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I certainly don’t claim to be a financial wizard. In fact, at best, I have a rudimentary understanding of how the convoluted funny money economy works. However, you don’t need to fully comprehend the ins-and-outs of rigged monetary system to understand we’re in for big trouble and the coronavirus “pandemic” is not only accelerating the fall but will make the outcome far, far worse. 

For more detail on the financial end of this disaster, read Mike Whitney’s Why Washington’s COVID-19 Relief Package Must Be Stopped!

No chance, however. As I write this, Congress passed a pork-laden“stimulus” bill. 

If we can believe numbers put out by the CDC, as of Friday, March 27 there were 1,246 deaths in the US attributed to the virus. Compare this with the 1968 H3N2 “Hong Kong Flu.” It reportedly killed 100,000 people in the US and around a million around the world. 

At the time, the response was not to lock down the country and destroy the livelihood of millions of Americans and usher in the severe violations of the Constitution we are now witnessing.

Short of COVID-19 numbers shooting into the stratosphere in the long run, the death rate will be nowhere near those of the H3N2 pandemic. After the virus is put down by warm temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, jobless and impoverished Americans will scratch their heads in wonderment at the overreaction by government. 

Back in 1968, the US economy was doing fairly well. It was the economic powerhouse of the world. The economy began the slow process of engineered deterioration after the so-called “Nixon shock” imposed wage and price freezes in response to Federal Reserve manufactured inflation and the direct international convertibility of the dollar to gold in 1971. 

10% inflation in the 1970s was “the result of the honest mistakes of a well-meaning central bank (sic),” according to the Fed.

The former Fed boss, Ben Bernanke, said in 2002 “honest mistakes” were also responsible for the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed (see Jerry Mazza’s How the FED engineered the Great Depression; for historical comparison of the current economic trauma prior to COVID-19, see Doug Casey: Comparing the 1930s and Today). 

Is the current corporate propaganda media-generated hysteria over what appears thus far to be a normal influenza virus happenstance? 

I argue the pandemic was planned or conveniently exploited, if not beforehand then in its early stage as it swept China. I am convinced the virus was arranged or exploited to make an excuse for a coming and unavoidable Greater Depression, a historically unmatched depression as a direct result of the fraud, manipulation, and gambling debts of the financial class. Blame for the pinpricks deflating absurdly enlarged and distorted asset bubbles horrendously crashing the economy will be laid at President Donald Trump’s door. 

Moreover, the crash and its enforced misery—only now beginning to gain fatal momentum—will be used by the ruling elite to demand several drastic “reforms,” beginning with a call for a centralized world government. This globalist scheme, long in the planning, will be rolled out “temporarily” to confront the virus. 

From The Guardian on March 27:

Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response.

Brown’s “executive power” will become permanent after the virus has subsided. It will be the foundation for a global government after the world economy finally falls off a cliff—possibly weeks or months away—and the desperate masses begin rioting in the streets over food shortages and the inevitable institution of martial law (or something similar without the namesake in an end-run around the Constitution, which does not explicitly grant emergency powers to a president). 

Prior to Gordon Brown’s demand, bankers and establishment economists began a heightened call for “a digital alternative to paper money” to stop the spread of the virus and “helping improve financial inclusion by addressing the needs of millions of Americans that remain unbanked, according to the FDIC.” 

In January, the elite at Davos was way ahead of the curve on the effort to dispose of paper money and replace it with a digital financial and societal control mechanism. 

“Users of the U.S. dollar are ‘underserved by an analogue currency in a digital world,’ Christopher Giancarlo, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said during an event in Davos,” CNBC reported. 

The promise of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is that it could make cross-border movement of money easier and improve traceability to fight corruption or money laundering, according to Henri Arslanian, global crypto leader at PwC.

It would also make tracking and surveilling citizens far easier and more efficient. “There are two kinds of economic surveillance to take note of. One is surveillance by companies, the other is by the state,” writes Melissa Twigg. 

“It’s the companies that want to get data on you,” says [financial analyst Tom Nicholls]. “But they form the pool of data that then a state would be able to access.” It may sound very Black Mirror, but it’s already happening in China, where mass financial data from Alipay is helping to craft the country’s social-credit system, which will reward and punish citizens based on economic behaviour.

There appears to be no end to the manufacture of state and media-generated hysteria.

ABC News notes that a “Department of Homeland Security memo sent to law enforcement officials around the country warns that violent extremists could seek to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic by carrying out attacks against the U.S… The memo, which was circulated on Monday, comes after assurances from FBI Director Chris Wray in a video message that agents would be even more vigilant in monitoring threats to the U.S. as the virus spreads.” 

Last August the FBI “for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat,” according to a memo circulated at the FBI’s Phoenix office. 

“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

For those who pay attention, there is ample evidence the FBI arranges terrorist plots and has done so at least since the agency ran its unconstitutional COINTELPRO takedown of numerous political opponents beginning in the 1950s. 

Both the FBI and DHS may begin categorizing those of us who differ with the state and its media on the origin and impact of the coronavirus as “domestic extremists” bent on destroying the nation. 

The real destroyers and psychopathic misanthropes, however, are in high places. They are cynically and criminally exploiting the coronavirus—so far no more dangerous than seasonal flu—to shove their one-world agenda down our throats as easily frightened Americans run around like Chicken Little, begging the state to take care of us before the sky falls. 

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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 Shutterstock

This question is invited by news reports that they are preventing the use of the anti-malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients.  According to experts, the anti-malaria drugs are effective if used early enough in the infection.  But the drugs are cheap and there is no profit in them.  

As of Tuesday, New York hospitals have federal permission to give desperately ill patients a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin on a “compassionate care” basis.

According to the world’s leading expert, Didier Raoult (image on the right), it is too late to give the anti-malarial drugs in the latter stage of the infection, see this.   

Fauci says there is no substantive proof that the drugs are effective, but the Chinese and Didier Raoult, who is far more prominent than Fauci, say otherwise.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Coronavirus cases are continuing to accelerate as the world’s most affluent countries, for a change, bear the brunt of a serious infectious illness. Yet again it is the bulk of populations that will really suffer, however, as multinational corporations and establishment centres seek to consolidate their wealth and influence.

The number of official infections worldwide is set to surpass the 700,000 mark, an increase of about half a million cases in two weeks.

More than 30,000 people have so far died. The most powerful country of all, America, has comfortably the highest number of infections in the world, at over 120,000 and counting. (1)

Source: WHO

Around 18,000 fresh cases alone were detected in America on 27 March 2020, a record daily increase. Figures for 28 March in the US are once more revealing a very large quantity of new cases, with New York containing almost half of all nationwide reported diagnoses. More than 140,000 people globally have recovered from the coronavirus.

Actual statistics in America may be much higher, and there is every sign that many tens of thousands of new coronavirus detections will occur there in the weeks ahead. With a population less than a quarter that of China’s, the US is already suffering far more from this disease by comparison to their main rival in the world arena.

Image on the right is from the WHO

The coronavirus will hit America’s people hard, due to the country being dominated to an unusual degree by extreme wealth, which has increased notably during the neoliberal era. America’s healthcare system, designed for the well off, is not remotely organised to handle a highly infectious disease which is proving difficult to eradicate.

The most likely reasons behind the coronavirus developing is because of the following factors: Global industrial-scale meat production and its enormous antibiotic usage, combined with humanity’s ongoing attacks on planetary ecosystems, as closer interaction occurs between billions of people, their livestock and wild animals, all of which are potential carriers of both old and new infectious illnesses. Of this, there is an abundance of scientific research and evidence. (2)

It is a perfect storm that has been brewing, a breeding ground in which contagious maladies can spread forth. The arrival of a disease like the coronavirus has been an inevitability. It is no accident over the past generation especially, as the rate of environmental destruction grows, that so many different illnesses have sprung up around the planet.

Among the least likely causes behind the coronavirus emerging, is that of deliberate implantations into countries from people, or through biological/chemical warfare by hostile powers. Considering America’s very harmful post-1945 foreign policy record, fingers of blame were pointed early on in Washington’s direction, such as by the Chinese or Iranian governments (3). In these instances, there is simply no evidence to support their accusations.

The complaints of Beijing and Tehran are at least understandable, if one takes a brief glance at American hostility, specifically one notorious incident which could have destroyed the world. Washington has a history of implanting biological diseases and infestations inside the borders of designated enemies, such as Cuba, along with implementing invasions and terrorist campaigns. These malevolent actions performed a leading role which resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis occurring in October 1962.

In August 1962, president John F. Kennedy formally decided to escalate Washington’s terrorist assaults against Cuba (Operation Mongoose), with these attacks thereafter occurring right up to, and even during the missile crisis itself two months later – which the Kennedy administration previously expected would culminate in a large-scale US invasion of Cuba, in October 1962.

The American author and historian, Aviva Chomsky, revealed of the Cuban Missile Crisis that,

“In fact the major players in the United States emerge as more reckless than heroic… many of the claims made by the Soviets and Cubans, previously denied by U.S. sources, turned out to be true. The Cubans did fear another U.S. Invasion, and plans for such an invasion were indeed in the works. Soviet nuclear capability was in fact far behind what the United States had developed”.

Aviva Chomsky writes further,

“The Soviet purpose of placing missiles in Cuba was to address real threats: to defend Cuba against U.S. attack and to respond to the global strategic and political nuclear advantage held by the United States… Despite U.S. promises, it refused to accept international oversight of its non-intervention pledge, and in fact U.S. plans to overthrow the Cuban government continued unabated”; and she notes that for humanity, “The brink was far closer than either the public at the time, or later historians, had realized”. President Kennedy afterwards informed his advisors that “our objective is to preserve our right to invade Cuba”, breaking all promises made which the Kennedy administration had no intention of ever keeping. (4)

In light of such examples as this, it is easy to empathise with the Chinese and Iranian governments for feeling paranoid. These two countries already endure regular intimidation by US economic and military power.

Focusing again on the coronavirus, with the disease having spread to almost every country worldwide, it has reportedly taken on two slightly different strains (“L-type” and “S-type”), as medical and biological experts have highlighted (5). It is not yet clear if one strain of the coronavirus is more severe than the other, but the current strains detected are almost identical.

Erik Volz, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said of the coronavirus in early March,

“I think it’s a fact that there are two strains. It’s normal for viruses to undergo evolution when they are transmitted to a new host”.

Volz’ observations are supported by Ravinder Kanda, a senior lecturer in evolutionary genomics at Oxford, who commented earlier this month that,

“There do appear to be two different strains. The L-type might be more aggressive in transmitting itself, but we have no idea yet how these underlying genetic changes will relate to disease severity”.

Maladies such as the coronavirus are particularly prone to quick mutations, even on a person-to-person basis, which scientific analysts have noted. There is nothing sinister, or unusual, about a different strain of this disease occurring in countries thousands of miles apart, like Italy and China. There is nothing odd either regarding a separate strain unfolding across nations close to China’s shores.

That Italy and America could contain the same variety of virus, does not at all mean that such a strain was implanted or spread from the US into Europe. There is again no proof to support allegations behind the critical circumstances in this virus’s development. Such reflections count as mere speculation, particularly when not supported by studies conducted by professionals in the field.

One of the central developments to date of the coronavirus, is that it has been attacking most severely some of the world’s wealthiest countries and, crucially, the planet’s biggest tourist destinations: France, America, Germany, Italy and Spain. This indicates a great deal.

France is the most visited country on earth, followed by Spain and America, with Italy and Germany close behind (6). They consist mainly of the nations worst affected by the coronavirus from its earliest stages, and this is surely no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that, as things stand, those countries closed off from the world have virtually escaped the disease such as: Libya (1 case), Syria (5 cases), Laos (6 cases) and Myanmar (8 cases).

It is highly likely that the coronavirus was disseminated worldwide, primarily as a consequence of air travel relating to the tourist industry. This is especially so in an era of unprecedented globalisation, as people are flown every which way by the tens of millions each month. It accounts for the remarkable rapidity of the coronavirus expansion, and the appearance of the disease in dozens of countries on a seemingly simultaneous level.

In 2019 the number of tourists worldwide reached a record 1.5 billion, almost 20% of the entire human population (7). From early 2020, the coronavirus fanned out so quickly as millions upon millions of people descended on the above tourist destinations, and upon returning from such places to their home countries.

Moreover, it is impossible to analyse each person who passes through an airport, in order to judge if they were infected with the disease at that time. Symptoms do not show up at once, and are obvious only later on. One cannot estimate with a measure of real confidence precisely how this disease evolved, how it circulated, which strain developed where, through what countries, etc. Yet it is possible to examine the most likely causes of infectious disease development, based on broad scientific research.

From the early 1950s until today, humans have increasingly encroached into the environments of animals, birds, insects, etc., all of which can conceivably carry deadly ailments, as they have in the past. Any such disease could disperse from wild creatures, who usually have strong constitutions, to vulnerable pigs or cows, which may in turn pass on the illness to people.

By analysing the spread of potentially lethal illnesses, we can examine the issue of industrial meat production, and its dependence on antibiotic usage (8). This problem is in fact so significant, that it may be outweighed on a global threat level only by nuclear weapons and the climate crisis.

Countless millions of domesticated animals are herded together in dreadful indoor conditions, and to prevent disease circulation, they are pumped full of antibiotics. The never-ending use of antibiotics has been destroying their effectiveness, and is creating mutant, drug-resistant bacteria. The arrival of dangerous bacteria may constitute a foundation for the spawning of new contagious diseases. Antibiotic abuse is making the administering of these drugs less effective also in the treatment of human illnesses.

Antibiotics induce artificial weight gain in species like chickens, which is another reason for their use (9). Antibiotics are strongly endorsed by multinational corporations, who depend on the meat industry to maintain their high profit levels, such as fast food retailers McDonald’s and KFC. Big pharma are likewise profiting massively from meat manufacturing, and rake in about $5 billion each year from producing antibiotics for farm livestock. The US animal antibiotics industry amasses profits of around $2 billion a year, while its European equivalent takes home $1.25 billion per annum. (10)

The antibiotics market as a whole is worth $45 billion. Regulations, put forth in an attempt to reduce antibiotics in meat processing, are undermined by lobbyists connected to big pharma and fast food transnationals. What we have here is a vast, interconnected operation dedicated to collecting mega wealth, and which is inflicting wide-scale harm on the planet. In an age of neoliberal globalisation, governments are compromised and proving impotent in tackling these problems.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has largely been co-opted to corporate power. Of the swine flu from a decade ago, researchers advising the WHO were paid millions of euro from the vaccine industry. A number of people, from big pharma, were present in secret advisory groups that were close to the WHO’s Director-General of the time, Margaret Chan, who retired from this role in 2017. (11)

The prestigious Danish physician Halfdan Mahler, who led the WHO for 15 years, had warned at the end of his tenure in 1988 that big pharma “is taking over the WHO”. His remarks went unheeded.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Worldometer, Coronavirus Cases, 28 March 2020

2 Adele Peters, “Why our shrinking natural world is increasing the pace of global pandemics“, Fast Company, 13 March 2020

3 Michael Jansen, “Iran struggles to fight Covid-19 as US sanctions hurt healthcare“, Irish Times, 20 March 2020, 

4 Aviva Chomsky, A History Of The Cuban Revolution (John Wiley & Sons; 2nd edition, 31 Mar. 2015), pp. 69-70

5 Jessica Hamzelou, “Are there two strains and is one more deadly?“, New Scientist, 5 March 2020

6 Nellie Huang, “10 most visited countries in the world“, Wild Junket, 6 January 2020, 

7 Megha Paul, “UNWTO records 1.5 billion tourism arrivals in 2019“, Travel Daily Media, 21 January 2020, 

8 Robert Hackett, “Noam Chomsky: ‘In a couple of generations, organized human society may not survive‘”, National Observer, 12 February 2019

9 Jill Ettinger, “‘Low dose’ Antibiotics in Chicken Feed for Weight Gain Widespread, Investigation Finds“, Organic Authority, 22 October 2018

10 Holly Watt, “How much does big pharma make from animal antibiotics?”, The Guardian, 19 June 2018

11 Soren Ventegodt, Reviewed & Approved by Dr. Harold H. Fain, January 2015

Featured image is from Health.mil

Former Health Ministry chief Prof. Yoram Lass says governments can’t halt viruses and the lockdown will kill more people from depression than the virus.

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Former Ministry of Health director-general Prof. Yoram Lass has been regularly interviewed by the Israeli media since the coronavirus outbreak first started. But in contrast to the prophets of doom and deep concern shown by most medical professionals, he has presented a somewhat different and controversial opinion. Prof. Lass feels that it is wrong to shut down the entire country because of a virus that is ultimately less of a killer than the flu. In other words, he is saying that taking into account the cost benefits, it is preferable ‘to sacrifice’ the elderly so that daily life can go on as normal. This is an outlook that has antagonized many and has made him a ‘persona non grata’ in the TV interview studios.

Lass is at peace with himself over all this and with the voices calling him ‘deluded.” “I didn’t invite myself to the studios,” he told “Globes,” “and I’m prepared to give my opinion to everybody who is ready to listen.”

Do you think you are being excluded because you presented an unpopular position?

“I can tell you that several days ago I heard with my own ears, after I was interviewed on the radio by Nissim Mishal, the deputy director of the Ministry of Health Prof. Itamar Grotto tell Mishal that I shouldn’t be brought into studios. And last Friday, I was invited to the studio by Ayala Hasson. Some three days beforehand, they called me and ask not to go anywhere else, and then the day before they cancelled. And who did they replace me with on the program? The futurist David Passig, who told the people of Israel that in the best case scenario 40 million people would die, and in the worst case scenario 300 million people would die. That shows you how the media is only trumpeting hysteria. Because it was clear that if I was sitting next to him, I would only have told an amazed Israeli people that every year 17,000 Italians die of flu while in Israel only 126 dies of flue last year.

What does that mean?

“Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country. In the US about 40,000 people die in a regular flu season and so far 40-50 people have died of the coronavirus, most of them in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington.”

“The characteristics in every country are different. In Italy the median age of those dying of the coronavirus is 81 and the population is very old and frail and smokes more and among the dead are more men. In Korea, in contrast, more young women and non-smokers have been infected. In every country, more people die from regular flu compared with those who die from the coronavirus. All this is what I was saying when they were still listening to me. Instead of this they bring somebody like Passig, who says the opposite things, and I’m sure that what he says won’t happen.”

How can you be sure?

“Because there is a very good example that we all forget: the swine flu in 2009. That was a virus that reached the world from Mexico. But what? At that time there was no Facebook or there maybe was but it was still in its infancy. The coronavirus in contrast is a virus with public relations.”

Whoever thinks that governments end viruses is wrong

The number of deaths from the virus is not what is shocking in the eyes of Lass. “I won’t say how many people will ultimately die from coronavirus, but what I say to myself is that in a large country like China, in the entire Wuhan region, which has 70 million people, 3,000 people have died. In that entire country, the numbers are very low. If that was like the black plague in the Middle Ages in Europe, in which one third of Italians died, then 20 million people would die. Small pox, which the European brought to America, killed off all the Indians. The atmosphere today in Israel is as if there is some type of disease, which will kill off all the population. If Passig says that 300 million will die (worldwide) then 1 million will die in Israel.

But it is not only in Israel. All the countries that were apparently complacent until now, like Germany and the UK, have all now brought in a policy of lockdown.

“Even so I say that the numbers do not match the panic. That’s because in China they stopped the virus and because of natural immunity, which they’ve forgotten to talk about. What stopped the swine flu pandemic and what generally stops viruses? Whoever thinks that the government ends viruses is completely wrong. What really happens? The virus, which nobody can stop, spreads throughout the population and then the population, not those at risk, are exposed to the virus and simultaneously the body creates antibodies to shut down and prevent the disease. At the moment in Israel, the virus is being spread around by a great many people who don’t know that they have it and people are being exposed and becoming immune. The chain of infection is broken and in that way the virus comes to a halt.”

You’re talking about the British model in which the elderly are forced into isolation and the rest of the population develops natural immunity and continues their lives as normal?

“Yes, I agree completely with that approach. On the one hand, to protect the weak population, while leaving the rest of the other people to carry on.”

But then we see that even the British prime minister Boris Johnson, who led that policy, was forced to back down.

“He caved in. We are in a clear situation of psychology prevailing over science. The science rests on data. I presented to you some numbers and statistics that demonstrate that the genie is not terrible. Regular flu makes people yawn and the old person in a bed in a hospital corridor doesn’t interest anybody but we have become monstrously hysterical and in the past fascist regimes have come to power. It’s the same type of craziness. Entire peoples are undergoing some sort of mental process.”

A lot of antagonism has been stirred up towards you by your comments that the elderly population can be sacrificed.

“I didn’t use such a terrible word as ‘to sacrifice’ at all. The journalist asked me if that’s what I meant and on TV you don’t have the possibility of explaining in detail, so I simply answered yes. But that’s not what I meant although I take responsibility for it.”

So what did you mean?

“To say that in life we take risks, and I’ve got some examples: when we drive in the car we cause the deaths of about 350 people per year (in Israel). If we stopped all transportation in Israel, we would save their lives. We would save them.”

“Another example: many soldiers who are young and have their entire lives before them are killed so that the defense plans and policies can be implemented, and which are sometimes deluded. So because of the risk we should dismantle the IDF in order to save the soldiers’ lives?”

If we get back to our example, the medical price of what is happening now resembles price paid for the seasonal flu virus that we have every fall. In the State of Israel, 126 people die, in the US 40,000 people, in Italy 17,000 and that’s the price we are prepared to pay to live normal lives.”

The economic damage is harder than the health damage

“I call it the economic and social Yom Kippur. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have lost their livelihood and their support and many more will die from heart attacks and anxiety or depression as a result of this. So in life we take risks and pay the price.”

You need courage to present an opposing opinion

Why in your opinion is your position received with such antagonism?

“I receive a lot of support from people in the public, although of course not from a representative sample. There is to my regret somebody who is being saved by all this hysteria at the moment, so he is not going to extinguish it but he is ‘going along with’ the whole thing and I admit that you need courage to present an opposing position.”

Well, it’s clear who you mean

“I’m talking generally. The situation is even playing into the hands of the Hungarian prime minister because the fact that two Iranian students started the virus (in his country) supports his clams against foreigners.”

But still how do you explain that even leaders that initially didn’t take the virus seriously, like Trump, completely changed their opinion?

“I’m a man of science, feelings won’t sway me. I’m not prepared to think in contradiction to the facts but most people are prepared for psychology, if not history, to be stronger than straightforward facts.”

