdrawal from Iraq.  Earlier this month, Trump claimed that Iran was planning an unprovoked attack on US troops in Iraq, and he threatened Iran would pay a heavy price if they did so.

While Iran was ruled by the US ‘puppet’, the Shah of Iran, there was no Sunni-Shia divide; however, once the 1979 Islamic revolution occurred in Iran, the US State Department, and the CIA, began fueling sectarian hatred between the Sunni and Shia in the Middle East.  Before 1979, Iran had been under the US sphere of influence, but once they lost Iran the US targeted them with a sophisticated propaganda program, which aimed at replacing Iran as the enemy of the Arabs, and not Israel. This propaganda campaign was so successful, that today we see the ‘Arab Gulf’ monarchies cooperating with ‘Israel’ on the economy, security, and political issues.

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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.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

The US under both right wings of its war party is an unprecedented bully on the world stage.

It’s ruling regimes represent an unparalleled threat to everyone everywhere.

The long aggressive arm of its military operates in parts of the world where it doesn’t belong — notably the Middle East, Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa.

Wherever US forces show up time and again mass slaughter, vast destruction, and/or human misery follow.

Nations the US doesn’t control are on its target list for regime change by aggression, war by other means, or old-fashioned coups — notably China, Russia and Iran.

The former two are unlikely to be attacked militarily because of their formidable retaliatory power, though it’s possible by accident or design.

The threat of nuclear war exists that’s able to kill us all if launched, a self-destructive act of madness if US dark forces go this far.

Do Trump regime hardliners consider Iran an easier target to attack militarily? Do they foolishly believe they can easily prevail in a war of aggression?

Pentagon commanders know otherwise. They understand war and risks of waging them, especially against nations with powerful militaries like Iran.

They know the US hasn’t won a war since WW II ended. While Iran can’t match US military power, it can and no doubt will retaliate strongly if aggressively attacked.

Though not nuclear armed and dangerous like the US, the IRGC had over 40 years to prepare for aggression by an adversary like the US and Israel.

Its weapons are sophisticated enough to hit back hard against an aggressor. It can likely inflict major damage on US regional assets if attacked.

The US has been unable to control Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen after years of endless wars — Iran a more formidable adversary than any of the above nations if aggressively attacked.

Going this far would be madness. In response to Trump’s hostile saber rattling, Iran’s IRGC commander General Hossein Salami said the following:

“I have ordered our naval forces to destroy any American naval force in the Persian Gulf that threatens the security of Iran’s military or non-military ships,”

“We (warn) the Americans that we are fully determined and serious in defending our national security, maritime borders, maritime interests, maritime security and security of our forces at sea and any (wrong) move (by to Trump regime) will meet our decisive, effective and prompt response.”

In response to Trump’s ordered assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani, the Pentagon saw the IRGC’s retaliatory capability firsthand.

On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif slammed Trump’s saber rattling threats, tweeting:

“US military is hit by over 5000#Covid-19 infections. @realdonaldtrump should attend to their needs, not engage in threats cheered on by Saddam’s terrorists” (likely referring to anti-Iranian MKO elements).

“Also, US forces have no business 7,000 miles away from home, provoking our sailors off our OWN Persian Gulf shores.”

In July 2018, Iran’s Tasnim News cited documents released by the Trump regime’s justice department that showed “close ties between Donald Trump’s inner circle and Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK), an anti-Iran terrorist group which was taken off the US’ terrorist organization list in 2009,” adding:

US establishment media reported that then-Trump regime national security advisor John Bolton and DJT’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani “met at least five times with the MKO terrorists” in 2018.

“The NCRI is the political wing of the MKO, one of the oldest and bloodiest terror groups in the modern world.”

In 1986, its elements fled Iran for Iraq and sided with Saddam Hussein against the Islamic Republic during war throughout most of the decade.

They’ve been responsible for killing thousands of Iranians, “including by bombings in public places and targeted killings,” Tasnim News reported.

While the threat posed by the US to Iran can’t be underestimated, continued Trump regime war by other means is more likely than hot war.

At the same time, what’s unthinkable is possible because of US rage to replace all sovereign independent ruling authorities with pro-Western puppet rule it controls.

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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 OneWorld

The media’s incredibly irresponsible, “shock and awe” reporting on the coronavirus has created a monumental stampede of fear and panic which is a million times more damaging than the virus itself.

Here are two facts that says it all:

Fact #1. Deaths in the U.S. from influenza from 1950 to 2017 ranged from 13.5 to 53.7 per 100,000 (source statista.com).

Fact #2. Deaths in the U.S. (as of this writing) from the coronavirus is 14.9 per 100,000 (source worldmeters.info). Bear in mind that this number includes “probable” deaths as well as confirmed deaths from the coronavirus.

So to sum this up, the per capita deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus is lower than the per capita deaths from the flu in almost every year from 1950 to 2017. The highest number of deaths from the flu per capita was in 1960. Deaths that year was 53.7 per 100,000, well over three times as high as the coronavirus. These are the facts, not crazy media hype. Please check them out for yourself. Incidentally, the per capita death rate from what the hysterical media loves to call a, “global pandemic” is only 2.4 per 100,000. (See this)

The White House Coronavirus Task Force’s newest model predicts that coronavirus deaths could reach 60,000. It currently stands at 49,000. Even if that [estimate] number [which is manipulated] was to double to 98,000 it would still be much lower than all the per capita flu deaths from 1950 to 1998.

So in light of these facts, why is the media on what appears to be a crusade to spread fear and panic throughout the land? Their non-stop, 24/7 hysterical reporting has produced a tsunami of fear and panic creating a domino effect, – an avalanche of panic that has shut down hundreds of thousands of businesses, severely damaged our economy, closed our schools, closed our places of worship, and put 22 million Americans out of work. I’m not saying that the media is trying to destroy the country, but they certainly are behaving like that is their intention.

The fear mongers say that, “social distancing” (translation, – shutting down the country) is the way to fight the virus. We’ve never shut down our country in the past to fight a virus, even though the deaths rates were far higher that the coronavirus rate is now. We’ve always taken care of the sick, but continued to work. We’ve kept our country alive and vibrant. Viruses, illness, and death are a part of life, but life must go on.

There are other countries that are not shutting down their economies as a way to fight the coronavirus, for example Sweden. They have not closed their economy and they are fairing just as well or better than many of their European counterparts that have put severe restrictions on their people and their economies.

If we used, “social distancing” (shutting down the country) whenever a virus came around in the past, our country as we know it would not exist. We would have been reduced to the level of a very poor third world country long ago, and that will certainly happen if we shut down our country to fight every new virus that shows up in the future (as the fear pundits are already predicting).

Yes, the fear mongers are already saying that the coronavirus will make a return this winter. If it does are we going to respond the same way, – “shelter in place”, hide under the bed, and close down the country? If we continue to do this our country will surely be doomed.

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Leslie Taha is a freelance writer, author, artist, and former guest columnist for the Tacoma Tribune. [email protected]

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced plans on Friday, April 17, for a farm relief program. Funded largely through the CARES Act, the $19 billion package will be used to funnel funds to corporate farms while providing little assistance for the vast majority of small or working farmers.

Like other government programs to help farmers, most of this money will end up in the hands of agribusiness. The majority of farmland is owned by farms grossing over $500,000 in sales, a figure that demonstrates the demise of the American family farm. In total, $16 billion will be handed directly to farmers, of which $9.6 billion goes to the livestock industry. This funding will be given largely as reimbursements for “losses” and will not be contingent upon providing food to those in need.

The remaining $3 billion will be used to purchase $100 million each of produce, meat and dairy that will be distributed to food banks, nonprofits and community and faith organizations every month. This is a paltry sum, amounting to just 27 cents a day for every food insecure person, a figure that will only decline as America’s now 22 million unemployed seek assistance.

It will also provide funds to distribute 1,000,000 meals a week to children in “a limited number of rural schools.” How this would actually be done given the wide dispersion of such students, many of whom rode buses for an hour or more to reach their schools, is unclear.

This bailout is intended to offset financial losses from the collapse of distribution systems during the pandemic. While grocery stores are having difficulty keeping their shelves stocked, much of the food in the pipeline is packaged in bulk quantities for institutional buyers such as restaurants and schools.

The closure of restaurants, schools and other institutional buyers has resulted in farmers destroying millions of pounds of food as their distribution chains are disrupted. This is not because there is no demand, but because transitioning to retail packaging is too costly. It is cheaper to destroy food than to repackage it and send it elsewhere.

This mass destruction of crops and dairy products comes at a time when millions of Americans have lost their jobs and are now turning to food banks to feed their families. Some food banks are reporting an increase in demand as high as 300 percent. Lines of cars in the thousands have been reported queuing up at food banks across the country.

But even if all the available food was sent to food banks, they lack the necessary resources and equipment to handle such an expansion in supply. A study of food banks in San Diego County, California, found that in 2015 less than half of food banks had enough refrigerator space and only 54 percent had enough freezer space to service people in need. If food banks around the country did not have enough storage space before the pandemic, there is no reason to believe that they are prepared to handle a huge rise in demand or supply.

Feeding America, one of the largest organizations representing food banks, estimates that an additional $1.4 billion is needed to cover the increasing operating costs of food banks, an insignificant amount compared to the $2 trillion granted to bail out the banks and corporations.

Whether or not food banks and charities can handle a massive influx is not issue for the capitalist class and the state that protects it. They do not care whether people receive enough food, as long as the agricultural industry remains profitable and the pretense of aid is maintained.

There is not even mention in the legislation of providing agricultural and food processing workers with aid. Without proper protective equipment, these workers are at great risk, and migrant workers in particular are threatened with destitution without income support.

Farm laborers earn between $15,000 and $24,499 a year, according to official figures, with a quarter living below the poverty line. Already working and living in horrid conditions, these workers face privation during a global health crisis. Suffering similarly horrendous conditions, meat packing workers are kept on the job while the virus is allowed to tear through their plants. It has already taken several lives and infect ed hundreds of workers. These workers need aid far more than the capitalists who exploit them.

The ruling class has made it clear with this relief program that it only cares about protecting profits at the expense of workers. Kenneth Sullivan, CEO of the meatpacker Smithfield Foods, said, “We have to operate these processing plants even when we have COVID. If we don’t, we sadly won’t have food.”

This is a falsehood. Tens of millions of pounds of food are being destroyed while the USDA estimates that 2.4 billion pounds of meat sits in cold storage—enough to cease all meat packaging for several weeks until protective measures are put in place.

An estimated 3.7 million gallons of milk are dumped every day, enough to provide all 37 million food insecure people with two quarts a week. There is plenty of food to last while measures are taken to protect workers, both citizen and immigrant. The claim that workers must die to keep production flowing is a nefarious lie.

What the working class needs is not a haphazard dumping of goods into food banks and charities, but an adequate income so that all working people can afford to buy food, and an adequate supply so that the food is available to those who want it.

This should be combined with a coordinated effort to reorganize food supply chains to meet social needs. The vast resources of the state and private industry must be placed under the control of the working class, with a coordinated and scientific plan for the safe harvesting and distribution of agricultural goods.

The retooling of currently unused supply chains is a necessary and far from impossible task. Restaurants, schools and hotels must have their cold storage resources reconverted into temporary distribution centers for those in need. One restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland, called La Cuchara, has already repurposed its supply chain to create a makeshift grocery store. The widespread capacity for converting existing resources is apparent.

But such changes must be made to feed the working class, not to benefit the capitalists who would sacrifice millions of workers to the virus to keep their profits flowing.

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In the second half of the week the military situation in Syria’s western Aleppo escalated.

On April 22, Turkish forces shelled positions of the Syrian Army in western Aleppo. Pro-Turkish sources claimed that this shelling was a response to Syrian Army strikes on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-linked groups near the villages of Kafr Amma, al-Qasr, Kafr Taal and Kafr Nouran. Pro-government sources described these strikes however as a defensive measure to counter regular ceasefire violations by Turkish-backed militants.

On April 23, the Syrian Army reinforced its positions east of Atraib by deploying additional troops and equipment there. If Turkish forces and Idlib militants continue attacks on Syrian Army positions in western Aleppo, open military hostilities could resume in the area.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham executed a 19-yo Syrian refugee deported from Turkey to Greater Idlib. Mohamad Aqib Hamam Tanu was killed on April 20 after militants found that SMS messages in his phone contained criticism of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Mohamad al-Julani.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains the most powerful group in Greater Idlib and controls most of the militant-held area in the region, including Idlib city, the border with Turkey and key positions on the contact line with the Syrian Army. The Turkish leadership in fact provides direct support to the terrorist group by turning a blind eye to its crimes and protecting it from the Syrian Army.

More details appeared about the recent Israeli strike on Syria. According to fresh data, the Israeli strikes targeted a command center of Hezbollah near the town of al-Sukhnah, a training camp of the Iranian-backed Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade in the al-Tulilah reserve near Palmyra, and a base of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps within the Palmyra Air Base. Despite this, the only confirmed casualties resulting from the strike were 3 Syrian service members.

Pro-government locals intercepted another US military convoy in the province of al-Hasakah. On April 22, locals stopped the US convoy near the town of Farfarah, stoned it and forced US troops to retreat. The incident happened near a Syrian Army checkpoint.

The Asayish security unit of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces commented on the recent clashes with the pro-government National Defense Forces (NDF) in al-Qamishly city. The Kurdish force accused pro-government fighters of destabilizing the situation and threatened them with military action. In their turn, pro-NDF sources claim that the tensions in the city result from the violent behavior of Asayish personnel, who are putting pressure on and discriminating against Arab locals on ethnic grounds.

On April 22, US President Donald Trump said that he has given orders to attack and destroy any fast attack craft of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy that “harass” US warships. Encounters between the IRGC Navy and US warships erupt in the Persian Gulf on a regular basis. All these confrontations have a similar pattern: the US leadership sends warships, including aircraft carriers, to the Persian Gulf describing this as a show of force and a ‘strong message’ to Iran. IRGC fast attack craft deploy to track and monitor the US warships, as well as to prevent any attempts to enter Iranian waters. In response, the US accuses Iran of aggressive actions and provocations.

The most recent incident of this kind happened on April 15 when 11 IRGC Navy fast boats tracked 6 US warships: the USS Lewis B. Puller, USS Paul Hamilton, USS Firebolt, USS Sirocco, USCGC Wrangell and USCGC Maui.

Any US Navy attempts to attack IRGC Navy fast attack craft operating in Iranian or international waters in the Persian Gulf would immediately lead to a new round of military escalation in the region. Just recently, the Iranian military deployed additional coastal defense missile systems near the Straight of Hormuz.

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Despite the unprecedented damage global panic over coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has caused to nations around the world, so-called “pro-democracy” protesters have vowed to immediately resume street mobs as soon as emergency measures are lifted in Thailand.

The move will almost certainly contribute to socioeconomic instability and only compound the plight faced by average Thais whom these “student protesters” claim they represent.

The protesters, while claiming to fight for “democracy,” are actually supporters of corrupt nepotist billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, his now disbanded  “Future Forward Party,” and his sponsors including fugitive billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, his “Pheu Thai Party” (PTP) and a host of foreign interests including the US and British governments.

US and British support for these protesters and the political parties they back stems from their collective opposition to the current Thai government’s growing ties with nations like China and Russia who have helped to all but displace Western primacy over Asia Pacific.

The Nation in their article, “Students expected to continue democracy fight once virus situation abates,” claimed:

Students are expected to resume intense political activities after the Covid-19 situation normalises and the government eases its lockdown restrictions next month.

Before the spread of Covid-19, students in universities across the country and some high schools in Bangkok had organised flash mobs in February and March to express their demand for democracy, rewriting the Constitution and ending the current military-backed coalition government. 

Noteworthy is the students’ supposed demand for “democracy.”

The current government is in fact a result of democratic elections carried out in 2019, the ruling party Palang Pracharath having gained several million more votes that Thanathorn’s “Future Forward Party” and building a coalition government larger than that proposed by Pheu Thai of which Future Forward is merely a subsidiary.

Ironically, those currently undermining democracy now are the student protesters themselves and their sponsors, who collectively refuse to respect the results of the 2019 general elections, seeking to create social instability in a bid to coerce the majority into making concessions to them they failed to earn at the ballot box.

At a time when others are working to help the nation recover from the global Covid-19 panic, including helping medical workers, innovating, organizing charity for those in need, and those working to put the nation back on its feet economically, these “student protesters” seem only able to offer the promise of more disruptions and the predictable socioeconomic damage they will cause, in pursuit of a transparently self-serving bid for political power.

The same article in the Nation would also point out the to current activities pursued by these “student protesters” which included sitting at home at their computers creating Twitter hashtags complaining about the government’s performance during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The protesters, sponsored by foreign governments and in particularly the US and UK, and their plans to leverage the socioeconomic damage caused by Covid-19 to catch the government off balance at the end of emergency measures, may point to a much larger global strategy pursued by Washington and London to likewise target off-balanced governments around the world.

As nations around the globe face the health and economic threats Covid-19 poses, they should also be fully aware of and prepared for the geopolitical threat those seeking to take advantage of Covid-19 fallout to target their recovery efforts as US and British-backed protesters in Thailand appear poised to do.

For Thais themselves, they are once again reminded as to why they voted for the current government in power in Thailand in the first place, and not for Future Forward and its dishonest army of supporters, an army of supporters who seems only capable of condemning others and complicating the nation’s progress into the future rather than aiding it in any practical or pragmatic way.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. 

Featured image is from NEO

In the summer of 2020, the U.S. intends to open its consulate in Greenland, as well as allocate $12.1 million to strengthen its presence on this island. According to the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Carla Sands, the North American country will reopen a consulate in the capital city of Nuuk so it can “serve as our primary platform for increasing our daily interaction with the people of Greenland,” which is a territory of Denmark.

According to the State Department, the $12.1 million tranche is intended for financial aid to Greenland and is supposedly not related to the desire previously expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump to buy the territory. As stated in a Greenland Government (Naalakkersuisut) press release,

“the U.S. is focusing on sectors in Greenland that will benefit the economic development of Greenland, including the mineral industry, tourism and education.”

At the same time, the State Department said

“that the United States recognizes that Russia has legitimate Arctic interests. It’s an Arctic Council member. It’s cooperated with the United States and other Arctic states in a number of areas, including oil spill response, search and rescue, pollution issues. That work is continuing; it’s ongoing; it’s welcome. We have no concerns about it or no objections to it, and we want it to continue. But we also have concerns about Russia’s military build-up in the Arctic.”

The State Department spokesman also said that the United States does “not accept Beijing’s claims to be a near-Artic state” and that “its soft power tools generally have a sharp edge.”

Although the U.S. says it is concerned by Russia’s supposed military build-up in the Arctic, it is likely more concerned by China, a country 1,500 kilometers away from the Arctic but considers itself a “near Arctic” state. Washington cannot pass off Russia’s interests and legitimacy in the Arctic and is thus trying to a create a “us verse them” situation by highlighting to Moscow that China is not an Arctic state. Although Russia is a militarily powerful state, China is the true economic rival of the U.S., and this is of a greater immediate concern for Washington as there is little chance in the short and medium term of a war between Russia and the U.S. Although relations are hostile, they are not strong enough to eventuate in a military conflict.

However, as the U.S. attempts to use Greenland to counter China and Russian interests in the Arctic, it has not considered Denmark at all, with many political parties across the political spectrum denouncing Washington’s moves.

“The U.S. is clearly working to undermine the Kingdom of Denmark,” said Rasmus Jarlov, a centre-right MP and former minister. “In the end, they might not be present in Greenland at all if they come with this kind of agenda. It is totally unacceptable.”

Karsten Honge, a leftwing MP, accused the U.S. of trying to drive a wedge between Greenland and Denmark and urged Danish premier Mette Frederiksen to “draw a line in the ice cap.”

Since 2008, Greenland has enjoyed strong autonomy, all powers were transferred to Nuuk except foreign and financial policy, and security. The largest island on the planet has enormous geostrategic appeal, which the Trump Administration has desperately wanted to take advantage of. Washington is well aware of the great disadvantage it has in this geostrategic battle against Moscow. Russia not only controls much more Arctic territory than the U.S., it is also much better prepared to exploit and control the Arctic. Paul Zukunf, commander-in-chief of the US Coast Guard between 2014 and 2018, said in 2017 that it will take the U.S. “a generation” to reach Russia’s military capabilities in the Arctic.

The U.S., Russia and China are competing over the Arctic because as the icecaps melt, a new maritime route that is emerging will allow ships to pass through, considerably reducing journey times between Europe, North America and East Asia, propelling international trade. In addition, a 2008 study by the U.S. Geology Service indicated that the Arctic potentially has 22% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves, in addition to precious metals and minerals like gold, copper, bauxite, zinc and diamonds.

However, a U.S. control of Greenland will mean a considerable advantage against Russia to gain access to these precious resources and control maritime laneways. Greenland itself has large reserves of gas, oil and fresh water. It is for this reason that Trump believed the purchase of Greenland is a great real estate deal. But the battle goes beyond Greenland, and focuses on the Arctic.

Eight nations are within the Arctic Circle – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S., and all of them created in 1996 the Arctic Council, a forum in charge of promoting cooperation and coordination. China is however outside of this circle but will still force its way to try and influence the region. Although the U.S. is watchful and suspicious of Russia, a part of it is hoping that Moscow and Washington can coordinate against Chinese influence, while at the same time dominate the region for itself. It is however unlikely that Copenhagen will allow the U.S. to control and/or influence Greenland, despite its attempts, thus severely weakening American hegemony in the Arctic.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Dr. Dan Erickson of Accelerated Health Care talks about the impact of the coronavirus on Kern County.

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The ongoing economic collapse combined with a public health crisis is unprecedented in modern memory.

The human toll from both mounts daily worldwide — a second 9/11 in new form that’s likely to be far more devastating for ordinary people in the West and elsewhere than in 2001 or during the Great Depression.

During the 1930s in America, an alphabet soup of constructive federal programs aided ordinary people in need, notably by jobs creation — positive actions, though not enough to end hard times for lack of greater spending needed that began in the run-up to and during WW II.

The 9/11 state-sponsored event launched endless wars on humanity at home and abroad.

The US attacked one country after another threatening no one, invented enemies, not real ones.

Police state laws were enacted, human and civil rights suffering a major body blow.

The standard of living in the US and West fell from the ravages of neoliberal harshness.

What Obama called “shared sacrifice” was all about ordinary people sacrificing so privileged ones could share at their expense — the earlier new normal entering its likely more devastating phase now.