What will happen if you are proven wrong? Look you yourself said that you don’t know how many will ultimately die from the coronavirus.

“Every year in Italy, 17,000 die and you yawn. I will continue to say what I’m saying when 17,000 and even more die from the coronavirus. If 170,000 die then I’ll say I was wrong. But meanwhile 2,200 have died in Italy and a handful in Germany out of 80 million and the virus has been spreading around the world for two months. In Germany they were doing anything special until the hysteria forced them to.”

So there is not a single brave leader who will stand up and say: I am behaving differently?

There isn’t and there are even those who are exploiting it for their needs and that is the big concern, like the Hungarian prime minister and his remarks against Iranians. We know what is at the heart of the hysteria here and we know where it leads. It’s like before the Yom Kippur War, there is a concept and there is no room for any other opinion. Life for everybody is destroyed but because of the anxiety everybody is falling into line with one opinion. It is an ‘Orwellian’ process: one people, one flag, one anxiety. Today all the hysterical people are waving the Italian flag. They are not prepared to listen to the numbers.”

But in China the virus was stopped because of the actions that the government took?

Swine flu was stopped without the world being brought to a halt. Every virus creates antibodies. A government cannot stop a virus. What stops a virus is natural immunity. It’s impossible to stop a virus by government decree. And here is a question: the Chinese claim that they have stopped the virus by the lockdown but the lockdown is finished and the virus is moving around freely, so how are morbidity and mortality not continuing? If the theory of lockdown was correct they would be continuing to die there. Who discusses this?”

“The government says, ‘I’ve done my bit’ But it forgets that our bodies are extremely smart and creates natural immunity and so the chain of infection is broken and in this way the virus is ended, otherwise it would continue.

The policy of lockdown is trying to prevent a collapse of the health system under the burden of treating the sick as well as fatalities, have you not taken that into account?

“It’s called flattening the curve. If you look at the number of fatalities from flu in Italy, 17,000, it is clear that that is just the tip of the iceberg beneath which there are hundreds of thousands perhaps a million, who were sick but did not die. Even the patients that did not die needed treatment and the system did not collapse. So why should there be a collapse now? For 35 years I’ve been hearing that the health system in Israel is collapsing. Even during the regular flu season there is overloading in hospitals. Did anybody close down the country?”

Channel 13 declined to comment on the aforementioned claims. The Ministry of Health said, “Prof. Lass, who under his watch there was the difficult recurrence of polio (1988-1989) could cause damage with his irresponsible remarks which might harm public health in Israel.”

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Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on March 22, 2020

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020

Almost everyone I talk to, lay people and colleagues (I am a specialist in internal medicine and have worked for two years at a department of infectious diseases) consider the Coronavirus pandemic a pandemic of panic, more than anything else.

On 8 March, I published in the BMJ about this. I wrote:

“What if the Chinese had not tested their patients for coronavirus or there had not been any test? Would we have carried on with our lives, without restrictions, not worrying about some deaths here and there among old people, which we see every winter? I think so.”

The WHO estimates that an influenza season kills about 500,000 people, or about 50 times more than those who have died so far during more than 3 months of the Coronavirus epidemic.

I also wrote:

“Is it evidence-based healthcare to close schools and universities, cancel flights and meetings, forbid travel, and to isolate people wherever they happen to fall ill? In Denmark, the government recommends cancellation of events with over 1000 participants.”

It is much worse now. All gatherings in Denmark of more than 10 people are banned, even outdoors, and you can get a fine of 1500 kr (about $250) if you violate this rule. What a dream scenario for any ruler with dictatorship tendencies; all democratic demonstrations are unlawful. Football matches are still allowed, if there are only 5 players on each team and no spectators.

I joked about my tennis, but now my four times a week of tennis is gone even though we cannot be more than 4 people on the court at a time. Next I joked about golf, as I could not imagine anyone would forbid golf. They did, even though there are loads of people walking or running in the forest around our golf course, and even though you may still walk on the fairways, if you do not look like a golfer. Our CrossFit gym also closed as per government orders.

I had only one joke left, which I fired when my wife told me that in the lunch room of the department of clinical microbiology where she works, every second chair should be left empty while the conference room is overcrowded as usual, also in the intensive care unit at our hospital! I replied she should tell her colleagues that from now on, our prime minister will only allow one person at a time in Danish double beds. Keep the distance is our mantra, and people we meet in the forest make big bends to avoid coming too close to us. It is kind of funny.

In Italy, they borrow the neighbour’s dog to get a little fresh air because it is still allowed to walk the dog.

We closed our borders with Germany and Sweden, although we have more Coronavirus than they have. It was like when I saw they sprayed an Air India plane flying out of Heathrow to avoid bringing Heathrow malaria mosquitos into India. Why not close the island of Fyn, in the middle of Denmark, which is easy, as there is a bridge on each side that can be blocked by the military? Where does this stop? Logic was one of the first victims.

I shall not discuss here why the mortality is so different in Italy and South Korea, but I do find it very prudent that they told people to stay in their homes in South Korea if they fall ill, and only if they become very sick, will a car come and bring them to a hospital that is not overcrowded. If the infectious dose is high, mortality will also be higher because there will not be sufficient time to establish an immune response. Therefore, overcrowded hospitals will have higher mortality rates. The panic does just that: leads to overcrowded hospitals.

The panic looks like an unfortunate overreaction. We don’t even know if the risk of dying if you get infected with Coronavirus is higher than if you get influenza, or so many other virus infections, and most of those who die are old and suffer from comorbidity, just like for influenza.

Our main problem is that no one will ever get in trouble for measures that are too draconian. They will only get in trouble if they do too little. So, our politicians and those working with public health do much more than they should do. No such draconian measures were applied during the 2009 influenza pandemic, and they obviously cannot be applied every winter, which is all year round, as it is always winter somewhere. We cannot close down the whole world permanently.

Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke about tigers. “Why do you blow the horn?” “To keep the tigers away.” “But there are no tigers here.” “There you see!”

The harms include suicides that go up in times of unemployment, and when people’s businesses built up carefully over many years lie in ruins, they might kill themselves. The panic is also killing life itself. John Ioannidis’ article from 17 March is the best I have seen so far: “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”

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Poucas horas após o seu anúncio, mais de 800 venezuelanos actualmente a residir nos EUA registaram-se para um voo de emergência entre Miami e Caracas através do um portal oficial do governo venezuelano. Este voo, gratuito, foi proposto pelo presidente Nicolás Maduro quando este teve conhecimento de que 200 venezuelanos estavam retidos nos Estados Unidos após a decisão por parte do seu governo em acabar com os voos comerciais como medida preventiva contra o coronavírus. A promessa de um voo expandiu-se a dois ou mais voos, visto ter ficado claro que muitos venezuelanos presentes nos EUA querem regressar à Venezuela, contudo a situação ainda se encontra por resolver uma vez que os EUA proibiram todos os voos de e para aquele país.

Aqueles que só se informam junto da comunicação social de referência podem questionar-se sobre quem é que no seu juízo perfeito quereria trocar os Estados Unidos pela Venezuela. A “Time”, o “Washington post”, o “The Hill” e o “Miami Herald”, entre outros, na última semana publicaram várias peças de opinião que descreviam a Venezuela como sendo um pesadelo caótico. Estes órgãos de comunicação social pintaram o quadro de um desastre causado pelo coronavírus, de incompetência governamental e de uma nação à beira do colapso. A realidade da reacção da Venezuela ao coronavírus não tem sido de todo alvo de cobertura por parte da comunicação social.

Mais, o que cada um desses artigos relega para segundo plano são os danos causados pelas sanções do governo Trump, as quais devastaram a economia e o sistema de saúde venezuelano muito antes da pandemia de coronavírus. Estas sanções empobreceram milhões de venezuelanos e tiveram um impacto negativo crucial em infra-estruturas vitais, como a produção de electricidade. A Venezuela está impedida de importar peças novas para as suas centrais energéticas e as consequentes falhas de energia afectam o abastecimento de água, que depende de bombas eléctricas. Estas, entre dezenas de outras implicações causadas pela guerra híbrida contra a Venezuela, causaram um declínio nos indicadores de riqueza em todo o espectro, tendo estas sanções causado mais de 100.000 mortes.

No que toca especificamente ao coronavírus, as sanções aumentam o custo dos kits de teste e dos mantimentos médicos, e proíbem o governo venezuelano de comprar equipamento médico aos EUA (e a muitos países europeus). Estes obstáculos aparentemente deviam colocar a Venezuela na via para o pior cenário possível, como no Irão (também assolado pelas sanções) ou a Itália (assolada pela austeridade e pelo neoliberalismo). Em contraste com estes dois países, a Venezuela tomou medidas decisivas logo ao início para enfrentar a pandemia.

Como consequência dessas medidas e de outros factores, actualmente a Venezuela tem o melhor cenário possível. No dia em que escrevo este texto, passaram 11 dias desde o primeiro caso confirmado de coronavírus, o país tem 86 pessoas infectadas e 0 mortes. Os seus vizinhos não se saíram tão bem: o Brasil tem 1.924 casos com 34 mortos; o Equador 981 com 18; o Chile 746 com 2; o Peru 395 com 5; o México 367 com 4; a Colômbia 306 com 3. (Com a excepção do México, todos estes governos participaram e contribuíram activamente nos esforços dos EUA para uma mudança de regime na Venezuela.) Porque é que na Venezuela está tudo a correr muito melhor que aos outros países da região?

Os cépticos dirão que o governo de Maduro está a omitir os números e os mortos, que não há testes suficientes, não há medicamentos suficientes nem talento suficiente para lidar de modo adequado com a pandemia. Mas os factos são estes:

Primeiro, a solidariedade internacional desempenhou um papel inigualável no que toca a permitir que o governo tenha conseguido fazer frente a este desafio. A China enviou kits de diagnóstico que irão permitir 320.000 testes, bem como uma equipa de especialistas e toneladas de mantimentos. Cuba enviou 130 médicos e 10.000 doses de Interferon Alfa-2B, uma droga com um registo de sucesso no apoio à recuperação de vítimas do COVID-19. E a Rússia enviou a primeira de várias remessas de kits e equipamento médico. Estes três países, normalmente caracterizados pela política externa dos EUA como sendo maléficos, ofereceram a sua solidariedade e apoio material. Os Estados Unidos oferecerem mais sanções e o FMI, reconhecidamente sob o controlo dos EUA, negou o pedido por parte da Venezuela para um financiamento de emergência de 5 mil milhões, apoio com o qual até a União Europeia concorda.

Segundo, o governo aplicou rapidamente um plano para conter a disseminação da doença. A 12 de Março, um dia antes dos primeiros casos confirmados, o presidente Maduro decretou Estado de Emergência Médica, proibindo as multidões e cancelando todos os voos oriundos da Europa e da Colômbia. A 13 de Março, Dia 1, dois venezuelanos testaram positivo; o governo cancelou as aulas, começou a exigir a utilização de máscaras de protecção no metro e nas fronteiras, fechou os cinemas, bares e discotecas, e restringiu os restaurantes a serviços de take away ou entregas. Vale a pena repetir que foi no Dia 1 mal teve um caso confirmado; muitos Estados dos EUA ainda não tomaram estes passos. No Dia 4, foi colocada em vigor uma quarentena nacional (equivalente a ordens de reclusão domiciliar) e o portal do Sistema Pátria foi reestruturado para fazer um inquérito popular a potenciais casos de COVID-19. No Dia 8, estavam infectadas 42 pessoas e cerca de 90% da população estava resguardada em quarentena. No Dia 11, mais de 12,2 milhões de pessoas tinham respondido ao inquérito, mais de 20.000 que reportaram estar doentes receberam em suas casas a visita de profissionais de saúde e 145 foram referenciadas para análises ao coronavírus. O governo estima que sem estas medidas, a Venezuela teria mais de 3.000 pessoas infectadas e um número mais alto de óbitos.

Terceiro, o povo venezuelano estava preparado para lidar com a crise. Ao longo dos últimos 7 anos, a Venezuela tem convivido com a morte de um líder extremamente popular, violentos protestos de direita, uma guerra económica que se caracteriza em escassez e hiperinflação, sanções que destruíram a economia, tentativas constantes de golpe de Estado, tentativas de insurreições militares, ataques às infra-estruturas essenciais, apagões, emigração em massa e ameaças de uma intervenção militar dos EUA. O coronavírus é um tipo diferente de desafio, mas as anteriores crises instilaram a resiliência entre o povo venezuelano e fortaleceram a solidariedade no seio das comunidades. Não há pânico nas ruas; pelo contrário, as pessoas estão calmas e a seguir os protocolos de saúde.

Quatro, organização de massas e dar prioridade às pessoas acima de tudo. As comunas e as comunidades organizadas chegaram-se à frente, produzindo máscaras, mantendo o sistema de abastecimento alimentar CLAP a funcionar (esta cesta alimentar mensal chega a 7 milhões de famílias), facilitando as visitas ao domicílio de médicos e encorajando à utilização de máscaras em público. Mais de 12.000 estudantes de medicina no seu último ou penúltimo ano de estudos voluntariaram-se para serem treinados em visitas domiciliares. Pelo seu lado, o governo de Maduro suspendeu o pagamento das rendas, proibiu os despedimentos em todo o território, deu subsídios aos trabalhadores, proibiu as empresas de telecomunicações de cortar os serviços de Internet e telefone às pessoas, chegou a acordo com as cadeias de hotéis para cederem 4.000 camas caso a crise cresça e prometeu pagar os ordenados das pequenas e médias empresas. Por entre uma crise de saúde pública – complementada por uma crise económica e sanções – a reacção da Venezuela foi tentar garantir alimentação, cuidados de saúde gratuitos, expandir os testes e aliviar a carga económica sobre a classe trabalhadora.

O governo dos EUA não respondeu ao pedido do governo de Maduro para abrir uma excepção à Conviasa Airlines, a sancionada transportadora aérea nacional, para trazer os venezuelanos retidos nos Estados Unidos para Caracas. Dado tudo o que está a acontecer nos Estados Unidos, onde os tratamentos para o COVID-19 atingem quase 35.000 dólares e o governo pondera dar prioridade à economia em vez de às vidas das pessoas, talvez os venezuelanos que estão à espera de regressar para casa compreendam que a sua probabilidade de sobrevivência ao coronavírus – tanto física como económica – é muito superior num país que dá mais valor à saúde do que aos lucros.

Leonardo Flores

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Who were the men and women behind the U.S. biological weapons programs during World War II? We know Imperial Japan had biological weapons, specifically bombs made of infected fleas they dropped on China and there were others who committed the same atrocities throughout history. The Japanese had madmen, but so did the Americans. What kind of madmen would be engaged in such dangerous weapons of war that can kill every man, woman and child on earth? In the U.S., one of the madmen can be traced back to the late 1920′s and his name was Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, a Harvard medical school graduate who was a victim of pulmonary tuberculosis while working at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital as an intern.

Dr. Rhoads was a dedicated oncologist, pathologist and a hospital administrator who went on to teach and conduct research on disease processes at his alma mater. Then From 1929 until 1939, he worked at both the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and shortly after, became a staff member at Rockefeller Hospital where he followed his other interests in hematology and poliomyelitis. By 1931, hematologist William B. Castle asked Dr. Rhoads to join him at the Rockefeller Anemia Commission where he worked for several months to participate in clinical research at Presbyterian Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico as part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “sanitary commission” team to study pernicious iron deficiency anemia. Puerto Rico had pernicious iron deficiency anemia had an affection rate of 80% that was caused primarily by parasitic hookworms which also co-existed with another problem, the ‘tropical sprue’ which is described as “a malabsorption disease commonly found in tropical regions.”

As it is told, the story begins on November 10th, 1931, Dr. Rhoads attended a party hosted by a Puerto Rican co-worker’s house in Cidra, Puerto Rico, but after leaving the party he found his car vandalized with items in his car stolen, so he went to his office apparently angered by the situation and wrote a letter to Fred W. Stewart, whom he called Ferdie, a colleague from Boston that read:

Dear Ferdie:

The more I think about the Larry Smith appointment the more disgusted I get. Have you heard any reason advanced for it? It certainly is odd that a man out with the entire Boston group, fired by Wallach, and as far as I know, absolutely devoid of any scientific reputation should be given the place. There is something wrong somewhere with our point of view.

The situation is settled in Boston. Parker and Nye are to run the laboratory together and either Kenneth or MacMahon to be assistant; the chief to stay on. As far as I can see, the chances of my getting a job in the next ten years are absolutely nil. One is certainly not encouraged to make scientific advances, when it is a handicap rather than an aid to advancement. I can get a damn fine job here and am tempted to take it. It would be ideal except for the Porto Ricans. They are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them. They are even lower than Italians. What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. It might then be livable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off 8 and transplanting cancer into several more. The latter has not resulted in any fatalities so far… The matter of consideration for the patients’ welfare plays no role here — in fact all physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.

Do let me know if you hear any more news.

Sincerely, “Dusty”

By the end of December, a former lab technician by the name of Luis Baldoni resigned and later testified that he could have been in danger by exposing Dr. Rhoads. But a month later, around January 1932, Baldoni gave Pedro Albizu Campos, the president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party the letter written by Dr. Rhoads which angered the Nationalist leader and many Puerto Ricans.  Albizu Campos sent copies of the letter to newspapers, embassies around the world, to the League of Nations, the Pan American Union and even the Vatican. Albizu Campos responded by writing his own letter stating that Dr. Rhoads was plotting to exterminate Puerto Ricans with cancer as part of American imperialism alongside U.S. installed governors in Puerto Rico who promoted labor emigration and birth control. According to author Truman R. Clark, who published ‘Puerto Rico and the United States, 1917-1933′ in 1975 wrote:

The Nationalists saw the Rhoads letter as proof that the U.S. government had a “policy to exterminate our people,” by keeping wages in the sugar industry so low that workers would starve, selling Puerto Ricans food “unfit for human consumption and the source of serious disease,” and having its governors emphasize emigration and birth control. The United States, said the Nationalists, had all but wiped out the American Indian and the Hawaiians with tuberculosis, starvation, and vaccination shots, but they did not believe even Americans would stoop so low as to inoculate people with cancer, until Dr. Rhoads admitted his part in the fiendish plot

By 1940, rather than face justice, Dr. Rhoads was selected to be the next director of Memorial Hospital for cancer care and research. By 1941 he was studying the use and effects of radiation to treat leukemia. Ironically, by 1950, Albizu Campos was arrested as a political prisoner and was used as a guinea pig to test human radiation experiments which led to his death in 1965.

However, during World War II, Dr. Rhoads became a colonel in the U.S. Army and was chief of medicine in the Chemical Weapons Division. He later went on to establish other chemical weapons laboratories in Utah, Maryland, and Panama participating in race-based secret experiments on African-Americans, Japanese-Americans and of course Puerto Ricans along with 60,000 U.S. soldiers who ended up with life-long aftereffects.

Dr. Rhoads went on to win the ‘Legion of Merit’ for combating poison gas and advancing the use of chemical warfare. The U.S. Army Medical Service published ‘The Medical Department of the United States Army in World War II., Volume 9’ on the original start of their chemical weapons program leading to biological weapons:

In July 1943, a Medical Division was established in the Chemical Warfare Service at Edgewood Arsenal, Md., under Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads of New York. He was commissioned as a colonel in the Medical Corps and served as chief of the division until April 1945. The division was responsible for conducting research connected with prevention and treatment of chemical warfare casualties, for carrying out toxicological studies related to hazards in the production of chemical warfare agents, and for liaison with the surgeon general. By the end of 1943, new Chemical Warfare Service medical laboratories had been established at Camp Detrick, Md.; Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; and Camp Sibert, Ala. The Medical Division coordinated the work of all these laboratories and maintained liaison not only with the Surgeon General’s Office but also with other War Department agencies and with the Canadian and British chemical warfare research offices.

In January 1944, the Chemical Warfare Service was charged additionally with responsibility for all biological warfare defense projects. This assignment originated in October 1941, when the Secretary of War requested the National Academy of Sciences to appoint a civilian committee to review the field of biological warfare. The response was the formation of the so-called WBC (War Bureau of Consultants) Committee which included representatives of the Surgeon General’s Office as liaison members

And the U.S. biological weapons program was launched with help from Dr. Rhoads who was instrumental to the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex in developing and later establishing the foundation leading to the use of biological weapons. Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads and his legacy lives on in Puerto Rico and around the world as one of the men who helped develop and produce some of the most dangerous biological (and chemical weapons) known to man. Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads was a brilliant doctor and researcher, but there is no doubt that he was a racist and a psychopath with dreams of exterminating the Puerto Rican population.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Susan E. Lederer, “’Porto Ricochet’: Joking About Germs, Cancer, and Race Extermination in the 1930s,” American Literary History 14 (2002): 725

Eric T. Rosenthal, “The Rhoads Not Given: The Tainting of the Cornelius P. Rhoads Memorial Award”, Oncology Times, 10 September 2003. Volume 25. Issue 17. pp. 19-20. Retrieved 17 December 2012.

Truman R. Clark. 1975. Puerto Rico and the United States, 1917-1933, University of Pittsburgh, pp. 151-154

“DR. RHOADS CLEARED OF PORTO RICO PLOT”, New York Times, 15 February 1932

Daniel Immerwahr; ‘How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States’, pp. 246-249; “A man of brusque manners”: Luis Baldoni, Testimony in Cornelius Rhoads Case, 1932, 1, folder 4, box 31, Reynolds papers

Stephen Hunter & John Bainbridge; ‘American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman’, pp. 194-195; Simon & Schuster pub., 2005;

“HEALTH: Puerto Ricans Outraged Over Secret Medical Experiments” , (IPS) Inter Press News Agency, Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, 21 October 2002

All images in this article are from the author

So much discussion among virologists regarding the number of COVID-19 “confirmed cases” in the USA. The fact of the matter, is that the existing data base under the helm of the CDC is totally unreliable. Why? Because people across America cannot afford to pay for the corona virus test. Which means that millions of Americans who might have the COVID-19 virus are simply not accounted for. 

In Florida, the going rate for a COVID-19 test in early February (at the outset of the WHO public health emergency) in a private clinic was of the order of $3000 and it was not always covered by your insurance company.

Since then the price has gone down. The price of the COVID-19 virus test is according to reports between $100 and $250 for uninsured persons in California.

More recently, the US Congress has promised that it will cover the costs of the tests, but you could still “face high bills” for medical services.

The Harvard Business Review says we need a “cheap way” to diagnose the coronavirus. But is a “cheap test” a “reliable test”? And does it ensure the patient with immediate followup treatment.