COVID-19 combined with economic collapse continue war on humanity where 9/11 left off.

Wall Street banks and other politically well-connected companies were handed trillions of dollars in free money.

Ordinary people are getting short-term peanuts, for many not enough to survive without food aid, medical help, and suspension of rent or mortgage payment obligations.

The public health crisis will pass in time, the human economic toll for countless millions in the US and West to continue longterm.

It’ll likely include greater widespread poverty, unemployment, underemployment, human deprivation, and totalitarian rule, the latter enforced by police state harshness — an unacceptable new normal arriving in stages.

Economic collapse with longterm adverse consequences for the majority in the West is most worrisome. More on this below.

While the highly contagious novel coronavirus is influenza in new form, much about it remains to be learned, including effective treatments that aren’t available so far.

Rushing vaccine development and promoting mass vaccination will do far more harm than good.

All vaccines have toxic ingredients that are harmful to human health. No successful coronavirus vaccine was ever developed.

Whatever emerges ahead for COVID-19 will most likely be ineffective because it’s “unlike any other virus known to mankind and it exhibits a wide range of anomalous characteristics compared to other viruses,” Thailand Medical News (TMN) reported, adding:

Vaccines won’t work because “(i)t  will not be one drug that can treat the COVID-19 disease but a combination of many.”

Unlike other viruses, “every (novel coronavirus) change on its genome as it passes from host to host” results in numerous mutations, treatment needing to address their individual characteristics.

Infected asymptomatic individuals and others who recovered from infection (developing positive antibodies) remain vulnerable to re-infection.

There’s risk of other diseases resulting from infection, including what one genomic expert calls “strange chronic conditions (and) accelerated cancers.”

According to TMN, COVID-19’s “ability to mutate has been vastly underestimated,” new mutations discovered not previously seen, some more serious than others.

Epidemiologist/hepatologist Dr Li Lanjuan discovered new mutations in patients infected with the virus.

Treatment for one may be inappropriate for others. Dr. Li and her research team discovered over 30 COVID-19 mutations.

Are there many more still unknown? She warned that “the true diversity of the viral strains is still largely under-appreciated.”

Much more research is needed for greater knowledge of the virus in its various forms before effective treatments can be developed.

Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics Professor Xuegong Zhang explained that “(o)ur understanding of the virus remains quite shallow. There are so many unanswered questions.”

The good news is that the vast majority of infected individuals will recover.

The bad news is that the virus in its numerous mutating strains will likely be around for a long time.

The worst news is that loss of fundamental rights and economic collapse will likely cause far greater harm to countless millions of people in the US, West and elsewhere than the human toll from coronavirus strains.

Economic collapse is happening at breathtaking speed. US unemployment is far higher than reported numbers — 26 million more Americans out of work in the last month alone, millions more awaiting their unemployment applications to be processed.

Perhaps nearly half of working-age Americans are unemployed. According to Shadowstats economist John Williams, true US unemployment in April will likely be “more than double anything seen post-WW II,” the worst by far since the Great Depression.

The US economy is cratering. March retail sales fell over 10%. Industrial production is lowest since WW II ended.

Depending on how long economic crisis conditions last, things could exceed the worst of the Great Depression.

US Q II GDP “will see the deepest drop in modern history,” said Williams. Year-over-year new claims for unemployment insurance increased by “1859%.”

The surge in new filings continues. Williams estimates true US unemployment for April at “around 38%” of the workforce and heading higher.

Prior to the last month, the highest number of US weekly unemployment filings was 695,800 in 1982.

In the past four weeks, it would way exceed the 26 million number reported if all claims were processed as received.

Current hard times for most Americans are far more severe than the 2008-09 Great Recession.

Along with millions of new unemployment filings, there’s a record number of continuing claims — both numbers likely to keep rising until economic recovery begins.

Economic activity in Europe is affected like the US because of lockdowns.

The longer they continue, the greater the economic damage to most people and countless numbers of small and medium-sized business that may be unable to survive.

Is that planned in the US and perhaps Europe?

Will dominant companies use economic crisis conditions to consolidate to greater size and market power by buying vulnerable businesses at fire sale prices while letting others fade away and die, reducing competition overall?

Will the legacy of what’s ongoing be greater power in the hands of dominant enterprises, institutions, and ruling hardliners at the expense of public health, social justice, fundamental freedoms, and nations in the West more unsafe and unfit to live in than ever before what’s going on began?

Is what’s happening long ago planned by dark forces for aims they seek to achieve, or are events unfolding naturally?

The fullness of time will tell what I suspect is more the former than the latter, ordinary people harmed so privileged ones can benefit.

9/11 was made-in-the-US state-sponsored terrorism, planned well in advance.

The same is perhaps true about a second 9/11 in new form that’s ravaging economies, public health and welfare of ordinary people worldwide.

A more dismal new normal likely awaits in the US and West, exacerbating the disturbing trend since the neoliberal 90s.

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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.

It is clear that we are heading for severe economic storms. Several scenarios are possible, one more optimistic than the other, but the whole system can also go bust. In any case, hard choices will have to be made.

According to the Financial Times chief economist “this is much the biggest crisis the world has confronted since the second world war and the biggest economic disaster since the Depression of the 1930s”.

The collapse of prices in the oil market betrays that the global economy is having a very rough time and that recovery is not going to happen soon. Oil demand is a good indicator of economic activity.[1] Globally, that demand has fallen by as much as a third.

The IMF has just published a report on that economic storm. In the most optimistic case, this year the global economy will be 6.3 percent smaller than was expected before the coronacrisis. Next year, growth would be 2.4 percent higher than expected. In that scenario, an estimated $ 3,400 billion will be lost due to this crisis[2]. That equals the GDP of all countries in South America and one and a half times that of Africa. That seems an awful lot, and it is, but this amount is only one-seventh or less of what is estimated to be parked in tax havens.

In case lockdowns in parts of the world last longer than until June, and if new lockdowns happen in 2021, the IMF estimates the loss at double that (-8% or $ 6.800 billion loss). In the less favorable – but more realistic scenario – government spending in the rich countries will increase by 10 percentage points of GDP and debt will increase by 20 percentage points.[3]

And this is all on the assumption that the entire system will survive. In another report the IMF warns:

“This crisis presents a very serious threat to the stability of the global financial system. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, financial conditions tightened at unprecedented speed, exposing some ‘cracks’ in global financial markets”.

The world’s total debt today has reached a record $ 253,000 billion. That is 322 percent of the world GDP. That’s a ticking time bomb. But what is even more worrying today are the risky credit market segments. This means junk bonds,[4] leveraged loans[5] and bespoke private credit. After the crisis of 2008, central banks pumped a lot of money into the financial markets (so-called “quantitative easing” or QE). This, together with extremely low interest rates, has led to a huge financial bubble and to the creation of today’s many zombie companies and banks[6].

According to the IMF the value of these junk credits has risen to an incredible $ 9,000 billion. If this starts to collapse and tops the loss of the other thousands of billions of dollars as a result of COVID-19, the 2008 crisis will be a snap in comparison. Not without reason the IMF says: “This crisis is like no other”.

So there are three scenarios: an optimistic (which actually boils down to a major depression), a less optimistic and a real crash. In each of those scenarios, a tremendous amount of money will be needed to stem the crisis and recover.

The key question is where this money should come from. Who will pay the bill? There is not much choice. Either the working population or the outrageously large fortunes. The former will lead to enormous impoverishment, with all possible political consequences, and will plunge the economy even deeper into the crisis due to the further decline in purchasing power.Editor in chief of The Financial Times Rana Foroohar focuses on the matter:

“If we want capitalism and liberal democracy to survive COVID-19, we cannot afford to repeat the mistaken ‘socialize the losses, privatize the gains’ approach of a decade ago”.

In other words, COVID-19 has thoroughly shaken up the balance of powers. The financial and economic elites are on the defensive. An economic model where profits take precedence over people’s well-being and health is no longer sustainable. The time is ripe for fundamental social changes for the benefit of the people who keep our society afloat during the corona crisis. Introducing a corona tax will be essential, but only just a beginning. Much more than that will be necessary. In any case, these are exciting times. Get ready.

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Notes

[1] The stock markets are not a good indicator at the moment because they are artificially boosted by the gigantic amount of money that central banks are pumping into the capital markets. This is one of the reasons why bond market interest rates are very low, leading speculators to turn to the stock market.

[2] For next year, growth is estimated to be 2.4 percent higher than normally expected. Together this will result in a loss of 3.9 percent. Out of a total of $ 87,000 billion, this equates to $ 3,400 billion.

[3] For example, instead of a government deficit of 3 percent of GDP, this will amount to 13 percent. Instead of debt of 100 percent of GDP, this becomes debt of 120 percent of GNP.

[4] In order to get money (for investing), a company can issue shares, borrow money from the bank or appeal directly to savers by issuing a bond (debt certificate). The buyers of that bond are, in effect, lending money to that company and are receiving interest in return. A junk bond is a risky bond. Interest is high, but so is the risk that the loan cannot be repaid.

[5] Leveraged loans are loans to companies or individuals who already have a lot of debts themselves. In a manner of speaking, they take out new loans to pay off their old ones. The new ones are a leverage for the old ones and therefore go on increasing the debt burden.

[6] Zombie companies are companies with no reserve. At the slightest problem, they get into trouble and bankruptcy threatens.

While philanthropy is considered noble, some philanthropists appear to be doing far more harm than good with their donated millions. Bill Gates, who cofounded Microsoft in 1975, is perhaps one of the most dangerous philanthropists in modern history, having poured billions of dollars into global health initiatives that stand on shaky scientific and moral ground.

Gates’ answers to the problems of the world are consistently focused on building corporate profits through chemical agriculture and GMOs, or pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

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“I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” US President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday in a startling threat that could trigger a catastrophic war throughout the Middle East and beyond.

The threat to launch a war 7,000 miles from US shores in the midst of coronavirus pandemic, whose death toll in the US is rapidly approaching 50,000, comes on the heels of Trump’s Monday night tweet announcing a suspension of all immigration into the United States, a transparent attempt to scapegoat immigrants for the ravages of the pandemic and the layoffs of tens of millions of workers.

There is in both of these actions an expression of desperation and a flailing about in the face of a national and global crisis for which the US ruling class has no viable solution. It is a crude attempt to change the subject and divert public attention from the catastrophic consequences of the criminal indifference of the government and the ruling oligarchy it represents to the lives and well-being of the vast majority of the population.

Pentagon officials reported Wednesday that they had received no prior notification of Trump’s tweet, much less any orders for a change in the rules of engagement in the Persian Gulf.

Nonetheless, the brutal and fascistic rhetoric of Trump reflects a drive to war by US imperialism that has not been tempered, but rather intensified, by the global pandemic.

Even as Trump issued his tweet, US warships were sailing toward a confrontation with China in the South China Sea. At the same time, the Pentagon was announcing a shift in its deployment of long-range, nuclear capable B-52 bombers to make their presence less predictable to Beijing and Moscow and thereby ratchet up tensions.

In recent days, the US has sharply escalated its air strikes against the impoverished African nation of Somalia, even as the coronavirus pandemic threatens to ravage its population. Escalating war threats continue against Venezuela, and the Pentagon continues to provide support for the near-genocidal Saudi-led war against the people of Yemen.

Nowhere does this war drive find more naked expression than in the massive government bailout that is being organized for the US arms industry. With tens of millions of workers unemployed, many facing hunger, and a drive by both the Trump administration and state governors to force a premature return to work, billions upon billions of dollars are being lavished upon military contractors to sustain their guaranteed profits and the obscene fortunes generated for their major shareholders.

The Pentagon’s top weapons procurer, Undersecretary of Defense Ellen Lord, told a press conference Monday that some $3 billion has already been funneled to the arms makers in the form of early payments for existing contracts, in addition to billions more approved by Congress in the first CARES Act, which pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets. She indicated that much more will be doled out once Congress passes another stimulus package.

Asked by a reporter how much would be need to insure Washington’s Merchants of Death from any losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, she replied, “We’re talking billions and billions on that one.” Lord added that the first priority for this aid program was the “modernization process of the nuclear triad.”

These industries are hardly the picture of the deserving poor. The fact that massive financial resources that are desperately needed to save lives and rescue millions of workers from poverty are instead being poured into their pockets is a crime.

In a conference call this week to inform Lockheed Martin shareholders of first-quarter earnings, the company’s CEO, Marilyn Hewson, boasted that the corporation’s “portfolio is broad and expanding” and its “cash generation” strong. She said the company looked forward to “supporting our warfighters’ needs.”

Indeed, Lockheed Martin pulled in $2.3 billion in cash during the single quarter and expects to top $7.6 billion—coronavirus effects notwithstanding—over the year. It has a $144 billion backlog in orders, an all-time high.

Asked whether she had any qualms about political fallout over completing a $1 billion stock buyback in the midst of the crisis, she replied, “We’re very different, I think, than those who have experienced a very significant impact to their demands.” Hewson announced that the company had set aside a grand total of $10 million for COVID-19-related relief and assistance.

The “very different” character of these companies was also noted in a financial column published in the New York Times for the benefit of its well-heeled readers, titled “Opportunity in the Military-Industrial Complex.”

Pointing to the projected $741 billion Pentagon budget for the coming year, the Times counsels: “That combination of federal dollars and corporate heft may represent an opportunity for investors who don’t mind profiting from warfare. A modest bet on a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund that buys military contractors and aerospace companies may help buffer the deep recession brought on by the coronavirus.”

In short, one can reap substantial wealth from—and amid—mass death.

One of the principal concerns expressed by Undersecretary of Defense Lord as she spelled out plans for the multibillion-dollar bailout of the arms industry was the disruption of supply chains, particularly those originating in the maquiladora sweatshops just across the US border in Mexico. She also mentioned problems in India.

Thousands of Mexican workers have struck and protested against the deadly conditions inside these plants, conditions that are being prepared for workers throughout the planet as back-to-work orders are shoved through. At a plant in Ciudad Juárez owned by Michigan-based Lear Corporation, 16 workers have died from COIVD-19, while area hospitals are overflowing with victims of the virus.

The Pentagon and US Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau have intervened with the Mexican government, demanding that the maquiladoraworkers be forced back into the plants as “essential” to US imperialism’s war machine, just like their counterparts in the US. Lockheed relies on low-paid Mexican workers in Chihuahua, Mexico to produce electrical wiring for the US military’s Black Hawk and S-92 helicopters and F-16 fighter jets, while Boeing gets parts from a plant run by PCC Aerostructures in Monterrey. General Electric, Honeywell and other military contractors also profit off the labor of Mexican workers across the border.

Transmitting the dictates of the Pentagon in the language of contempt for human life that characterizes all of the policies of the Trump administration and the US ruling class, Ambassador Landau launched a Twitter campaign demanding that Mexican workers go back into the maquiladoras for the greater good of US imperialism. He enjoys the full collaboration of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, promoted by the pseudo-left as a “progressive” and even “socialist,” who has prepared the country’s National Guard for deployment against strikers.

Warning that workers’ jobs are tied to supply chains linking them to US arms manufacturers, Ambassador Landau said, “if we do not coordinate our response, these chains can evaporate.”

He added, “There are risks everywhere, but we don’t all stay at home for fear we are going to get in a car accident. The destruction of the economy is also a health threat.”

These are the same reactionary, antiscientific and misanthropic arguments being made in the US and internationally in an attempt to force workers back into the factories and workplaces with the certainty that many will fall sick and die.

Workers in the arms industry in the US, like their counterparts in Mexico, have also struck and protested over being forced to work as part of the “critical infrastructure” of US imperialism. Workers at the Bath Iron Works in Maine and the BAE Systems shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, both run by General Dynamics, have struck over the failure of the employers to provide them with protection against infection and death. Similarly, workers at the GE Aviation plant in Lynn, Massachusetts, which produces engines for US Marine helicopters, picketed the plant over the lack of protective measures or any guarantee for workers who fall victim to COVID-19.

This resistance of the working class across national boundaries is directly opposed to the rabid nationalism and reaction that characterizes the response of the ruling classes, not only in the US, but in Europe and internationally, to the intensification of the capitalist crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. To defend their profit interests, they will condemn millions to sickness and death, even as they prepare for world war and fascist dictatorship. The only alternative is for the international working class to put an end to the profit system and rebuild society on socialist foundations.

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Featured image: B-52s lined up at Andersen Air Force Base (Source: WSWS)

Please pay attention to the following statistical facts that contradict what is being propagandized on every media outlet, including television, radio and national, regional and local print media:

As just one example, it must be noted that only a small fraction of one percent of the population of China ever got COVID, despite well-propagandized media reports that successfully made most of us think that the entire population of China was at risk. 

The assortment of statistics concerning the risks of actually getting COVID as of mid-April are far less that the 1 out of a 100 (as heralded by the media), which if true might even make me concerned. Hint: The risks are far, far less. 

1] The reported number of COVID infections (not all lab-confirmed!) in the US (as of today) is 564,000 cases. The US has a population of 330,000,000 (330 million), which, when divided into the 564,000 calculates out (at 0.0017) which represents a miniscule percentage chance of getting infected with COVID  (170 infections out of every 100,000 Americans).

2] The risk of dying of COVID in the US (23,000 deaths so far, again an inflated number, mainly because of the many false positive PCR tests and the actual over-counting “guesswork” involved in filling out the death certificates) is even more unlikely at 0.007% (23,000 divided by 330,000,000 equals 0.0000696, or 7 Americans dying from COVID out of every 100,000 Americans.

3] Most of this miniscule risk of dying, it must be emphasized, is borne by the frail, the chronically ill, the elderly, the malnourished, the over-medicated, the over-vaccinated, and the terminally ill patients that are vegetating, often bed-ridden, in nursing homes. etc. 

4] An important, but rarely mentioned statistic is the number of presumed COVID-19 deaths per million population [9which does not even prove COVID-19 infection] of any given nation. In the US, that number, as of mid-April is 15 (per million), meaning that only 15 Americans out of every 1,000,000 have died of COVID. That means that 999,985 out of every million Americans HAVE NOT DIED from COVID.

5] To put the US presumed COVID deaths per million into perspective, the number in the Scandinavian countries is in the high teens or twenties per million. Italy’s COVID deaths per million population is 218; Spain’s is 201; Germany’s is 11; Canada’s is 3; Israel’s is 3; China’s is 2 Brazil’s is 1; etc, etc!!)

6] Another important number to understand is the number of all cause deaths that occur each day in any given country, a number that has been averaged out over recent decades. As an example, 2,500 Germans die every day and 7,755 Americans die each day. Naturally, the vast majority of deaths occur in the elderly population that are mostly pre-terminally ill for one reason or another, including what happens during every one of the viral influenza pandemics that occur every year.

7] America’s All-cause Daily Death Number is 7,755 (= 2,830,690 deaths per year); India’s Daily deaths amount to 26,670 deaths; Japan’s is 3,630; Italy’s is 1,737; France’s is 1,647; Russia’s is 1,444; Canada’s is 780; Brazil’s is 920; Australia’s is 447; Sweden’s is 250; Israel’s is 122; etc, etc.

8] And, it is important to realize that the locations of deaths in America occur 60% of the time in a hospital, 20% in nursing homes and the other 20% occur at locations outside of institutions, usually at home.

9] For Minnesota (population 5,600,000), the risk of contracting COVID (total Minnesota cases, as of mid-April = 1621 cases) is a miniscule 0.00289% (1641 divided by 5,600,000 = 0.0000289). The vast majority of the cases are in high density metropolitan areas that are in the southern half of the state. 

10] My Duluth home is in St Louis County (population = 199,000). As of April 18, there are 52 cases with 8 deaths, which yields an incidence of 0.000026 (or 0.026 % chance of getting a COVID infection; that is, 26 people are infected out of every 100,000 county residents) and a death rate of 0.000042 (or a 0.004% chance of dying from COVID = 4 people dying out of every 100,000 county residents).

11] The risk of contracting COVID for those of us that live in the northern half of Minnesota is even tinier. There were zero cases Up North until mid-March, following which the numbers only gently trickled up from zero by a handful of cases each day.

12] One must keep in mind that the CDC’s Bureau of Statistics is strongly encouraging (actually ordering?) all American physicians to list “COVID” as the cause of death on discharge and death certificates of every patient that was either test-positive or simply suspected of having COVID during the hospitalization, illness or death at home or on the street. This is true even if the patient was actually a terminally-ill, Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) elderly patient who would be expected to succumb to their pre-existent cardiac, pulmonary, renal, immunologic and/or hepatic diseases that were therefore also being “treated” with large numbers of potentially toxic prescription drugs.

13] Because of the significant incidence of faulty and unapproved PCR tests, it is important to be mindful that an unknown, but significant percentage of coronavirus test-positive cases are actually false positive cases and therefore patients with common colds (or even no symptoms at all) can easily be erroneously confirmed as COVID-19! There are also known to be a certain percentage of cases of benign coronavirus illnesses, including

• A] cases of the common cold that can be caused by a coronavirus;
• B] cases of MERS or SARS-type coronavirus infections; or
• C] asymptomatic carriers of one of the many other non-COVID-19 strains of benign coronaviruses.

14] In Iceland’s extensive screening system, there is a 50% false positive rate in totally asymptomatic Icelanders that never developed any flu-like illnesses. Were these folks just on the verge of getting a common cold, carriers of a benign, non-COVID-19 coronavirus or was the test flawed?

15] So, I say to those of us who are fortunate enough to live in non-metropolitan areas like northern Minnesota, take a deep breath, take a walk, take a drive, go to the grocery store, exhale when passing someone on your un-masked walk, consider even giving a big hug to a fellow, un-infected, hug-compliant friend that has quarantined him- or herself for the past couple of weeks – and stop worrying so much.

Here are several important articles:

1] Peter Koenig’s powerful 3,500 word Global Research article on the COVID “crisis”.

2] Spiro Skouras’ powerful 45 minute video on the COVID “crisis” and the New World Order; and

3] Scott Tips’ powerful 6650 word article on the COVID “crisis”.

The text above is an edited version of a longer article sent by email to Dr. Kohl’s Readers. We are much indebted to Dr. Kohls

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Dr Kohls is a retired rural family physician from Duluth, Minnesota who has written a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine since his retirement in 2008. His column, titled Duty to Warn, is re-published around the world. 

He practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping psychiatric patients who had become addicted to their cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His Duty to Warn columns often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “FrankenFoods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at: 

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and 

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

Featured image is from caglecartoons.com

There are 55 member-states within the African Union (AU) where 1.2 billion people reside.