For people who are under lockdown and who have been out of a job for the last month, and who have to pay their mortgages and buy food, what is left over for emergency medical expenses?

 

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 or “Covid-19” is a coronavirus similar to the virus that causes pneumonia. Covid-19 is a danger to at-risk groups including the elderly and the chronically ill. 

For the vast majority of the population, Covid-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold. This is backed up by statistics already being reported across Western publications and based on information derived from China’s outbreak where the virus first appeared.

Compared to cancer, heart disease, substance abuse, or car accidents – Covid-19 is relatively harmless. But it has been put in the spotlight by deliberately dishonest, selective reporting that focuses on generating hysteria by presenting out-of-context information to an ignorant and easily panicked public.

If there is no global concern or massive mobilization over cancer and heart disease – conditions that claim far more lives than any virus – why the sudden hysteria and “concern” .

Context is King 

According to StatNews.com in their article, “Lower death rate estimates for coronavirus, especially for non-elderly, provide glimmer of hope:”

The chance of someone with symptomatic Covid-19 dying varied by age, confirming other studies. For those aged 15 to 44, the fatality rate was 0.5%, though it might have been as low as 0.1% or as high as 1.3%. For people 45 to 64, the fatality rate was also 0.5%, with a possible low of 0.2% and a possible high of 1.1%. For those over 64, it was 2.7%, with a low and high estimate of 1.5% and 4.7%.

The chance of serious illness from coronavirus infection in younger people was so low, the scientists estimate a fatality rate of zero.

Healthline.com would report in their article, “Here’s How COVID-19 Compares to Past Outbreaks,” that the most affected groups are:

…adults over 65 with underlying health conditions; children seem to be spared and are experiencing milder symptoms (in China, children account for just 2.4 percent of cases)

If that isn’t convincing enough, simply scrutinize content you’re already reading – especially regarding Covid-19 deaths – and see how old and in what health those are in reportedly dying from Covid-19. Many paragraphs down – far from the hysteria-generating headlines – you will find that those dying are already chronically ill, advanced in age, and/or already at risk whether it was Covid-19 or the common cold.

When deaths are reported without context they easily create panic.

When the number of Covid-19 deaths are put into perspective in relation to past outbreaks – or even side-by-side with the annual common flu virus- we see just how unwarranted the current wave of hysteria is and how overreactions from governments are aimed more at saving face and assuaging public panic than preserving public health.

In Thailand where up to four deaths have been reported at the time of writing this article – the first case involved a man who already had Dengue fever – a serious, life-threatening tropical illness spread by mosquitoes.

The other 3 cases involved a 70 year old with pre-existing tuberculosis, a 79 year old with multiple pre-existing chronic illnesses, and a 45 year old suffering from obesity and chronic diabetes.

All four individuals would be considered “at-risk” and should have been isolated from those potentially carrying not only Covid-19 – but any communicable disease at all including the common cold or flu.

Do these deaths warrant paralyzing an entire nation of 70 million people? Or closing entire businesses and costing billions in commerce? The damage measures made in reaction to hysteria will cause more damage to many more people and for a much longer duration than Covid-19 ever could on its own.

Common Sense Measures 

Measures should be put into place and resources invested into educating the public on how to isolate and protect at-risk individuals – efforts should be made to help those at risk isolate themselves and provisions – including investments in critical care equipment such as ventilators – made to handle the influx of at-risk patients who end up with Covid-19 regardless.

What should not be done – is the spread of panic, hysteria, and the imposition of draconian measures simply to assuage panic and hysteria – measures that will also gut the economy, impact millions of workers, and disrupt the lives of millions more who depend on the day-to-day functioning of society and who face little or no health risk upon contracting the virus.

These measures – ironically – are in turn fueling additional panic including hording and social tensions that are only compounding the damage “Covid-19 hysteria” is already having on society.

Who is Fueling Hysteria and Why? 

There is the vastly corrupt mass media who depends on public panic and hysteria at times like this to boost clicks and sell newspapers. They also seek to advance their agenda and that of their wealthy sponsors and enhance their grip over the public’s attention. The media is determined to spread hysteria to keep people fixated on their reportage, completely indifferent to the damage they are causing.

There are also political groups – partnered with the media – attempting to leverage and amplify the appearance of Covid-19 into an unprecedented crisis despite a lack of evidence to justify doing so. Their interest is not in ensuring the safety of the public or maintaining oversight of government efforts – but instead leveraging the resulting hysteria to chip away at ruling governments they seek to destabilize and replace.

Aiding them are US and European-funded fronts posing as “human rights” advocates and “independent media” outlets. Groups like “Human Rights Watch” have attacked governments for not taking decisive enough action – then complained when decisive action was taken as being too draconian and violating “human rights.”

These are interest groups that are never satisfied with the government’s response to Covid-19 because they are interest groups completely unconcerned with Covid-19 itself and its impact on public health – and instead – concerned only with how they can generate and leverage public hysteria to advance their entirely unrelated and self-serving political agenda. Again, this is done with complete indifference to the damage being done to society by doing so.

What has resulted is governments around the globe taking measures in reaction to public panic – not to fight the actual pathogen. While draconian efforts to isolate the entire population may work in slowing the spread of Covid-19 – is it worth paralyzing entire economies, costing billions in economic damage, disrupting the lives of hundreds of millions of people who – if contracting Covid-19 – will have what is essentially a cold for a week?

The answer should be an obvious “no.”

Now and in the Future 

The answer also isn’t “doing nothing.”

Again, at-risk groups can and should be protected. State resources should be mobilized to protect and isolate them from the general population and treat them in the worst case scenario should they contract the virus anyway. Public information campaigns should be mounted to encourage basic hygiene especially for those who may come in contact with at-risk individuals – something that should be done year-round and regardless of whatever strain of the cold or flu is prevalent at the time.

And just in case a genuinely deadly pathogen appears on the horizon, nations should invest in economic infrastructure that can thrive regardless – just in case nationwide containment ever truly is necessary. This includes investing in online commerce, delivery services, decentralized manufacturing, and localized food, water, and energy security measures – all measures that would make for a more resilient society regardless of the threats that may or may not appear in the future.

Panic has proven a greater enemy than the Covid-19 pathogen. That society can be crippled by politicians, political groups, and a corrupt mass media over what is essentially a slightly more virulent form of the common cold, says a lot about how the world currently works and what needs dire attention to fix.

From those driving needless hysteria to those caving into it at the cost of economic stability and the disruption of millions of ordinary lives – it’s clear that we face a precedent being set – one that will ensure virtually any excuse in the future can be used to cripple civilization on a global scale. It seems obvious this cannot be allowed to stand, but what is less clear is what can be done to ensure it does not.

It can be hoped that governments around the globe pressured by hysteria this time around will set up measures in the future to avoid caving in again.

For the average individual – knowing that virtually everything you read in the media is likely promoting an agenda and thus being misrepresented – gives you the ability to look for context and truth yourself and applying critical thinking skills – reducing your suseptibility to panic and hysteria – and innoculating us all against the real virus infecting society – a political and social virus.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Establishment media never miss an opportunity to set the record straight on major issues.

Instead they consistently proliferate state-sponsored Big Lies about designed US adversaries.

The latest exercise in Trump regime mass deception is directed against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other key Bolivarian officials.

Falsely accusing them of narco-terrorism, AG Barr and Pompeo failed to provide evidence backing Trump regime charges against them because none exists.

Without it, accusations are baseless. Instead of debunking them, the NYT said the following:

“President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was indicted in the United States on Thursday in a decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy in which, prosecutors said, he led a violent drug cartel even as he ascended to the top of government.”

The Times should have explained that Trump regime charges are phony.

It should have stressed that Bolivarian Venezuela is in the vanguard of combatting illicit drugs and narco terrorism.

It should have said that throughout most of the post-WW II period, the US has been and continues to be the world’s leading narco terrorist state.

Instead of truth-telling on major US domestic and geopolitical issues, the Times and other establishment media exclusively feature the falsified official narrative.

The neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post featured the same Big Lie.

Failing to debunk phony US state-sponsored deception, WaPo admitted that action taken by the Trump regime on Thursday aims “to force” Maduro from power.

Everything thrown at Bolivarian social democracy by US regimes since Hugo Chavez’s December 1998 election failed — including all-out Trump regime war by other means.

Do its hardliners intend trying to kidnap Maduro and other Venezuelan officials, AG Barr saying:

“We’re going to explore all options for getting custody.”

Phony charges against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials will likely harden their resolve to resist the unparalleled menace posed by the US under both wings of its war party.

Over-the-top Wall Street Journal editors headlined “Indicting the Caracas Mob (sic),” saying:

The Trump regime’s “Justice Department goes after Venezuela’s gangster government (sic).”

Calling model democrat Maduro a “dictator,” the Journal falsely accused him of “oppress(ing) Venezuelans even as the virus may spread to Latin America.”

Latin American expert Leonardo Flores debunked the Big Lie, explaining how Maduro is handling the COVID-19 crisis.

After offering free air transportation for Venezuelans in the US wishing to return home, 800 nationals “registered” to be aboard Miami – Caracas flights, Flores saying:

It’s “clear that many Venezuelans in the US wanted to go back to Venezuela, yet the situation remains unresolved due to the US ban on flights to and from the country.”

“The reality of Venezuela’s coronavirus response is not covered by the mainstream media at all.”

Unlike the Trump regime, “Venezuela took decisive steps early on to” deal with COVID-19 outbreaks.

“Venezuela is currently in its best-case scenario. (Eleven) days after the first confirmed case of coronavirus, the country has 86 infected people, with 0 deaths.”

Through Thursday, Brazil has 2,985 cases, Ecuador 1,403, Chile 1,306, Panama 674, Argentina, 589, Mexico 585, Peru 580, Colombia 491, smaller numbers in other Latin American countries that keep growing.

According to Latin American analyst Charles Call, “Latin America may be hard-hit, with deep humanitarian, economic, and political consequences.”

COVID-19 outbreaks are “spreading to every country in the region,” numbers reported perhaps the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come for nations with underfunded public health programs.

Before all-out Trump regime economic, financial, and medical terrorism on Venezuela, the country had a model universal healthcare system, now partly hamstrung under near-US blockade conditions.

According to Flores, international solidarity is helping Venezuela deal with containing COVID-19 outbreaks, along with treating infected individuals.

“China sent coronavirus diagnostic kits that will allow 320,000 Venezuelans to be tested, in addition to a team of experts and tons of supplies,” he explained.

“Cuba sent 130 doctors and 10,000 doses of interferon alfa-2b, a drug with an established record of helping COVID-19 patients recover.”

“Russia has sent the first of several shipments of medical equipment and kits.”

The Trump regime piled on more illegal sanctions along with phony narco terrorism charges against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials.

Maduro straightaway declared a a national health emergency, prohibited large gatherings, cancelled international flights, and took other steps to contain outbreaks — including a national quarantine four days after the first confirmed one.

Thousands of Venezuelan who reported feeling ill were visited at home by medical professionals, a small number referred for COVID-19 testing.

The Bolivarian Republic is no stranger to crises since the Bush/Cheney regime’s April 2002 aborted two-day coup attempt to oust Hugo Chavez.

Numerous failed US attempts to eliminate Venezuelan social democracy followed.

Flores explained that earlier crises “instilled a resiliency among the Venezuelan people and strengthened solidarity within communities.”

“There is no panic on the streets; instead, people are calm and following health protocols” to weather the current storm.

Venezuelans in need are getting home visits by doctors. Food distribution continues to millions of households.

Rent payments were suspended, a firing freeze instituted, telecoms prohibited from cutting off phone and Internet access to cash-strapped households.

“Venezuela’s response has been to guarantee food, provide free healthcare and widespread testing, and alleviate further economic pressure on the working class,” Flores explained.

At a time of rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreaks in the US, treatment for Americans is largely based on the ability to pay.

Its high cost, including for COVID-19, forces millions of Americans to forego treatment if ill and hope for the best.

Flores stressed that Venezuelans wanting to return home from the US “are much better (protected) in a country that values health over profits.”

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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 coronavirus story has generated a number of major subplots.

First is the origin of the virus. Did it occur naturally or was it created in a Chinese, American or Israeli weapons lab? If bioengineered, did it somehow escape or was it deliberately released? As the governments that might have been involved in the process have become very tight lipped and the mainstream media is reluctant to embrace conspiracy theories, we the public may never know the answer.

Second is the nature of the virus itself. There are inevitably skeptics who choose to compare the affliction to a common head cold or normal winter flu and are able to cherry pick so-called experts to support their case. Many Americans are unwilling to submit to a lockdown or isolation and are flaunting their willingness to go out in public and mix freely while others are claiming that the whole thing is a hoax designed to create a panic that will benefit certain constituencies.

There are press reports of teenagers going to supermarkets and faking a sneeze or a cough in the produce section to show their indifference to the infection avoidance guidelines now being promoted by the media and government. Some critics have also commented regarding the deaths of hundreds of Italians daily, suggesting that in Italy’s health care system old people were deliberately being allowed to die.

The fact is that when critically ill people die in hospitals it is sometimes attributable to triage. Triage arises when there are only limited resources to treat the sick, as in the case recently in the Italian Lombard city of Bergamo where hospitals were overwhelmed. Doctors must make the decision to treat those who are ill who are likely to survive as a first priority, meaning that others will only receive limited treatment. Italy has roughly the same number of hospital beds as does the United States per capita and it has more ventilators capable of being used to treat the advanced stages of the virus. It also is receiving assistance from both China and Russia on testing supplies and additional ventilators and masks. Italy has conducted far more coronavirus tests than has the U.S. The northern Italian medical services system was up to European standards, better than what prevails in the U.S., but it has been broken by the virus. Spain is heading the same way and there are similar concerns about France.

In spite of all the ideologically driven background clutter, genuinely knowledgeable medical authorities come down overwhelmingly promoting the view that the virus is highly contagious and capable of spreading rapidly, making it a pandemic, and it can be exceptionally lethal to certain demographics, including the elderly and those with weakened immune systems. The way of combatting it also appears to be agreed upon by most genuine experts i.e. that testing must be widespread to determine who is infected and those individuals should be isolated from contact with others for at least two weeks to limit the spread of the contagion. For those whose conditions worsen, hospitalization and treatment for possible respiratory failure are warranted.

The third big issue is the apparently deliberate failure of the Trump Administration to respond proactively to limit the spread of the virus. Seeking to protect the stock market more than the American public, President Donald Trump initially downplayed the impact of the virus, even calling it a “hoax” during January and February when it first appeared on U.S. soil. It turned out that several institutes affiliated to the Center for Disease Control to deal with epidemics had been dismantled by the Administration and, in spite of the warning provided by what was occurring in Wuhan, the U.S. made no effort to increase its supply of testing kits, masks or ventilators. Meanwhile, congressmen were receiving dire warnings of what was coming from the intelligence community in private briefings, leading to a number of senators selling their stock in anticipation of a market collapse. That is something called insider trading and it is illegal. It is also a measure of the corruption of America’s ruling class.

The fourth major subplot relates to what will come out of the pandemic once it is over, if it is indeed defeated at all. Critics rightly observe that the government response both at federal and state levels might well be a major overreaction to a health crisis that could possibly be dealt with using a lighter hand. Donald Trump has now called himself a “wartime president,” a particularly odd conceit in that America’s chief executive officer dodged the Vietnam war draft.  Trump is now providing daily rambling briefings emphasizing that his administration deserves a “10 out of 10” for its yeoman’s work against coronavirus. The real story is that the president personally inhibited initial efforts to respond to the disease and he is now attempting to regain lost ground by supporting draconian measures to include cash payments to all American residents, even to people who do not need the money. The money itself will have to be borrowed or printed, putting the United States even deeper in debt.

Based on his wartime status, the president and his cabinet are poised to exploit Civil War and Korean War legislation to assume powers over the economy and will likely arrange bailouts of some industries that will then acquire the government as a partner.

The now declared “national emergency” will undoubtedly come to include some forms of martial law to enforce the isolation of targeted populations and it is also being reported that the Justice Department has asked Congress to allow judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during the “emergency.” As we have learned from the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and the Authorization to Use Military Force, allegedly temporary powers acquired by the executive branch have frequently become permanent. Unrestrained power in the hands of a Trump or Biden should frighten anyone who is still interested in voting in November.

There is some speculation that Trump might well follow the example being set by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Israel has banned foreign visitors, is under 24 hours curfew and is effectively in lockdown. It is using cell phone intercepts provided by the intelligence services to track the comings and goings of Israeli residents. The monitoring is being justified as a mechanism to create a record of who is meeting whom and where to support isolation and lockdown efforts. A similar program is already active in the suburbs around Washington. The National Security Agency (NSA) already has the technical ability in place that would permit monitoring of the movements of much of the U.S. population. It would be an intelligence community dream and would fit quite nicely with Congress’s recent efforts to re-authorization certain Patriot Act aspects of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Fifth and finally, there is the politicization aspect of coronavirus. The virus is being “blamed” on China, a global competitor of the United States. As is often the case, Trump has gotten the ball rolling through his usual verbal toxicity, calling the virus the Chinese Virus or Wuhan Virus. Other Republicans have picked up on the theme, leading to the inevitably Democratic progressive wing complaints that such language was “racist.” The fact it, there is no evidence whatsoever that China in any deliberate way either created or unleashed the virus.

And, of course, there is Russia. It would almost seem an old joke that is no longer amusing to blame something new and menacing on Moscow and congress has so far largely refrained from doing so. But that does not mean that the Deep State establishment is holding the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin blameless. The U.S. intelligence community, through its preferred propaganda sheet the New York Times, is now reporting that Russia is taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to spread disinformation through Europe and also in the U.S. In particular, Putin has escalated a campaign-by-innuendo to reduce confidence in the outcome of the upcoming 2020 presidential election. In any event, the Russians are too late as the Democratic and Republican parties’ behavior has already convinced many Americans that voting in November will be a waste of time.

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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]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Morning Star

Not a day passes without some hyped up media story of how big-pharma is racing to the rescue of humanity with its search for a coronavirus vaccine. There are over 40 companies now searching for a vaccine. Collectively they are spending huge sums of money supported by lavish amounts of tax payer cash. Estimates of how soon a vaccine can be produced vary wildly but most estimates agree that it is unlikely to happen this year. It goes without saying that the first to market with a usable vaccine stands to make billions of dollars.

The mainstream media, scientific and political establishments are completely under the spell of big pharma. Governments reassure the public that they’re doing everything in their power to protect them with a variety of measures. These range from mass lock downs and trillion dollar bailouts for big business to limited amounts of helicopter money for the citizens of wealthier countries.

Regardless of where you live if you have to go to hospital with symptoms of the coronavirus the key question facing you is: will you be able to leave walking out front door or will you end up being wheeled out the basement back door?

The mainstream media in cahoots with governments and the medical establishment are suppressing any news regarding the use of a cheap, safe and easy to produce treatment for coronavirus patients. Maybe its because this treatment is being used in Chinese hospitals to save lives. Let’s face it there has been no let up in Cold War 2.0 during the current pandemic.

Dr. Andrew W. Saul, Editor in chief of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, sums up the Western big pharma approach nicely when he says:

“Medical orthodoxy obsessively focuses on searching for a vaccine and/or drug for coronavirus COVID-19). While they are looking for what would be fabulously profitable approaches, we have with vitamin C an existing, plausible, clinically demonstrated method to treat what coronavirus patients die from: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or pneumonia.’’

On 17 March a group of Chinese physicians held a video conference to discuss the use of high dose intravenous vitamin C for patients with moderate to severe cases of corona virus. The keynote speaker at this meeting was Dr. Enqian Mao, chief of the emergency medicine Department of Ruiijin hospital in Shanghai.

Dr Mao is also a senior member of the expert team at the Shanghai Public health Centre, where all coronavirus patients have been treated from the Shanghai area. Dr Mao was also a co-author of the medical protocol for the treatment of coronavirus that has been adopted by the Shanghai Medical Association and the government of Shanghai. This medical protocol also advocates the use of high-dose intravenous vitamin C for the treatment of mild, moderate and severe cases of the coronavirus.

Over the last decade Dr Mao has been using high-dose intravenous vitamin C (IVC) to treat patients with a variety of acute medical conditions ranging from pancreatitis and sepsis to surgical wound healing. When the coronavirus epidemic first broke out he and several other colleagues thought that high-dose intravenous C could be a potential treatment for patients presenting with the coronavirus. Their recommendation for the use of high-dose intravenous vitamin C as a treatment was adopted by the Shanghai expert team.

Dr. Richard Cheng, an American-Chinese doctor currently based in Shanghai has given a report of this meeting. He notes that:

“Dr. Mao stated that his group treated ~50 cases of moderate to severe cases of Covid-19 infection with high dose IVC. The IVC dosing was in the range of 10,000 mg – 20,000 mg a day for 7-10 days, with 10,000 mg for moderate cases and 20,000 for more severe cases, determined by pulmonary status (mostly the oxygenation index) and coagulation status. All patients who received IVC improved and there was no mortality. Compared to the average of a 30-day hospital stay for all Covid-19 patients, those patients who received high dose IVC had a hospital stay about 3-5 days shorter than the overall patients. Dr. Mao discussed one severe case in particular who was deteriorating rapidly. He gave a bolus of 50,000 mg IVC over a period of 4 hours. The patient’s pulmonary (oxygenation index) status stabilized and improved as the critical care team watched in real time. There were no side effects reported from any of the cases treated with high dose IVC. ‘’

Dr Cheng also reported that he had a separate meeting with Dr. Sheng Wang, Professor of critical medicine of Shanghai’s 10th Hospital, Tongji University College of medicine. At this meeting Professor Weng said that there were several important lessons to be learned from Shanghai’s experience treating patients with the coronavirus. The most important lesson was:

“Early and high-dose IVC is quite helpful in helping Covid-19 patients. The data is still being finalized and the formal papers will be submitted for publication as soon as they are complete.’’

Professor Wang also stated that coronavirus patients displayed a high rate of hyper-coagulability, i.e. an abnormally increased tendency toward blood clotting, which is best treated with heparin.

He also stated that it was vitally important for front line medical professionals to, ‘wear protective clothing at the earliest opportunity for intubation and other emergency rescue measures.’ The American health authorities shouldtake notice of this considering that pictures of nurses in New York wearing black plastic refuse sacks have been appearing on social media.

Richard Chang has also noted that Professors Mao and Weng have stated that high-dose intravenous vitamin C is being used as a treatment for coronavirus patients in other hospitals around China.

Not surprisingly, reports of this cheap, safe treatment, that has been pioneered in China, have been being completely ignored by Western governments and the medical establishments that are beholden to the big pharmaapproach to the current pandemic.

Thankfully, there are doctors in the West who are not blinded by the close minded approach pursued by their governments and so called medical experts. Apparently, doctors at several hospitals in New York, which is the epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic in America, have started to use the pioneering treatments coming out of China.

Dr. Andrew G. Weber, a pulmonologist and critical-care specialist affiliated with two Northwell Health facilities on Long Island, has said that coronavirus patients admitted to intensive care immediately receive 1,500 mg of intravenous vitamin C. This dosage is then repeated 3-4 times a day.

According to Dr. Weber this treatment regime is based upon the experimental use of high-dose vitamin C in Shanghai’s hospitals. He told the New York Post:

“The patients who received vitamin C did significantly better than those who did not get vitamin C. It helps a tremendous amount, but it is not highlighted because it’s not a sexy drug.”

Apparently, high-dose intravenous vitamin C is been used in hospitals across New York. Sadly, its use appears to be patchy and is dependent upon the whims of individual doctors rather than being part of any systematic medical protocol.

As the global death toll soars higher we can only hope that more and more doctors will follow in the footsteps of their Chinese colleagues and have the courage to use a safe and cheap treatment that is totally at odds with the big pharma approach currently followed by the World Health Organisation and most governments. The current approach used by many Western Governments has been slow, clumsy and ill informed putting the interests of big business above saving the lives of ordinary people.

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The United States has become the new center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 86,000 cases, more than China or Italy. More than a thousand Americans have already died, but this is surely only the very beginning of this deadly collision between the U.S.’s uniquely inadequate public healthcare system and a real pandemic.

On the other hand, China and South Korea, which both have universal public health systems that cover the bulk of their people’s healthcare needs, have already turned the tide on Covid-19 through targeted quarantines, mobilization of public healthcare resources and testing programs that quickly and efficiently test everyone who may have come into contact with the virus. China sent 40,000 doctors and medical staff, including 10,000 respiratory specialists, into Hubei province in the first month or two of the epidemic. It has now gone up to 3 days in a row with no new cases and is starting to lift social restrictions. South Korea quickly tested over 300,000 people, and only 131 of its people have died.

The WHO’s Bruce Aylward visited China at the end of February, and reported,

“I think the key learning from China is speed… The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful you’re going to be… In China, they have set up a giant network of fever hospitals. In some areas, a team can go to you and swab you and have an answer for you in four to seven hours. But you’ve got to be set up — speed is everything.”

Researchers in Italy have experimentally confirmed that up to 3 out of 4 Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic and therefore undetectable by testing only people with symptoms. After a series of deadly missteps, the U.S., which had its first case on January 20th, the same day as South Korea, has over two months later only just begun widespread testing, when we already have the most cases and the 6th highest death toll in the world. Even now, the U.S. is mainly limiting testing to people with symptoms, not doing the targeted testing of new case contacts that was so effective in China. This ensures that otherwise healthy, asymptomatic carriers will unknowingly spread the virus and keep fueling its exponential growth.

So why is the United States so uniquely incapable of confronting this pandemic as efficiently or effectively as China, South Korea, Germany or other countries? The lack of a national, publicly-funded universal health system is a critical deficiency. But our persistent inability to set one up is itself the result of other dysfunctional aspects of American society, including the corruption of our political system by powerful commercial and class interests and the American “exceptionalism” that blinds us to what we can learn from other countries.

Also, the military occupation of the American mind has brainwashed Americans with strictly military concepts of “defense” and “security,” perverting federal spending priorities in the interest of war and militarism at the expense of all our country’s other vital needs, including the health of Americans.

Why can’t we just bomb the virus?

Of course this question is ridiculous. But this is how U.S. leaders respond to every danger we face, with massive diversions of our national resources to the military-industrial complex (MIC) that leave this otherwise wealthy country starved of resources to tackle problems our leaders can’t pretend to solve with weapons and war. Depending what is counted as “defense” spending, it accounts for up to two-thirds of federal discretionary spending. Even now, a bailout for Boeing, the 2nd largest U.S. weapons maker, is more important to Mr. Trump and many in Congress than helping American families get through this crisis.

At the end of the Cold War in 1989, senior officials told the Senate Budget Committee that the U.S. military budget could safely be cut by 50%over the next ten years. Committee chairman Jim Sasser hailed the moment as “the dawn of the primacy of domestic economics.” But by 2000, the influence of the military-industrial complex had shrunk the “peace dividend” to only a 22% reduction in military spending from 1990 (after adjusting for inflation).

Then, in 2001, the military-industrial complex seized on the crime of the new century by 19 mainly Saudi young men armed only with box-cutters to launch new wars and the most expensive U.S. military build-up since World War Two. As former Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz said at the time, this was not a legitimate response to the crimes of September 11th. “It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done,” Ferencz told NPR. “If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t approve of what has happened.”

Despite the abject, bloody failure of the so-called “Global War on Terror,” the opportunistic military-build-up it served to justify still wins every budget battle in Washington. After adjusting for inflation, the 2020 U.S. military budget is 59% higher than in 2000, and 23% higher than it was in 1990.

Over the past 20 years (in 2020 dollars), the U.S. has allocated $4.7 trillion more to the Pentagon than if it had just maintained its budget at the same level since 2000. Even between 1998 and 2010, as Carl Conetta documented in his paper, An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending, actual war spending was matched dollar for dollar by unrelated additional military spending, mostly increased procurement spending to develop and buy very expensive new warships for the Navy, budget-busting warplanes like the F-35 fighterfor the Air Force, and a wish-list of new weapons and equipment for every branch of the military.

Since 2010, this unprecedented diversion of our national resources to the military-industrial complex has outstripped actual war spending even further. Obama spent more on the military than Bush, and now Trump is spending even more. In addition to $4.7 trillion in extra Pentagon spending, U.S. wars and militarism have cost $1.3 trillion more for Veterans Affairs since 2000 (also adjusted for inflation), as Americans predictably come home from America’s wars needing levels of medical care that the U.S. does not otherwise provide to its people.

All that money is gone now, just as surely as if it had been heaped up somewhere in Afghanistan and incinerated by a few of the 80,000 bombsthe U.S. has dropped on that poor country since 2001. So we do not have it to spend on public hospitals, ventilators, medical training, Covid-19 tests or any of the things we so desperately need in this distinctly non-military crisis.

Our $6 trillion have been utterly wasted – or worse. The U.S. war on terror did not defeat or end terrorism. It only fueled an endless spiral of violence and chaos across the world. The U.S. war machine has destroyed country after country: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen – but it has never rebuilt or brought peace to any of them. Meanwhile, Russia and China have built effective 21st century defenses against America’s obsolete war machine at a small fraction of its cost.

As countries around the world face the common danger of Covid-19, perhaps the most cynical response of all has been the U.S. government’s decision to impose even more brutal sanctions on Iran, one of the worst-hit countries, already deprived of life-saving medicines and other resources by existing U.S. sanctions.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate ceasefire in every war during this crisis, and for the U.S. to lift its deadly sanctions on all our neighbors around the world. That should include Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Syria; Venezuela; Zimbabwe; and not least Cuba, which is playing a courageous and active role in fighting the pandemic, rescuing the passengers of an infected British cruise ship that was refused entry by the U.S. and other countries, and sending medical teams to Italy and other infected countries around the world.

The 21st Century Command Economy

The “command economy” was a derisive term used to criticize the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe during the Cold War. But economist Eric Schutz used the 21st Century Command Economy as a subtitle for his 2001 book Markets and Power, in which he analyzed the effects of the dominant market power of monopolistic multinational corporations on the U.S. economy.

As Schutz explained, neoliberal (or neoclassical) economic theory ignores a critical factor in the “free” markets a generation of Americans have been taught to revere. This ignored factor is power.  As more and more aspects of American life are entrusted to the mythical “invisible hand” of the market, the most powerful players in every market are free to use their market power to concentrate wealth and even greater market power in their own (not so invisible) hands, driving smaller competitors out of business and exploiting other stakeholders: customers; employees; suppliers; governments; and local communities.

Since 1980, every sector of the U.S. economy has been gradually taken over by fewer and fewer larger and larger corporations, with a predictably debilitating effect on American life: fewer opportunities for small business; diminishing investment in public infrastructure and services; shrinking or stagnant wages; rising rents; privatization of education and healthcare; the destruction of local communities; and the systematic corruption of politics. Critical decisions that affect all our lives are now made primarily at the bidding and in the interests of big banks, big pharma, big tech, big ag, big developers, the military-industrial complex and the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

The infamous revolving door through which senior officials move between the military, lobbying firms, corporate boards, Congress and the executive branch is duplicated in every sector of the economy. Liz Fowler, who wrote the “Affordable Care Act” as a Senate and White House staffer, was a senior executive at Wellpoint Health (now Anthem), the parent company of Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which now rakes in billions in federal subsidies under the law she wrote. She then returned to the “industry” as an executive at Johnson & Johnson – just as James “Mad Dog” Mattis returned to his seat on the board at General Dynamics to reap the rewards of his “public service” as Secretary of Defense.

Whatever mix of capitalism and socialism each American may favor as a model for the U.S. economy, very few Americans would pick this corrupt 21st century command economy as the system they would choose to live under. How many American politicians would win election if they honestly told voters that this is the system they believe in and plan to promote?

We are living in a society in which everybody knows the deal is rotten, as the Leonard Cohen song goes, and yet we remain lost in a hall of mirrors, victims of a “divide and rule” strategy by which the wealthy and powerful control politics and the media along with every other sector of this 21st century command economy. Trump, Biden and Congressional leaders are just their latest figureheads, demonizing and arguing with each other as they and their paymasters laugh all the way to the bank.

There is a savage irony in the way the Democratic Party closed ranks around Biden just as Covid-19 appeared on the scene. A month ago, it seemed that 2020 might be the year Americans would finally blow away the well-funded smoke and mirrors of the for-profit U.S. health insurance industry and achieve universal publicly-funded healthcare. Instead, Democratic leaders appear to be settling for the lesser evil of another humiliating defeat and four more years of Trump over (to their minds) the greater danger of a Sanders presidency and universal healthcare.

But now this exceptionally dysfunctional society has run smack-bang into a real force of nature, a tiny virus that can kill millions of people. Other countries are rising to this exacting test of their healthcare and social systems more successfully than we are. So will we finally wake up from our American dream, open our eyes and start learning from our neighbors in other countries, including ones that have different political, economic and healthcare systems than ours? Our lives may depend on it.

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Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He is a freelance journalist and a researcher for CODEPINK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: President Trump visited the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on March 6, 2020. From the left: Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, CDC director Robert R. Redfield, and CDC associate director Stephan Monroe. Credit: White House photo by Shealah Craighead

这种趋势是由于恐惧和媒体虚假信息导致的全球封锁。目前，全球有数亿人处于封锁状态。

COV-19危机演变的下一步是什么？

1月7日，中国当局在发现达科那病毒后仅两周，就在达沃斯世界经济论坛（1月21日至24日）上宣布了一项冠状病毒疫苗计划。

新型冠状病毒疫苗计划的牵头实体是流行病防范创新联盟（CEPI），该组织由世界经济论坛（WEF）和比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会赞助和资助。

请注意时间顺序：在世卫组织正式发起全球公共卫生紧急事件（1月30日）前一周，达沃斯世界经济论坛（WEF）宣布了2019年nCoV疫苗的开发。确诊病例”，全球（中国以外）为150个（包括美国的6个）。

CEPI正在与大量“候选人”合作，在疫苗接种业务中寻求“垄断”角色，其目标是“全球疫苗项目”。它宣布为与Inovio和昆士兰大学（澳大利亚）的现有合作伙伴关系提供资金。此外，CEPI于1月23日确认了与Moderna，Inc.以及以Anthony Fauci博士为首的美国国家过敏和传染病研究所（NIAID）的合同，后者在整个美国开展了恐惧和恐慌运动： “比季节性流感还糟十倍”。

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你可以点击下面的链接阅读整篇文章的英文版，也可以用手机翻译

 

The destruction of the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 in New York City late in the afternoon of September 11, 2001, was not a result of fires, according to the much-anticipated final report issued today by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The UAF team’s findings, which were the result of a four-year computer modeling study of the tower’s collapse, contradict those of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which concluded in a 2008 report that WTC 7 was the first tall building ever to collapse primarily due to fire.

“Our study found that the fires in WTC 7 could not have caused the observed collapse,” said Professor Leroy Hulsey, the study’s principal investigator. “The only way it could have fallen in the observed manner is by the near-simultaneous failure of every column.”

The four-year study was funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth), a nonprofit organization representing more than 3,000 architects and engineers who have signed the organization’s petition calling for a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

“We are proud to have supported the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Professor Leroy Hulsey in conducting a genuinely scientific study into the reasons for this building’s collapse,” said Richard Gage, president and founder of AE911Truth. “It is now incumbent upon the building community, the media, and government officials to reckon with the implications of these findings and launch a new full-scale investigation.”

AE911Truth and its allies among the 9/11 victims’ families will now use the findings in the report as part of a formal “request for correction” that the group plans to submit to NIST in the coming days.

“The indisputable errors documented in our request for correction will give NIST no way out of correcting its deeply flawed report and reversing its conclusion that fires were the cause of the collapse,” said Gage.

The final report, entitled A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7 – Final Report, includes clarifications and supplemental text based on public comments submitted in response to a draft report released by UAF and AE911Truth on September 3, 2019.

The UAF team’s final report is the result of an extensive four-year computer modeling effort that was followed by a robust peer review process. The peer review included dozens of public comments as well as external review by two independent experts, Dr. Gregory Szuladzinski of Analytical Service Company, a leading expert in structural mechanics and finite element modeling, and Dr. Robert Korol, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at McMaster University and a fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.

“I am grateful to everyone who supported or participated in this study in any way,” said Professor Hulsey. “We hope that our findings will be carefully looked at by the building community and spur further investigation into how this building came down on that tragic day.”

The Hulsey report and supporting materials can be found on UAF’s Institute of Northern Engineering website at http://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7 and on the AE911Truth website at https://www.ae911truth.org/wtc7.

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Featured image is from ae911truth.org

The only man to be convicted of the infamous Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, died in 2012 and protested his innocence until his final breath. His fellow Libyan and co-defendant, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted and is still living in Libya. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 killed all 259 passengers and crew on board as well as 11 people on the ground in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Al-Megrahi was not alone in believing that he and his country were innocent of the crime. His family members are determined to clear his name if not prove his complete innocence. His son Ali is leading the family mission and told the BBC that his father was “innocent and had cared more about the victims than himself.”

The family has just won a huge victory with the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) decision on 11 March that an appeal can be made to the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland’s highest criminal court. The SCCRC had to decide if there are grounds for a posthumous appeal on the basis of a possible miscarriage of justice, among other possibilities. The commission found sufficient grounds to question the 2001 trial that convicted Al-Megrahi. Six grounds for review were considered before it was concluded that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred by reason of “unreasonable verdict” and “non-disclosure”.

This specifically raised serious doubts about the process by which Al-Megrahi was identified and linked to clothes found in the suitcase said to have contained the bomb. According to the SCCRC, “No reasonable trial court could have accepted that Mr. Megrahi was identified as the purchaser.”

The only witness to link Al-Megrahi to the clothes was a Maltese shop keeper named Toni Gauci, who died in 2016. He was a co-owner of a clothes shop in Malta and he testified that he sold the clothes to Al-Megrahi, who denied vehemently that he had ever been to the shop let alone bought anything from the witness. During the trial, this testimony was central to Al-Megrahi’s conviction, although the crown prosecutor, Lord Advocate Peter Frasier, later completely dismissed Gauci as “an apple short of a picnic” and “not quite the full shilling”. Why he accepted his testimony at the special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in the first place is still a mystery. Could it have been a conspiracy against Muammar Gaddafi and Libya, as the late Libyan leader always claimed? He is not alone in thinking so.

Law Professor Robert Black, who came up with the idea of holding Al-Megrahi’s trial in a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands — the first such occasion in history – now talks of a wider conspiracy to frame Libya. “I think the Scottish prosecution was from the start excessively influenced by the US Department of Justice, FBI and CIA,” Black told me this week when I asked about this possibility. In the late eighties, the US hated Gaddafi for his unrelenting opposition to America’s policies in the Arab world and beyond. He was accused of so many terrorist acts around the world that adding Lockerbie to the list would have been neither difficult to do nor easy to dispute; western media and politicians already projected Gaddafi as a monster capable of any and every evil.

Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, 23 April 2017 [Twitter]

It later emerged that Toni Gauci received $2 million in return for his testimony against Al-Megrahi before he disappeared from Malta altogether. Many experts think that he was coached on his story to be as convincing as possible. Under Scottish law, it is illegal to reward or coach witnesses in any legal proceedings.

According to Professor Black, the High Court of Judiciary could return its verdict before the 32nd anniversaries of the atrocity on 21 December this year. Meticulous as ever, the now retired professor thinks the court is likely to quash the original verdict and thus exonerate the late Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi posthumously. If that happens, he believes that Al-Megrahi’s family would be “entitled to claim compensation for wrongful imprisonment.” The convicted man spent eight years in prison after his conviction on 31 January 2001 before being released in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he was terminally ill with prostate cancer. However, warned Black, any such claim is likely to be resisted strongly.

At this stage we might feel entitled to ask what should happen to Libya if the verdict goes the way that Al-Megrahi’s family hope. The North African country had to endure crippling economic sanctions imposed by a series of UN Security Council resolutions starting with Resolution 731 passed on 21 March 1992. If Al-Megrahi is vindicated, might Libya also be vindicated and possibly claim compensation for the damage caused by the sanctions? Can it ask for the reimbursement of $2.7 billion paid to victims’ families? Even though the country accepted responsibility for the actions of its “officials” — Al-Megrahi and Fhimah, who was station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta at the time of the bombing — the money was paid as part of the requirements of the UN Resolutions.

Whatever the Scottish High Court of Justiciary decides later this year, many think that Al-Megrahi and Libya are already exonerated by the fact that the SCCRC has raised serious doubts about the trial and its verdict. Given the obvious US links to the case, it is interesting to note that current US Attorney General William Barr was the acting Attorney General who indicted the two Libyans in 1991. What will he have to say when the Court in Scotland returns its verdict?

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What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it.

My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liaisons dangereuses between Macronism and Big Pharma and especially about the mysterious “disappearance” – more likely outright theft – of all the stocks of chloroquine in possession of the French government.

Respected Professor Christian Perronne talked about the theft live in one of France’s 24/7 info channels: “The central pharmacy for the hospitals announced today that they were facing a total rupture of stocks, that they were pillaged.”

With input from another, anonymous source, it’s now possible to establish a timeline that puts in much-needed perspective the recent actions of the French government.

Let’s start with Yves Levy, who was the head of INSERM – the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research – from 2014 to 2018, when he was appointed as extraordinary state councilor for the Macron administration. Only 12 people in France have reached this status.

Levy is married to Agnes Buzyn (image on the right), who until recently was minister of health under Macron. Buzyn was essentially presented with an “offer you can’t refuse” by Macron’s party to leave the ministry – in the middle of the coronavirus crisis – and run for Mayor of Paris, where she was mercilessly trounced in the first round on March 16.

Levy has a vicious running feud with Professor Didier Raoult – prolific and often-cited Marseille-based specialist in communicable diseases. Levy withheld the INSERM label from the world-renowned IHU (Hospital-University Institute) research center directed by Raoult.

In practice, in October 2019, Levy revoked the status of “foundation” of the different IHUs so he could take over their research.

Raoult was part of a clinical trial that in which hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin healed 90% of Covid-19 cases if they were tested very early. (Early massive testing is at the heart of the successful South Korean strategy.)

Raoult is opposed to the total lockdown of sane individuals and possible carriers – which he considers “medieval,” in an anachronistic sense. He’s in favor of massive testing (which, besides South Korea, was successful in Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam) and a fast treatment with hydroxychloroquine. Only contaminated individuals should be confined.

Chloroquine costs one euro for ten pills. And there’s the rub: Big Pharma – which, crucially, finances INSERM, and includes “national champion” Sanofi – would rather go for a way more profitable solution. Sanofi for the moment says it is “actively preparing” to produce chloroquine, but that may take “weeks,” and there’s no mention about pricing.

A minister fleeing a tsunami

Here’s the timeline:

On January 13, Agnes Buzyn, still France’s Health Minister, classifies chloroquine as a “poisonous substance,” from now on only available by prescription. An astonishing move, considering that it has been sold off the shelf in France for half a century.

On March 16, the Macron government orders a partial lockdown. There’s not a peep about chloroquine. Police initially are not required to wear masks; most have been stolen anyway, and there are not enough masks even for health workers. In 2011 France had nearly 1.5 billion masks: 800 million surgical masks and 600 million masks for health professionals generally.

But then, over the years, the strategic stocks were not renewed, to please the EU and to apply the Maastricht criteria, which limited membership in the Growth and Stability Pact to countries whose budget deficits did not exceed 3% of GDP. One of those in charge at the time was Jerome Salomon, now a scientific counselor to the Macron government.

On March 17, Agnes Buzyn says she has learned the spread of Covid-19 will be a major tsunami, for which the French health system has no solution. She also says it had been her understanding that the Paris mayoral election “would not take place” and that it was, ultimately, “a masquerade.”

What she does not say is that she didn’t go public at the time she was running because the whole political focus by the Macron political machine was on winning the “masquerade.” The first round of the election meant nothing, as Covid-19 was advancing. The second round was postponed indefinitely. She had to know about the impending healthcare disaster. But as a candidate of the Macron machine she did not go public in timely fashion.

In quick succession:

The Macron government refuses to apply mass testing, as practiced with success in South Korea and Germany.

Le Monde and the French state health agency characterize Raoult’s research as fake news, before issuing a retraction.

Professor Perrone reveals on the 24/7 LCI news channel that the stock of chloroquine at the French central pharmacy has been stolen.

Thanks to a tweet by Elon Musk, President Trump says chloroquine should be available to all Americans. Sufferers of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, who already have supply problems with the only drug that offers them relief, set social media afire with their panic.

US doctors and other medical professionals take to hoarding the medicine for the use of themselves and those close to them, faking prescriptions to indicate they are for patients with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

Morocco buys the stock of chloroquine from Sanofi in Casablanca.

Pakistan decides to increase its production of chloroquine to be sent to China.

Switzerland discards the total lockdown of its population; goes for mass testing and fast treatment; and accuses France of practicing  “spectacle politics.”

Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, having had himself treated with chloroquine, without any government input, directly calls Sanofi so they may deliver chloroquine to Nice hospitals.