Governments throughout the continent have taken initiatives to reduce the threat of COVID-19 cases which have been confirmed in a majority of countries.

The Republic of South Africa, the most industrialized state with a population of 60 million, has the second largest number of confirmed cases within the AU. President Cyril Ramaphosa during late March ordered a lockdown to prevent further community transmission of the virus.

On April 22, the Minister of Health, Dr. Zweli Mkhize, reported to the media that there are 3,635 confirmed cases inside the country resulting in 65 deaths. Mkhize said that 134,000 tests had been administered with nearly 6,900 carried out over a 24 hour period.

Ramaphosa has deployed 3,000 members of the South African National Defense Forces (SANDF) to assist medical and security personnel in the implementation of the lockdown. The government has established quarantine centers utilizing sports stadiums to contain people who may have violated the social distancing protocols placing themselves at risk for exposure and infection.

These measures have created additional problems both socially and economically.  Many people living in various areas of the country cannot shelter-in-place due to the necessities of earning a living. Others live in crowded households where there is not enough space to effectively minimize distancing.

Ramaphosa announced on April 22, that 73,000 SANDF troops were being placed on standby as he prepared to make announcements about the status of the COVID-19 prevention policies in effect now for four weeks. The escalation of military preparedness could be in response to the reports of attacks on delivery trucks carrying food and the unsuccessful attempt by some people to break into stores at a shopping mall in Mitchell Plains near Cape Town.

People who cannot work from their homes are suffering due to the lack of income. Desperation has increased for the marginalized sectors of the working class already subjected to an official unemployment rate of 29%.

South African Minister of Defense Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula commented on the decision to deploy and place on standby tens of thousands of troops, saying:

“If you look at the numbers and the rate at which the infection has gone up, you will realize that at some point we may actually need the kind of human deployment which has never been seen before.” (See this)

In light of the economic impact of the pandemic and the subsequent closing of the economy, Ramaphosa has announced the enactment of a stimulus package which could assist people in coping with the uncertainty. The package, worth $US26 billion, is designed to bolster businesses and provide income for three million workers.

Kenya Maintains Emergency Measures amid Pandemic

Kenya, the largest economy in East Africa, has been under a state of emergency for the last month. President Uhuru Kenyatta has addressed the country on a regular basis to encourage compliance with the restrictions on gatherings and movements. (See this)

The Kenyan Health Ministry is providing regular updates on the number of infections and deaths from the pandemic. The country which relies heavily on tourism, agricultural and light industrial production has experienced a rapid decline in its national income.

As of April 22, Kenya has confirmed over 300 cases among the 15,000 people tested. 14 people have died from COVID-19 and 83 reportedly have fully recovered.

South African soldiers enforce lockdown amid COVID-19 pandemic

Healthcare officials are concerned about the high rate of asymptomatic infections. A report in the Daily Nation noted this phenomenon in the case of one patient noting that:

“Mr. Kevin Aura, 26, is one of the patients considered to be asymptomatic, who now account for almost half of the confirmed cases in Kenya. As daily numbers of confirmed cases rise, the ministry says there is evidence of asymptomatic cases, sparking fear of unwitting community transmission.”

Nigeria Takes Action to Protect Africa’s Most Populous State

Lagos, the commercial capital of the West African state of Nigeria, whose national population is 206 million, has been under a lockdown since late March when President Muhammadu Buhari addressed the nation on the current impact of the virus on this oil-producing state.  Since the first case was detected on February 27, the federal government has halted all international and domestic passenger flights, shuttered educational institutions while expanding the lockdown to Abuja and Ogun states.

Buhari announced on March 29 that the country was working with the People’s Republic of China to develop measures for containing the spread of COVID-19 and the treatment of patients. The president emphasized the need to follow the guidelines developed by medical professionals in Nigeria.

In his speech on March 29 Buhari said:

“Indeed, the Director General of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) was one of ten global health leaders invited by the World Health Organization to visit China and understudy their response approach. I am personally very proud of Dr. Ihekweazu for doing this on behalf of all Nigerians. Since his return, the NCDC has been implementing numerous strategies and programs in Nigeria to ensure that the adverse impact of this virus on our country is minimized. We ask all Nigerians to support the work the Federal Ministry of Health and NCDC are doing, led by the Presidential Task Force.” (See this)

As of April 20, Nigeria’s health authorities had confirmed 86 new cases of COVID-19, the highest daily increase since the outbreak bringing the total number of cases to 627. Statistics compiled by the NCDC illustrates that the epidemic is spreading at a more rapid rate over the last month.

Nigeria has confirmed 21 fatalities while 170 people have been released from hospitals after making a full recovery.

Egypt Confronts Pandemic and the Economic Impact

As of April 22, Egypt had the highest number of COVID-19 cases on the African continent. The ministry of health reported 169 new coronavirus illnesses and 12 additional deaths.  These figures brought the number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Egypt to 3,659 while the number of deaths climbed to 276. The health ministry also announced that 935 people had recovered from the disease.

The pandemic has influenced the way in which the Egyptian parliament conducts its business. A session of the House of Representatives designed to enhance the authority of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi to take measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 was conducted with limits on the number of people present in the chambers.

Al-Ahram, the state-sponsored daily newspaper, reported on the amendments to several articles of the constitution, saying:

“The 17 new powers include the right to close schools and universities, shut down certain ministries, authorities and companies entirely or partially, postpone the payment of water, electricity and natural gas bills entirely or partially, and compel Egyptian expatriates returning home to undergo necessary health and quarantine measures.

The powers also give the president the authority to allocate cash and in-kind assistance to individuals and families, offer financial support for medical research, provide financial and in-kind support to damaged economic sectors, postpone the payment of certain taxes, and turn schools and youth centers into field hospitals.”

As Ramadan approaches, the way in which the Islamic season is celebrated has drastically changed in Egypt. Houses of worship have been ordered closed due to the pandemic and gathering of large numbers of people are prohibited.

AU Encourages Continental Effort to Eradicate Pandemic

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is the headquarters of the AU Commission which has been monitoring the spread of COVID-19 across the region. Figures published on the AU website indicate that 52 countries are reporting 21,096 infections and 1,055 deaths. Some 4,974 people have recovered from the disease.

Two AU member-states, the Union of Comoros and the Kingdom of Lesotho, have no confirmed cases. Lesotho has been under a lockdown for several weeks. The country is completely surrounded by South Africa, which has over 3,600 cases. Both Lesotho and the Union of Comoros are members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which is a regional affiliate of the AU.

Daily reports are being issued by the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC), an agency within the AU. According to its website:

“Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is a specialized technical institution of the African Union established to support public health initiatives of member states and strengthen the capacity of their public health institutions to detect, prevent, control and respond quickly and effectively to disease threats. Africa CDC supports African Union Member States in providing coordinated and integrated solutions to the inadequacies in their public health infrastructure, human resource capacity, disease surveillance, laboratory diagnostics, and preparedness and response to health emergencies and disasters.”

These objectives are closely linked to the social, political and economic capacity of AU member-states to address healthcare concerns on the continent. The AU Commission has acknowledged the economic impact of the pandemic on the various economies throughout the region.

A Voice of America (VOA) report noted in early April that:

“Researchers at the AU now believe the continent will slip into a recession this year due to the impact the coronavirus is currently having on trade, remittances, tourism and a huge fall in global oil prices.  An AU report seen by VOA estimates governments will lose around $270 billion from lost trade. The report, first published by Reuters, also says governments will need at least $130 billion in additional public spending to fight the virus.”

The advent of COVID-19 will surely bring into existence a deeper discussion on the future economic policies for AU member-states. Priorities related to centralized planning, the empowerment of working people, women, youth and farmers, the necessity for the training and retention of healthcare professionals, are all essential for the strengthening of Africa in order to confront the present crisis and those which will surface in the future.

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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

On April 21, clashes broke out in the city of Qamishly between the Kurdish Asayish, a security force of the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the pro-government National Defense Forces.

Local sources claim that NDF units tried to capture several Asayish positions in the city, but failed to do so. Both sides allegedly suffered no casualties. The situation de-escalated rapidly after the Russian Military Police deployed in a nearby area intervened .

On April 16, an Asayish checkpoint in the city was attacked with two hand grenades allegedly thrown by NDF members.

The current escalation is reportedly the result of disagreements between local NDF and Asayish commanders. Nonetheless, it should be noted that Qamishly city is infamous for regular clashes and tensions between the NDF and the SDF’s Asayish. The Kurdish group is trying to establish full control of the city and does not like the fact that the Damascus government has strong support there. In their turn NDF units seek to push back the creeping advance of the Kurdish force, which they see as a betrayer of Syrian national interests because of its open cooperation with foreign occupants – i.e.the United States.

The Russian Military Police and the Turkish Army held a limited joint patrol on the M4 highway in southern Idlib. From the Russian side the patrol involved two BTR-82A armoured personnel carriers and a Tiger armoured vehicle, while from the Turkish side four BMC Kirpi MRAPs took part. The movement of the Russian-Turkish convoy was monitored by unmanned aerial vehicles of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

This was the fifth limited Russian-Turkish patrol held in the framework of the Turkish-Russian Idlib agreement reached on March 5. The area of the patrols serves as a visual demonstration of the lack of progress made in the creation of the safe zone along the M4 highway in southern Idlib and in the removal of radical militants from it.

Later on the same day, the Syrian Army shelled positions of al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tharir al-Sham near the village of Tell Afis, located near the government-controlled town of Saraqib. Pro-government sources say that militants are concentrating forces there in preparation of an advance to capture Saraqib.

Late on April 20, the Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes on several supposedly Iranian targets in the province of Homs.  Syrian Air Defence systems responded to the attack by intercepting several missiles. However, according to open data, at least 3 Syrian service members died as a result of the incident. So, at least some of the Israeli strikes hit their targets.

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It is too early to say when or even whether the siege initiated by the coronavirus will end, but many Americans and Europeans are speculating over what kind of countries will emerge on the other side. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed illegal spying on American citizens, recently predicted that there would be a “slide into a less liberal and less free world,” that the surveillance systems being created to monitor the spread of the disease would become an “architecture of oppression.” To be sure he has a point in that governments have historically used crises to expand their powers. After the crisis is over, the emergency power granted to manage the activity of the people tends to be retained.

Much depends on the lessons learned from what is being done to contain the virus currently. If testing and “keep your distance” does not succeed in checking the spread of the disease and restoring a version of what once was normal life, harsher and more permanent measures might prevail. Alexander Dugin foresees a “military-medical” dictatorship developing.

The rapid spread of the virus has also spawned some unusual conspiracy theories. One claims that the virus was actually developed in the United States, stolen from a lab by Chinese scientists and then released in China before being allowed to propagate worldwide as part of a communist conspiracy to destroy the economy and political system in the U.S. Another has cast Bill Gates as the villain, claiming that he had a hand in the appearance of the virus as part of a nefarious plot to take over global health care. The megalomaniacal Gates certainly is to blame for using his wealth and status to promote a universal “health” surveillance system for the post-coronavirus world, but that he might have been behind the appearance of the virus itself is certainly a bit of a stretch. Still other theories connect the appearance of coronavirus to 5G telecommunications technology.

The reality of to what degree the national security state that already exists tightens its grip based on a continuing medical emergency pretty much depends on how the virus itself reacts to summer heat and the measures being taken to contain it. Meanwhile, there have been some decidedly extreme proposals about what the United States and other nations might consider doing to seize and maintain the high ground in the battle against a still proliferating, highly contagious and lethal disease.

The key to stopping the spread of the virus, most authorities would agree, is to test and monitor nearly all the public, to force them if needs be to maintain distance from individuals who are already infected. There have been several proposals for how to do that ranging from testing nearly everyone and issuing health ID cards based on the results, with those individuals considered contagious or especially vulnerable being subject to quarantine or some form of further isolation. One over-the-top plan would make the health status of individuals recorded and updated on a chip readable by government scanners that would be permanently embedded in everyone’s body.

The plan that appears to have the best possibly of being adopted is being promoted in a joint venture by Apple and Google that appears to have White House support. Bloomberg reports that

“Apple Inc. and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population.”

The monitoring would be done by central computers and once the principle is established that phones can be manipulated there are no technical or practical limits to what other tasks could be included. That means that the observation made by protagonist Winston Smith in George Orwell’s “1984” has finally been realized. Smith was doing the mandatory half hour of exercise daily in front of his television, but when he began to slack off a voice from the tv set admonished him. He then accepted that in theory the government was actually capable of surveilling everyone all the time and might in fact be doing so. Well George and Winston, we have finally arrived at 1984.

Even if coronavirus fades into obscurity, government might plausibly exploit the fear created by it to push hard that a surveillance mechanism be continued and even expanded to prevent its recurrence or the development of future pandemics. That is what the “science” tells one is the right thing to do, at least according to some scientists, but it ignores individual liberty of association, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. The U.S. and other governments have long demonstrated that when it comes to individual freedom versus the ability of the state to impose a statist uniformity, the rules makers will always win out. 9/11, for example, produced the Patriot and Military Commission Acts that have considerably abridged personal liberty in America, even though the threat of terrorism was overstated at the time and has considerably receded ever since. Yet, unfathomably, the Patriot Act has survived and keeps getting renewed by Congress.

Predictably perhaps, presidential son-in-law and jack of all trades Jared Kushner, fresh from his failure to bring peace to the Middle East, has been placed in charge of a White House task force that will determine how and when to develop a pandemic surveillance system which will also link those ill to hospital centers for mandatory screening and treatment. The argument being made is that tracking nearly everyone would enable the identification and quarantining of those who are sick in nearly real time, controlling the spread of future viruses that has up until now been impossible. That the information would be collected into a national data base appears to be part of the program and it would, of course, include information on the patient’s location and activities.

As social media is already being manipulated and controlled by the government working hand-in-hand with the oligarchs who own and operate the sites, the ability to further isolate members of the public so as to preempt the development of any genuine resistance to state policies might well be seen as highly desirable. It would be a gift to a developing police state to be able to know where everyone is at any given time and be able to intuit what they might be doing. Real troublemakers could be further identified and singled out for special attention.

And one should note that it all comes at a time of great vulnerability to both revolution and repression, when representative government is under siege in many countries, unable to control the narrative as it once did. Donald Trump in a tweet barrage last Friday called on his followers to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia because he disapproved of the policies on coronavirus and gun control being advanced by their respective governors, all Democrats. Calling for the overthrow of state governments is illegal, a call to insurrection, but Trump apparently believes that having survived one impeachment attempt he is now untouchable. If many Americans begin to take Trump’s exhortations literally, it could be a sign that the admittedly dystopian political equilibrium in the U.S. is about to spin out of control.

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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 kobini.com

What is happening in front of all our eyes at the moment is a huge scary dizziness. “Corona” is a geopolitical operation by the “global elite” and their “depopulation agenda” is real. Isolation imprisonment makes people sick and kills them. But most contemporaries are prevented from thinking and acting rationally by their sense of authority. This affects so-called “simple” people as well as intellectuals, doctors or politicians. There are hardly any real scientists left, only academics who are hiding. And the fellow citizens who have no possibility to obtain and acquire the necessary factual knowledge via alternative media are further manipulated via the mass media and kept in agonizing uncertainty. But if you try to take away the fear and panic of your fellow human beings and enlighten them, you will find that they are almost impossible to reach emotionally and intellectually. And this is because in this effort one naturally disagrees with the prevailing opinion of supposed authorities such as doctors and politicians. Many contemporaries seem to be impregnated by the sense of authority. They cannot or do not want to know anything about another opinion. But the human being is good, just irritated.

Roman Rolland’s Anti-war Novel “Clerambault”

The subject of Rolland’s book is not the First World War, although it overshadows it. His real subject is, as he says, “the sinking of the individual soul into the abyss of the mass soul”. This novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1915) was published exactly 100 years ago. It is worthwhile to read about that time and compare it with the present day. (1) In the introduction Rolland writes:

“Free souls, strong characters – that is what the world needs most today! (…) Every human being, if he is a true human being, must learn to stand alone within all, to think alone for all – if necessary, even against all! To think sincerely means to think for all, even if one thinks against all. Mankind needs those who offer it chess out of love and rebel against it when necessary! Not by falsifying your conscience and your thoughts for the sake of mankind do you serve mankind, but by defending its inviolability against social abuse of power; for they are organs of mankind. If you are unfaithful to yourselves, you are unfaithful to them.”(2)

In the second part of his novel Rolland describes the attempts of his Protagonist Agénor Clerambault, to talk to his fellow men in order to win them over to his anti-war ideas. The mechanisms of the partly unconscious resistance he described among his discussion partners are also experienced today by those who strive to win over their fellow human beings to rational thinking and action:

“Clerambault tried to speak to one or the other. Everywhere, however, he encountered the same mechanism of subterranean, semi-conscious resistance. They were all girded with the will not to understand, or in fact with a persistent counter-will. Their reason was as little affected by counter-arguments as a duck is by water. In general, people are equipped with a quite invaluable quality for the purpose of their comfort, for they can make themselves blind and deaf if they do not wish to see or hear something. And if, by some embarrassing coincidence, they have already noticed something that is annoying to them, they understand the art of forgetting it immediately. (…)

Others were eloquent speakers, who were not afraid of a Word Tournament and gladly took up the discussion in the hope of leading the stray sheep back to the flock. They did not discuss the opinion of Clerambault himself, but only whether it was up to date and appealed to his good spirit. ‘Certainly, certainly. In fact, you are right, in fact, I think quite like you, almost like you. Oh, I understand you, dear friend… But, dear friend, be careful, (…) One must not speak every truth, at least not immediately. Yours will be beautiful… in 50 years. One must not want to be hasty. One must wait until the time is ripe…’ (…) Wait? Wait for what? Until the appetites of the exploited or the stupidity of the exploited grow weary?”(3)

Authority obedience – No! 

“Authority” is the term for the possibility of a person, group or institution to exert influence on other persons and, if necessary, to enforce its own will against them, thus constituting a relationship of superiority and subordination. Authority is associated with claims to power, which are founded in different ways. In the Middle Ages it was the church that enforced these claims to power. Anyone who dared to deviate from its doctrine risked hell. Many religious and supposedly non-religious people still fear these consequences today.

The representatives of a state also enjoy a certain authority, a special reputation. They too want to exert influence on us citizens. And there would be nothing to prevent us from subordinating ourselves to them if the rulers were the best people, the most important, the most peaceful, the most decent and the most honest. But since this is not the case, never has been and never can be (Tolstoy), we should urgently refrain from considering rulers infallible and subordinate ourselves to them without criticism. We should have the courage to use our own intellect (Kant).

How to win our contemporaries for rational thinking and acting?

For a long time we have not lived in an open society in which every opinion is allowed to be expressed and has its place. Nowadays, dissenting opinions are completely prohibited and sanctioned. Even in families, we do not take the time to openly discuss with the children both their burning developmental issues and the family’s concerns. Often both spouses are working and exhausted in the evening.

This social pressure and lack of practice makes it almost impossible to win our fellow human beings – regardless of age – to rational thinking and acting. Nevertheless, we must never give it up. Never ever give up! The human being is good, just irritated. Our own honesty, openness, independence and transparency are prerequisites for our counterpart to start trusting us slowly and to dare, in very small steps, to enter the supposedly mined field. The other person must also have the secure feeling that he can learn something from me as a trustworthy, authentic person or as an expert with a certain standing (authority).

But that alone is not enough. The contemporary must also show a certain readiness to accept something from another, must possess a spiritual and mental openness. Why not even leave the well-trodden paths of the past – these familiar habits (“I can’t get out of my skin!”) – and check whether new and unfamiliar paths do not lead to truth and a life worth living.

Do not give up hope that the former people of poets and thinkers, as well as the other enslaved peoples, will wake up, find rational thought and action and be ready for civil disobedience. This time they will not give the emerging world fascism a chance.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) Reinbek near Hamburg (1988). Translated from French by Stefan Zweig. First published in 1920 by the Paris publisher Ollendorff. Original title “One against all” (1917)

(2) A.a.O., p. 12f.

(3) A.a.O., p.105f.

Featured image is from Getty

The Iranian and US geopolitical agendas are world’s apart.

Iran hasn’t attacked another country in centuries, threatens none now. Claims otherwise turn truth on its head.

The US, in contrast, is at war on humanity at home and abroad — by hot and other means.

Iran respects international law, the sovereign rights of other nations, and seeks cooperative relations worldwide.

The US seeks unchallenged global dominance, demands other nations bend to its will, and targets ruling authorities unwilling to sacrifice the sovereign rights of their countries to US interests with regime change.

Iran is the region’s leading peace and stability proponent, the US the world’s main belligerent – perpetually at war on invented enemies, abhorring what just societies cherish.

Last week, the US navy falsely accused Iranian vessels of harassing Pentagon warships — near Iran’s waters in the Persian Gulf where they don’t belong, their presence highly provocative.

A Pentagon statement claimed Iranian “vessels repeatedly crossed the bows and sterns of the US vessels at extremely close range and high speeds,” adding:

“The US crews issued multiple warnings via bridge-to-bridge radio, five short blasts from the ships’ horns and long range acoustic noise maker devices, but received no response.”

Provocative US actions occur repeatedly in the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, enforcing an illegal blockade of Venezuela, and waters elsewhere worldwide — where the US presence is unwanted and reviled.

Iran harasses no other countries. Yet the Pentagon falsely accused its military of “dangerous and provocative actions,” ignoring its own real ones.

Iran’s IRGC dismissed what it called a “Hollywood-style” account of Iranian vessels in their own waters while US warships encroach on them provocatively.

An IRGC statement refuted the Pentagon’s claim, denouncing what it called “unprofessional” maneuvers by the “terrorist US naval forces” in the Persian Gulf,” adding:

In order to protect its coastline and waters from “illegal, unprofessional, dangerous and adventurist” moves by the US, Iranian naval vessels patrol the Persian Gulf.

The IRGC accused the Pentagon of putting out “false and fake stories.”

When a fleet of 11 Iranian vessels encountered US warships, their commanders ignored the IRGC’s warning to cease “unprofessional and provocative moves,” adding:

“The illegitimate presence of the terrorist US regime is the root cause of evil and insecurity in the region, and the only way to strengthen sustainable security in this strategic region is for the Americans to withdraw from West Asia.”

“They should be assured that the Revolutionary Guard navy and the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran see the dangerous actions of foreigners in the region as a threat to national security and its red line, and any error in calculation on their part will receive a decisive response.”