Because of Raoult’s (image on the left) research, a large-scale chloroquine test finally starts in France, under the – predictable – direction of INSERM, which wants to “remake the experiments in other independent medical centers.” This will take at least an extra six weeks – as the Elysee Palace’s scientific council now mulls the extension of France’s total lockdown to … six weeks.

If joint use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin proves definitely effective among the most gravely ill, quarantines may be reduced in select clusters.

The only French company that still manufactures chloroquine is under judicial intervention. That puts the chloroquine hoarding and theft into full perspective. It will take time for these stocks to be replenished, thus allowing Big Pharma the leeway to have what it wants: a costly solution.

It appears the perpetrators of the chloroquine theft were very well informed.

Bagged nurses

This chain of events, astonishing for a highly developed G-7 nation proud of its health service, is part of a long, painful process embedded in neoliberal dogma. EU-driven austerity mixed with the profit motive resulted in a very lax attitude towards the health system.

As Bugault told me,

“test kits – very few in number – were always available but mostly for a small group connected to the French government [former officials of the Ministry of Finance, CEOs of large corporations, oligarchs, media and entertainment moguls].  Same for chloroquine, which this government did everything to make inaccessible for the population.

They did not make life easy for Professor Raoult – he received death threats and was intimidated by ‘journalists.’

And they did not protect vital stocks. Still under the Hollande government, there was a conscious liquidation of the stock of masks – which had existed in large quantities in all hospitals. Not to mention that the suppression of hospital beds and hospital means accelerated under Sarkozy.”

This ties in with anguished reports by French citizens of nurses now having to use trash bags due to the lack of proper medical gear.

At the same time, in another astonishing development, the French state refuses to requisition private hospitals and clinics – which are practically empty at this stage – even as the president of their own association, Lamine Garbi, has pleaded for such a public service initiative:

“I solemnly demand that we are requisitioned to help public hospitals. Our facilities are prepared. The wave that surprised the east of France must teach us a lesson.”

Bugault reconfirms the health situation in France “is very serious and will become even worse due to these political decisions – absence of masks, political refusal to massively test people, refusal of free access to chloroquine – in a context of supreme distress at the hospitals. This will last and destitution will be the norm.”

Professor vs president

In an explosive development on Tuesday, Raoult said he’s not participating in Macron’s scientific council anymore, even though he’s not quitting it altogether. Raoult once again insists on massive testing on a national scale to detect suspected cases, and then isolate and treat patients who tested positive. In a nutshell: the South Korean model.

That’s exactly what is expected from the IHU in Marseille, where hundreds of residents continue to queue up for testing. And that ties in with the conclusions by a top Chinese expert on Covid-19, Zhang Nanshan, who says that treatment with chloroquine phospate had a “positive impact,” with patients testing negative after around four days.

The key point has been stressed by Raoult: Use chloroquine in very special circumstances, for people tested very early, when the disease is not advanced yet, and only in these cases. He’s not advocating chloroquine for everyone. It’s exactly what the Chinese did, along with their use of Interferon.

For years, Raoult has been pleading for a drastic revision of health economic models, so the treatments, cure and therapies created mostly during the 20^th century, are considered a patrimony in the service of all humanity.“That’s not the case”, he says, “because we abandon medicine that is not profitable, even if it’s effective. That’s why almost no antibiotics are manufactured in the West.”

On Tuesday, the French Health Ministry officially prohibited the utilization of treatment based on chloroquine recommended by Raoult.  In fact the treatment is only allowed for terminal Covid-19 patients, with no other possibility of healing. This cannot but expose the Macron government to more accusations of at least inefficiency – added to the absence of masks, tests, contact tracing and ventilators.

On Wednesday, commenting on the new government guidelines, Raoult said,

“When damage to the lungs is too important, and patients arrive for reanimation, they practically do not harbor viruses in their bodies any more. It’s too late to treat them with chloroquine. Are these the only cases – the very serious cases – that will be treated with chloroquine under the new directive by [French Health Minister] Veran?” If so, he added ironically, “then they will be able to say with scientific certainty that chloroquine does not work.”

Raoult was unavailable for comment on Western news media articles citing Chinese test results that would suggest he is wrong about the efficacy of chloroquine in dealing with mild cases of Covid-19.

Staffers pointed instead to his comments in the IHU bulletin. There Raoult says it’s “insulting” to ask if we can trust the Chinese on the use of chloroquine. “If this was an American disease, and the president of the United States said, ‘We need to treat patients with that,’ nobody would discuss it.”

In China, he adds, there were “enough elements so the Chinese government and all Chinese experts who know coronaviruses took an official position that ‘we must treat with chloroquine.’ Between the moment when we have the first results and an accepted international publication, there is no credible alternative among people who are the most knowledgeable in the world. They took this measure in the interest of public health.”

Crucially: if he had coronavirus, Raoult says he would take chloroquine. Since Raoult is rated by his peers as the number one world expert  in communicable diseases, way above Dr. Anthony Fauci in the US, I would say the new reports represent Big Pharma talking.

Raoult has been mercilessly savaged and demonized by French corporate media that are controlled by a few oligarchs closely linked to Macronism. Not by accident the demonization has reached gilets jaunes (yellow vest) levels, especially because of the extremely popular hashtag  #IlsSavaient (“They knew”), with which the yellow vests stress that French elites have “managed” the Covid-19 crisis by protecting themselves while leaving the population defenseless against the virus.

That ties in with the controversial analysis by crack philosopher Giorgio Agamben in a column published a month ago, where he was already arguing that Covid-19 clearly shows that the state of exception – similar to a state of emergency but with differences important to philosophers – has become fully normalized in the West.

Agamben was speaking not as a doctor or a virologist but as a master thinker, following in the steps of Foucault, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Noting how a latent state of fear has metastasized into a state of collective panic, for which Covid-19 “offers once again the ideal pretext,” he described how, “in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that was induced by the same governments that now intervene to satisfy it.”

There was no state of collective panic in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam – to mention four Asian examples outside of China. A dogged combination of mass testing and contact tracing was applied with immense professionalism. It worked. In the Chinese case, with the help of chloroquine. And in all Asian cases, without a murky profit motive to the benefit of Big Pharma.

There hasn’t yet appeared the smoking gun that proves the Macron system not only is incompetent to deal with Covid-19 but also is dragging the process so Big Pharma can come up with a miracle vaccine, fast. But the pattern to discourage chloroquine is more than laid out above – in parallel to the demonization of Raoult.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: A mask-wearing French citizen in Paris. Photo: Facebook

Excerpts from Fidel’s 2003 speech in Buenos Aires:

“Our country does not drop bombs on other peoples… our country does not possess nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, or biological weapons. Our country’s tens of thousands of scientists and doctors have been educated in the idea of saving lives.”

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Since I am an optimist, I think this world can be saved, in spite of the mistakes made, in spite of the immense, hegemonic powers that have been created, because I believe ideas prevail over force.…

Our country does not drop bombs on other peoples, nor does it send thousands of planes to bomb cities; our country does not possess nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, or biological weapons. Our country’s tens of thousands of scientists and doctors have been educated in the idea of saving lives. It would absolutely contradict this concept to put a scientist or a doctor to work to produce substances, bacteria or viruses to kill other human beings.

Allegations that Cuba is doing research on biological weapons have even been made. In our country, research is conducted to cure diseases as severe as meningococcal meningitis and hepatitis, to produce vaccines with genetic engineering techniques, or, something of great importance, to discover vaccines or therapeutic formulas through molecular immunology; some of which can prevent and others cure. We are moving forward along this path. This is the pride of our doctors and our research centers.

Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors have provided internationalist services in the most remote and inhospitable places. I once said that we could not and would never carry out preventive or surprise attacks against any dark corner of the world; but rather that our country could send needed doctors to the darkest corners of the world.

Doctors, not bombs. Doctors, not smart weapons.

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Featured image is from Granma

Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.

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Venezuela Dismisses US Justice Department ‘Narco-terrorism’ Accusations

By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz, March 27, 2020

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro rejected US drug trafficking accusations against his person and senior members of his government.

In a televised address Thursday evening, Maduro blasted the State Department’s “racist cowboy methods” of offering money for information leading to his and other Venezuelan leaders’ arrest. The president likewise touted Venezuela’s role in fighting the drug trade and in the Colombian peace process.

Real Virus, Fake Shock

By Mark Taliano, March 27, 2020

One of the “solutions” to the WHO-fabricated shock has been to “helicopter” (2) money into a broken financial system.

But root causes are being ignored. The predatory doctrine of neoliberalism should be identified as the failure that it is. The evisceration of the public sphere, deregulation, and hyper privatisations schemes, hallmarks of neoliberalism, are among the root causes.

COVID-19 Puts Capitalism on a Ventilator. No More Bank and Corporate Bailouts!

By Prof. Anthony A. Gabb, March 27, 2020

The aftershock of previous pandemics was catastrophic. The fourteenth century Black Plague and the 1918 Flu pandemics inflicted colossal hardships and caused many deaths. The Black Plague shook the foundations of feudal social relations. It killed 25 to 30 million people, resulting in peasant uprisings, shortages that caused wages to rise, and large parcels of land to go fallow. Scientists believe the 1918 Flu could have come to Spain from the United States and spread to other parts of the world killing 20 to 50 million people, more than the 17 million who died in WW1. Even though it was common knowledge that the flu was already in Philadelphia, the authorities went ahead anyway with a parade to raise funds for the war causing many unnecessary deaths—at the time the economics of the war took priority over stopping the spread of the flu. Similarly, today there are competing views about whether fixing the economy should take precedence over addressing the ravages of COVID-19.

The Senate’s Coronavirus Relief Package Must be Stopped!

By Mike Whitney, March 27, 2020

The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package is not fiscal stimulus and it’s not a lifeline for the tens of millions of working people who have suddenly lost their jobs. It’s a fundamental restructuring of the US economy designed to strengthen the grip of the corrupt corporate-banking oligarchy while creating a permanent underclass that will be forced to work for slave wages. This isn’t stimulus, it’s shock therapy.

Recognizing and Resisting the “Hasbara Pandemic”

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, March 27, 2020

On the opposite side is the news story about a former FBI agent Robert Levinson. Levinson disappeared in 2007 and the United States had accused Iran of holding him hostage. Iran has no information about him. Yesterday, out of nowhere, various hasbara outlets cited Levinson’s family releasing a statement citing that they recently received information from US officials that led them to conclude that “our wonderful husband and father died while in Iranian custody.”

Iran denied having held him in custody and the news of his death was news to them. Why was this unbelievable? After all, I have no way of knowing who is lying, the US or Iran. Though one certainly may question the timing of this report.

Covid-19: Lithuania on the Brink of a Catastrophe

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, March 27, 2020

COVID-19 expands in Lithuania. Having registered its first official case in February, the country currently has almost 300 infected people and four confirmed deaths. Taking into account that the official numbers tend to differ from the real ones due to the delay in investigating suspicions, it is likely that there are already many more infected, perhaps even thousands. In parallel, state measures to contain the announced catastrophe are few and weak and the government is more concerned in dealing with an alleged “Russian threat” than with the country’s imminent crisis.

Lancet Chief Skewers Johnson Government for Its Disastrous Covid-19 Failure

By True Publica, March 27, 2020

Horton looks at the moment when the government realised their ‘herd immunity’ strategy had imploded. “Many journalists, led by the BBC, reported that the science had changed and so the government had responded accordingly. But this interpretation of events is wrong. The science has been the same since January. What changed is that government advisers, at last, understood what had really taken place in China. The UK’s best scientists have known since that first report from China that Covid-19 was a lethal illness. Yet they did too little, too late.”

 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro rejected US drug trafficking accusations against his person and senior members of his government.

In a televised address Thursday evening, Maduro blasted the State Department’s “racist cowboy methods” of offering money for information leading to his and other Venezuelan leaders’ arrest. The president likewise touted Venezuela’s role in fighting the drug trade and in the Colombian peace process.

“Our spirits are high,” he said. “We’ve had record numbers of drug busts in the past 15 years, ever since we got rid of the [US] Drug Enforcement agency.”

Earlier in the day, a communique from the Foreign Ministry likewise refuted the accusations as “miserable, vulgar and baseless.”

“At a time when humanity is facing a pandemic, Donald Trump attacks the Venezuelan people once more with miserable, vulgar and baseless accusations,” the statement reads.

In a press conference Thursday morning, US Attorney General William Barr unsealed an indictment against Maduro, accusing the Venezuelan leader of conspiring with Colombia’s FARC rebels to “to flood the United States with cocaine” as far back as 1999 when he was first elected to congress.

Fourteen current and former officials were also charged in parallel indictments, including National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Supreme Court President Maikel Moreno, Industry Minister Tareck El Aissami, former intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal, and retired major general Cliver Alcala.

FARC leaders Ivan Marquez and Jesus Santrich were similarly indicted. The two head a dissident faction that took up arms again last year, blaming the Colombian government for the collapse of the 2016 peace accords.

“For more than 20 years, Maduro and a number of high-ranking colleagues allegedly conspired with the FARC, causing tons of cocaine to enter and devastate American communities,” Barr claimed.

Washington has long accused Caracas of drug smuggling, previously sanctioning other Venezuelan senior officials, including then Vice President El Aissami in 2017, on the same grounds.

However, US officials have so far declined to provide concrete evidence implicating top Venezuelan leaders, while data from the Drug Enforcement Agency shows that only a fraction of drug routes pass through Venezuelan territory, with the majority of cocaine entering the US via Central America and Mexico.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a US $15 million reward for “information related to” Maduro and $10 million for that pertaining to Cabello, Carvajal, Alcala, and El Aissami. Carvajal has reportedly been missing for several months, with Spanish authorities having approved his extradition to the United States.

Cliver Alcala made headlines on Wednesday after an arms shipment was seized by authorities in Colombia. The Venezuelan government claimed the weapons were part of a coup attempt by the retired general.

Alcala has since confirmed the plot, claiming that the weapons belonged “to the Venezuelan people” and had been acquired as part of a signed agreement between himself, self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido, longtime anti-government strategist J. J. Rendon and “US advisors.”

In a radio interview and later in Twitter videos, Alcala explained that the goal was to form a “liberation force” to “surgically take out targets in Venezuela.” He went on to blame members of the opposition for leaking the plan, claiming that opposition leaders Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez were “very much aware” of the operation.

“He [Guaido] can’t deny it because I have the contract waiting for the moment that justice [officials] comes to my house, to present the indictments,” he told W Radio.

Reacting to the Justice Department indictment, Alcala denied the charges, stating he had previously met with US officials on no less than “seven occasions.” He said he would await authorities’ inquiries at his residence in Barranquilla, Colombia.

For his part, Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced Thursday afternoon that his office was launching an investigation against Alcala, Guaido and “other conspirators” following the former’s public statements. Saab lashed out against Washington and Bogota on Twitter, slamming their efforts to “promote assassinations and terrorist attacks.”

The Attorney General’s Office has launched several investigations against Juan Guaido ever since his self-proclamation in January 2019. Guaido had his parliamentary immunity revoked by the Supreme Court, but has yet to be taken into custody.

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

Featured image: U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman announcing charges against Maduro and other high ranking officials. (US Attorney’s Office)

The notorious “moderate rebels” have blown up a bridge on the M4 highway in southern Idlib as part of their effort to sabotage the creation of a security zone in the area. The Kafr bridge is located near the town of Jisr al-Shughr, near positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party, both of which are linked to al-Qaeda. Surprisingly, pro-opposition sources publicly admit that the bridge was destroyed to hinder Russian-Turkish plans to conduct joint patrols along the M4. After previous acts of sabotage against the deal, supporters of the Idlib “moderates” opted to blame “Russian barbarians”, “sectarian Iranian militias” or the “puppet Assad regime”. But such claims did not hold water because the rough actions of the Idlib militants were too obvious.

Over the past two weeks, Turkish troops have conducted at least 8 patrols on their own along the M4 highway and participated in 2 joint patrols with Russian Military Police west of Saraqib. However, the presence of the Turkish Army in the area of the supposed security zone did not stop supporters of Idlib armed groups from building barriers with large mounds of earth, blowing up bridges, destroying improvised Turkish road checkpoints and even staging IED attacks on Turkish military columns. The constant threat of terrorist attacks will clearly remain a sad reality of modern Idlib for as long as al-Qaeda-linked groups exist there.

On March 25, a Turkish soldier, Umit Udul, shot himself dead near the town of Ras al-Ayn in northeastern Syria. Kurdish sources claim that he did it as an act of protest against the actions of the Turkish Army in Syria. However, these claims remain unconfirmed. The security situation in the Turkish-controlled part of Syria’s northeast has been deteriorating for months. So, the incident may have been a result of local tensions.

Two Turkish soldiers were killed by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, in the area of the Turkish anti-PKK operation “Claw”. The Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed the casualties saying that 8 PKK members were “neutralized” in response to the attack.

Rocket strikes continue hitting US-linked facilities across Iraq. Early on March 26, several rockets were launched at the area of the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone. A day earlier, on March 25, unidentified forces shelled Camp Taji, the biggest military base hosting US troops in the country. Regular rocket attacks already forced the US military to evacuate several smaller bases, including the key fortified facility near the Syrian border – al-Qaim. This was done under the pretext of “successes” against ISIS and COVID-19-related issues.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition itself is collapsing. On March 25, Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces, announced that French troops had withdrawn from Iraqi territory.

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COVID-19 expands in Lithuania. Having registered its first official case in February, the country currently has almost 300 infected people and four confirmed deaths. Taking into account that the official numbers tend to differ from the real ones due to the delay in investigating suspicions, it is likely that there are already many more infected, perhaps even thousands. In parallel, state measures to contain the announced catastrophe are few and weak and the government is more concerned in dealing with an alleged “Russian threat” than with the country’s imminent crisis.

Incompetent to deal with the virus’s arrival in Lithuania, the pro-Western government decided to choose simple targets to blame for the coming disaster: Russia and the Lithuanian diaspora. Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis in recent pronouncements went to the extreme of saying about diaspora Lithuanians returning to the country:

“You have probably seen scenes on social media, who and what types are returning to Lithuania (…) I’m sorry, but they cannot be called people. (…) These are the individuals that, after getting off planes and ferries, are posing danger to us.”

Supposedly, there was a collective breach of social isolation rules by Lithuanian emigrants, however, instead of making decisions that enforce quarantine rules, Skvernelis prefers to harass his own people.

Lithuania then began to spread the lie reported by the European Union that Russia would be spreading fake news about the development of the pandemic in western European countries. In a March 16 report, the European External Action Service published:

“The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries […] in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies”.

According to the EU, Moscow would be interested in increasing panic in the bloc’s countries and would be spreading lies on social networks for this purpose.

In response, the incompetent Lithuanian government decided to hide the lack of policies against the virus by tightening up measures against Russia. The government announced that as a quarantine measure it would close the access route to Kaliningrad, which is a Russian territory in the Baltic. In addition to being a measure of extremely dubious effectiveness, it is above all disrespectful, anti-diplomatic and outrageous maneuver against Russia, since Moscow has sovereignty over Kaliningrad. Although the traffic in the region has not been completely closed, the Lithuanian government has already restricted it significantly, reducing the number of trains and limiting the number of passengers to a maximum of 100 people.

However, with great attention being paid to Russia and the diaspora, a very important point in the Lithuanian viral crisis is being ignored. So far, 20 NATO soldiers stationed in Lithuania have tested positive for the disease. The number is truly alarming and can indicate the beginning of a major outbreak of infection. Official government data did not report the nationality of the infected, but it is already known that two of them come from the Netherlands. Apparently, in addition to bringing international instability and insecurity to Lithuanians, NATO is also carrying a deadly pandemic, but it is minimally curious how the government remains inert about such numbers and simultaneously prefers to implement policies against Russia and the diaspora.

Indeed, if the Lithuanian government maintains its current stance, it will have to deal alone with what could be the biggest crisis in its country’s history. The rate of growth of the infection is still inaccurate, partly due to the lack of transparency in the Ministry of Health, which is clearly omitting data to “prevent collective panic”. Due to the fact that a large part of the Lithuanian population is educated in the Russian language, it does not remain totally hostage to the lies spread by the media agencies in the country and in the European Union, and can consume content produced in Russian, which usually shows another view about the pandemic. It is for this reason that the Lithuanian government and the EU accuse Moscow of spreading “fake news”.

What we know so far is that in less than a week the numbers jumped from 60 to 300 officially confirmed cases. In addition, two members of Seimas are infected and Parliament is unable to maintain activities, with meetings being conducted remotely. In the morning of last Wednesday, 46 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed. Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the truth about the catastrophic scenario that is approaching the country.

Above all, Lithuania is dealing with its own choices. The situation of the coronavirus in Russia, compared to the Western scenario, is very clear: it is Western Europe that is succumbing to the coronavirus. Therefore, it is much more logical to think that the infection vector for Lithuania is also the West, and not Russia, which shows the weakness of anti-Russian policies and restriction of access to Kaliningrad as ways to contain the pandemic. And the alarming number of infected NATO soldiers makes one to presume that the virus has entered the country through this way.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The coronavirus is real, but the shock is a fabrication.

The WHO proclaimed a “pandemic” prematurely, without sufficient evidence, no doubt influenced by “vested interests”.

How do we know this?

The UK government recently proclaimed that

“more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.” (1)

The information from “Public Health England” is, apparently, being suppressed.

One of the “solutions” to the WHO-fabricated shock has been to “helicopter” (2) money into a broken financial system.

But root causes are being ignored. The predatory doctrine of neoliberalism should be identified as the failure that it is. The evisceration of the public sphere, deregulation, and hyper privatisations schemes, hallmarks of neoliberalism, are among the root causes.

As happened after the shock of 9/11, emergency legislation will be passed which will exacerbate the cancer of the current political economy which serves the ruling, billionaire class to the detriment of us all.

We need to push back and use this shock to demand a more socially-oriented, democratic political economy that rejects both militarism and neoliberalism. Ironically, but not surprisingly, the countries best able to respond to the current shock, notably China and Cuba, are both being sanctioned and undermined by the Western oligarch class.

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

Notes

(1) GOV.UK, “High consequence infectious diseases (HCID).” Updated 21 March, 2020.
(https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid?fbclid=IwAR3IevitiWljJXNzFy3aQJr4TisgkVKLCMtewtMb8RFdjCQJEHjf6YjL8QA#status-of-covid-19 ) Accessed 25 March, 2020.