On Wednesday, Trump belligerently tweeted:

“I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”

After ordering the murder of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in January, Trump falsely accused “Iran and/or its proxies (of) planning a sneak attack on US troops and/or assets in Iraq” in early April, adding:

“If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry slammed his hostile remark, saying it could lead to regional “instability and disaster,” calling for cessation of US “warmongering during coronavirus outbreaks.”

Trump is at it again. Along with falsely blaming China for COVID-19, encouraging lawsuits against the country and its leadership going nowhere, he escalated anti-Iran saber rattling, likely on Netanyahu’s urging.

DJT is a failed businessman, failed deal-maker, geopolitical know-nothing embarrassment to the office he holds.

Preemptive US aggression against Iran could explode the region in devastating conflict, Pentagon forces and Israel to pay a heavy price if things go this far.

Chickenhawk Trump knows nothing about war. Pentagon commanders know Iran would be a formidable adversary if attacked.

The US hasn’t won a war since WW II ended. It’s good at destroying things and making enemies, not winning over hearts and minds.

A Final Comment

On Wednesday, Press TV reported that Iran’s IRGC Aerospace Division “successfully launched and placed the country’s first military satellite into orbit,” adding:

Dubbed Nour (Light)-1, “(t)he satellite was placed into (an) orbit 425 kilometers above earth’s surface.”

IRGC General Hossein Salami called the successful launch a significant boost to Iran’s intelligence capabilities, adding:

“Today, we can observe the world from space, which means the expansion of the strategic data of the IRGC’s mighty defense power.”

The “IRGC is now a space force” — to Washington’s chagrin.

Iran can monitor US military movements from space for real time awareness of what it’s up to.

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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 Voice of People Today

Detroit still remains at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic as infection rates continue at unacceptable levels amid the rapidly declining economic situation.

Although the rate of people entering hospitals suffering from the virus and the number of deaths are declining as of late April, thousands of people are sick and will face additional challenges as the future of their places of employment, housing and healthcare access are not assured.

One of the most egregious aspects in the current situation was the announcement recently that the largest hospital in the region, Beaumont, was closing its campus in Wayne, a municipality in the western region of the county. This same hospital along with other healthcare facilities, had said a week earlier that it would reduce its workforce due to the lack of elective procedures and routine medical evaluations as a result of the COVID-19 emergency.

Healthcare workers employed at Beaumont have suffered hundreds of lay-offs during this period of restructuring. Spokespersons for the nurses have indicated that they were not kept abreast of the management decisions being made in regard to the closing and reduction in staff.

Beaumont corporate officials say that the closure of the Wayne facility is temporary in order to shift its operations to other services since the COVID-19 admissions are ebbing across the metropolitan area. Nonetheless, there are daily news reports showing images of crowded hospital wards where there is a lack of personnel to provide quality care to patients.

According to an article published by Michigan Radio based upon a press conference with Beaumont CEO, John Fox, who said of the closure of the Wayne campus that:

“’It had been converted to take COVID-19 patients only. Since it appears the pandemic is leveling off, all the patients and staff were sent to other hospitals. ‘So, we did not need the Wayne 200 beds for that. And we’re now having it being sanitized and we’ll be on the process of converting it back,’ Fox said during an online news conference. He said it made more sense to put staff and resources to fight the COVID-19 in the health system’s other seven hospitals in the metro Detroit area. Sanitizing the Wayne hospital will take days. Then, Beaumont will  apply to the state to get approval to alter its use.”

However, throughout the entire Beaumont Hospital system some 2,475 people are being laid-off while 450 positions will be eliminated. Fox says that the job categories being removed are not related to providing healthcare to patients.

Another major hospital is the Detroit Medical Center (DMC) and its Sinai-Grace facility on the northwest side has been the scene of protests. One nurse was terminated at the hospital because she posted a seven second video on Facebook about precautions being taken in treating COVID-19 patients. Nurses have reported that there is a lack of staff to address the enormous problems at the facility while personal protection equipment (PPE) is in short supply.

Detroit nurse files suit for dismissal from Sinai-Grace Hospital amid pandemic

The nurse who was fired, Kenisa Barkai, has filed a lawsuit against Sinai-Grace. The company says that she violated the social media policy. Sinai-Grace was the scene of a sit-in during March to protest the conditions prevailing at the facility. The workers were told to go back to work or leave the hospital. They decided to leave and go home rather than work under such circumstances.

Barkai is taking legal action in response to the termination. The local NBC affiliate, WDIV, wrote in a report on April 21, saying:

“The lawsuit cites Michigan’s Whistle Blowers Protection Act, which states an ‘employer shall not discharge, threaten, or otherwise discriminate against an employee regarding the employee’s compensation, terms, conditions, location, or privileges of employment because the employee, or a person acting on behalf of the employee, reports or is about to report, verbally or in writing, a violation or a suspected violation of a law or regulation or rule promulgated pursuant law of this state.’ Sinai-Grace has repeatedly been the focus of media reports during the COVID-19 outbreak.” (See this)

The Plight of Senior Citizens in the State of Michigan

Nursing homes in the metropolitan Detroit area, similar to other parts of the United States, have been a center for COVID-19 infections and deaths. The outbreak which captured the attention of the U.S. public and raised awareness about the seriousness of the pandemic was the tragedy surrounding the nursing home just outside of Seattle, Washington during February and early March. Other convalescing and assisted-living facilities have met similar fates. In New Jersey, 17 bodies of former residents were uncovered at one nursing home.

In Detroit and the state of Michigan, the names and locations of nursing homes where COVID-19 infections were in existence, was being withheld from the public. These facilities were the scene of many fatalities in the battle against the virus. The state-controlled Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs reports that there are 292 homes for the aged and 4,211 adult foster care homes in Michigan with total bed capacity of more than 57,000.

As of April 21, the State of Michigan Health Department declared that it would report on the locations where COVID-19 cases were present. Agencies working in the areas of senior care welcomed this policy shift. The data coming out of the nursing homes will provide a more accurate picture of the degree to which the virus has spread throughout the state and the U.S. as a whole.

The Michigan-based Bridge Magazine has been investigating the conditions inside the nursing homes in the state. In an article the publication reviews recent events including:

“A Genesee County nursing home where 17 resident deaths were reported on Saturday (April 18), with an additional 24 residents testing positive, seven of whom were hospitalized. Twenty-six employees tested positive. That followed reports that 21 residents had died of COVID-19 at two Wayne County nursing homes, with 46 other residents with confirmed cases of the coronavirus. On Friday (April 17), an official at Hillsdale Hospital in rural southern Michigan reported that a county nursing home had 42 cases of COVID-19 among staff and residents, accounting for seven nursing home deaths among 10 total coronavirus deaths in the county.”

Mass Unemployment and the Need for a Program of Resistance

Since the declarations of emergencies in various states and the issuance of guidelines from the White House Task Force in mid-March, 22.3 million workers in the U.S. have applied for unemployment benefits. This represents 14 % of the workforce being rendered idle over a period of six weeks.

Nonetheless, these figures are undoubtedly undercounts since many workers claim that they cannot even gain access to the websites and phone centers where the filing are taking place. Many say that the websites are down and that phone numbers listed to call are constantly busy or there is no answer. Oftentimes workers are disconnected while waiting to file for benefits.

In states like Michigan and Pennsylvania the escalation in jobless claims account for 20% of the workforce. The stimulus checks sent out to taxpayers with documents are by no means adequate to sustain workers through this long term crisis. There is no economic relief for undocumented workers many of whom toil in what is described as the “essential” job categories.

Unprecedented levels of unemployment will only compound the dire conditions of working families particularly among African Americans and other oppressed groups. The people of color communities in cities such as Detroit, New York City, Newark, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, etc. are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic. One by-product of unemployment is the loss of healthcare insurance. This will of course adversely impact the medical system even further prompting additional lay-offs and the reduction in services during a period where just the opposite is required.

In Detroit, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition has launched a campaign to request the intervention of Cuban medical personnel in the city to address the shortages of healthcare personnel along with bringing a socialist perspective to the pandemic. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicting the potential for a “second wave” COVID-19 infections this coming Fall and Winter seasons, the capacity of the existing hospital systems, municipal structures and social services to maintain any semblance of effectiveness could very well be compromised.

Therefore, the burgeoning discontent among people suffering from job losses, inadequate healthcare, the lack of water, education and housing, requires a programmatic approach which is designed to address the crisis from the perspective of the working class and oppressed. Corporate-backed Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit has already announced a bank-driven austerity budget for the next two fiscal years absent of any debate or discussion with community organizations and labor.

Demonstrations occurring in the hospital system and the service industry could easily spill over into other sectors of the population. Low-wage workers employed by Target and Amazon say they will engage in a “sick-out” on May 1, International Workers Day, to highlight the deteriorating conditions under which they work.

USA Today carried a story on the upcoming May Day national actions noting:

“More than 350 Amazon warehouse workers in 50 locations pledged to call out from their jobs starting Tuesday, according to Athena, a coalition of local and national organizations representing workers.

Target workers are planning a mass sickout May 1, which is International Workers Day, said Adam Ryan, a liaison with Target Workers Unite, an employee activist group.”

Workers in other industries need to learn from these efforts as the political pressure by the capitalist ruling class on the White House to encourage people to go back to work increases. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic has by no means run its course. Also millions of people are unemployed and are unable to resume normal economic activity.

As the crisis worsens an ideological struggle will intensify between forces on the Left against right-wing elements seeking to exploit the fear and uncertainty for the purposes of prompting a neo-fascist agenda. It will be important for progressive forces to take independent organizing initiatives to combat the further erosion of living standards inside the country.

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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

India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) took a page from Trump’s playbook by selectively embracing economic nationalism after it revised its foreign investment policy to mandate that companies from neighboring states receive government approval prior to investing within the country. Although not officially stated in the DPIIT’s notification on the matter, this new policy is being widely interpreted by Indian media as aimed against China, which the local Chinese Embassy also fears is the case.

They released a statement on Monday reminding their hosts that Chinese investment has driven development in the mobile phone, household electrical appliances, infrastructure, and automobile industries, which has been mutually beneficial. The Chinese Embassy then warned that “the additional barriers set by the Indian side for investors from specific countries violate the WTO’s principle of non-discrimination…(and) do not conform to the consensus of G20 leaders and trade ministers to realize a free, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable and stable trade and investment environment.”

The diplomats who published that message on their embassy’s website concluded by writing that “We hope India would revise relevant discriminatory practices, treat investments from different countries equally, and foster an open, fair and equitable business environment.” While that would be the best outcome for their bilateral relations, it doesn’t appear too likely since India seems intent to exploit the worldwide economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19 in order to advance what it regards as its own interests at China’s expense.

It would be inaccurate to assert that India is opposing globalization per se since it’s only restricting investment from neighboring countries, which is more akin to opposing regionalization than anything else and thus goes against the spirit of both BRICS and the SCO. The selective embrace of the US’ economic nationalism in a way that convincingly seems designed to stem the otherwise limitless potential of Chinese-Indian economic relations naturally makes observers suspicious of India’s motives.

The US surpassed China as India’s top trade partner earlier this year owing to the increase in its energy exports to the South Asian state, though that doesn’t in and of itself need to have any zero-sum significance since it’s entirely possible for the country to balance between its two leading trade partners without limiting one or the other’s investments within its borders. In fact, the argument can be put forth that it would be to India’s enduring benefit if it retained equally significant economic relations with both of them.

Nevertheless, the nationalist sentiment that’s espoused by the ruling BJP sometimes takes the form of China-bashing by its media surrogates, which was always worrying to begin with but attracted significant international attention in February after Trump’s first-ever presidential visit there where the two sides agreed to become “comprehensive global strategic partners“. Considering the US’ antagonism towards China, this raised concern among some observers that India would follow America’s lead in attempting to “contain” the People’s Republic.

It’s through this prism that the DPITT’s discriminatory regulations should be interpreted. The US has made no secret of its desire to reroute global supply chains away from China, and India has been proposed by some as a prime re-offshoring destination. India will obviously need to replace the Chinese investment that will predictably be lost as a result of the new restrictions, which could in turn attract American and other Western investors — including those which currently base their production in China — to fill the artificially created void.

In other words, India’s discriminatory investment regulations appear to be part of its “comprehensive global strategic partnership” with the US intended to benefit American investors at the expense of their Chinese counterparts, thus making this a zero-sum policy. It also has geostrategic implications as well considering the global context in which these hostile intentions are being expressed. It can only be hoped that India reconsiders the risks associated with this policy otherwise it might be destined to become the US’ “junior partner”.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

What if…? What if the number of Coronavirus cases is not accurate and is actually exaggerated by many times? What if the estimates are based on a flawed computer model? What if the developer of the model has so admitted? What if the death certificates are being modified to show more Coronavirus related deaths than actually exist? What if people who were already dying of serious conditions like heart disease or diabetes or COPD are now being counted as Coronavirus deaths because of the supposed presence of Coronavirus at the time of death? What if hospitals are assuming people have Coronavirus just because they exhibit one or more symptoms, like a cough or fever, even though no actual lab testing is performed (presumptive diagnosis)? 

What if the CDC is as wrong about this virus as they were about Swine flu in 1976, or since then the Bird flu, or HIV or SARS or MERS? What if the Swine Flu Vaccine injured more people than the Swine Flu itself and the program had to be stopped? What if you found out that Fauci had very large financial ties to the Pharma agenda to provide vaccines, and that is why he is not mentioning any possible way to treat the flu except vaccines? What if Fauci has close financial connections to Bill (the computer and vaccine salesman) Gates? What if natural immunity from a virus entering your system through the throat is far superior to a synthetic chemical cocktail called a vaccine shot into your body with a needle? What if the alleged COVID-19 deaths were mostly people who were already dying? What if your best defense against all viruses was a healthy immune system? What if inexpensive things like vitamins A, C and D3 could boost your immune system? What if Zinc and Selenium were important to immune health? What if the people who play doctors on TV never mention the importance of vitamins and minerals? 

What if “social distancing” really does not stop you from getting the virus, but only slows down the transfer of the virus through the population? What if slowing down the transfer of the virus, is just another way of prolonging the life of the virus and the ‘crisis’ and the ‘panic’ and the control of our lives?  What if wearing masks does not really stop the virus? What if the virus can enter through your eyes and ears, which are connected to your mouth and throat? What if the virus is simply a seasonal flu, just like every other year, and the crisis is a drastic exaggeration, to intentionally create a panic? What if there really is nothing to fear but fear itself?

What if the FED and the Treasury are bailing out major corporations and banks to the tune of trillions of taxpayer backed fiat dollars, but it’s being called a Corona Virus Remediation package? What if you get a $1,200 check, but then your share of the total bailout debt is 10 or 100 times higher? What if the FED is destroying the value and purchasing power of your dollars and savings and retirement plans, by printing trillions of more money that only benefit the rich and well connected? What if all of our financial markets are rigged? What if the stock market was about to crash on its own, but the crash is being falsely blamed on the virus?

What if you stopped watching television, and actually started questioning the mainstream reports and did some research for yourself on the internet? What if you found out that there are many credible people and organizations that are questioning the mainstream reports? What if we are being lied to? What if the lies are intentional? What if certain people are going to gain financially from this crisis? What if there are people who will gain power over us from the crisis? What if you went to Youtube and looked up the following people and listened to the information they have about the ‘alleged crisis’ we are now enduring? 

What if their names were DR Ron Paul, and he was calling for Fauci to be fired? Dr John Bergman? Dr Sherry Tenpenny? Dr Joseph Mercola? Dr Bruce Lipton? Dr David Brownstein? Albert E. Carter? Investigative journalists Robert Scott Bell or Del Bigtree or Bill Sardi or Daisy Luther or Lew Rockwell or Jack Kerwick or Jon Rappoport? Or economists and philosophers Doug Casey or Peter Schiff or Catherine Austin Fitz or Dr Greg Mannarino or Max Keiser or Lynette Zang or Larken Rose? What if these people and many others had important information about what’s really happening in America and the world that you are not hearing on television or radio programs? What if these people could help you be healthier? Or less fearful? Or happier? Or more Free? 

What if we are being bamboozled? What if our nation is being looted while we are staying home and watching the daily fear porn on TV? What if it’s all a clever distraction? What if the remaining freedoms and rights we didn’t lose after 911 are being stolen from us today in broad daylight? What if our natural rights are being attacked and we are doing nothing to defend them? What if the virus is not our real enemy? What if we are so busy being obedient little sheep that we will wake up too late? What if when we wake up, the America we love is nowhere to be found? What if in the future, when you are old, and the children ask you what you were doing when the Greatest Depression began in 2019 and the Constitution died an ugly death, and all you can tell them is that you were hiding at home from a flu virus and watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island? 

What if?  

Kimberly Brady, MD, Douglas County

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Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

The United States Treasury Department gave California-based oil giant Chevron until December 1 to wind down its operations in Venezuela.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a temporary license Tuesday authorizing Chevron transactions and activities “necessary for safety or the preservation of assets in Venezuela” or “necessary to the wind down of operations, contracts, or other agreements” with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.

The US multinational is now forbidden from drilling, selling and buying Venezuelan crude, or transporting it. Infrastructure work such as repairing oil wells is allowed only “for safety reasons,” while dividend payments to PDVSA are likewise prohibited.

The latest measures also apply to oilfield service companies Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Schlumberger and Weatherford International.

According to Reuters, the move was seen as a “compromise” in the Trump administration, between those who believe the company leaving would weaken the Venezuelan government and others who defend keeping a “corporate beachhead” in the country.

Chevron is the last remaining US oil firm still active in Venezuela’s petroleum sector. Since last year, the company has been the beneficiary of a series of renewable 90-day waivers that exempted it from US oil sanctions. Chevron currently runs four joint ventures with PDVSA, the largest being Petropiar in Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt. Petropiar had recently cancelled service contracts following the precipitous fall in oil prices.

In January 2019, Washington imposed an oil embargo, barring US firms from drilling in Venezuela as well as exporting diesel and gasoline to the Caribbean country. The measures were later escalated to a blanket ban on dealings with Venezuelan state firms, authorizing secondary sanctions against third party actors.

In recent months, the US Treasury Department blacklisted two subsidiaries of Russian oil giant Rosneft, prompting the firm to transfer its Venezuela operations to an unknown company belonging to the Russian state.

Long relying on crude exports for upwards of 95 percent of its hard currency earnings, Venezuela has been hard hit by US sanctions as well as the recent crash of global oil prices. On Monday, prices fell to an unprecedented low of -$38 per barrel due to the combined impact of an ongoing price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia as well as the collapse of demand brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Washington’s latest measures against the Venezuelan sector comes amid reported conversations between the Maduro government and the opposition led by self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido.

Reuters reported that there have been “exploratory talks” as the country faces the coronavirus pandemic. The news agency claims that, according to sources, topics discussed have included Covid-19, fuel shortages and US sanctions.

Guaido denied that any talks had taken place, claiming that the opposition was united behind his proposal of a “National Emergency Government” excluding Maduro. The opposition leader has also endorsed a US “democratic transition” plan unveiled last month that would see Maduro replaced by a power-sharing government in exchange for eventual sanctions relief.

Caracas rejected the US plan, which is not contemplated by Venezuela’s constitution, as “tutelage”. For his part, President Maduro has reiterated calls for dialogue with the opposition and international foes during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Lucas Koerner reporting from Santiago de Chile and Ricardo Vaz from Mérida.

On Wednesday, Iran’s IRGC launched a military satellite into orbit 265 miles in space above planet earth.

IRGC commander General Hossein Salami said the “successful launch of the satellite promoted new dimensions of the defense power of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” 

Calling the launch into earth orbit a “strategic achievement,” Salami added that Iran now is one of the few nations with advanced space technology, giving its military enhanced intelligence capabilities.

IRGC Aerospace Force commander General Ali Hajizadeh said Wednesday’s launch was achieved with liquid and solid fuel, an advanced technology “only superpowers” had until now.

Shortly after the launch, Fox News quoted an unnamed Pentagon source saying the following:

“US intelligence has not detected any new satellites orbiting earth, indicating Iran’s satellite launch likely a failure.”

Hours later, the Pentagon backtracked from this assessment, Joint Chiefs vice chairman General John Hyten, saying:

Iran’s rocket “went a long way. It takes a little while to characterize what goes off into space,” adding:

An updated Pentagon assessment of the launch will be announced in a day or two, suggesting the launch succeeded.

According to Space.com, “US tracking data indicate” that Iran’s military satellite successfully reached earth orbit.

Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell issued the following statement about Iran’s military satellite launch in largely technical language, saying:

“US has issued a TLE (two-line element) for a new launch 2020-024A, object 45529 in a 426 x 444 km x 59.8 deg orbit.”

“Ground track is consistent with a launch from Shahroud at 0400 UTC plus or minus 2 minutes,” adding:

“I consider that this confirms that the Iranian satellite successfully reached orbit.”

Iran earlier experienced satellite launch failures, the most recent one in February. A Simorgh rocket carrying a communications satellite failed to reach orbit.

Another failure occurred in January. Last August, an attempted space launch rocket exploded on the launch pad. Wednesday’s successful launch suggests earlier problems were resolved.

The US falsely considers Iran’s military and space program strategic threats — ignoring the Islamic Republic’s aim for regional peace, stability, and mutual cooperation with other nations, at war with none, threatening none, polar opposite how the US, NATO and Israel operate.

Despite US sanctions war and medical terrorism on Iran, its authorities continue countering Washington’s hostile actions successfully — including in combatting COVID-19 outbreaks.

On Wednesday, Press TV reported that “infections drop(ped) by 53 percent in the past 18 days,” deaths “reduced by 30 percent.” The downward trend is encouraging.

Despite enormous obstacles because of US state terror, Iran at this stage appears more successful in containing COVID-19 outbreaks than the US with the world’ highest number of outbreaks and deaths, far more than any other country.

According to Iran’s health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour, “(w)e are in the phase of managing the disease and the trend of controlling COVID-19 disease has been maintained.”

On Wednesday, Russian Academy of Sciences Oriental Studies Institute’s senior fellow Irina Fedorova hailed Iran’s successful military satellite launch, saying its authorities “can now observe the world from space,” adding:

Despite enormous challenges from US “maximum pressure,” its sanctions war, other hostile actions, and the novel coronavirus, Iran “finds ways to advance large-scale scientific and military projects.”

Editor-in-chief Aleksey Leonkov of Russia’s Arsenal Otechestva, a military and weapons technology publication, “Iran is working to solve its defense issues,” adding:

“It’s trying to protect itself from the existing military technologies that the not-so-well-wishing countries possess.”

“Following in North Korea’s footsteps, Iran has now become a member of the space club.”

Yet the Trump regime, Congress, and anti-Iran US media consistently turn truth on its head, falsely claiming Iran space technology is “more evidence proving (it’s) an ‘evil state’ because the satellite has military applications,” according to Leonkov.

Hostile US actions against Iran are well-documented, including its longstanding propaganda war.

On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus recited a litany of bald-faced Big Lies about Iran, saying:

The Islamic Republic “has long used its naval forces to terrorize the international maritime community (sic).”

Polar opposite is true. The above accusation applies to the US, not Tehran.

Ortagus: During JCPOA negotiations in 2015 “and after its adoption, the US navy recorded 22 incidents of unsafe and unprofessional conduct by the IRGC Navy” — another Big Lie.

So was falsely saying Iran “threat(ens) international peace and security” — what’s clearly true about US forever wars against invented enemies. No real ones exist.

Iranian naval vessels provide security for its offshore Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman waters — its IRGC navy and other forces threatening no one.

The US threatens humanity at home and abroad, well-documented by its hostile actions.

On Wednesday, Pompeo falsely blamed China for spreading COVID-19 outbreaks, citing no evidence because none exists.

He lied claiming Beijing “is exploiting the world’s focus on COVID-19 by continuing its provocative behavior (sic).”

He falsely called the US “the most generous nation on the planet.”

He reinvented reality, calling Iran’s Wednesday satellite launch a hostile act by a US “designated terrorists” — referring to the IRGC, Tehran’s military.

The State Department falsely calls it a foreign terrorist organization, a statement defying reality last April saying:

The IRGC “regularly threatens freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf while its Aerospace Force directs the country’s ballistic missile program in defiance of Security Council resolutions (sic),” adding:

“Since 1979, Iran has made it a policy of state to actively direct, facilitate, and carry out terrorist activity globally (sic)” – a US, NATO, Israeli specialty, polar opposite how the Islamic Republic operates.

Claiming Iran’s ballistic missile development and space program threaten regional security is polar opposite reality.

Pompeo also falsely accused Iran of “spreading (novel coronavirus) disinformation” and waging a “global terror campaign (sic).”

Time and again, the US accuses other countries for its own failings, wrongdoing and high crimes.

Iran is at peace with its neighbors and other nations worldwide, polar opposite how the US operates — perpetually at war, abhorrent of peace and stability.

The US illegally imposed sanctions on 22 nations, including Russia (as well as Crimea), China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Belarus, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Somalia, Yemen, Zimbabwe, and others.

Separately, Pompeo signaled Trump regime approval for illegal Israeli annexation of settlements and Jordan Valley territory belonging to Palestinians that’s likely coming in the weeks ahead.

It’s an issue to be addressed in future articles as new developments occur.

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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 ecological dimensions of COVID-19 have become increasingly prominent in much recent discussion, with several important contributions exploring the pandemic in relation to capitalist agribusiness, widespread loss of biodiversity, and the destruction of natural ecosystems. There is, however, a further element to COVID-19’s ‘ecology’ that deserves much greater attention: the ways the escalating pandemic intersects with, and is simultaneously acting to accelerate, a profound shock to the fossil fuel industry. Global oil markets are undergoing an unprecedented transformation as a result of this shock, and while longer-term trajectories remain open, this moment will undoubtedly shape the politics of oil – and the prospects of mitigating climate change – for decades to come.

With states representing over 90 per cent of global GDP stuck under some form of lockdown, and the simultaneous shuttering of large swathes of global manufacturing, transport, industry, and retail – the demand for oil and oil products has dropped to historic lows. Indeed, it has been estimated that the reduction in US automobile use alone has led to an astonishing 5 per cent fall in global oil demand – about the same as if the whole of Europe, Africa and the Middle East had simultaneously stopped driving. The International Energy Association’s Executive Director, Fatih Birol, estimated on 25 March that global oil demand could fall by about 20 million barrels per day, a prediction that has now been revised up to 30 million barrels per day. This plunge in world energy use is unparalleled in both speed and depth, exceeding all other major crises of the last century – including the 1929 Depression and the 2008 global financial crash.

And just as energy demand is in free-fall, world oil supplies look set to significantly increase following an announcement in early March that Russia and Saudi Arabia would remove limits on oil production levels. Combined with the effects of the pandemic, this ‘Oil War’ has pushed global oil prices to multi-decade lows, and left producers rushing to find storage space on land and sea for their oil, rather than sell it at a loss. With global storage fast approaching full capacity, some oil traders are actually now expecting producers to pay them for taking oil off their hands. All of these factors have led analysts to forecast a record number of bankruptcies among oil companies for 2020, an eventuality that could imperil a range of important banks and financial institutions in a manner redolent of 2008.

But what might this extreme shock to energy markets mean for the future of the fossil fuel industry and the possibilities of ending oil-dependency? Some commentators have speculated that this might all be a little bit of good news in the context of the COVID-19 calamity – the pandemic could “kill the oil industry and help save the climate” as a headline in the Guardian newspaper exclaimed on 1 April, with the demise of many smaller oil producers and the weakening of oil majors such as Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP bringing us closer to a transition away from fossil fuel use.

Such rosy scenarios, however, tend to abstract from the realities of a catastrophe capitalism that is inexorably tied to the extraction and exploitation of fossil fuels, and which has deeply embedded ‘Big Oil’ throughout all facets of our daily life. Like all moments of sharp change, the eventual path we take out of these multiple, intersecting crises – an oil price crash, severe economic downturn, and virus pandemic – will depend on our capacities to build effective political alternatives to Fossil Capital. We need to pay close attention to the possible winners and losers that might emerge from this current moment, and be wary of equating the temporary (albeit severe) collapse of an oil-based economy with the demise of the system itself.

The Middle East, Russia, and US Oil

There is a long and complex story behind the rise of an oil-centered global capitalism. This story encompasses the displacement of coal by oil and gas in the early 20th century, the rise of Middle East oil producers (led by Saudi Arabia) through the post-war period, numerous wars and revolutions, huge fluctuations in global oil prices in the 1970s and 1980s, and major shifts in the structure of the global oil industry. Importantly, this history is also centrally linked to how global finance developed in the postwar period – a fact often omitted in accounts that focus too much on oil as a physical commodity. Flows of so-called ‘petrodollars’ were essential to the emergence of new financial markets (such as the Euromarkets) from the 1960s onwards, the rise of Anglo-American financial dominance, and the patterns of debt dependency that continue to mark the relationships between countries in the North and South. Oil, in short, had come to permeate all aspects of global capitalism by the end of the 20th century.

Beginning in the early 2000s, world oil prices rose steadily on the back of the increasing global demand associated with the rise of China. Prices fell back sharply in 2008 with the global economic crisis, but soon resumed their upward trajectory and eventually peaked at around $114/barrel in mid-2014. This was a financial boon for most Middle East oil exporters (and carried major consequences for the political dynamics of the wider Middle East region), but the extended period of rising prices also benefitted marginal producers elsewhere in the world. Most significantly, investments in the development of so-called ‘non-conventional’ oil and gas supplies – reserves that are difficult and significantly more expensive to extract than conventional fossil fuels – were strongly incentivized during this prolonged period of high oil prices.

Of particular relevance here is US shale, crude oil that is held in shale or sandstone of low permeability and which is typically extracted through fracturing the rock by pressurized liquid (hence the term ‘fracking’). There are a variety of ways of calculating the ‘break even’ cost of shale production and this figure changes depending on the particular oil field and the prevailing costs of technology, labour, taxes and so forth – but a widely quoted figure is that most US shale producers require a price of $45 or more to turn a profit. By contrast, Saudi oil has a production cost of around US$4/bbl and Russian oil around US$10/bbl. These comparisons need to be interpreted with care, as Saudi Arabia and Russia are states not companies, and they depend heavily on oil and gas revenues to meet their budgetary needs – in this sense, the ‘breakeven price’ of oil for these states is much higher and fluctuates according to levels of government spending. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that consistently high oil prices through most of the first two decades of the new millennium helped to attract large investments into shale field development and drove significant improvement in extraction technologies for these non-conventional supplies.

This, of course, was an unmitigated ecological and social disaster, which rested fundamentally on the repeated deployment of state-backed violence against Indigenous populations in the US (and Canada) in order to make way for pipeline routes and other infrastructure. But the result was a spectacular boom in US domestic oil production. Between 2009 and 2014, the production of US shale oil tripled, propelling the United States into the top rank of oil producers globally. Remarkably, the US became a net exporter of oil in early 2011, and overtook Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer in 2013 – a position it has maintained until this day, and a far cry from the panicked predictions of ‘energy dependence’ that had marked US policy debates in the early years of the new millennium.

OPEC+ and 2020 Oil Price War

However, the huge increase in global oil inventories that resulted from this additional US production – coupled with a moderation of Chinese energy demand, a sputtering global economy, and the move toward greater use of renewable energy sources – brought the period of high global oil prices to an abrupt end in mid-2014. The price of Brent fell by 70 per cent through 2015, eventually bottoming out at around $30/barrel in early 2016. This was the largest drop in oil prices in three decades. With the US experiencing its first decline in annual oil production since 2008, many smaller and highly leveraged companies went under – for 2015, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that the combined losses of major publicly traded onshore producers reached a staggering $67-billion.

US oil producers were not the only ones hit by the price rout of 2014-2016. All major oil exporters confronted mounting budget deficits and haemorrhaging of their reserves – this included Saudi Arabia, which burnt through more than one-third of its foreign reserves between the oil price peak in 2014 and end-2016. In the face of these mounting fiscal pressures, two of the world’s leading oil-producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, took steps to strengthen global oil prices through a series of coordinated cuts to production. This de facto alliance was formalized in a mutual pact, dubbed OPEC+, which was established between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and 11 non-OPEC countries in December 2016. Until it unravelled in early March this year, OPEC+ proved successful in keeping the price of oil within a narrow band of around $50-$80.

For US oil companies – who were not bound by any of these international agreements– OPEC+ proved extremely fortuitous. In the wake of the 2015 plunge in prices there had been a wave of consolidations and bankruptcies in the US oil industry, and the stabilization of relatively high oil prices served to reinvigorate domestic oil exploration and production. Indeed, by January 2020, daily US oil production was to reach over 12.7 million barrels, an increase of nearly 45 per cent since December 2016 and up from less than 5 million barrels/day in 2008. These figures starkly demonstrate that while most of the world’s major oil producing countries sought to limit their production levels in line with OPEC+, US oil companies were essentially left free to increase their levels of production unhindered. As Keith Johnson noted in Foreign Policy on 27 March, “No country has added more oil to the global glut in recent years than the United States—and despite the recent plunge in crude prices, US producers are still increasing output.”

However, on 6 March this year, the OPEC+ alliance was to break apart spectacularly after Russia rejected a call by OPEC to cut global oil production by a further 1.5 million barrels/day. Not only did Russia refuse OPEC’s request, it also announced that it would no longer abide by the initial December 2016 agreement. This decision was swiftly met by a Saudi counterattack delivered on 8 March – a bombshell announcement that the Kingdom was also no longer committed to the negotiated production limits, and would seek to increase its oil supply to 12.3m barrels/day in April (up from 9.7 million barrels/day in March) and then further boost its production capacity to 13 million barrels/day as soon as possible. With the prospect of an additional several million barrels of daily supply about to hit world oil markets, the price of the key international benchmark for oil, Brent Crude, dropped more than 30 per cent in the space of 48 hours. Global stock markets also plunged, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling a record 2000 points on 9 March, the largest ever intra-day loss.

The precise trigger for Russia and Saudi Arabia’s decision to walk away from OPEC+ remains unclear. Some observers speculate Russia may have been seeking to retaliate for US sanctions that had been placed on the largest Russian oil company, Rosneft, in February. Others claim that Russia’s decision needs to be understood in the context of its own internal politics, with Putin seeking to cultivate support among Russian elites closely connected to the oil industry and who have long opposed OPEC+. Other analysts have describedthe Russian and Saudi actions as a “game theory masterstroke,” which both countries were fully anticipating prior to the March announcements.

Regardless of the immediate conjunctural factors, the longer-term strategic motive behind the Russian and Saudi decision is clear. For several years, both countries had seen US oil producers, unhindered by any production limits, continue to gain market share at their expense. By threatening to flood the world with more oil (and here, Saudi Arabia’s actions are particularly decisive, due to its unique ability to quickly ramp up production capacity) the price of oil would fall significantly. Saudi Arabia and Russia would need to endure the pain of low oil prices for several years; in the meantime, high-cost US producers would be driven to the wall.

An Oil Price War Meets COVID-19

However, in the days following this massive supply shock to global oil markets, it quickly became evident that a much larger blow to oil prices was looming as a result of COVID-19’s escalating spread outside of China. For oil producers, the tsunami of demand destruction greatly magnified the effects of the Saudi and Russian announcements, and pushed oil prices toward single digit levels. By 29 March, the price of the US benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil had dropped by more than 60 per cent since the beginning of the year, falling below $20/barrel, its lowest level in 18-years. The international benchmark, Brent, dropped to $23.03/barrel, the lowest since 2002. Importantly, these benchmark prices often don’t reflect the actual real price that a barrel of oil costs in the physical market – with traders reporting some types of oil selling for as low as $8/barrel. Amidst predictions of $10/barrel, oil companies began to slash their spending on further exploration, rig construction, and capital expenditure.

In the face of these extremely low prices, oil producers have been scrambling to store their oil in the hope of making a profit when prices rise sometime in the future. The problem, however, is that storage space is highly limited (particularly on land) and there are logistical and technical costs associated with bringing oil to where it can be safely stored away. Analysts have estimated that around three-quarters of the world’s storage capacity is already utilised, and that limits will be reached by the end of May. By mid-March, leading pipeline companies in the US were worrying that oil producers might attempt to use their infrastructure to store oil rather than transfer it somewhere else, and thus began insisting on a bill of final receipt before they would accept any new oil. And because it is expensive to shut down or temporary halt oil wells (and land leases sometimes contain clauses that require continuous production), oil companies may prefer to give away their product rather than halt work; indeed, in mid-March, traders were bidding for Wyoming Asphalt Sour (used mostly to produce bitumen) at negative 19 cents per barrel, effectively asking producers to pay them in return for taking the oil off their hands.

All of this presents enormous pressures across the entire oil value chain, from crude oil producers (companies and countries) through to refining and the petrochemical industry. Firm bankruptcies and the shutting down of oil wells are almost certain in the immediate weeks, and will likely be concentrated among those producers who rely upon relatively high oil prices, e.g. US and Canadian companies active in oil sands and shale production. Indeed, this prognosis was confirmed in the Dallas Federal Reserve March Monthly Survey on Oil and Gas, where industry respondents commented that the prospect of “the domestic oil and gas industry has never been bleaker” – this was “a perfect storm of disaster” and “the single worst reset in energy prices in [a] lifetime.”

Oil and Finance

But mapping the potential trajectories of this pandemic-led crash requires a closer examination of the linkages between the oil industry and the wider economy. Crucial here is the deep interconnection between energy-related companies and financial markets, most evident in the US, where energy companies have become extremely leveraged over recent years. Much of the debt issuance by these companies – not only producers of crude oil, but also oil field service companies, refiners, and other ‘mid-stream’ firms such as pipeline companies – has been rated below investment grade. Quite strikingly, energy companies have been the biggest issuers of ‘junk bonds’ in the US for 10 out of the last 11 years, and now make up more than 11 per cent of the entire US junk bond market. The problem is compounded by the very significant amount of unsecured debt (debt that is not backed by any collateral) of US energy companies; this figure surpassed the levels of secured debt for the first time in 2016, reaching $70-billion in December 2019, up from only $1-billion in 2015.

With the cratering of demand in the wake of COVID-19 – amplified by the Russia/Saudi decision to increase production levels – many energy-related companies face an imminent downgrade to their financial ratings. UBS Group estimated on 16 March that up to $140-billion of bonds issued by US energy companies are at risk of becoming ‘fallen angels’ – i.e. losing their investment-grade status. As this debt is downgraded to junk-bond territory, the increased supply will act to lower bond prices while increasing their yields (the interest paid on the bond, which moves inversely to price in the case of bonds). One possible consequence is a liquidity crisis where energy companies not only find it very difficult to find buyers for their debt – a critical issue as many are due to renegotiate their debt throughout 2020 – but are also forced to pay much higher interest rates on their bonds.

The net result will undoubtedly be a sharp increase in bankruptcies among such US energy companies over 2020 and 2021. Indeed, the first of these casualties occurred on 1 April with the filing for Chapter 11 by Whiting Petroluem, the largest independent oil company in North Dakota (the second-biggest US oil producing state). Whiting carried carried more than $2.8-billion of debt on its books, but just days before the Chapter 11 filing, its senior executives awarded themselves $14.6-million in bonuses, with the company’s CEO walking away with an immediate payment of $6.4-million – much more fortunate than the one-third of the company’s workforce that had been fired last July. Whiting is almost certainly the first in a coming wave of energy company bankruptcies; indeed, Rystad Energy estimated on 3 April that if oil continues to sit around $20/barrel then more than 500 firms would be pushed into Chapter 11 over 2020-21, the largest number of such filings in modern history.

Such defaults could seriously destabilize other parts of the financial system. Pension funds, insurance companies, banks and other financial institutions hold large quantities of energy debt and may be placed at risk in the event of a large wave of corporate defaults – smaller US regional banks, in particular, are heavily exposed to the oil and gas sector. Recent years have also seen the widespread practice of securitising highly leveraged corporate loans – i.e. the bundling together of a large number of risky corporate loans that are then sold as securities known as Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs). Although it is difficult to disaggregate CLOs by sector or to determine with any precision who holds them, a wave of defaults among oil and gas companies could cascade through financial markets in much the same way that occurred with mortgage backed securities in 2008. Such interdependencies with financial markets are of course not unique to the fossil fuel industry. However, this sector stands out particularly sharply among the potential landmines that lay littered across financial markets today. Very high levels of unsecured debt, a predominance across junk bond and distressed debt categories, and the extreme shock presented by the oil price crash – all combine to make this sector a likely candidate for the propagation of severe financial stress throughout other parts of the global economy (much like the real estate sector in 2008-2009).

Winners, Losers … and the Climate

It is certain that all parts of the fossil fuel industry will face a severe crisis over the remainder of this year and into 2021 – but what might this mean for our ecological future? Unfortunately – unless fossil capital can be effectively challenged now – a likely scenario is that a significant wave of bankruptcies in the energy sector will actually accelerate the further centralization of control by the largest oil majors. ‘Big Oil’ – Exxon, Shell, BP and a handful of others – are much better positioned to survive this crisis than other smaller producers. They tend to be vertically integrated firms, i.e. they are active across the entire energy value chain, including refining, and thus will have some of their losses in crude production offset by the lower cost of fuel inputs for their downstream operations. As truly global firms, they have reserves and assets distributed across the world, not solely in the higher cost shale fields of the US. Financially these firms also tend to have much deeper pockets, and their prospects are deeply entwined with broader financial markets (including pension funds) – in the UK, for example, BP and Shell account for a remarkable one-fifth of all FTSE dividends.

This scenario is precisely the one that leading financial firms are expecting to see unfold over the next 12-18 months. Goldman Sachs, for example, noted recently that while the current crisis will undoubtedly “be a game changer for the industry,” the probable outcome is that “Big Oils will consolidate the best assets in the industry and will shed the worst … when the industry emerges from this downturn, there will be fewer companies of higher asset quality.” Inter-industry disputes over state support to the ailing shale industry in the US also reflect this possible outcome. Here, as Justin Mikulka meticulously documents, large oil majors such as Exxon have sought to hasten the collapse of smaller producers and have vigorously opposed any state support to the shale industry. Mikulka cites the CEO of one shale firm, Pioneer Natural Resources, who told CNBC that efforts to engage the Trump administration in support of shale producers were not going well, because “We’ve had opposition from Exxon who controls API [American Petroleum Institute] and the TXOGA [Texas Oil and Gas Association] … they prefer all the independents to go bankrupt and pick up the scraps.”

For this reason, the current moment presents a real danger for climate justice campaigns. In the US, for example, the Trump administration has agreed to loosen environmental regulations for power plants, factories and other industrial facilities – essentially allowing these polluters to ‘self-monitor’ their own pollution levels, according to a recent report in the New York Times. This new policy has been rolled out by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of addressing the COVID-19 crisis, but tellingly, it was also one of the key demands raised by the American Petroleum Institute in a letter sent by these Big Oil lobbyists to the Trump administration on 20 March. It is not just the fossil fuel industry that is attempting to use this crisis to roll-back environmental regulations, large banks and financial firms are similarly pushing for a relaxation on climate change reporting requirements and a delay to climate change ‘stress tests’.

A scenario that sees the undermining of (already inadequate) environmental regulations and a wave of industry consolidation ultimately places Big Oil in a stronger position to capitalise from a post-viral world. While oil prices are today at historically low levels, they will not remain there over the longer term. One of the critical consequences of today’s vast destruction in the demand for oil is that most leading oil companies are announcing savage cuts to their capital expenditure (CAPEX) on oil exploration and project development. For the oil majors these initial cuts have averaged around 20 per cent over the last few weeks; they are even higher in the shale industry, where one energy consultant expects a 40 per cent drop in spending over 2020. It takes considerable time and expense to restart or bring new oil production online after projects have been halted or oil-wells shut-in, and for this reason, the effects of today’s cutbacks to CAPEX will be felt in supply constraints for some time in the future. This creates a strong possibility of a sharp rebound in prices as we emerge from this crisis – an outcome that will incentivize a renewed wave of investment and expansion in fossil fuels globally (much as happened through the recent history of US shale production).

How might this be reflected beyond the US and the fortunes of the large, globally-diversified oil majors? Here we also need to differentiate between the more powerful oil producing states and other poorer oil exporters. There is no doubt that countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states will certainly experience rising deficits and greater pressure on government spending in a prolonged period of low oil prices. These states, however, have relatively low levels of existing debt and can borrow fairly cheaply on international markets. The Gulf’s particular class structure – an overwhelming reliance on temporary migrant workers that make up more than 50% of the Gulf’s labour force – also means that any sharp economic contraction can be partially displaced through simply sending migrant workers home (as happened in Dubai in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis). Indeed, much like the possible strengthening of ‘Big Oil’ through this crisis, the Gulf states could see their position further consolidated if assets in neighbouring countries become more cheaply available in a post-viral world. One important market here is India, where companies headquartered in the Gulf are continuing to make significant inroads in expectation of a boom in future energy demand. The Gulf’s strategic insertion within trade and financial networks connected to China is also important to highlight. Crude oil and petrochemicals remain central to these connections, and work on key projects in these sectors is continuing throughout the current crisis (such as Abu Dhabi’s Ruwais refinery, which will be the largest integrated refinery and petrochemical plant in the world on completion).