(2) Alastair Crooke, ” ‘Helicopter Money’: This Is the Game-Changer Geo-Politically.” 23 March, 2020.
( https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/03/23/helicopter-money-this-is-the-game-changer-geo-politically/?fbclid=IwAR1vbUuVFckx47c3Pq8BpkO6m0BIB2oSnM9G2tvORk41uz-clW7yayqNjrg) Accessed 25 March, 2020.

---

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro after weeks of downplaying the potential seriousness of the coronavirus is beginning to lose popularity for his irrationality, especially since describing the coronavirus as a “fantasy” and a “minor flu.” While all South American countries, with the exception of fellow neoliberal Chile, have taken drastic measures to fight against coronavirus, Bolsonaro has been inactive, allowing the infection rate in Brazil to more than quadruple in only a week to over 2,200 people. This has caused angst for many in the middle classes that were crucial to his election as the country’s presidency in 2018. For days now, many in the middle class have led protests from their home balconies by banging on saucepans loudly. Some in Brazil are even speculating whether he is allowing coronavirus to get out of control as a reason to cancel the municipality elections scheduled for October this year – this at a time when his popularity continues to tumble.

Bolsonaro fell out with the Governor of São Paulo, João Doria, whom he called a “lunatic” and accused of “creating terror” for implementing quarantine in the most populous state and financially important state of Brazil. São Paulo is the most infected state and highest death count. The conservative governor of Rio, second most populous state in Brazil, Wilson Witzel, said “The lack of dialogue and sanity is unacceptable. I never thought that I would experience this in a democracy.” Effectively the most important states of Brazil are defying the Federal government feeling that Bolsonaro is doing next to nothing to deal with the pandemic.

According to public opinion institutes, Bolsonaro’s popularity is crumbling. In a Datafolha survey, 35% of Brazilians believe Bolsonaro is handling the pandemic in a good manner while 33% thought it was poor. Although it may seem insignificant, this would overlook the immense popularity that Bolsonaro once had, and in his stronghold of São Paulo, it is especially telling how much his popularity is falling. In an IBOPE survey, 48% of people in São Paulo found his handling of the pandemic as bad and lousy, and 25% of people believed it was optimal and good. These figures will only continue to get worse for Bolsonaro as the Center for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases of the London School of Tropical Medicine, estimates that the underreporting of those infected in Brazil is enormous and that there would be at least nine times more than the 2,200 detected so far.

One of Bolsonaro’s ideas to deal with the economic fallback of the pandemic was to suspend work contracts and therefore workers’ wages for four months. He had to back down in the face of massive opposition from all social strata, which was especially expected since 21% of Brazilians live in poverty. Bolsonaro is of course protecting ultra-capitalist interests in Brazil, as he openly said he would before his election, where he was dubbed “Tropical Trump.”

This moniker continues to be proven true as Bolsonaro follows every step of U.S. President Donald Trump, who yesterday expressed his ambition to end American lockdowns by Easter. Bolsonaro following shortly after Trump announced that Brazil’s lockdown measures are exaggerated and his country will be back open for business. However, this will prove to be a catastrophic move as Brazil’s fragile healthcare system will inevitably be overwhelmed and the country will not be able to conduct business ‘as usual.’

At a time when the U.S. has shown self-interest during this pandemic by abandoning its closest NATO allies, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo created a diplomatic crisis between Brazil and China by saying on Twitter that “China is to blame [for the coronavirus] and freedom would be the solution.” The Chinese Embassy hit back, saying: “His words are extremely irresponsible and sound familiar. They are still an imitation of your dear friends. Upon returning from Miami, he unfortunately contracted a mental virus, which is infecting friendships among our peoples.” Brazil’s Foreign Minister then ludicrously demanded that China apologize for the insult. Bolsonaro had to call Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday to affirm Brazil’s “friendship” with China and reverse the damage made by his son and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo.

Many Europeans appreciate Russian, Chinese and Cuban assistance to fight against coronavirus as Washington has abandoned its European NATO allies, isolated itself and refused to help the hardest hit countries such as Spain and Italy. And unsurprisingly, the U.S. has shown a complete disinterest to assist Brazil. Bolsonaro has already had to humiliate itself by getting Brazilian Secretary of Health João Gabbardo to request Cuba to send back doctors who were expelled by him so they can help prevent the country’s health system from collapsing. Although Bolsonaro does everything he can to serve Trump’s agenda against China, Cuba and other states, it is these very states that Brazil must cooperate with so that it can navigate through this pandemic. Bolsonaro must now have a serious relook at his foreign policy in light of this fact.

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

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres warned that a global recession, “perhaps of record dimensions”, was a near certainty…“We are in an unprecedented situation and the normal rules no longer apply.”

The aftershock of previous pandemics was catastrophic. The fourteenth century Black Plague and the 1918 Flu pandemics inflicted colossal hardships and caused many deaths. The Black Plague shook the foundations of feudal social relations. It killed 25 to 30 million people, resulting in peasant uprisings, shortages that caused wages to rise, and large parcels of land to go fallow. Scientists believe the 1918 Flu could have come to Spain from the United States and spread to other parts of the world killing 20 to 50 million people, more than the 17 million who died in WW1. Even though it was common knowledge that the flu was already in Philadelphia, the authorities went ahead anyway with a parade to raise funds for the war causing many unnecessary deaths—at the time the economics of the war took priority over stopping the spread of the flu. Similarly, today there are competing views about whether fixing the economy should take precedence over addressing the ravages of COVID-19.

COVID-19 originated through natural processes. On 31 December 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) of an outbreak. It has since become a pandemic. As it navigates its way across the planet, COVID-19 is expected to leave no less of a calamitous trail of suffering, death, and economic devastation. Globally, so far over 435,000 have been afflicted by the virus and over 19, 000 have died. The economic repercussions could result in “perhaps record dimensions” . The stock market has dropped over 30 percent, and whole industries such as airlines, tourism, and travel have been negatively impacted.

Globally and in the United States COVID-19 spotlights capitalism’s dim response to cope with it. Many countries are using revolting health care systems. Not surprisingly, the U.S. healthcare system, which is inadequate under normal circumstances, is woefully insufficient and unpracticed. It is based on crisis management principles therefore it is devoid of advanced planning; this is evidenced by shortages of basic supplies like masks, testing kits, and ventilators. The delayed response, which is tantamount to a crime, is being coordinated by a President who is doltish, in denial, and who initially claimed the virus was a hoax and a Vice President who is an anti-science creationist. To be clear, the Democrats are equally responsible for this chaos.

Should the virus be contained within a reasonable short time, the economy will struggle with an easier recovery process. The longer it takes to suppress the virus, the effectiveness of the delayed response could be eclipsed by unnecessary misery, deaths and an existential economic meltdown. There are already calls once again for another bailout of corporate America and the banks. Again, it will fall on the backs of working people to save the system from itself.

Who we are, our individuality, is not separate from what and how we as a species produce things, as we interact with nature. COVID-19, like climate change, is a natural outgrowth of the profiteering activities of Anthropocentric Industrial Capitalism (AIC), which is an existential threat to humanity. If we continue to pillage the earth for profits, we will, in part, trespass deeper into the habitats of other species increasing the frequency of closer contact with them, creating the possibility for other novel coronaviruses. This should come as no surprise, since in the recent past the earth’s ecosystem has responded to abuse with AIDS, Avian flu, SARS, MERS, and Zika. It is time to start asking hard questions like: Is capitalism capable of addressing the problems it produces? How many times should a system that time and again fails to deliver be bailed out? And what’s the next coronavirus?

In the absence of an advanced plan, the only response is containment, mitigation, and testing for the virus. To be clear, this is not a discussion about containment, mitigation, and testing per se which is a true and tested approach. Until a vaccine is found, there will be testing for the virus and those who have the virus will be targeted and contained. To mitigate the spread of the virus people are being told to stay at home, regularly wash their hands, stop shaking hands, and engage in “ social-distancing ”. Meanwhile, developing a vaccine could take another year.

It is true that qualitative external shocks like COVID-19, tsunamis or wars can throw the economy out of kilter. But more importantly it is also true that crises are part of the internal logic of capitalism. Just before COVID-19 hit, as recent as December 2019, the economy was already showing signs of weakness. Its very existence depends on the generation of profits, while at the same time it produces misery, inequality, unemployment, inflation, alienation, stress, recessions, and systemic crises. A commodity like a health care service is virulent with these contradictions and tension. Many who work in the healthcare system are underinsured, or have no health care benefits. COVID-19 is the trigger that exposes systemic weaknesses and exacerbates this current crisis.

Similar measures were taken in response to previous pandemics. Those who had the plague were contained and walled off from entering other villages. Alarmingly, almost seven centuries later, in the age of high-tech communications, the same tools are being used to match those who get the virus with a limited number of available hospital beds. While the authorities can quickly find trillions of dollars to bailout corporations and banks, you are told that a planned robust universal health care system that anticipates pandemics is too expensive.

Then there is the containment and mitigation of the virus while allowing the economy to unravel, hopefully for a short period. The longer the unravelling the deeper will be the economic carnage and the longer will be the recovery. If you and everyone else stop dining out, your neighborhood restaurant will have no customers and will go bankrupt. After which wholesalers that supply your local restaurants will follow. This will cause unemployment to rise. If the ripple effect mutates the whole economy could be put on a ventilator. Global debt is about $188T, of which corporate debt is about $16T. Because their reserve cash is generally enough to keep them afloat for 12 days, small businesses will be the first to go under–small businesses are the canary in the coal mine.

The modern-day Robber Barons of industry and Wall Street, along with the government are frantically designing a ventilator to distribute taxpayer’s money to all organs of the economy–domestic and foreign banks and corporations and consumers. The corporate media is firing on all cylinders hoping to convince you to support the efforts of the “job creators”. While the Congress is preparing a stream of trillion dollar bailout programs, last Friday the Federal Reserve Bank handed the banks a massive $1T handout at zero interest rate.

But the optics of bailing out only corporations and banks might raise eyebrows this time. As a result, they are also saying that working people must receive help. While this is true, the hidden motive is that they know that workers do not have any money to spend in order to reset the system. Over forty percent of the US population has less than $400 in savings. Seventy percent of every dollar spent in the US is spent by consumers.

Any bailout in the form and magnitude of the 2008 crisis bailout handed to banks and Wall Street, could trigger widespread anger in this country. This justifiable anger could find a productive outlet in the form of a transition plan with firm conditions in the interest of the many hard-working wealth creators and the planet, rather than 2,000 multibillionaires, Wall Street and corporations. With this is mind there should be no more bank and corporate bailouts. When workers are required to buy health insurance, corporations in the airlines, hospitality, or any other industry should be required to do the same before they make risky investment decisions. They should no longer expect working people to bail them out. This is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us.

Working people should advocate for an alternative transition plan whose main goal is to restructure key industries such as healthcare, education, food, housing, and transportation. This plan would be under the control of working people and a restructured government. In order for businesses to qualify for phase one of this plan, they must have a history of: being friendly to unions; paying a livable wage with full benefits packages including childcare; and complying with environmental requirements. In addition, businesses must agree to regular monitoring of how the loan money is being used; must not have previously received any bailout money; and must commit to a timeline to transition to worker control of these enterprises. These conditions would be subjected to periodic review by a worker’s committee. The plan would be funded by a rollback of the $1.5T recent tax cut to the rich and a special bailout progressive tax on billionaires. Businesses that are a part of other than key industries, would be encouraged to seek financial assistance through the banks.

During the second phase of the transition plan, a Department For Environmental Research and Climate Change will be established and funded by a retroactive tax on corporations who profited from the destruction of the environment; a worker’s political party will be established; there will be free access to healthcare, education, vacant land/property/housing including utilities, food, and public transportation; a progressive tax on all income and wealth over $1 million; all student debt will be cancelled; religious establishments will be taxed; inheritance laws, unproductive industries like advertisement, and rent will be abolished; banking and media will be nationalized/centralized; political prisoners and those who have been criminalized because they are poor will be freed; the military, which includes the police and the judiciary will be downsized; and a jobs bill for all working age adults will be enacted.

Time and again billionaires, bankers and corporate executives have received unconditional bailouts. While they will benefit, working people are always those who are asked to finance these bailouts. If you are unemployed or in an insecure job with little or no benefits, have unpayable student debt or cannot afford to pay for an education, trapped in unsustainable housing conditions, another unconditional balout will not improve your quality of life. The level of inequality in the US is at dizzying heights and getting worse. The richest three people in the US have more wealth than the bottom 50 percent. Without fundamental changes, more bailouts will be necessary because economic crises are intrinsic to capitalism. This crisis precipitated by COVID-19 represents a great opportunity for transforming a chaotic system that has proven it is unable to deliver. The transition plan outlined in this essay might be a good place to start that transformation.

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Anthony A. Gabb, Ph.D. is a retired Professor of economics. He has taught economics for 40 years, 32 of which was at St. John’s University, New York. His most recent work includes “Can the Fascist Germ Rise to Epidemic Levels in the USA Today?” and “Financial Oligarchy Feudal Aristocracy”. He has published and delivered dozens of papers, a book chapter, and a book review, interviewed by The New York Times, Corriere della Sera, and has appeared on Channel 1 New York.

The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package is not fiscal stimulus and it’s not a lifeline for the tens of millions of working people who have suddenly lost their jobs. It’s a fundamental restructuring of the US economy designed to strengthen the grip of the corrupt corporate-banking oligarchy while creating a permanent underclass that will be forced to work for slave wages. This isn’t stimulus, it’s shock therapy.

Who can survive on $1,200 for one, two or three months time? And what happens to the millions of people who paid no taxes last year? Are they supposed to scrape by on nothing? Congress knows that most households live paycheck to paycheck. With no savings how will they pay the rent, the electric bill, the phone and the cable? Congress is quibbling over an extra $600 per month unemployment for those who are lucky enough to get it, when most people are just trying to figure out how they’re going to survive, how they’re going to pay the mortgage, when they’ll be able to go back to work, and whether their job will still be there when this nightmare is finally over?

Did you know that “if you don’t already have direct-deposit information on file with the IRS from previous tax returns, you won’t get the emergency funds for up to 4 months”? That means millions of people will have zero income for 4 months! What will become of them? Where will they go? Who will provide them with shelter and food? Shouldn’t congress be asking these questions?

And what happens to the 50% of the American people who had less than $400 saved before the crisis hit? What happens to them when they fall between the cracks and lose their apartments, lose their jobs, and lose their ability to maintain their tenuous standard of living? These people will never regain their financial footing. Never. It’s a death sentence. We’re going to see an explosion of homelessness, drug addiction, depression, alcoholism, suicide and crime unlike anything this country has ever seen before. Are the imbeciles in congress so blind that they can’t see that they’re condemning a large part of the population to permanent, inescapable, grinding poverty and desperation? Can’t they see that?

Do you understand why this bill is being rushed through congress?

It has alot to do with the falling stock market but more precisely with the hundreds of corporations that have been hawking bonds to gullible investors who thought they were buying the debt of responsible, well-managed companies that used the money to improve their product-line, train workers, or build new factories. But instead, greedy CEOs have been using the money to buy shares in their own companies to boost executive compensation and reward shareholders. It’s a multi-trillion dollar scam that blew up in their faces causing a complete freeze-over in the corporate bond market. That’s what’s really going on, there’s a massive credit crunch that has a stranglehold on the bond market and there are only two ways to fix the problem:

1. Let the failing corporations default and pick up the pieces after the dust settles or…
2. Launch a major $4.5 trillion bailout for busted corporations that drove their companies off a cliff.

Those are the two choices. Naturally Treasury Secretary Mnuchin chose the latter which suggests that the real motive for giving working people the $1,200 checks was simply to divert attention from the massive trillion dollar bailout to teetering corporations. That’s the real objective of the so-called fiscal stimulus bill. It’s another giant welfare check for the plutocrats.

The centerpiece of the new legislation is a provision for $425 billion giveaway to big business. The New York Times explains what is going on in a recent article. Here’s an excerpt:

“Republican senators have suggested creating a fund of $425 billion at the Treasury Department that the Fed could use to back emergency lending facilities — which would enable such programs to grow far beyond that scale.

Because the Fed cannot take on substantial credit risk itself, the Treasury Department backs its emergency lending, using money from a fund that contains just $95 billion. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday suggested that the new money in the Republican bill could be leveraged by the Fed to back some $4 trillion in financing.

“We do have limited amounts of money we’re using before Congress passes this bill, so we’re not waiting on Congress,” Mr. Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC on Monday. “As Congress gives us the authority, we’ll be increasing the facilities substantially.” (“The Fed Goes All In With Unlimited Bond-Buying Plan”, New York Times)

What does it mean?

It means that Mnuchin is transforming the US Treasury into a hedge fund. That’s what it means. It means that the Treasury is going to use the $450 billion that is obliquely allocated in the emergency bill, to create a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV)–which is a sleazy, off-balance sheet operation that is used to conceal underhanded bookkeeping, that will leverage up by 10x (which means that the Fed will use the $450 billion to borrow tens times more than the original amount or $4.5 trillion) that will be stealthily used to bail out underwater corporations, financial institutions and, yes, banks. (Note–The fairy-tale about “well capitalized banks” is pure bunkum. These guys have serious exposure through “sponsored repo” which is lending to hedge funds via the repo market.) The Fed has already created one SPV for the Commercial Paper market under the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) which is supposed to be used to mitigate volatility in global currency markets, not for bailing out failing corporations. It’s a complete misuse of funds. Unfortunately, targeted suspension of the Sunshine Act will prevent the public from figuring out who is getting money in what amount and for what purpose. This whole scam has been carefully worked out right down to legal provisions preventing transparency.

By the way, Mnuchin’s personal bio is worth reviewing. According to Senator Ron Wyden:

“Mr. Mnuchin’s career began in trading the financial products that brought on the housing crash and the Great Recession. After nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, he left in 2002 and joined a hedge fund….

“In early 2009, Mr. Mnuchin led a group of investors that purchased a bank called IndyMac, renaming it OneWest. OneWest was truly unique. While Mr. Mnuchin was CEO, the bank proved it could put more vulnerable people on the street faster than just about anybody else around.

“While he was CEO, a OneWest vice president admitted in a court proceeding to ‘robo-signing’ upward of 750 foreclosure documents a week…between 2009 and 2014, a period during which the bank foreclosed on more than 35,000 homes. ‘Widow foreclosures’ on reverse mortgages – OneWest did more of those than anybody else. The bank defends its record on loan modifications, but it was found guilty of an illegal practice known as ‘dual tracking.’ One bank department tells homeowners to stop making payments so they can pursue modification, while another department presses on and hurtles them into foreclosure anyway.” (“Stimulus Bill: The Fed and Treasury’s Slush Fund Is Actually $4 Trillion”, Wall Street on Parade)

Does that sound like someone who can be trusted in the distribution of $4.5 trillion in government funds?

The media is not even trying to hide the sordid details of what’s going on behind the scenes. Take a look at this excerpt from an article at Bloomberg:

“The Federal Reserve could now have as much as $4.5 trillion to keep credit flowing and make direct loans to U.S. businesses through the massive coronavirus stimulus bill being considered by U.S. lawmakers. The bipartisan agreement, which still needs to be passed by the Senate and House and signed into law by President Donald Trump, will include $454 billion in funds for the Treasury to backstop emergency actions by the Fed to support the U.S. economy, Senator Patrick Toomey said on Wednesday.

The central bank will work with the U.S. Treasury to use that money as a backstop against credit risk as it supports markets for corporate and short-term state and local debt, while also loaning directly to large and medium-sized businesses….

“It is a very, very big thing; it is unprecedented,” the Pennsylvania Republican told reporters Wednesday on a conference call, adding it was an opportunity to lever up “the unlimited balance sheet of the Fed.”

Toomey’s comments suggest Fed facilities could be expanded with the new funds, in effect doubling the Fed’s current $4.7 trillion balance sheet if necessary. On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the bill would provide up to $4 trillion in liquidity through broad-based lending programs operated by the Fed.” (“Fed’s Anti-Virus Lending Firepower Could Reach $4.5 Trillion”, Bloomberg)

Toomey is an idiot! Can’t he see what’s going on? Why does he say: “This is a very, very big thing.”… “an opportunity to lever up “the unlimited balance sheet of the Fed”??? Doesn’t he know that the US Treasury has now accepted full liability and credit risk for the Fed’s emergency bailout operations. Does he like the idea that the American people will now be on the hook for the CEOs who blew up their own companies to fatten their own bank accounts?? That’s what this means. Readers should parse these articles very carefully, word by word, phrase by phrase. The ugly truth is spelled out in black and white. Here’s the key phrase in the Times article:

“Because the Fed cannot take on substantial credit risk itself, the Treasury Department backs its emergency lending.”

And here’s the key phrase in the Bloomberg article: “The central bank will work with the U.S. Treasury to use that money as a backstop against credit risk as it supports markets for corporate and short-term state and local debt, while also loaning directly to large and medium-sized businesses.”

There it is: Credit risk, credit risk, credit risk. Who assumes the credit risk for this $4.5 trillion dollar giveaway??

The American taxpayer. Look: The Fed has always had the ability to print as much money as it chooses. (Remember: “Unlimited QE”??) So why did the Fed need to link-up with the Treasury for this operation?

Because the Fed is unwilling to accept the credit risk. Who will ultimately be accountable for all the bad bets and worthless bonds that are being downgraded as we speak? Who is going to mop up the trillions in red ink created by crooked, scheming, cutthroat corporations (and their financial counter-party accomplices) who plundered their companies for the sole objective of enriching themselves and their shareholders?

Who?

The US Treasury backed by the American taxpayer.

This is really the endgame. Wall Street has subsumed the US Treasury and turned it into a massively leveraged hedge fund that is controlled by an unscrupulous charlatan who made his bones evicting families from their homes during the worse economic slump since the Great Depression.

We’re truly fu**ed.

NOTE– As this was being written, stocks were shooting higher for a third consecutive day due, in large part, to the easing of credit spreads in the corporate bond market. According to Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, “They’ve been able to come into the credit markets and stabilize that area; we see credit spreads starting to tighten up a little bit…..The fact that they’re starting to stabilize gives people the kind of confidence they need to be able to dip their toes back into the market at a time when we absolutely need it.”

In other words, the bailout appears to be working for the investor class. Yipee.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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Steady media reports on the rising number of the novel Coronavirus infections and its human toll have contributed to a global psychology of fear where entire populations are succumbing their free will to those in positions of authority, elected and otherwise.   But while we try to keep ourselves safe during this pandemic, a deadlier and more destructive virus creeping in the shadows for years is also reaching its peak. The virus is called hasbara or better understood as propaganda.