Other poorer oil exporters will face much more serious problems as a result of the current plunge in oil prices. These include Ecuador, Venezuela, and Iran – the latter two contending also with savage US-imposed sanctions. States such as Nigeria – which depends upon oil for 57 per cent of government revenue and over 90 per cent of foreign exchange earnings – will find it exceedingly difficult to meet budgetary demands, a problem that will have deadly consequences in the midst of the current pandemic. Similarly, for Iraq, where oil exports make up 90 per cent of government revenues and a large proportion of the population depends upon the public sector for wages or pensions, it is difficult to see how the expected shortfall in funding will be addressed. The problems these countries face, however, should not be blamed on low oil prices; instead, longstanding legacies of colonialism, the destruction wrought by Western-led wars and occupation, and the relations of debt and dependency that bind these countries to the centres of the global economy need to be placed upfront in tackling this pandemic. Nigeria, for example, may depend on oil for a large proportion of government revenues – but more than half of these revenues are spent simply on servicing existing foreign debt. Any attempt to move beyond fossil fuel dependency at the global level must challenge this combustible mix of oil, debt, and finance.

At the time of writing, there is talk of a possible deal between the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia around oil production levels. It is unlikely that such a deal would have any sustained effect on the price of oil given the vast destruction of demand that has occurred in recent weeks. Some observers have noted the irony of seeing leading Republicans who had previously called for the dismantling of OPEC because of its ‘cartel’-like behaviour now demanding greater market collusion with Saudi Arabia and Russia over prices. There is certainly no doubt that the mutually-reinforcing crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economic downturn are indeed provoking a whole range of unexpected political realignments, strange bedfellows, and new openings for political change. But this moment is also one where previously existing arrangements may be re-worked and consolidated in the interests of the most powerful – we face the very real danger of an emboldened and resurgent oil industry, positioned ever more centrally within our political and economic systems. Such an eventuality would be a disastrous outcome to this current pandemic.

Many thanks to Jeffrey R. Webber for helpful suggestions on this piece.

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In the midst of the global pandemic, India and Pakistan are increasing mutual violence, without due attention being paid to the situation by the international media. Several violations of the ceasefire between the two countries have been taking place in recent weeks, reigniting the flame of a regional war that troubled the world last year, when relations between India and Pakistan approached the total catastrophe in Kashmir.

In April, India violated Pakistani airspace by sending a military spy drone to capture images of Pakistani territory along the Line of Control. The drone is estimated to have crossed more than 600 meters of the Pakistani airspace. In an official note, the Pakistani Army stated that the act was a true provocation and that it obtained an incisive and effective response: “This blatant act was answered harshly by the Pakistani Army troops, who shot down the Indian drone. This act of the Indian Army is a clear violation of the rules established between the two countries and has demonstrated the Indian Army’s lack of commitment to the 2003 ceasefire”.

Previously, Pakistan reportedly summoned an Indian diplomat to express protest against violations of the ceasefire agreement signed in 2003, but apparently has had no success in the negotiations. Last year, another Indian drone was also shot down after entering 150 meters into Pakistani territory, according to the Pakistani Armed Forces.

However, the Indian Army also claims to have its grounds for tightening up the surveillance system. According to a response by the country’s security forces, the reason for sending the drone was the recent detection of a large Pakistani infiltration into Indian territory. In a recent Pakistani military operation around the Line of Control, five Indian soldiers were killed, undermining collective security and exacerbating local tensions. India responded sharply to the attack, firing missiles at Pakistani platforms and deposits in the regions of Jammu and Kashmir. According to the Pakistani government, these platforms were used by terrorist groups and have been completely destroyed.

According to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, led by Jonas Jagermeyr, a low-level nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan could wipe out large areas of the world’s food supply, starting cataclysmic fires that would extinguish the sun in a decade-long nuclear winter. In an approximate estimate of 150 nuclear warheads for each country, Pakistan and India pose a real threat to global food security with their arsenals, if they eventually use them. Although it is a small nuclear stockpile, representing an insignificant fraction of the world’s 14,000 warheads, the nuclear power of these countries can be devastating, even in a “limited war”, which raises the need to seek a reconciliation dialogue and to try to ease tensions.

The study is carried out by starting a simulation in 2025, when tensions in the region turn into a hypothetical shooting war, and then supposes what might happen if both sides detonate a total of 100 bombs with the size of the Hiroshima one – much less powerful than many modern warheads. In addition to the immediate death and destruction of the explosions, a cascade of side effects would agitate the world’s climate for years, according to the study, causing immense fires that would send more than 5 million tons of soot into the stratosphere. With a layer of smoke, global temperatures drop sharply, sending crop yields into a steady downward spiral, “overcoming the greatest famine ever recorded”, creating an almost apocalyptic world scenario.

It is for these reasons that Russia recently warned that the accession of India and Pakistan to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons would be a real disaster, an extremely dangerous idea, given that both countries have been involved in an endless conflict for decades that pushes them to an eternal arms race that aims to define who is the superior power. This situation of conflict and dispute could represent the definitive end of the agreement and its complete failure, instead of limiting the arsenals of India and Pakistan, so that it may be safer to keep them out.

A possible war between India and Pakistan would not benefit anyone. Both are extremely strong countries, with enormous growth potential and which can only lose with a conflict of such magnitude. The image of both countries is diminished by the war, being rejected from international agreements and projects with other world powers due to the insecurity generated by their presence. It is more than obvious that the real way to resolve the territorial disputes between them is not war, but dialogue and arbitration.

A formal and definitive agreement could extinguish or at least soften and postpone the disputes between Pakistan and India, however, it is clear that countries with such a history of rivalry have great difficulty in dialogue. For this reason, it is lucid to defend international arbitration mediated by another emerging power, such as Russia or China, which aims at a balance point and a fertile and lasting agreement, from which India and Pakistan can develop peacefully and improve their relations between themselves and with other countries.

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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

While the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill was authored in the spirit of beating back a pandemic, buried deep within its text is a stipend for the US State Department operations dedicated to carrying out foreign interventions that have contributed to the outbreak of preventable diseases like polio in Syria and Pakistan.

Passed unanimously by Congress this March, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provides $250 million for the State Department to implement “economic, security, and stabilization” activities through an “Economic Support Fund” (ESF). Earmarked for activities through September 2020, the bill authorizes the State Department to fund “international organizations.”

While the bill does not specify which organizations qualify for funding, many recent State Department “security and stabilization” operations have relied heavily on foreign proxies which did exactly the opposite of improving public health systems. This was particularly true in Syria, where the US embarked on a multi-billion-dollar regime-change operation that actively destabilized large swaths of the country, resulting in the resurgence of polio just 15 years after the Syrian government had eradicated it.

The disease likely returned to the country thanks to the infiltration of jihadist fighters from Pakistan, where the CIA had destroyed confidence in anti-polio efforts by launching a fake vaccination drive that doubled as a spying campaign in its hunt for Osama bin Laden.

At the center of the destructive interventions in Syria and Pakistan was the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a State Department subsidiary that functions as the humanitarian arm of American empire.

In Syria, USAID attempted to construct a parallel government in regions controlled by foreign-backed, anti-government militants, helping to consolidate extremist control while doing nothing to stop the resurgence of preventable diseases. Earlier in Pakistan, the supposed aid agency not only partnered with the CIA to organize the sham vaccination drive, it recruited the doctor who oversaw it.

This sordid history should raise serious questions about the massive Emergency Support Fund allocated to the State Department and USAID under the guise of fighting coronavirus. Not only is the ESF classified by the Congressional Research Service as a “non-health development assistance account,” its recipients have contributed to the delegitimization of public health systems and the spread of disease in countries already plagued by US intervention.

Washington’s “moderate rebels” bring polio back to Syria

The Syrian government achieved a public health milestone in 1999 when it fully eradicated polio through a nationwide vaccination drive. Fifteen years later, however, the World Health Organization had declared a public health emergency as polio returned and threatened to spread to neighboring countries.

Why had an entirely preventable disease been able to creep back into Syrian communities? The answer was simple: the country had been destabilized by a proxy war fueled by the US and its allies, placing entire regions under the control of extremist militias that severed those under their control from the public healthcare system.

Operation Timber Sycamore, a semi-covert operation to topple the Syrian government, officially began in 2012. Through this multi-billion-dollar arm-and-equip operation, the CIA sent weapons over the Turkish border and placed them in the hands of fanatical Islamist fighters marketed to the American public as “moderate rebels.” Within months, large sections of the country were overrun by extremist militias, which proceeded to destroy infrastructure and place previously functional public services under their theocratic rule.

In areas that were captured by anti-government militants, USAID enacted a $340 million program to establish a parallel government it dreamed would eventually replace the one in Damascus, which the US aimed to topple. To do so, it dumped funding into supposed “civil society” groups such as the White Helmets, and opposition media outfits like Radio Fresh. Meanwhile, a British firm called Adam Smith International received a contract to help establish a “Free Syrian Police” force capable of imposing law and order.

Behind the scenes, while the White Helmets reaped Nobel Prize nominations and relentless corporate media promotion, the group became a de facto MASH unit for jihadist militias, participating in public executions and other atrocities carried out by the armed Islamists it accompanied.

Radio Fresh was forced to broadcast Arabic lyrics over farm animal sounds to skirt theocratic rules forbidding the playing of music. Its US-funded founder, Raed Fares, was assassinated in 2018 by members of al-Qaeda’s local affiliate.

For its part, the “Free Syrian Police” was quickly infiltrated by extremist militias, helping them consolidate control over the Idlib province of Syria, which the Syrian government is still fighting to liberate.

In perhaps its only evaluation report on its activities in Syria, USAID’s inspector general conceded it had no idea what was taking place in supposedly “liberated” territory: “The extent to which [the Office of Transition Initiative’s] efforts were successfully building inclusive and accountable governance structures was still unclear,” the report concluded.

USAID’s inspector general added that “the ongoing conflict resulted in challenges that have led to delays in development and implementation of these activities.” (The coronavirus bailout provides the inspector general with an additional $1 million to monitor USAID activities supported by the new Emergency Support Fund.)

As insurgent-occupied areas of Syria degenerated into dystopian Wahhabi fiefdoms, foreign fighters slipped in by the tens of thousand. Some of them hailed from a country that had just seen its own polio outbreak thanks to a cynical US intelligence operation that involved USAID.

And almost as soon as polio struck Syria, a celebrity public health expert with ties to the US State Department began working with the Syrian opposition to weaponize the outbreak in the service of regime change.

Spinning Syria’s polio crisis with Saudi assistance

Beginning in 2014, Dr. Annie Sparrow waged a crusade to blame the Syrian government for the outbreak of polio and accuse the World Health Organization (WHO) of supposedly downplaying its severity. “It missed the outbreak for many, many months and has not been able to demonstrate that it has vaccinated kids effectively,” Sparrow said of the WHO in 2014.

In an 2017 incendiary op-ed for the Qatari-backed Middle East Eye, Sparrow launched a Trumpian assault on the WHO, branding it as an “an apologist for Assad atrocities” that was “complicit in war crimes.” Whitewashing the presence of foreign-backed extremists in the country, she referred to the regions they controlled merely as “government-shunned areas.”

Sparrow was not just any public health professional with an objective concern for Syrian civilians. She was, in fact, the wife of Ken Roth, the regime change-obsessed director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), which functions as a revolving door between the NGO sector and Democratic Party-run State Departments. (Sparrow, an Australian doctor, was a former HRW researcher.)

Annie Sparrow and HRW’s Ken Roth at a White House state dinner in 2011

According to a glowing 2015 profile of Sparrow in Vogue, she was not exactly a neutral party to the Syrian conflict either: “Sparrow has been working closely with the Assistance Coordination Unit—the humanitarian arm of Syria’s opposition coalition,” the magazine noted.

According to the Assistance Coordination Unit’s website, its activities were bankrolled by a $17.5 million grant from the government of Saudi Arabia, which had also established a brutal militia called Jaish al-Islam (the Army of Islam) to wreak havoc just outside Damascus.

Annie Sparrow worked “closely” with the Assistance Coordination Unit, a Saudi-funded medical front for the Syrian opposition

So while she portrayed herself as a public health hero, Sparrow was “working closely” with an apparent front for one of the world’s worst human rights violators to slander the World Health Organization and destabilize a country to the point that it could no longer control preventable diseases.

A devious CIA/USAID operation triggers polio in Pakistan

Contrary to Annie Sparrow’s partisan screeds, the most likely cause for the spread of polio to militia-held bastions of Syria was the infiltration of foreign jihadists. According to an analysis by Jennifer Cole of the Royal United Services Institute, genetic sequencing linked a polio outbreak in northeastern Syria “to one of Pakistani origin…” At the time, 92 percent of the world’s polio cases occurred in Pakistan.

“Efforts to eradicate the disease in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria – the only three countries where the disease remains endemic, with ‘wild’ or naturally occurring strains still circulating – have long been challenged by Islamist militants who claim that the vaccinations are a Western plot to make their children infertile, to spread AIDS, or that health workers are undercover Western spies,” Cole explained.

The fear among Pakistani jihadists that Western vaccination drives served as a cover for spying was firmly grounded in reality. In 2010, the CIA staged a fake vaccination campaign against Hepatitis B near a villa outside Islamabad that it suspected was the residence of Osama bin Laden. The plan called for herding children from the villa, vaccinating them, and testing the needles for DNA that resembled that of the al-Qaeda leader, thus determining whether he was sheltering inside.

To spearhead the devious operation, the CIA turned to Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor the agency had recruited through USAID. The vaccination drive was planned in USAID warehouses by Afridi and staff members of Save the Children, a USAID partner NGO that was running cover for the CIA, according to Afridi.

Soon after bin Laden was captured in May 2011, Afridi’s cover was blown by a local journalist, he was jailed, and Save The Children was expelled from the country. As word of the sham vaccination effort got out, jihadists from Pakistan to Nigeria began slaughtering polio vaccination workers in droves. Suddenly, the disease was spreading like wildfire.

“Forevermore, people would say this disease, this crippled child is because the U.S. was so crazy to get Osama bin Laden,” lamented Leslie Roberts of Columbia University’s School of Public Health.

It was little more than a year after the CIA helped unleash polio on Pakistan that the agency began funneling arms to anti-government militants in Syria through its Operation Timber Sycamore. As parts of the country transformed into havens for the same jihadist fanatics who had been murdering vaccination workers in Pakistan, polio returned and threatened to spread into neighboring states like Turkey and Jordan.

And all along, USAID was blindly dumping resources into these disease-infested regions, helping to consolidate jihadist control under the guise of “stabilization.”

Now, thanks to the coronavirus stimulus package, the same State Department programs that have spread chaos across the Middle East have received a massive shot in the arm.

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Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone

The intemperate volcano that is the US President has done much to burn its way through prominent appointments.  As the title of former GOP strategist Rick Wilson’s book goes, Everything Trump Touches Dies.  There seem few more important individuals in the United States than Dr Anthony Fauci, and that, for the White House, is a problem.  No burning bushel can distract from the orange tufted centre of power that is Donald Trump, and Fauci, as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been giving much to distract.   

Over the weekend, the disgruntled anti-Fauci clan started buzzing with the hashtag #FireFauci, the underachieving work of DeAnna Lorraine.  Lorraine, former challenger for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California House seat, likes to share material from the QAnon group, which takes pride in, shall we say, cavalier narratives pullulating with fantasies.  (The fictional Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama child sex trafficking ring; the canard of Angela Merkel really being the granddaughter of Adolf Hitler.) 

Momentum was generated by President Trump’s Sunday retweet of a call to fire Fauci.  Lorraine, in the tweet in question, was exercised by Fauci “now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives.”  But, she claimed, it was the medical expert – one Anthony Fauci – who told people on February 29^th “that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.”  Time, then, to fire him.

Fauci, for his part, stated on CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday morning the obvious point that restrictive measures, had they been imposed earlier, might have lessened the harm.  “I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives.”  The observation tallies with discussions held by medical officers the world over on the speed, and forcefulness of suppression, mitigation and containment.  COVID-19 has done its bit to baffle and alarm.

In baying – or tweeting – for Fauci’s blood the suggested replacement by the #FireFauci mob was one Dr Shiva Ayyadurai, a Massachusetts Senate candidate who comes across as a militant, zany version of that self-promoting wonder of mindfulness Deepak Chopra.  Ayyadurai – not an actual medical doctor – is certainly not shy of controversy, being a votary of the vitamins-will-treat-and-prevent Coronavirus school of thought.  On May 23, he penned an open letter to Trump with “a solution to restore the immune and economic health of the American people.  This solution can be executed immediately in a low-risk and cost-effective matter.”  This naturally entailed putting Fauci’s head on a pike.  His “health” policy, sneers the doctor, “will result in the short- and long-term destruction of our citizen’s [sic] immune health as well as our nation’s economic health – a perhaps a conscious or intended goal.”  Fauci is taken to task for being uninventive, a 1950’s relic of the “one-size-fits-all”, and “non-personalized approach to medicine and public health”.  But what is unforgiving for the man his followers call Dr. Shiva is the “fake science” he peddles on the immune system. 

Ayyadurai then settles into self-promotion mode.  He was a pioneer of Biological engineering, “demanding a modern engineering systems approach to biology”.  As a PhD from MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering in 2007, he invented CytoSolve, “a proven technology that enables the discovery of new medicines, combination therapies, functional foods and supplements – faster, cheaper, and safer, by using the computer to model complex molecular mechanisms and diseases.” 

He concludes, from his own understanding of modern science, that it is “the over reaction of our OWN weakened and dysfunctional immune system attacking tissues and cells of our own body that harms and kills, versus the virus – be it COVID-19 or any other virus.”

On April 3, the Shiva4Senate website commenced a petition for the indictment and firing of Fauci, claiming “significant and deep conflicts with Big Pharma that has a singular aim: Force medical mandates eg. Vaccines upon all Americans.”  Ayyadurai thereby becomes the anti-Big Pharma advocate, the noble knight battling the corporate and bureaucratic dragon of the medical establishment.  Half-plausible critiques – the staining and at times lethal corruption of corporatized health care – are meshed with an implausible goo of self-promoting treatments that look like Chopra solutions on steroids.  In doing so, the obvious point – that vaccines do save lives – is stumped.

The latest rage against expertise seems to have failed to affect any genuine change.  On Monday, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley took a bucket or two to “media chatter” that Fauci would be taken off the coronavirus task force.  Forget Fauci: it was China all along that was the issue.  “The President’s tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history.”  This rewriting, suggested Gidley, involved obscuring the role played by the Democrats and the media in their obsession with impeachment proceedings, thereby ignoring the dangers of COVID-19.  When Trump did “take bold decisive action to save American lives by cutting off travel from China and from Europe”, he was attacked.

In this big to do, Fauci insists that Trump, for the most part, has listened to the recommendations of the COVID-19 taskforce.  A diplomatic, if optimistic assessment. He hopes that cooler heads will prevail.  “The idea of just pitting one against the other is just not helpful.”  As for Trump, his words on Monday were reassuringly dangerous.  “I’m not firing him.  I think he is a wonderful guy.”  Fauci beware. 

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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]

Ever since President Donald Trump said last month that a COVID-19 vaccine could be ready in 12 to 18 months, Wall Street analysts have been warning that the real timeline is likely to be longer, even though more than 40 candidates are in development. But just how much longer will it take to bring a vaccine to market?

Global analytics firm Clarivate took a look at vaccines from two companies that have entered clinical trials—Moderna and Inovio—and came to a sobering conclusion: It will take at least five years for either vaccine candidate to complete the development process through full regulatory approval. And neither company has a high probability of success, Clarivate told FiercePharma.

If the FDA granted the companies emergency authorizations—as it did for the malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine recently, without proof they could effectively treat COVID-19—that could cut the timeline short. But as SBV Leerink analysts recently pointed out, regulators tend to eye vaccine safety very closely, which is one reason why R&D timelines are longer for those products compared with drugs.

Using a tool it developed called Cortellis Analytics, Clarivate estimated that Moderna has just a 5% probability of success with its COVID-19 vaccine mRNA-1273, and that the time window for approval would be 5.2 years. The low probability of success reflects the fact that mRNA is a new, unproven approach to vaccines, said Sarah Hardison, Ph.D., head of product, regulatory and pharmacovigilance at Clarivate, in an email.

Granted, Moderna has garnered plenty of support for mRNA-1273—not the least of which was yesterday’s $483 million grant from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to accelerate late-stage trials and manufacturing. Furthermore, Moderna has vowed to start a phase 2 study in the second quarter and could start a phase 3 as early as this fall.

If Moderna makes good on those promises, the ultra-fast timeline “would be unprecedented and [would] certainly make an impact on our predictions,” Hardison said.

A spokesperson for Moderna did not immediately respond to a request for comment from FiercePharma, but during a conference call with analysts Friday morning, chief medical officer Tal Zaks, M.D., Ph.D., said that “our responsibility is to demonstrate the clinical benefits, derisk the safety database….as fast and as diligently as humanly possible.”

When asked if Moderna might get an emergency-use approval from the FDA to get mRNA-1273 on the market quickly, Zaks said he couldn’t make any promises. “The decision on emergency use is going to be an evolving one…as the data matures to make that determination,” he said. “So it’s very hard to predict today.”

Clarivate’s Cortellis tool uses machine learning to forecast development timelines and the probability of success for drug candidates that have entered clinical trials. The firm said in a recent online post that as of April 8 there are 185 companies and research institutes working on 156 COVID-19 medicines and vaccines, 11% of which are in clinical development.

The other vaccine candidate that Clarivate evaluated was Inovio’s DNA vaccine INO-4800, which the company moved into clinical testing last week. Clarivate forecasts a probability of success of 15% for INO-4800 and an approval timeline of 5.5 years.

A spokesperson for Inovio said in a statement emailed to FiercePharma that the company does not comment on speculative or theoretical scenarios. “Based on our intimate knowledge of and extensive experience with our proprietary DNA platform, including developing vaccine candidates against related coronaviruses, we remain highly confident in the viability and likelihood of success of our vaccine candidate for the novel coronavirus,” the company said.

Clarivate isn’t the only firm raising questions about the growing optimism that a solution to COVID-19 will rescue everyone from their quarantines soon. Analysts at SVB Leerink spoke to a vaccine development-specialist earlier this month and warned in a report to investors that “safety is often more important than efficacy to regulators, and long-term safety must be established before” a vaccine will be approved.