Lest you think it is not contagious or deadly, think Iraq.  The Iraq war alone cost the American taxpayers trillions of Dollars but the Iraqi population bore the brunt of the pain and suffering from America’s sanctioned terror attack and invasion with over one million souls lost and counting.  Just like COVID-19 which may be dismissed as a cold, the hasbara virus may be taken for the truth – and therein lies the threat.  As we surrender our will to the officials so that we can survive this pandemic, the spinners have upped their hasbara in order to coax us into embracing their terrorism, their wars, and their genocide.

Abandon your will, if you must, but not your common sense. As someone who has studied propaganda for fifteen years, I have never seen it so prevalent and so dangerous at a time when we are distracted by a viral disease.  Having allowed the hasbara virus to spread and go undetected for such a long time, we’ve lost all ability to recognize it. The spinners know this and are taking full advantage of it. Let me give you two examples from the last 24 hours alone.

First one is a heartwarming ‘news item’ – even benign.

How can the picture of this cute dog not touch you heart? More so when you read on that his owner is in quarantine in Mexico with the coronavirus.  His chips cravings prompt him to tie a note to the dog, send him to the store with a $20 bill and instructions to the shopkeeper to give the dog a bag of “Cheetos”.  Now didn’t that give you the warm fuzzies?  The story is shared over and over and the ‘news reporter’ gets a kudos from his boss for writing this sweet story which would no doubt increase circulation.  I loved it.

But then I had to ask myself why a man in Mexico would tie a 20 Dollar bill to his dog and not Pesos.  That is a lot of Mexican Pesos, and no change was returned.  I mean where would the poor dog keep the change, a lot of change, in Mexican Pesos.

I shared the story with many friends, some of whom included university professors.  None noted the oddness of the Dollar bill.    Even when I asked if they noted something strange about the story, they did not point to it until I told them.  The story was heartwarming and the incident was something they all wanted to accept – a feel good story. Nothing else was noted. We want to believe a story that appeals to our sense of reality, our values, no matter how unrealistic.

On the opposite side is the news story about a former FBI agent Robert Levinson. Levinson disappeared in 2007 and the United States had accused Iran of holding him hostage. Iran has no information about him. Yesterday, out of nowhere, various hasbara outlets cited Levinson’s family releasing a statement citing that they recently received information from US officials that led them to conclude that “our wonderful husband and father died while in Iranian custody.”

Iran denied having held him in custody and the news of his death was news to them. Why was this unbelievable? After all, I have no way of knowing who is lying, the US or Iran. Though one certainly may question the timing of this report.

But it was not just the timing that was odd. It was the orange prison uniform. Orange prison uniform is easy to process for Americans, and the West.  Images of prisoners wearing orange jumpsuit in Guantanamo is embedded in our minds. More disturbing still are the images of prisoners captured by ISIS and wearing orange jump suits as they are being executed. I always wondered where did ISIS get all the orange jump suits their prisoner wore. But that is beside the point. In Iran, prisoners do not wear orange. The uniforms are different shades of blue depending on their status. Ordinary prisoners wear the striped while political prisoners the plain blue uniforms.

Photos courtesy of Iran-based journalist

Aside from the wrong color uniform, I was struck by Levinson’s appearance as portrayed in Western media.  It was hard to process the tanned face which contrasted so sharply with his pale hands. It didn’t make sense. It is not clear to me as to why America would choose this moment to stage this death. I can only imagine that it is to present an image of a ruthless Iran in order to justify its terrorism by way of sanctions at a time when Iran, like the rest of the world, is fighting this pandemic. But even the lies will not hide the shameless stain of America’s cruel madness. Hence, we must resist and fight the propaganda.

For decades, we have been victims of propaganda to the point that we are no longer aware of it.  In spite of it, we have not managed to build an immunity to the lies.  Quite the opposite — we have become more vulnerable as our resistance erodes with every shot of hasbara.  But we are not broken – not yet.  It can only affect us if left undetected.  Like COVID-19, the hasbara virus goes undetected until it’s tested for and discovered.  We must therefore learn to test for, detect, and reject it.  We can do this by refusing to abandon our critical thinking. Pleasant or not, we cannot allow our underlying bias guide us and use commonsense. Don’t let the hasbara virus infect you — it is deadlier than you can imagine.

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Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on US foreign policy. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

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

The largest country in the world is faring surprisingly well when it comes to surviving World War C, which is greatly attributable to Russia’s proactive measures in taking COVID-19 as serious as possible, including through border closures and the forthcoming imposition of what can be described as “lockdown-lite”.

Make an unnecessary journey and you could face a fine of £60: that’s the message the UK government is sending as it tightens up its restrictions in light of the current coronavirus pandemic. On Monday night, Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation, and in truly unprecedented manner for this liberal politician, informed people that their rights and freedoms would have to be temporarily curtailed; he instructed the British public to stay at home unless absolutely necessary. The Prime Minister has become the latest victim of Covid-19, along with Prince Charles: this virus does not discriminate.

Boris Johnson has been trying to get his message across for weeks now – that self-isolation is the key to tackling the pandemic. Yet not everyone has been paying attention. Just a few hours after his announcement on Monday for people to remain indoors, people could be seen socialising outside and the London underground was still jam-packed, even though there is now a limited number of places people can gather in. Despite the warnings, some people have chosen to ignore the advice on social distancing, leading to the PM’s decision to give the police powers to fine and even arrest those who disobey the rules.

UK residents may only leave their homes for essential reasons: to buy groceries, once a day for exercise (or walk the dog), to fulfil a duty of care, to travel to essential work or for medical reasons. The police are already taking their enforcement powers very seriously, using drones and roadblocks to catch out anyone flouting the law. This has already caused some controversy however as a couple walking their dog in the Peak District were exposed by a police drone. Police claimed that the couple had driven 30 miles away to walk their dog in a way that was ‘not essential’. However when the UK cabinet office was approached about this the response was that it is not in fact forbidden to drive somewhere to take a walk.  It’s not clear why the police thought that this couple, walking in a remote part of the country far from anyone else, could possibly be worth highlighting as an example. This case emphasizes the extent to which this law is open to interpretation and that problems could arise as a result.

The measures that Boris Johnson has taken however are undoubtedly necessary, and if nothing else have perhaps not been implemented early enough.  The number of deaths in Britain to Covid-19 is now 578 with over 11,600 cases and the country is on a steeper trajectory than either Italy or Spain – the two worst affected European countries – have been on to date. Italy’s scientific advisor, Walter Ricciardi, who called his nation’s lockdown has even said that the UK government should have shut down the country earlier – 10 days earlier in fact – to halt the spread of the virus.  He has suggested that as a result, the UK may go on to have a higher infection rate than that of Italy and that it will have to endure lockdown conditions for a longer period.

Scenes of struggling hospitals in Italy and exhausted medical staff have shocked the world. The death toll in the country is now over 8000 with morgues bursting at the seams and stadiums transformed into makeshift hospitals. Spain is not far behind with over 4000 deaths and the largest number of deaths in one day amongst nations: 718 in total. Things have got so out of hand that an ice rink in Madrid has had to be used as a temporary morgue. The President of the Madrid region has said she expects around 80% of the population to contract coronavirus.

Across the world people are getting used to a new reality. In the age of globalization, our freedom of movement has been the key to the current crisis. Now we must learn to live without it for the time being. At least, most of us have the ability to stay connected through the internet. Without that convenience, the current lockdown would be much bleaker.

One thing is for sure, this period in our history will have a profound effect on all of us. When it is over, we will all be changed in some way. It will have both negative and positive effects: for some of us, we will have lost loved ones; for others, we will learn to appreciate the things we take for granted: meeting with friends and family; exercise, entertainment, holidays. Things we deemed an essential part of life now don’t seem so essential after all…

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from TruePublica

Perspectives on the Pandemic:

Dealing with Coronavirus, a fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.

Dr John P.A. Ioannidis is a professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University.

Watch the interview below.

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Hospitals all over the western world are bracing for a tsunami of intensely ill patients suffering from breathing difficulties due to the Coronavirus.

In Britain, car companies are scrambling to produce ventilators. Plans are being laid for the army to build hospitals in conference centres. In Ontario, Canada, wards are being cleared, plans are being laid, models of infection are being scrutinised. If 70 percent of the population does not cut its social engagement by 70 percent, locking down will not work. Nerves are jangling.

Breaking point

So what do you think it is like in Gaza? This is not a question heard often these days, when Palestinians have been dropped off the international agenda, either as refugees or as people.

What do you think the prospect is for a besieged enclave that has 56 ventilators and 40 intensive care beds for a population of two million?

By comparison, according to figures from the OECD, Germany has 29.2 ICU beds per 100,000; Belgium 22; Italy 12.5; France 11.6, and the UK six and a half. Gaza has two.

Everywhere, medics are asking themselves whether they will be brought to their knees by Covid-19. They don’t ask themselves that question in Gaza. The health system there already is on its knees – by design. It passes for normality. It does not make the news. The international community scrambles with sticking plaster relief.

This has been the reality for the past 13 years. No conflict in that time was complete without a warning that the health system in Gaza was on the point of collapse.

In June 2018, at the start of a year when Israeli soldiers killed 195 Palestinians and injured nearly 29,000 people on the Great March of Return, UN experts said that healthcare in Gaza was “at breaking point”.

Acts of cruelty

During the war in 2014, hospitals such as Al-Aqsa in Deir al-Balah or al-Wafa in Shujaiyyeh were the target itself of Israeli shelling. Ambulances too were deliberately fired on by Israel. But this is what happens day in day out, acts of cruelty which never make the headlines that define who lives and who dies in Gaza.

Think about what happened to Muna Awad at the Erez Crossing in May last year. Muna had to hand over her gravely ill five-year old daughter Aisha to a woman she had never seen to get medical treatment in East Jerusalem. Aisha had been diagnosed with brain cancer, which could not be treated in the specialist hospital in Gaza.

Neither Muna nor her husband Wissam was allowed to travel with their daughter. Even Aisha’s grandmother, who was 75 (Israel refuses entrance to women under the age of 45 and men under 55), was refused entry.

Erez was the last time her mother saw Aisha conscious. The little girl had several operations in East Jerusalem but returned in a coma and never came out of it. She died in Gaza. Her case is not unique.

Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, in Gaza, documented 25,658 Palestinians who applied for permits to seek medical treatment outside the enclave in 2018. Of that number, Israeli authorities delayed processing or rejected outright 9,832 applications – some 38 percent of cases.

If you want to know what collective punishment feels like in Gaza, try getting sick.

Aerial photographs of a quarantine hospital that is being constructed in western Rafah, #Gaza to prevent the spread of #coronavirus in the besieged heavy-populated enclave. pic.twitter.com/5m7Z3FotLs

— Palestine Live (@pallive_en) March 24, 2020

To retrieve the body of one of its soldiers, Hadar Golden, who was killed in combat in 2014, Israel reduced the number of entry permits from Gaza. The campaign was led by Golden’s family. There was an op-ed article in the Washington Post. And the government acted on it.

Figures supplied to Haaretz by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories showed that in the first half of 2018, Israelrefused permission to 769 Palestinians seeking to leave Gaza for Israel because they were “first-degree relatives of a Hamas activist.”

So who holds the key to a medical collapse in Gaza? Israel.

Medical collapse

This is why the Ministry of Health in Gaza called on the international community to compel Israel to remove the blockade amid an acute shortage in ventilators, ICU beds, medicine and protective equipment.

And this is why the international community should now listen. Majdi Duhair, director of preventive medicine at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, told MEE that the biggest difficulty they faced was their ability to scale up ICU beds.

Given the shortage that exists, they only have 26 free ICU beds to deal with the spread of Covid-19.

“This is the biggest dilemma we face, all that is available is 65 beds of intensive care between children and adults, and this number is sufficient for normal and routine cases, and we need this number. There are six beds in the field hospital, and there are 18-20 beds in all places to deal with the spread of corona,” Duhair said.

He added:

“We are doing crew training, but this number is not sufficient. No new staff has been hired, the problem is there are volunteers, but the employment potential is limited, and existing employees receive 40-50 percent of their salaries.”

Gaza has suffered enough. No-one can just sit on the sidelines and watch this happen. Israel has to be told to lift the siege or suffer the consequences of sanctions and isolation itself.

This is an obscenity – one of many in the Middle East – that no western government can afford to maintain.

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David Hearst is the editor in chief of Middle East Eye. He left The Guardian as its chief foreign leader writer. In a career spanning 29 years, he covered the Brighton bomb, the miner’s strike, the loyalist backlash in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Northern Ireland, the first conflicts in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in Slovenia and Croatia, the end of the Soviet Union, Chechnya, and the bushfire wars that accompanied it. He charted Boris Yeltsin’s moral and physical decline and the conditions which created the rise of Putin. After Ireland, he was appointed Europe correspondent for Guardian Europe, then joined the Moscow bureau in 1992, before becoming bureau chief in 1994. He left Russia in 1997 to join the foreign desk, became European editor and then associate foreign editor. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he worked as education correspondent.

Featured image is from Desertpeace

Make no mistake. Legislation that should be called the GOP/Dem-Don’t-Care/CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act is a corporate bailout bill with crumbs for ordinary Americans.

It’s a bandaid approach to a public health emergency/economic crisis, the latter mostly harming the vast majority of ordinary Americans.

Well-managed companies will survive. Mismanaged ones like Boeing, the airlines, and others should be allowed to go bankrupt — their operations considered essential nationalized and run by the government, free from market considerations, focusing solely on the public interest.

Republicans and Dems failed to prioritize what’s most important in the current environment.

All the money in the world thrown at corporate America won’t help a bit if spreading/highly infectious COVID-19 outbreaks aren’t contained.

Public and personal health alone should be prioritized. The economy can wait. Without healthy employees and customers, businesses can’t operate.

If infections keep spreading and most people remain fearful of resuming normal activities, stores and restaurants will stay empty if reopened.

The same goes for airports, train stations, bus terminals, and other public spaces, including sports venues, if most people remain hunkered down to stay safe.

The July Tokyo Olympics was cancelled. So is the remainder of the current NBA and NHL seasons, most likely, that have yet to be formally announced. Suspending games was likely prelude to cancelling remaining ones.

MLB and NFL games may be affected the same way. As things now stand, few people want to be around others in public, except for family members because of the risk of spreading infections.

Fixing the economy requires safeguarding public health, welfare and safety.

That’s not how Congress and the Trump regime are addressing the COVID-19 crisis.

It’s growing more serious daily. On Thursday, the US surpassed China with the most infections — rising to 86,000, up around 17,000 in the last 24 hours.

The US death toll exceeds 1,000, around 300 in New York state, the hardest hit of the 50 states.

The duration and severity of the public health and economic crisis are unknown.

It’s unlikely to disappear quickly. There are already over half a million confirmed cases globally.

Compared to 38 million US flu cases this season, that runs from October to May, 390,000 hospitalizations, and 23,000 deaths, numbers of COVID-19 cases are minor by comparison except as follows:

The disease is a highly contagious new flu/influenza strain, no one with immunity, and severe cases can cause painful death by suffocation — the elderly and others with weak immune systems most vulnerable, why it’s better to be safe than sorry.

On Wednesday, the US Senate voted unanimously for the CARES Act business giveaway — Bernie Sanders supporting what his rhetoric opposed.

In a message to constituents he said the following disingenuously:

“(B)e assured that I am doing everything in my power in the US Senate to correct the completely unacceptable federal response to this crisis (sic).”

“(W)e must prioritize the health and economic wellbeing of Vermont’s working families—particularly our most vulnerable community members—instead of handing over another welfare check or no-strings-attached bailout to corporate CEOs and bankers on Wall Street (sic).”

“Working people must have the income, healthy food, safe shelter and child care, workplace leave, and cost-free medical testing and treatment that they need right now (sic).”

Let the record show he lied. He could have held up passage of the corporate giveaway but supported it instead — the latest example of his rhetoric going one way, his vote on the Senate floor another.

The measure includes delaying payment of individual payroll taxes until 2021 or 2022. The same holds for eligible businesses as follows:

They can delay paying payroll taxes through December 2020, pay 50% of them in 2021, another 50% in 2022.

Dems, including self-styled progressive Bernie Sanders, agreed to suspend payment of worker and business payroll taxes that’s all about weakening Social Security and Medicare trust funds — part of a longterm plan to erode and eliminate them.

In fairness, he has lots of company in both houses with nary a true blue profile in courage in Washington on all issues mattering most.

A handful of House representatives partly uphold this standard — none in either house fully across the board since Cynthia McKinney served for a six terms until 2007.

Then, earlier, and now she defined and continues to define what progressive politics is all about.

No one in Congress approaches her stature — why corporate giveaways like the CARES Act easily become the law the land.

The same or similar outcome to the Senate’s unanimous adoption is certain when House members vote Friday — Trump to sign into law what no responsible leader would tolerate.

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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.

An editorial piece in The Lancet – the world’s most prestigious, and best known general medical journal warned two months ago of the oncoming conflict between an ill-prepared, under-funded national health service and an indiscriminate invisible killer in the form of the 2019 coronavirus. More recently The Lancet warned again of the problems that health workers would be facing and yet the government took no notice – until it was too late:

“As the pandemic accelerates, access to personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers is a key concern. Medical staff are prioritised in many countries, but PPE shortages have been described in the most affected facilities. Some medical staff are waiting for equipment while already seeing patients who may be infected or are supplied with equipment that might not meet requirements. Alongside concerns for their personal safety, health-care workers are anxious about passing the infection to their families. Health-care workers who care for elderly parents or young children will be drastically affected by school closures, social distancing policies, and disruption in the availability of food and other essentials.

Health-care systems globally could be operating at more than maximum capacity for many months. But health-care workers, unlike ventilators or wards, cannot be urgently manufactured or run at 100% occupancy for long periods. It is vital that governments see workers not simply as pawns to be deployed, but as human individuals. In the global response, the safety of health-care workers must be ensured. Adequate provision of PPE is just the first step; other practical measures must be considered, including cancelling non-essential events to prioritise resources; provision of food, rest, and family support; and psychological support. Presently, health-care workers are every country’s most valuable resource.”

The Lancet takes aim at governments around the world, including the British government, that these front-line healthcare workers are being deployed in a way that will inevitably cause them to be infected and die needlessly.

Richard Horton – editor-in-chief of The Lancet – is clearly angry at the British response and wrote a scathing and highly critical article in The Guardian last week. He asked – “After all the warnings why did it take the UK government eight weeks to recognise the seriousness of what we now call Covid-19?”

The Lancet published the first report submitted by Chinese scientists in mid-February. Horton goes on – “Under immense pressure, as the epidemic exploded around them (the Chinese Scientists), they took time to write up their findings in a foreign language and seek publication in a medical journal thousands of miles away. Their rapid and rigorous work was an urgent warning to the world. We owe those scientists enormous thanks.”

And as Horton says – “But medical and scientific advisers to the UK government ignored their warnings. For unknown reasons they waited. And watched.” Horton is clearly still stunned by Britain’s response. He bemoans the controlled epidemic strategy of the ‘herd immunity’ as promoted by the two government experts who are regularly wheeled out to explain what is supposed to be going on. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, suggestedthat the target was to infect 60% of the UK’s population.

There is a reason why this strategy was the preferred one. The government had been warned of the pandemic four years earlier. It was such a foregone conclusion that the NHS went through a three-day exercise to model the outcome of a flu-like pandemic. The Chief Medical Officer at the time warned that the health service would not cope under such circumstances, specifically focusing on the lack of equipment, intensive care beds and most especially – “the real threat of totally inadequate ventilation.” Three previous tests and reports said the same and an updated report in 2018 meant that the Conservative government, in their quest for austerity and deliberately under-funding the NHS, knew all along that a pandemic was certain – and did the opposite of what was required to defend the country against such a threat.

Horton looks at the moment when the government realised their ‘herd immunity’ strategy had imploded. “Many journalists, led by the BBC, reported that the science had changed and so the government had responded accordingly. But this interpretation of events is wrong. The science has been the same since January. What changed is that government advisers, at last, understood what had really taken place in China. The UK’s best scientists have known since that first report from China that Covid-19 was a lethal illness. Yet they did too little, too late.”

Even as the catastrophe in Italy unfolded, the British government sat on its hands confident that what they were seeing live in southern Europe would somehow not happen in Britain. And as Horton says – “We had the opportunity and the time to learn from the experience of other countries. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the UK missed those signals. We missed those opportunities. There will be deaths that were preventable. The system failed. I don’t know why. But, when we have suppressed this epidemic when life returns to some semblance of normality, difficult questions will have to be asked and answered.”

In the meantime, our frontline health workers are inadequately protected, the country unprepared and people will needlessly die. This episode is a lesson that needs to be learned because next time, the virus could be more infectious and more deadly and as Horton says – “we can’t afford to fail again. We may not have a second chance.“

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In American politics, it is not often that one sees an assassination carried out in public, but that is exactly what the Democratic Party establishment did to peace candidate Tulsi Gabbard. She was sidelined right from the beginning of her campaign and the fact that she was a woman of color and a veteran earned her no points with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and, more to the point, with the Clintons, who continue to have a disproportionate say in what goes on in the party.The chameleonlike Clintons have long been known for their ability to punish anyone who stands in the way of their ambition and Hillary’s dislike for Gabbard dates back to the 2016 election when Gabbard, then vice-chair of the DNC, endorsed Bernie Sanders.

Gabbard is admittedly a somewhat controversial figure, but many individuals involved in the antiwar movement who have taken time to speak with her have come away impressed by her sincerity and willingness to talk up an issue that all the other candidates, save Bernie Sanders, have ignored. She is a serious non-interventionist and a critic of her party’s embrace of the national security state that has emerged since 9/11. In the several debates where she was allowed to participate and actually given some time to speak, she has been a harsh critic of the endless “regime change wars.”

Tulsi has stayed in the race in spite of the fact that the Democratic Party establishment, most particularly to include the Clintons, have been out to destroy her since she first appeared. Gabbard, generally definable as a conventional moderate Democrat, believes that the United States should end nearly all its wars overseas, which are a symptom of a fractured foreign and national security policy. She also advocates auditing the Federal Reserve and is a supporter of Julian Assange as well as whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Tulsi has stuck by her guns and had stayed in the race to promote those and other anti-establishment views.

Unfortunately for the many Americans who had hoped to see Tulsi somehow surfacing either as a candidate or as a major voice in shaping the party platform, her candidacy has finally ended. Her announcement came after she was blocked from participating in the candidates’ debate on March 15th by an abrupt and unexpected change in the guidelines for being included. The new qualifying criteria require a candidate to have earned at least 20 percent of the delegates awarded thus far, which meant that only Biden and Sanders could participate.