One prediction that most analysts have agreed on is that effective drugs to treat COVID-19 will likely hit the market before any vaccines do. Clarivate forecasts an 89% chance of success for Gilead’s remdesivir, which is in phase 3 trials and is widely considered to be the leading candidate. Clarivate has estimated the drug could be approved to treat COVID-19 in 2022.

Waiting two years for a drug that seems to be urgently needed now—not to mention five years for a vaccine—may seem unreasonable given the increasingly loud calls for quick solutions to COVID-19. Clarivate’s Hardison says support such as BARDA’s investment in Moderna’s vaccine candidate could change how the Cortellis algorithm makes its forecasts, which could ultimately result in a more optimistic timeline.

“This is an unprecedented and fast-changing environment,” Hardison said, “with increased investment, shortened timelines, and unpredictable FDA [and] regulatory authority responses.”

*

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Featured image is from Pixabay

Introduction

I am not a conspiracy theorist.  I am not a great fan of social media, blogs or controversy on the Internet; nor am I a journalist, at least not by profession.

I am a doctor: seven years at medical school, three years of applications, four years of doctoral studies to obtain my MD in Belgium, in 1995.  From 1997 to 2003, I specialised in anaesthesia-recovery, then in intensive care.  For the last 17 years, I have worked in this field, now in the spotlight during this viral pandemic called Covid-19.  I am therefore particularly qualified from a medical standpoint.  That’s where I stand out, and I am mainly guided in my profession by the motto passed down from the early days of medicine in Antiquity: “Primum non nocere” or in other words: “First, do no harm.”

I also have a wife and four children.  As an integral member of society and wanting the very best healthcare system for my wife and children, I feel particularly responsible when it comes to health.

I have no financial interest, in fact no interest at all in criticising our healthcare authorities, just for the pleasure of doing so.  Criticising certain medical dogmas such as influenza vaccination [1], the management of hyperlipidaemia [2] or the WHO’s and my country’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic [3], is risky and potentially punishable by strict sanctions from the Belgian General Medical Council [4].  That’s no small thing.  So what could possibly compel a specialised physician, father of four children, to write an article which could result in him being struck off, being the subject of reproach, losing his position at the hospital or enduring a verbal onslaught from his colleagues?  Why would he do that, if there is no financial profit or the expectation of praise, quite the contrary?

My response hangs on two words: dedication, or better still: conscience.

So what is the issue?

When it comes to healthcare, our societies have taken decisions rife with repercussions.

First, they decided to select, both on a supranational and a national level, one single committee as the official scientific reference point for world governments.  All health decisions affecting millions if not billions of people now hinge on the recommendations of the experts in this one committee.

Second, they have granted these different committees and their experts unwavering trust: the kind of trust that once accorded, is never questioned.

As such, if these experts announce something, it is deemed to be truth.  No criticism ensues.

On a global scale, we have the WHO, the World Health Organisation [5].  The WHO dictates, influences and directs the health policies in every country worldwide.

On a European scale, we have the EMA or European Medicines Agency [6], based in Amsterdam.  Its website claims that it ensures the scientific evaluation, control and monitoring of both human and veterinary medicines used in the European union.  Only time will tell what the EMA actually means by control and monitoring.

There are similar committees in every country, reporting to the WHO, and for European countries, to the EMA, and in each one, we find Key Opinion Leaders (KOL).

In the fields of medicine and healthcare, it appears, from their unanimously peer-acknowledged credentials and above all their honesty and their total independence from the industries, the pharmaceutical manufacturers in particular, that these experts are trustworthy.  But are they really?

My main focus in this article is France, where there is a similar committee in charge of managing the Covid-19 pandemic: CARE [7] (Comité Analyse Recherche et Expertise), consisting of 12 researchers and doctors, and set up by the French government on the 10^th March 2020.

I will also focus on my own country, Belgium, where a general superstructure called SCIENSANO [8] has been created from the merger of the old Centre d’Études et de Recherches Vétérinaires et Agrochimiques (CERVA – Veterinary and Agrochemical Research Centre) and the former Institut Scientifique de Santé Publique (ISP – Belgian Scientific Institute for Public Health).  A specific coronavirus scientific committee has also been specially set up [9] to manage the Covid-19 pandemic.  I shall also spend some time on the case of Maggie De Block, the Belgian Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health [10].

So how is all this a potential problem?

It would seem logical for such expert committees to be set up, enabling our politicians to take the best possible decisions in areas where they themselves have no expertise.

The effectiveness and safety of such committees are however only guaranteed if they are truly independent from superior authorities like the WHO, in the event that it were to take poor decisions, and only given the absolute integrity of its experts vis-à-vis the pharmaceutical industry.

If one of these conditions were not met, the implications for the people of these countries could be catastrophic.

In fact…..

Dependency on the WHO

In 2010, I wrote an article on the WHO [11], recently translated into English and published on the GlobalResearch website in February 2020 [12].

A whole decade later.

The verdict was already final in 2010.

SAGE, a strategic consulting group of vaccination experts was created in 1999 by the director general of the WHO [13].  It consists of individuals connected with the vaccine-manufacturer pharmaceutical industry, including Professor Albert Osterhaus from Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

A number of WHO scientific experts, then advisors to Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO when the global Swine flu (H1N1) pandemic was declared [14], had received direct or indirect payments from pharmaceutical companies, specifically GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis, both manufacturers of vaccines sold to manage that pandemic.

In my article published back on 26 November 2009 [15], I was already recommending that we prepare for subsequent pandemics.  And indeed, the WHO, contaminated by pharmaceutical industry experts who worship vaccination like a Holy Grail, clearly had a plan of intense fear for us, in the years to come.

Is this not the case, 11 years down the line?

A decade has passed but nothing has changed.  We can still not trust the WHO [3].  It’s no surprise really since nothing has been done to remedy the situation, or, for example, to clean up the committees of experts.  And this is a constant theme as can be seen with the European Medicines Agency as well.  To adapt the old Arabic proverb: the dogs bark, but the corruption caravan goes on, unfazed.  Only the people, once sufficiently informed and motivated, could call for change.

One reason, already highlighted in 1995 by Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer in the New England Journal of Medicine, the scientific bible of the medical profession, is that the healthcare system has been included in the logic of free markets, profit and profitability, and when chaos hits the markets, it hits the healthcare and public health systems also [16].

The European Medicines Agency: Experts Above and Beyond Reproach?

The answer is no [17].

Opacity, or in more poignant words, lack of transparency

Conflicts of interest: a euphemism for corruption.

Collusion with the pharmaceutical companies

Fake independence

Here we find the age-old “revolving doors” principle [18]:

“In fact, EMA employees have been repeatedly appointed “project manager” for the marketing authorisation of medicines manufactured by their former employers, or by companies in which they were stockholders or for whom their spouses worked.” [19]

“The question is all the more pertinent given the very common revolving doors practice in which EMA experts, at the end of a contract, would be appointed as highly-paid consultants for the pharmaceutical companies.  This practice has long been strongly denounced by organisations such as Formindep, Health Action International, Corporate EU Observatory or ALTER-EU.” [19]

But the scandal continues and nothing changes in spite of this evidence.

“The European Medicines Agency (EMA) had already been reprimanded in 2010 by the European Parliament for “disastrous management of conflicts of interest, based on the 2009 audit performed by the European Commission.”

How ironic when one thinks that the agency claims on its official website that it is responsible for the control and monitoring of the safety of human medicines [6], control and monitoring.  When it comes to taking the necessary measures to clean up its committees of experts, it failed.

CARE: independent consultants?

The situation in France is just as suspicious.

CARE, which stands for committee, analysis, research and expertise, was set up by the French government on the 10^th March 2020 then expanded on the 24^th March.

This article in Mediapart [20] is clear and final:

“Several of the doctors in the two scientific councils advising the government on the strategic choices to make with respect to Covid-19 have links with the pharmaceutical industry.”

The article [21] informs us that several members of the two scientific councils advising the French government on management of the Covid-19 pandemic have substantial financial ties with pharmaceutical companies.

“For example, according to figures in the “Transparence santé” (Health Transparency) public database, between 2014 and 2019, one of them received over 250,000 euros.  And in 2018 alone, “Big Pharma” paid out 1.36 billion euros to healthcare professionals.” [22]

So what do the authorities not understand about the word independence?

Is it a requirement for all cutting-edge scientists to have financial links with the pharmaceutical industry?  This could be a spurious claim by those defending such dangerous liaisons.

But such is not the case.

Probity and professional excellence are frequent bedfellows.  It does happen!

Professor Didier Raoult for example, who is currently making all the headlines for his anti-conformist views, was the only member of CARE with no known links with the pharmaceutical industry.  In fact he has left CARE in a huff [20].

There are other experts renowned worldwide for their independence from the pharmaceutical industry, such as:

• Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg [23], German pulmonologist who in 2009 was already calling for investigations to reduce the extent of conflicts of interest in those managing the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic in Europe.
• Dr. John Ioannidis [24], who has stated unequivocally that when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are making decisions without reliable data [25].
• Dr. Peter C. Gøtzsche, born on 26 November 1949, is a Danish physician and researcher.  He is director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre and co-founder, along with 80 others, of the Cochrane Collaboration.  In 2019, he founded the Institute for Scientific Freedom.  When it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic, he speaks of an epidemic of fear, far more lethal than the viral pandemic itself [26].

These three, only a small sample of a much larger group [27-28], are not just “run-of-the-mill” scientists.  They are not conspiracy theorists, but world-renowned doctors, some of them political figures, who all stand out for their scientific probity, their independence from both financial interests and the industry, and their anti-conformist stance.

Why are such individuals who have proven themselves both professionally and morally not on our governments’ committees and councils of scientific experts?

It’s up to the citizens of these countries to demand that they be called upon, today.

The solution will clearly not come from these same governments, riddled with corruption, in all its forms, and called, to use the revolting euphemism, conflicts of interest.

Is Belgium any different?

No.

In Belgium, we have a rather peculiar health minister, Maggie De Block, an individual renowned for a certain degree of arrogance, not to say contempt for those who do not agree with her and say so [29].

Green MP Muriel Gerkens pulled no punches when she called Maggie De Block more of a Big Pharma Minister than a Belgian healthcare minister [30].

Still from the same article, Maggie De Block’s views and the decisions she has taken only lead to one irrefutable conclusion: Maggie De Block can seriously damage the health of the Belgian people.

The non-profit FARMAKA for example, used to claim medical independence, in particular with respect to their objective analysis of medicines on the market vis-à-vis the practices of the pharmaceutical companies selling them.  It was the only independent body in the field.

When GPs and specialists are faced with partial information provided to them by the medical representatives working for these companies, compared with the work of an independent analysis body on the rational use of medicines, which should they trust?

The answer is in the question.

In 2018 however, with Maggie De Block as Health Minister, FARMAKA’s budgets were reduced, even totally cut [31].

Opacity has also become the general rule in negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies regarding the reimbursal of medicines [30].

In Belgium, there are no fewer than nine ministers with governmental authority in health matters (federal, provincial, regional) [32], more than in any other European country.  Our health policy is therefore played out through countless commissions in which the authorities and the mutual insurance companies negotiate with the doctors’ unions and other service providers, hospital umbrella associations and the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists.

Two official bodies are in charge of political decision-making based on independent and science-based information: the Conseil Supérieur de la Santé (CSS – Belgian Superior Health Council) and the Conseil Fédéral d’Expertise des Soins de Santé (KCE – Belgian Federal Healthcare Knowledge Centre) created in 2002.

With Maggie De Block as Health Minister, the Belgian government decided to merge the Institut Scientifique de Santé Publique (ISP – Belgian Scientific Institute for Public Health, previously the Institut d’hygiène et d’épidémiologie et Institut Pasteur – Belgian Hygiene and Epidemiology Institute and Pasteur Institute) with the Centre d’étude et de recherches vétérinaires et agrochimiques (CERVA – Belgian Veterinary and Agrochemical Research Centre) to form a new mega-scientific institute called SCIENSANO.

SCIENSANO will also gobble up the CSS and KCE, the only two remaining independent opinion bodies, which includes, for the KCE, patient organisation representatives; all this while 73 researchers and university professors are expressing their opposition, defending the independence of the KCE and the CSS [33].

Contempt, again and again.

It is important to know that the creation of SCIENSANO came in response to an audit based on WHO principles [34].

The WHO advises each country to have an effective Health Research System (HRS) to collect, rework and use optimally all scientific knowledge generated in the health field.

It all sounds good and praiseworthy, on paper.

Raf Mertens, director of the KCE, has however expressed his concern over this new unique structure reporting to Maggie De Block.  He has expressed his dissatisfaction with this merger saying that considering the members of the new Board, he fears the independence of the KCE will suffer [35].

73 researchers and doctors find that the merger is ill-timed and inadvisable.

According to the aforementioned Jounal du Médecin article [33] and quoting those who signed the petition demanding that the Centre féderal d’Expertise des Soins de Santé (KCE) and the Conseil Supérieur de la Santé (CSS) remain independent:

“Protecting the health of Belgian citizens must not be comingled with defence of agricultural sector and agri-food industry interests.  Scientific research, whether academic or conducted by public authorities, requires a minimum of independence to be credible.”

“The scientific advisory bodies in the health and healthcare field must be able to work without direct dependency links with interest groups, industrial lobbies and political influences.”

Once again, the principle of consolidating the different major scientific players in the human and animal healthcare sector into a single body looks good – on paper.

It all works providing the group is supervised by a truly independent industrial and political authority.

This is however not the case.  Raf Mertens, director of the KCE and Jean Nève, chair of the CSS, claim that there has been a lack of independence amongst the SCIENSANO experts whose role it is to give impartial opinions on healthcare.

The SCIENSANO Board is no longer a group of plural health profession, patient and university research centre representatives.  There is definite risk that the government will have more and more influence on their advice and the recommended measures to take.  We have already seen that opposition from politicians or certain powerful lobbies has prevented the KCE from publishing certain viewpoints.

What is more, the budget of FRANKEMA, the only truly neutral body providing doctors with information on medicines, should certainly not be reduced or cut but increased.

The fears expressed by the KCE and the CSS regarding their independence within the SCIENSANO were echoed by the universities and also by Paul de Munck, chair of the GBO, Groupement Belge des Omnipraticiens (Belgian Association of General Practitioners) [36].

So, the challenges are clearly not coming from conspiracy theorists’ or anonymous individuals’ websites but from doctors within these same institutions, who, given both their number and their credentials should not witness their opinions dismissed in this way by the contemptuous hand and omnipotence of our health minister.

Summary

I could continue country by country but the principles are always the same:

First: set up single, monolithic organisations to be the official and approved source of information, the alleged providers of the best decision-making: the WHO on the global scale, the EMA for Europe, CARE in France and SCIENSANO in Belgium – uniform, opaque structures, accountable to political and industrial institutions.

This takes place in spite of the proven scandals and documented corruption which have impacted all these organisations, at one time or another, with devastating consequences for the health of the population.

It is done in spite of opposition from individuals, not totally obscure parties or conspiracy theory websites but specialists who are rational and duly recognised in each of these countries.

Government decisions impact the real world, the health and the wellbeing of the people in particular.

Information on these scandals and these dissident but nonetheless legitimate voices is deliberately withheld from these same people.

As such, the citizens of these countries are unaware of these divergent but credible opinions.  The media are also silent, either deliberately or because they are unaware of it all themselves.

For example: The Belgian and French governments’ recent decision to enter a strict lockdown, as directed by CARE and SCIENSANO, was presented as a totally rational decision shared by scientists worldwide.

But such was not the case.  It was neither rational nor defended by the global scientific community.

A large number of physicians, professors, consultants and specialists were and still are opposed to the idea of locking up a healthy majority of the world’s population [27-28], and their opposition is based on scientific evidence.

A recent University College London (UCL) study reveals that closing down all schools will have only very little impact on the spread of coronavirus [37].  Our experts insist however that lockdown is the only solution.

The consequences of the lockdown are potentially disastrous.

People in our countries are not being given clear, unbiased and honest information.  Our politicians, journalists and the committees of experts unilaterally selected by the former are to blame for this.

Second: Accept continued lack of transparency and the existence of links between scientists, politicians and the parties benefiting from the sale and promotion of their products, i.e the pharmaceutical industry in the field of health.

It takes only a few internet clicks to confirm that medicine remains well and truly under the influence of, not to say under the absolute control of, the pharmaceutical industry, such as here on the Formindep website in France (FORMation médicale continue INDÉPendante – or Continued Independent Medical Training) [38], or on this website, where one learns that by offering rewards and profitable contracts, the pharmaceutical companies have woven a dense fabric of useful connections within the medical profession [39], or even here, on the Fédération maisons médicales (Medical Centre Federation) website, where in April 2008, the problem was already analysed in depth [40].

Who for example, tells medical students about the pharmaceutical companies and their manipulative and dishonest methods?  No one!  I can confirm that.

As stated however by Cindy Joye, Belgian GP in her end-of-year thesis: “I have received visits, on average, from at least one medical rep per week since I have been in practice as a GP.” [41]

On the 25^th October 2015, in the Health section of Le Monde Diplomatique [42], Professor Peter C. Gøtzsche, specialist in internal medicine, director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, the group of independent experts already mentioned above, doesn’t pull any punches.

“According to him, [the pharmaceutical industry] … is to blame for hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide every year, making it the third leading cause of death after cancer and heart disease.  He estimates that the accumulated knowledge on the Big Pharma lobby’s influence strategies designed to increase its profits are commensurate with organised crime and the Mafia.” [43]

It would however seem desirable and beneficial to separate the scientific work on a product from its funding by the industry which would benefit from its sale.

Primarily because the risk, the temptation to abandon all impartiality is really too great.

In addition, history has shown that in effect, corruption very rapidly sets in.  That is a simple fact demonstrated in this article.

Lastly, some would say that it is impossible to do otherwise but they are wrong because honest, trustworthy and reliable physicians do exist, as well as truly independent organisations still of a very high scientific standard, such as:

– The Cochrane Collaboration [44]:

“We do not accept commercial or conflicted funding. This is vital for us to generate authoritative and reliable information, working freely, unconstrained by commercial and financial interests.”

-) The Institute for Scientific Freedom [45], founded by the aforementioned Professor Peter C. Gøtzsche in 2019 [36]:

“The Institute for Scientific Freedom works to preserve honesty and integrity in science and to help develop better healthcare…”

-) AIMSIB, the association international pour une médicine scientifique indépendante et bienveillante (International Association for Scientific, Independent and Caring Medicine) [46]:

“Our objectives are to provide critical, independent, scientific and conflict-free information on medicines, treatments and medical devices.”

-The French magazine Prescrire (Prescribing) [47]:

“The Mieux Prescrire (Better Prescribing) association, editor of all issues of Prescrire, is a French non-profit (law of 1901) training company.  It was deliberately structured to be free from the influence of companies such as those in charge of organising healthcare systems.  Prescrire’s mission statement can be found in Article 1 of Mieux Prescrire’s (AMP) Articles of Association: To work, independently, for quality care, in the primary interest of patients.  To this end, the association may take any initiative and undertake any action for the purpose of training health professionals, raising awareness, providing information and improving practices.”

So, yes, it is possible to set up committees whose members are renowned, competent, honest and truly independent scientists to advise our governments without their decisions being influenced by the industry or by the various lobbies.

This would be neither inconceivable, nor naïve.

It is up to the people to demand it.

History has shown that the solution does not come from the organisations themselves who at best only get slapped on the wrist but continue their corrupt practices all the same, at worst are not in any way accountable and just carry on with business as usual.

This is the case of the WHO after their scandalous management of the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic and of the EMA after its scandalous management of the Gardasil vaccine and its serious adverse effects singled out by the Nordic branch of the Cochrane network [17].

The solution doesn’t come from politicians either: they who at best turn a blind eye, at worst benefit from the revolving doors system [18].

And the solution doesn’t come from the pharmaceutical industry, the number one beneficiary of the system.

The solution can only come from the people, individuals like you and me.

The stakes are worth it, aren’t they?

We need to go on the warpath, not against a virus but against the dishonesty, corruption, lying and immorality which encourage people who should protect us, to ruin our health in the name of their profit.

Dr. Pascal Sacré

 

Article in French :

COVID-19 – Vérifiez vos sources. Guerre contre… la corruption?

April 12 2020

Footnotes (references):

[1] Michel Georget, L’apport de la vaccination à la santé publique (Vaccination’s Contribution to Public Health), 2014, Danglès

[2] Les experts du cholestérol de la HAS dans le viseur d’Anticor et du Formindep (The HAS Cholesterol Experts seen by Anticor and Formindep), on the www.caducee.net website.

[3] https://www.mondialisation.ca/peut-on-faire-confiance-a-loms/5643772 (Can the WHO be trusted), by William Engdahl, on the www.mondialisation.ca website.

[4] Le Pr Philippe Even radié de l’Ordre des médecins (Pref. Philippe Even Struck Off), on the www.20minutes.fr website.  Emeritus Professor Philippe Even, former vice-chair of Université de Paris V, author of several books on medical corruption, including Guide des 4000 médicaments utiles, inutiles ou dangereux (Guide to 4000 useful, useless and downright dangerous medicines) and also Corruptions et crédulité en médecine, stop aux statines et autres dangers (Corruption and Credulity in Medicine, No to Statins and Other Risks), published by Cherche-midi.

[5] World Health Orgnaisation, WHO

[6] European Medicines Agency, EMA

[7] Covid-19 : qu’est-ce que le Care (Covid-19, What is CARE ?), on the l’Express website, published on the 24^th of March 2020

[8] Sciensano

[9] Steven Van Gucht, président du comité scientifique coronavirus (chair of the coronavirus scientific committee).  Belgian virologist Steven Van Gucht is a member of the Sciensano team and chairs the coronavirus scientific committee supporting the Belgian government in its management of the Covid-19 crisis. 

[10] Maggie De Block  

[11] Politique et corruption à l’OMS (Politics and Corruption at the WHO), on the Mondialisation website, by Pascal Sacré, 12th January 2010.

[12] Politics and Corruption at the World Health Organization (WHO), on the GlobalResearch website, by Pascal Sacré, 9th February 2020.

[13] Groupe stratégique consultatif d’experts (SAGE) – (Strategic Consulting Group), The SAGE group is concerned not only with vaccines and vaccination against childhood illnesses but with all vaccine-preventable diseases.

[14] Grippe A (swine flu): le niveau d’alerte pandémique passe en phase 6 (Swine flu: the pandemic alert level raised to Phase 6), beginning of the 2009 flu pandemic.

[15] Vaccination et pandémie virale 2009 : faites-vous confiance au SAGE ? (Vaccination and the 2009 viral pandemic: do you trust SAGE?), on the Mondialisation website, by Pascal Sacré, 26th November 2009.

[16] Jerome P Kassirer, Jerome P. Kassirer is an American nephrologist, medical researcher and professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.  He was Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1991 to 1999.  His quote appeared in the NEJM, 1995, vol. 333, n°1, p.50.

[17] Agence européenne du médicament : des experts sous influence ? (European Medicines Agency: Experts under Influence?), 12th December 2017.

[18] « Pantouflage » ou « revolving doors »; Following the controversy over the recruitment of José Manuel Barroso by Goldman Sachs or that of Hillary Clinton’s paid lectures on Wall Street, calls escalated for better regulation of the relationship between politics and finance.  Such behaviour blights our society as a whole, including healthcare.

[19] Alternative Santé numéro 78, article by Jeanne Leborgne, 12th December 2017.

[20] Covid-19: les conseillers du pouvoir face aux conflits d’intérêts (Covid-19: The Government’s Advisors and Conflicts of Interest), published 31^st March 2020, written by Rozenn Le Saint and Annton Rouget.

[21] Coronavirus : des liens troubles entre labos et conseils scientifiques (Coronavirus: Murky Ties between the Pharmaceutical Companies and Scientific Advisors), Valeurs actuelles, 3 April 2020.

[22] #TransparenceCHU : comment nous avons enquêté sur les liens entre labos et médecins, (#TransparencyCHU: How We Investigated the Ties between the Pharmaceutical Companies and Doctors).  Fifteen regional daily newspapers, including Le Parisien, report on an investigation into the ties between the pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals, this Friday, 10 January 2020.

[23] Dr Wolfgang Wodarg is a German physician specialising in Pulmonology, politician and former chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In 2009 he called for an inquiry into alleged conflicts of interest surrounding the EU response to the swine flu pandemic.

[24] Dr John Ioannidis is Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine and Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences.  He is director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).

[25] Dr John Ioannidis, – “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data”, Stat News, 17th March 2020.

[26] Professor Peter C. Gøtzsche, Corona: an epidemic of mass panic, published 21st March 2020.

[27] 12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic

[28] 10 MORE Experts Criticising the Coronavirus Panic

[29] Quand Maggie De Block se cure le nez en Commission par vidéo-conférence (When Maggie de Block picks her nose during a committee meeting by video-link), a picture taken from the video of the Health and Equality Committee meeting held last Tuesday by video link, went viral on social media.  Health Minister Maggie de Block obviously forgot that she was being filmed.

[30] Maggie De Block augmente encore et toujours le pouvoir des lobbies pharmaceutiques. Et notre santé? (Maggie de Block continues to increase Big Pharma lobby power.  What about our health?), by Muriel Gerkens, Green party MP and chair of the Health Committee in the House, article published in le Vif on 21^st September 2017.

[31] Farmaka amputée de moyens: le GBO s’inquiète (Farmaka’s funds chopped: The GBO is Concerned), Solidaris is not the only organisation to raise the alarm over the tight future prospects for neutral information on medicines.  The GBO is also expressing concern over the drastic cuts announced for independent medical visitors.

[32] La Belgique compte 9 ministres en charge de la Santé… comment cela se passe-t-il ? (Belgium Counts 9 Ministers in charge of Health…How is that possible?).  The political landscape for health in Belgium is marked by a fragmentation of power between the federal government, the communities and the regions.  No fewer than 9 ministers are in charge of health in some way.

[33] Pourquoi il ne faut pas fusionner les instances d’avis scientifiques en matière de santé (Why the scientific advisory bodies in the health field should not be merged), www.RTBF.be, 19^th September 2017.

[34] La création de Sciensano est la réponse du gouvernement à un audit mené par la Cour des Comptes en 2010 (The creation of Sciensano is the government’s response to a 2010 Court of Auditors audit), Journal du Médecin, 21^st September 2017.

[35] M. Mertens disait en effet craindre pour l’indépendance du KCE en raison de la composition du nouveau conseil d’administration (Mr. Mertens actually said he feared the independence of the KCE could be jeopardised by the members of the new Board).  Journal du Médecin, 21 September 2017.

[36] Le GBO inquiet pour l’indépendance du KCE (GBO expresses concern for independence of KCE).  Paul De Munck reiterates GBO’s commitment to the intellectual independence of scientific research.  Le Spécialiste, 26^th September 2017.

[37] Les fermetures d’écoles auront probablement un impact relativement faible sur la propagation du Covid-19, (School closures likely to have little impact on spread of coronavirus, review finds). The Guardian, by Sally Weale, 7^th April 2020.

[38] Le système d’influence des laboratoires pharmaceutiques (Pharmaceutical companies’ influence system).  Formindep, our association, has observed the influence pharmaceutical companies can have on political decisions. 18^th April 2015.

[39] Entre les labos pharmaceutiques et les médecins, 14 millions de conflits d’intérêts potentiels !, (14 million potential conflicts of interest between pharmaceutical companies and doctors!).  In spite of a series of scandals, transparency remains very fragmented.  In collaboration with the EurosForDocs project, we are disclosing a tool geared to clarifying these interest links: no fewer than 14 million such links have been identified in France since 2012, amounting to a total of over 3.5 billion euros paid out to medical professionals.  Rozenn Le Saint, 13^th November 2018.

[40] Médecins sous influence. Enquête sur les relations entre les médecins hospitaliers, (Doctors under Influence.  Investigation into the relationships between hospital doctors).  April 2008, Dr Jean Laperche, Krings Guillaume, Leroy Philippe, Kara Osman, Lecomte Laurie, Mertens Maud, Lallemand Séverine, Kabayadondo Gugu

[41] Influences des firmes pharmaceutiques sur les soins de santé, (Pharmaceutical Company Influence on Healthcare), Cindy Joye, Final dissertation for her University Certificate in Healthcare Ethics (UCL & FUNDP – 2012)

[42] Les laboratoires pharmaceutiques en accusation, (Pharmaceutical Companies Accused) by Paul Scheffer, Le Monde Diplomatique, Santé, October 2015. 

[43] Peter C. Gøtzsche, Remèdes mortels et crime organisé. Comment l’industrie pharmaceutique a corrompu les services de santé, (Mortal Remedies and Organised Crime.  How the pharmaceutical industry has corrupted the health services).  Presses de l’Université Laval, Québec, 2015, 457 pages.

[44] About Cochrane, “Cochrane is for anyone interested in using high-quality information to make health decisions. Whether you are a doctor or nurse, patient or carer, researcher or funder, Cochrane evidence provides a powerful tool to enhance your healthcare knowledge and decision making”.

[45] Institute for Scientific Freedom: “It works to preserve honesty and integrity in science and to help develop a better healthcare where more people will benefit; fewer will be harmed and more will live longer in good health.”

[46] L’association AIMSIB est un collectif de bonnes volontés issues de la société civile, (AIMSIB is a collective of goodwill from civil society).

[47] Pourquoi Prescrire ? (Why Prescrire?).  “Since January 1981, Prescrire’s sole purpose has been to provide medical professionals, and through them, their patients, the clear, synthetic and high-quality information they need, on medicines and diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in particular”.

 

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

As the global pandemic grips world attention, completely unnoticed by mainstream media was the release of a final report of an academic study pertaining to another previously calamitous event of international significance. On March 25th, the conclusion of a four year investigation by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks was published which determined that the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11th, 2001 was not caused by fire.

The peer-reviewed inquiry was funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization composed of more than 3,000 building architects and engineers who are a signatory to the group’s formal appeal calling for a new investigation into the three — not two — WTC skyscrapers destroyed on 9/11. The researchers infer that the collapse of Building 7 was actually the result of a controlled demolition:

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

With or without a pandemic, it is likely corporate media would have ignored the study anyway, just as they have anything that contradicts the official story of 9/11. However, it is notable that many have drawn parallels between the COVID-19 outbreak and the 9/11 attacks based on the widespread changes to daily life as a result of the crisis going forward. Already there is talk of nationwide lockdowns as a “new normal” with many rightly expressing concerns over civil liberties, press freedoms, the surveillance state, and other issues just as there were following 9/11. By the same measure, a false dichotomy is being established by political gatekeepers in order to silence those who dare challenge the official account as to how the coronavirus began. It is a stigmatization that is all too familiar to those who have never believed the conventional narrative that 19 Arab hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden armed only with box-cutters were solely responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that fateful day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This did not stop the British from supporting the House of Saud so long as it was in the interest of Western imperialism, an unholy alliance which continues to this day. However, U.S.-Saudi relations did come under scrutiny when the infamous 28 redacted pages of the December 2002 report of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001” conducted by the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence were finally disclosed in 2016. The section revealed not only the numerous U.S. intelligence failures in the lead-up to the attacks but the long suspected culpability of Saudi Arabia, whose nationals were not the focus of counterterrorism because of Riyadh’s status as a U.S. ally. The declassified pages show that some of the hijackers, 15 of them Saudi citizens, received financial and logistical support from individuals linked to the Saudi government, which FBI sources believed at least two of which to be Saudi intelligence officers. One of those Saudi agents received large payments from Princess Haifa, the wife of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a stipend from the latter’s bank account which inevitably went from the go-betweens to the sleeper cell.

President George W. Bush and Prince Bandar bin Sultan at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas in 2002

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

The Bush-bin Laden connection goes all the way back to the beginning of George W. Bush’s business career prior to his political involvement in 1976 with the founding of an oil drilling company, Arbusto Energy, whose earliest investors included a Texas businessman and fellow reservist in the Texas Air National Guard, James R. Bath, who oddly enough was the American liaison for Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half brother. To put it differently, the bin Laden family and its construction fortune helped finance Bush’s start in the oil industry, a relationship that would continue through the 1990s with Harken Energy, later the recipient of an offshore oil contract in Iraq’s reconstruction alongside Dick Cheney’s Halliburton. The Bush dynasty’s financial ties to both the Saudi royals and bin Laden family went on as co-investors in the Carlyle Group private equity firm where the elder Bush’s previous government service contacts were exploited for financial gain. In fact, on the morning of 9/11, Bush Sr. just happened to be attending a Carlyle business conference where another bin Laden sibling was the guest of honor in what we are supposed to believe is another astounding coincidence. Just days later, Shafiq bin Laden would be spirited off on a chartered flight back to Saudi Arabia in an exodus overseen by Prince Bandar himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most Americans are unaware that a similar coup d’etat nearly took place during the same year in the United States in an attempt to remove President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install an authoritarian government modeled on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as part of a scheme hatched by an inner circle of right-wing bankers otherwise known as the the ‘Business Plot.’ It was a conspiracy that only became public after it was heroically thwarted by a whistleblower in decorated Marine Corps veteran turned anti-imperialist, Major General Smedley Butler, after he was recruited to form the junta. Incredibly, one of the prominent business figures implicated in the putsch was none other than future Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush’s father and George W. Bush’s grandfather, who at the time was the director and shareholder of a bank owned by German industrialist and prominent Nazi financier Fritz Thyssen seized by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

After his transformation, in 1935 Smedley Butler famously penned War is a Racket and there is perhaps no better phrase that would sum up the so-called ‘War on Terror’ today. Not only did the American Reichstag fire of 9/11 trigger a domestic police state transformation that overrode the U.S. constitution in an American equivalent of the 1933 Enabling Act and the Heimatschutz (“homeland protection”) defense forces with the passing of the USA-Patriot Act and founding of the Department of Homeland Security, but it fulfilled the prophecy of political scientist Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations in a face-off between Islam and Christianity abroad. The prediction that religion and culture would be the primary source of geopolitical conflict in the post-Cold War world was an apocalyptic paradigm envisioned by right-wing orientalist philosophers like Huntington and Bernard Lewis which the PNAC neocon ideologues put into practice. Today, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis appears likely to have similar broad and long-term political, social and economic consequences and those who have doubts about the official explanation for the pandemic can hardly be blamed for their distrust given this history unless the lessons of 9/11 have gone unlearned.

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Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at [email protected]

All images in this article are from The Unz Review

Republicans and Dems serve privileged interests exclusively on major issues, differing only rhetorically for political reasons.

At a time of economic shutdown with growing millions of Americans out of work, congressional focus is largely on helping monied interests.

It’s unclear how much Payroll Protection Program (PPP) money is going to workers.

On Tuesday, CNBC reported that small businesses getting this funding “are among the lucky few,” adding:

“Business owners must now decide how to spend their money” — to retain workers or use it for other expenses to stay solvent.

“Some (recipient firms) are delaying disbursement(s)” because other priorities take precedence.

Some large companies are getting funds earmarked for small ones.

An estimated three-fourths of small businesses applied to the Small Business Administration for forgivable loans.

About 80% of applications haven’t been processed. Most small businesses needing financial help haven’t gotten it.

It’s unclear how many will be helped while economic hard times continue, countless numbers likely to be left out entirely.

Many won’t survive because of economic shutdown, jobs for their workers to be permanently gone.

Complicating things further is that millions of unemployed US workers aren’t getting their unemployment checks.

Weeks after applying for benefits, they remain in limbo. One frustrated unemployed worker said she may be homeless before help arrives.

About 22 million Americans applied for benefits, applications for millions more remaining to be processed, many others likely to apply as layoffs and furloughs continue.

One economist called the backlog a “peak load problem. The system is overloaded” and can’t keep up with the huge volume.

In Ohio, processing claims for eligible workers was delayed until mid-May.

In hindsight when current economic shutdown and COVD-19 outbreaks end, evidence may show the death toll to be higher from untreated commonplace major illnesses, deprivation, and despair than from the novel coronavirus.

Yet little or nothing is reported about an issue too important to ignore, what’s unaddressed by Congress and the White House.

There’s no federal funding to treat the sick, house the homeless, or feed the hungry.

Yet major banks and other corporate favorites got trillions of dollars in free money — an unprecedented wealth transfer scheme from ordinary people to privileged ones.

On Tuesday, Public Citizen president Robert Weissman slammed the Trump regime for using COVID-19 outbreaks “as a pretext to launch a sweeping effort to repeal or suspend regulatory safeguards,” adding:

At a time when protecting public health and welfare should be prioritized, Trump is “exploit(ing)” current conditions “to let corporations pollute our air and water, rip off consumers, endanger workers, and trample on civil rights…”

He’s “leav(ing) the nation economically weaker and will worsen public health.”

His agenda is doing little “to get money back into the pockets of consumers, workers and small business owners, or to put people back to work.”

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a $480 billion economic stimulus measure that left vital needs unaddressed, House adoption likely coming on Thursday.

The funding bill includes nothing for states and cities, nothing to feed hungry Americans, nothing to assure the unemployed get benefits quickly while economic crisis conditions continue, nothing to freeze rent and mortgage payments for unemployed workers, nothing for the beleaguered US Postal Service, and no hazard pay for front-line workers.

The measure includes $320 billion to small businesses for PPP —that may be used for other priorities with some of the funding likely going to larger firms, some earmarked for banks and credit unions.

Around $60 billion in loans and grants is earmarked for Economic Injury Disaster Loan disbursements — agribusiness eligible to receive them, likely to get the lion’s share.

There’s $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for virus testing.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities president Robert Greenstein called the Senate bill “inadequate” for failing “to deliver crucial state and local fiscal relief and food assistance” to hungry Americans.

Because of plummeting revenues from economic shutdown, states are forced to make hard choices.

They’re cutting funding for healthcare, education, and other essential services, along with laying off workers for lack of enough revenue — their actions causing greater economic contraction and creating more hardships for ordinary people.

Far more federal help is needed, including for food stamps, treating the sick, aiding the homeless, and providing other vital services.

Illinois projects a $7 billion budget shortfall over the next two fiscal years, a higher number if progressive tax legislation isn’t enacted this year.

According to Gov. Jay Pritzker, public health concerns are “accompanied by massive economic disruption that’s unprecedented in modern history.”

Maryland estimates a 15% budget shortfall for the current fiscal year. Michigan projects a 12% shortfall.

Most other states are hard-pressed because revenues aren’t matching expenses.

Most federal aid has gone to privileged interests, ordinary Americans in need getting short shrift.

During economic hard times, they’re struggling largely on their own with little federal, state and local help.

COVID-19 outbreaks are minor in comparison to economic duress, growing unemployment affecting millions, and their lack of financial ability to pay for daily essentials.

Before economic crisis conditions ease, the worst may be yet to come for ordinary people in the US and elsewhere.

When economic recovery is achieved, things won’t likely be as they were before current hard times began.

Lost rights and welfare for most people won’t likely won’t be regained.

A disturbing new normal replacing the pre-downturn status quo likely awaits.

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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.

Fifty years ago I and other conservationists and public health advocates were thrilled with the idea of an annual Earth Day celebration to honor our planet. At that time, I had more requests from television and radio to speak about health, nutrition and the early natural food movement. I had never received before any requests to speak about the environment, although I was an organic farmer and taught organic and sustainable agricultural methods at my Fertile Earth Farm outside of New Paltz in the Hudson Valley.

Despite the success of the early Earth Day events, there seemed to be very little national interest in deeper environmental issues. Even in those days, I largely spoke to deaf ears. Unlike the worldwide consciousness growing around civil and women’s rights, activism advocating for stewardship of the Earth, its resources and wildlife was still in its infancy. I was hoping these various efforts might join together. That included going vegetarian, live through the principle of being in harmony with the natural world and conscientiously simplifying our lives. Rather than focus on a future to purchase and hoard more stuff, explore what other cultures do to connect with our human faculties that foster compassion, kindness, and a shared commons. I believed we should be oracles of peace rather than ambassadors of political hegemony, oppression and power.

Yet how foolish, naive and delusional I was! Now jumping forward fifty years, where does humanity linger today?  Last year was the year of Greta Thunberg, a teenager who raised hell, got into the faces of the world’s leaders and demanded environmental priority over profits. Despite her sincerity, it turned out to be a rather futile gesture.  Her activism is admirable for mobilizing the global youth. But it also served her backers. Pull back the curtain and we discover laissez faire opportunists behind Green capitalism exemplified by the elite such as Al Gore. With very few exceptions, I no longer believe the world governments, and certainly not private industry or the mainstream media, will effectively cause anything to change to the degree necessary to reach a realistic level of ecological sustainability.

Do we ever ask a basic question?  What are we trying to save the planet from? The answer is simple: massive over-consumption of unessential stuff that requires endless exploitation of natural resources and the media’s manufacturing of consent. Aside from a bubble economy of debt, we have a bubble educational system.  Bubble military and pharmaceutical complexes. A bubble agriculture. A bubble body politic. And bubble comfort where we do nothing that advances the causes for empathy by engaging in authentic change and care for others rather than solely for ourselves and our tribe. All of our grasping for luxuries while doing less feeds the predatory capitalist system.

Robinson Jeffers, an icon of America’s early 20th century environmental movement, anti-war activist and epic poet warned of the same social hubris that we witness today and is now leading us to an environmental precipice. He believed humanity was too self-centered and indifferent to the “astonishing beauty of things.” He called on his readers to “uncenter” themselves. The only thing that materialism accomplishes, according to Jeffers, is to teach us how to suffer. His contemporary John Muir would castigate the utter failure of the faith based religions to protect the Earth and pen, “No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals, temples and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord.”

Sadly, our lying mainstream media rarely portrays the ugliness of our culture and our destruction of the planet. It only focuses on the consequences of climate change disasters, not why these crises are happening and who is ultimately responsible. These are treated as one time events. There is no complex and truthful analysis. For example, last year, there were record breaking weather events. Alaska witnessed for the first time a complete loss of sea ice. Wildfires occurred in Greenland and above the Arctic Circle. There was epic flooding in the American heartland, forest fires devastated large tracts of northern California, and the Bahamas were hit with the first recognized Category 6 hurricane. But these events were only in the news cycle for a day or two before disappearing. Have major media outlets ever gone back to look at the long term consequences?

Our media reality is hyper-kinetic. Short and spastic, it changes with each 24-hour news cycle. Information is rapidly lost from our cultural consciousness and other political news stories replace it before another climate catastrophe appears on the horizon. Consequently there is no time for self reflection or meditation about what each of us as individuals should be doing.

I knew something was terribly wrong during a later Earth Day celebration in Dallas where I was a speaker. After my lecture, I wandered around the fairgrounds observing people eating hamburgers and junk food. Coke cans were scattered about. I realized most came for the country music. They did not attend in order to learn how to better change their lives.

Today there is nothing to stop global warming’s dangerous feedback loops. Repeatedly we learn that the experts were wrong in their predictions by a substantial measure. The Antarctic ice sheets are melting far more rapidly than expected, by a ten-fold magnitude. Sea level rise is happening faster than forecasted.  In 2019, the International Arctic Research Center reported that the region has entered an “unprecedented state” that threatens the planet’s climate stability.

The Trump White House does absolutely nothing and instead has been making efforts to censor press statements related to climate change. Wall Street and the private corporate industrial complex are equally complicit in keeping the public stupefied.  In the meantime, there is a new Earth Day for us to stand up and be proud of. And this meaningless ritual we will continue to frivolously revere in the future as matters worsen. There is nothing to be learned from celebrity environmentalists, many who will fly to events in private jets, eat meat and then pontificate about environmental consciousness raising.

This does not mean that I am surrendering my commitment to the Earth nor should you. However, I will no longer waste my time with large environmental organizations and Earth Days. Instead, every day I support local activities such as farmer markets and efforts to strengthen local community resilience. I balance my lifestyle in order to minimize my carbon footprint, support truly sustainable movements, and intentional communities where people choose to live in harmony with nature and focus on the emotional and intellectual quality of their lives. I will continue to host daily radio broadcasts and direct documentaries on the environment and health. However, what we do as individuals in our homes, with our neighbors and communities also make a difference.

When Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson founded the first Earth Day in 1970, it was because he observed that the health of the planet was being completely ignored in politics and the media. The nationwide event would have been irrelevant except for it having set important milestones. It led to public support behind the eventual passage of Ralph Nader’s Clean Air and Clean Water acts and the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Nader is undoubtedly our most important and uncompromised environmentalist. It was his commitment to the Earth and our humanity’s relationship to the environment that resulted in passing many laws to protect us.

Therefore, instead of another Earth Day pageant on April 22nd, let us reconnect with the beauty of what remains of nature and our neighbors with earnest. And let’s remember the words of Chief Seattle from the Suquamish nation that “humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”

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Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his most recent film on climate change, Last Call for Tomorrow. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.