On March 18th, Gabbard announced her decision to wrap up her campaign and throw her support to Joe Biden as follows:

“I know that he [Biden] has a good heart and he’s motivated by his love for our country and the American people… So today I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our country together.”

The endorsement of Biden came as somewhat of a surprise as Bernie Sanders is closer to her philosophically, but sources close to Tulsi suggest that she did so in the belief that Biden was more likely to unite the party and also better suited to defeating Donald Trump. In any event, speculation that she will have some influence over where the Democratic Party is heading seems to be misplaced as she is not running again for Congress and seems content to return to what passes as a normal life in Hawaii. She retains her commission as a major in the Hawaii National Guard.

If one sought to make a case for who was most active in the undoing of Tulsi Gabbard, the finger would point directly at Hillary Clinton. When Tulsi endorsed Sanders in 2016 she did so knowing that “Clinton had a stranglehold over the Democratic party and that crossing Clinton (who considered herself the ‘inevitable nominee’) could mean the end of her own political career.” Clinton was reportedly made “extremely angry — to put it mildly” by the endorsement and had her aides send Tulsi a wave of threatening emails. 

Hillary Clinton’s first major attack against candidate Gabbard in 2019 was featured in a podcast hosted by former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe that was recorded last fall. The comments on Gabbard came during a discussion of the upcoming election. Clinton speculated that President Donald Trump and the GOP would likely be “grooming” a potential spoiler candidate for a third-party bid to take away votes from the Democrats. She said “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and they’re grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up because she’s also a Russian asset.”

Clinton did not name Gabbard but one of her spokespersons later confirmed the “Russian asset” comment referred to her. The reference to the completely respectable Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, was based on the oft-repeated claim by Clinton and others that Stein was being supported by Russian agents and that she took votes away from the Democratic candidate. Clinton has also suggested that Moscow is “grooming” Gabbard to run third party and steal votes from the Democrats.

Gabbard courageously responded to the Clinton attack with: “Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.”

Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a …

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

Shortly before dropping out of the race, while Tulsi was the only remaining woman contender for the nomination, Hillary Clinton opted to get in the proverbial last shot in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, saying “We no longer have a woman in the presidential race. There are a lot of reasons for that. We started off with I think six, and now have none.” 

That Tulsi Gabbard, a genuine peace candidate, was deliberately marginalized in the Democratic Party nomination process in spite of having considerable grassroots support does not speak well either for the party or for the system of government by the corruption that prevails in the United States. Tulsi has sued Hillary Clinton for $50 million for defamation due to her being labeled a Russian asset. In the suit, she describes Hillary as “a cutthroat politician by any account” and claims that the former Secretary of State has been working to destroy Gabbard’s presidential campaign as payback for 2016. May Tulsi prevail. And one has to hope that we all have heard the last of the Clintons.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard speaking with attendees at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention at the George R. Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Credit: Gage Skidmore/ Flickr) 

Government watchdog Public Citizen celebrated Wednesday afternoon as pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences backed off a monopoly claim for its drug that may treat the coronavirus which has sickened more than 487,000 people worldwide. Gilead, Public Citizen said, must now commit to ensuring the drug is accessible to all who need it.

Public Citizen applauded the news as a “big win” for those who spoke out against Gilead Sciences, whose former lobbyist, Joe Grogan, now serves on President Donald Trump‘s so-called “coronavirus task force.”

BIG WIN: Gilead just backed down.

The company caved under enormous public pressure and withdrew its appalling request for rare disease status on remdesivir.https://t.co/JmGGGouP3u

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) March 25, 2020

“It was outrageous that Gilead ever sought an ‘orphan drug’ designation for remdesivir, which aims to treat a patient population that easily may number in the tens of millions in the U.S. alone,” Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, said in a statement. “Thankfully, under pressure, the company has backed down. There’s no doubt that the prospect of an enormous public backlash is what made the difference.”

Gilead’s claim to “orphan” drug status for remdesivir, one of several drugs being tested to treat the coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, drew outrage this week from Public Citizen, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and dozens of other public interest advocates. 

Trump’s Food and Drug Administration granted the orphan status—which would allow a seven-year monopoly on the drug and could keep it out of reach of many Americans by preventing other companies from developing generic versions—even though Gilead developed remdesivir with at least $79 million in government funds. Orphan status is generally reserved for companies that may not recoup their research costs and for drugs which treat conditions affecting fewer than 200,000 people.

“Gilead must have been feeling the heat,” James Love, director of public interest non-profit Knowledge Ecology International, told NPR after Gilead reliquished its claim. “I think it’s embarrassing to take something that’s potentially the most widespread disease in the history of the pharmaceutical industry and claim it’s a rare disease.”

Soon after Public Citizen was joined by 50 other groups in demanding Gilead end its “unconscionable abuse of a program designed to incentivize research and development of treatments for rare diseases,” the company announced on Wednesday it would proceed without orphan drug status.

Public Citizen said that Gilead Sciences must go further than simply withdrawing its claim of orphan drug status, and actively work to ensure that remdesivir is widely produced and available for all who need it.

“Gilead must do more than make vague promises of reasonable pricing,” Maybarduk said. “It should commit right now to license the right and needed know-how to manufacture remdesivir to all qualified producers, in exchange for a modest royalty.”

“If the drug proves viable as a COVID-19 treatment,” he added, “the U.S. and the world will need the product available at a low price that reflects both the public health need and the potentially enormous market—with production at an unprecedented scale.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Featured image: The Gilead Sciences logo is seen on the company website. (Photo: Ivan Radic/Flickr/cc)

Italians furious at the lack of help and solidarity from the European Union began removing flags of the Union throughout the country and replaced them with Chinese and Russian ones. As this is happening in a long-time member of the European Union, the small Balkan country Montenegro went in the opposite direction and began praising the bloc. Refusing to assist Italy, the credibility of the European Union was dealt a huge blow, and Brussels decided to set aside a significant amount of assistance for Montenegro to mitigate the effects of the spread of coronaviruses. There is no doubt that the promised European Union assistance for Montenegro is certainly welcomed and valuable in the aftermath of delaying all assistance to the European Union’s worst hit countries, Italy and Spain. But this is merely a reaction to the increased popularity of China and Russia in these countries who have all provided assistance in a timely and unbureaucratic manner.

As part of a face saving exercise when many European Union members are questioning the necessity of such a bloc, Brussels has prioritized Western Balkan countries to legitimize itself again by fast tracking the memberships of not only Albania and North Macedonia, but also Montenegro. The European Union Ambassador to Montenegro, Aivo Orav, announced on Twitter that Brussels is allocating €3 million in emergency assistance to the Montenegrin health sector and €50 million for the health sector, the economy and business. This assistance to Montenegro, an aspiring European Union member, is an attempt to salvage the shaky reputation of the European Union. Attempting to regain credibility is understandable, but the big question is to what extent this move by the European Union can change the overall impression that the current crisis has shown a complete collapse of European solidarity.

EU solidarity with 🇲🇪 against #COVID19: we are providing €3million for immediate help to the health sector+designing a €50million long-term response together with @VladaCG to support mostly the health sector, the economy and businesses #CoronaInfoCG #EUzaCG pic.twitter.com/f2y8kXPnxQ

— Aivo Orav 🇪🇺 (@EUAmbME) March 25, 2020

Montenegrin Prime Minister Duško Marković described the European Union assistance to Montenegro as “European values ​​and solidarity in action.” Montenegro will continue to work diligently with the European Commission and the delegation to jointly address the effects of the crisis, Marković said.

Montenegrin President Milo Đukanović then said on Twitter:

“A great decision for our neighbours North Macedonia and Albania. Today – support to Montenegro in fighting COVID-19! EU keeps standing with Western Balkans in the hard times!”

Yesterday – a great decision for our neighbours #NorthMacedonia🇲🇰 and #Albania🇦🇱
Today – support to #Montenegro🇲🇪 in fighting #COVIDー19!#EU🇪🇺 keeps standing with #WesternBalkans in the hard times!

— Milo Đukanović (@predsjednik_cg) March 25, 2020

The official Twitter account of the Montenegrin Government went to Twitter to say:

“The EU, in the difficult moments of fighting against coronavirus, stands by Montenegro and provides urgent help for procurement of equipment and protective supplies worth €3 mil through the UN system while working on defining the model for an additional €50 million to help overcome the socio-economic effects of the crisis. We have also agreed to accelerate a € 18million collaborative programme to help small businesses, the most vulnerable categories of society and the unemployed.”

The #EU, in the difficult moments of fighting against coronavirus, stands by #Montenegro and provides urgent help for procurement of equipment and protective supplies worth €3 mil through the UN system… (1/2) #CoronaInfoCG https://t.co/fpczy5n062

— Govt. of Montenegro (@MeGovernment) March 25, 2020

The pro-Western Đukanović helped steer Montenegro into full NATO membership in 2017 and is on track to make his country soon join the European Union. The European Union gives the illusion that it is an alliance of liberal democracy, efficient and free of corruption. However Đukanović is alleged to have strong links to the mafia, as well as involved in smuggling, organized crime and unnecessary privatizations like the Prva Banka, which went to his family.

It is precisely the Western liberal aspect of European Union membership which supposedly united Europe that has been cited as crucial in media close to Montenegrin authorities. Today however, we see that there is nothing of such in the European Union as it quickly turned realist with the coronavirus pandemic. The member states of this organization have been left to fend for themselves in the most difficult and critical situations. From these different treatments of allies, by the EU and NATO on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other, a different composition of the global order will emerge at the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

Although Serbia has blasted so-called European Union solidarity, it remains a lonely voice of the non-member countries of the Balkans. North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro on Serbia’s southern flank are serving the Western agenda and acting as willing agents to inhibit Russian influence in a region that is overwhelmingly Slavic and Christian Orthodox. Despite the clear corruption of Đukanović, who should be the antipathy of so-called European values, Montenegro was not only fast-tracked into NATO, but is now being accelerated to the European Union in a face-saving regime. It is therefore unsurprising that anti-Serbian sentiment is being pushed by the ruling class in Podgorica to demonstrate to the West that Montenegro will be a partner to pressurize Serbia. Therefore, the accession of Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia to the European Union and NATO is being used by the West as a mechanism to contain Serbia and halt Russian influence into the Balkans, and also to save their own legitimacy.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Mainland China is closing down the hospitals in Wuhan, releasing patients who are already cured. Doctors are celebrating, and with them, the ordinary people; in China and all over the world.

It is not the end of the medical emergency, yet, but it is the beginning of the end; a victory of reason, of determination and discipline; a victory of the system that is serving its citizens.

People are returning home. Families are being reunited. Cities are slowly beginning to open up, again. With the victory comes spring; real and metaphorical.

Now, the biggest threat to China is that which comes from outside, from abroad.

But instead of shooting fireworks into night skies, China is sending wide-body airplanes. They are taking off, towards places such as Italy, bringing medical supplies and medical staff. China knows how to share and how to help those who are in need. It is part of its culture, as it is part of its political system.

For several weeks now, the Hong Kong rioters have been relatively quiet. Frankly, they have been humiliated.

Lately, they and their handlers have been re-grouping, changing tactics, thinking how to harm the People’s Republic of China, without making fools of themselves again.

Months ago, they tried to break China into pieces, using politics. And they failed. Then, they attempted to use the COVID-19, and nothing good came of it, either; the PRC flexed its muscles, used some of its best brains, and managed to perform the impossible: to save the nation with minimal casualties, in as short a period of time as possible.

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But what now, really is the worst news for the Hong Kong rioters and their decreasing base of supporters? Clearly, the fact that the Chinese and also Cuban socialism have presented themselves as much kinder, much more humane systems than those which are governing the Western countries.

The rioters are paid to hate and smear socialism. It is their job, their business to promote “Western values”.

China is now helping others, and so is Cuba, a country which is itself under a malicious U.S. embargo. Cuba has some of the best doctors on earth, always ready to send their “medical brigades” to all corners of the world, wherever people are facing medical emergencies and calamities. It is said that Cuba may already be extremely close to having a vaccine for the COVID-19.

In the meantime, the favorite man of the Hong Kong rioters, the U.S. President Donald Trump, is trying to turn medicine into a weapon, or as they say, to “weaponize the coronavirus”. He doesn’t seem to have much shame doing it.

Various publications, including the Mirror, recently printed stories of analogous headlines:

“Coronavirus: Donald Trump offers German lab cash to ‘make vaccine exclusive to the US.’”

“Donald Trump’s White House offered a German science lab cash to develop a coronavirus vaccine exclusively for the United States, it has been claimed.”

Is this the system that the rioters want for Hong Kong, for China and the entire world?

But this time the world is watching. This time, the world is not willing to forgive.

Italian people have been singing China’s national anthem, from the balconies of Rome, as a thank youfor China’s help with the coronavirus outbreak.

Then, on 16 March, 2020, RT reported that the Serbian President doesn’t believe in European solidarity, anymore, asking China for help, instead:

“As President Aleksandar Vucic declared a national emergency on Sunday, he had some scalding remarks for the EU.”

“The crisis has proven that European solidarity, only exists “on paper,” Vucic said, citing the ban on the export of medical equipment and supplies imposed by EU members to non-EU countries in response to the outbreak.

“Only China can help us in this situation,” the Serbian leader added, saying he recently wrote a letter to China’s Xi Jinping “asking him for help and calling him a brother.””

One heavy-lift Russian plane after another is taking off, heading for Italy, medical staff and equipment on board.

Now, what do the rioters feel? Are some of them at least finally realizing that they are finding themselves on the wrong side of history?

It is not Communism and socialism that are outdated and belonging to a depressing pile of historic scrap. It is gloomy imperialist nihilism and fundamentalist capitalism that have, a long time ago lost all luster and appeal.

It took an epic ideological battle over Hong Kong, as well as the global battle against a new form of the coronavirus, to demonstrate where the future of humanity really lies.

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This article was originally published on China Daily, Hong Kong.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are “China Belt and Road Initiative”,“China and Ecological Civilization”with John B. Cobb, Jr., “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and Latin America, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website, his Twitter and his Patreon. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In February, Friends of the Association of Peasant Workers (ATC) and the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) organized an agroecology and Sandinismo solidarity delegation to Nicaragua. Led by Friends of the ATC’s Coordinator and co-International Relations Secretariat, Erika Takeo, the delegation witnessed the current conditions in Nicaragua nearly two years after an attempted coup and the on-going work of the ATC in cooperative communities and unions around the country. Delegates included folks from Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Ecuador, Canada and the United States.

Other than the economy still recuperating from the attempted coup of 2018, the Nicaraguan people continue their struggle to remain independent and out of the grips of the neoliberal orbit of US imperialism. Despite the crippling effects of US sanctions, the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega has made significant social advances since it came to power in 2007, including expanding electricity to 97% of the population. The government is building new water and sewer systems, as well as funding tuition-free public schools through university. All Nicaraguans have access to the country’s universal health care system, regardless of income or employment, although the rural areas experience fewer services than the more urban areas.

It was apparent everywhere we traveled that the Ortega government is spending money on improving infrastructure and roads so that the country can easily and safely transport people and goods. And the country feels safe to be traveling around, with Nicaragua’s crime rate being the lowest in all of the Central American countries.

Gender equality is evident by some of their current laws. Fifty percent of government representatives must be women. For example, if there’s a male governor then there must be a female vice-governor. This progressive law makes Nicaragua unique in the Americas. Also, there is a Domestic Violence law that is actually enforced and, in some areas of the country, there is a police force made up of only women who respond to these cases, supporting women and children in homes and communities.

The Sandinista revolution remains strong, with the majority of Nicaraguans supporting the current Ortega government. Every Saturday, supporters march through the streets in Managua and other cities around Nicaragua. Graffiti and stencils of FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) and other artwork adorn walls, and statues of Sandino stand proudly in central parks reminding everyone of the revolution and the struggle it takes for it to continue.

Our delegation focused on the agricultural cooperatives and unions working in the country, such as the ATC and La Vía Campesina (LVC). Agriculture makes up a large part of Nicaragua’s economy for internal markets, exports and subsistence farming relied on by campesino families. An enduring part of the revolution is land reform, which has been supported by the Ortega government by continuing to grant smaller growers land title regardless of gender.

The delegation visited several unions and cooperatives, which, in the spirit of the Sandinista Revolution, reject the corporate food regime that demands peasants produce cheap exports for commodity markets paying them very little, while selling them expensive seeds, fertilizers and toxic pesticides. The cooperatives and unions save and share their own, creole, non-GMO seeds and many maintain seed reservoirs. Nicaragua prohibits the import of GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds. Farmer-to-farmer education through the ATC and the LVC supports the horizontal sharing and experimentation of sustainable agricultural practices, rejecting the top-down education of more “developed” agribusiness-dominated nations.

Santa Julia, a women’s cooperative growing coffee for market, as well as for their own sustenance, has embraced the agroecological method. This includes the social, economic and environmental well-being of meeting their needs individually as well as communally. With an anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal and anti-patriarchal methodology, they are improving their community by becoming food sovereign, composting, saving and sharing seeds, and finding ways to protect their crops from the effects of climate change. With the help of the ATC, the community was able to purchase equipment for processing coffee and, since March of this year, they now have running water from their well.

Other cooperatives, such as La Unión coffee cooperative in Jinotega municipality, and the community of Marlin Alvarado in Santa Teresa, Carazo, use agroecological methods of meeting their community’s needs. La Unión de Cooperativas Agropecuarias del Nueva Segovia (UCANS), a growers cooperative union in Somoto, has been organizing groups of cooperatives since 1998 to strengthen the social and economic well-being of growers. Their program includes: planning and coaching; exchange with other growers; technical assistance; seed banks; home gardens; crop management; and health nutritionists to the communities.

The radical practices of agroecology and food sovereignty are a figurative middle finger to US agricultural corporations. Nicaragua is about 90% food sovereign, meaning that they produce and consume 90% of the country’s food needs. This intentional and popular part of the revolution is one of the major reasons why Nicaragua can hold these powerful agricultural corporations at bay.

As I write this, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill without debate to impose more sanctions on Nicaragua. Why is the US government so obsessed with destroying Nicaragua? Like the examples of Cuba and Venezuela, Nicaragua is in the crosshairs of imperialism for standing up and saying no to the neoliberal model of dependence. The assaults and attacks from the US continue, but the Sandinista Revolution will endure. We can help them by contacting our Representatives and educating them about the realities of Nicaragua and their struggle to protect their country and their right to participatory democracy.

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Carissa Brands was a delegate in the recent Friends of the ATC delegation; she is an agroecological worker and a board member of the Task Force on the Americas.

The West Bank situation is becoming increasingly complicated amid the coronavirus pandemic and territorial disputes between Palestinians and Israelis. At first, the Palestinian Authority and Israel showed signs of cooperation in combating the pandemic. A few weeks ago, joint measures were announced between both sides to contain the epidemic of the new coronavirus in the region. The measures include distribution of cleaning and personal hygiene materials, in addition to virus testing kits and medical equipment.

On the part of Tel Aviv, the total closure of the West Bank was promoted, allowing, however, access for Palestinian workers involved in the construction and agriculture sectors to the Jewish state, which is why the proposal was well accepted by Ramallah. On the part of the Palestinians, the West Bank has also been blocked, but only partially and for two weeks, since last Sunday (March 22), in addition to the implementation of a series of control and quarantine measures.

However, efforts to contain the pandemic have not prevented Israeli incursions into the region, which have increased recently. Ibrahim Melhim, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, acknowledged Israeli efforts to contain the coronavirus in the country and in Palestine, but criticized the unstoppable incursions against the Palestinians.

“We have very strong round-the-clock coordination with the Israeli side to prevent the coronavirus from spreading (…) At the same time, Israel continues to operate in the Palestinian Territories as if there is no coronavirus crisis (…) They [Israeli forces] continue their raids across the West Bank, arresting people and confiscating lands, and that harms the existing coordination between the PA and Israel putting an additional burden on the Palestinian Authority,” said the spokesman.

Apparently, Israel pretends to collaborate with Palestine to stop the pandemic, when, in fact, it freely promotes its military maneuvers in the region, which go unnoticed by the mainstream media, strongly focused on covering the viral tragedy. In addition, Tel Aviv’s own collaboration to control COVID-19 in the region seems extremely limited. The blocking measures made it impossible, for example, for doctors from the “Physicians for Human Rights” (an Israeli NGO that serves Palestinians free of charge) to move alongside the West Bank, clearly hampering medical care in the region.

Mention should also be made of the fact that Israel, not Palestine, is the major focus of infections by the new coronavirus in the region. Israel has already more than 1.000 officially reported cases of the disease, in addition to one death, and several suspicions. In contrast, Palestine has around 60 infected people. It is clear from these data that the most stringent containment measures should come exclusively from Ramallah, since the Israeli military presence in the region itself poses a serious risk to Palestinian public health.

According to a survey by the Truman Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 63% of Israelis say Israel must help Palestinians during the coronavirus crisis. Vered Vinitsky-Serousse, president of the Institute, said that

“the majority of Israelis believe that, when necessary, the government should devise preventive measures to help Palestinians during the Covid-19 epidemic.”

The big problem, however, is how these joint maneuvers are conducted. Perhaps the first step to be taken in establishing joint measures is the definitive and immediate end to military incursions in the region, which constantly bring insecurity and terror to the Palestinian people.

The situation of tensions in the region must still be read in the context of the so-called “Deal of the Century”, the “peace” proposal for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians announced by American President Donald Trump. The “agreement” was celebrated unilaterally by the Washigton-Tel Aviv axis, with no participation of Palestinians, which is why it was rejected by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League. The document foresaw the annexation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, leaving around 70% of the region under Palestinian rule – a figure much lower than that proposed by all previous attempts to resolve the conflict. Everything indicates that Israel will not stop its attempts to occupy that territory as much as possible.

It is in this context that the “joint” actions between Israelis and Palestinians must be analyzed with skepticism and suspicion. Are these pandemic containment measures really good, even when behind them the Israeli army expands its occupation in the region with increasingly aggressive incursions? Also, to what extent does Palestine benefit from the help of these joint actions when Israel has an absurdly greater number of infected people? Would Israel be able to help the Palestinians? Or would that aid be a mask for such military incursions? All of these are valid questions.

It is also worth remembering that a few weeks ago, at the end of February, Israel announced the construction of more than 2.000 new settlements in Palestinian territories – and on the same occasion, Netanyahu authorized the construction of other 7.000 units in the East Jerusalem region. These data mean that Israel’s aggressiveness against the Palestinians was increasing recently. Did this aggression really disappear from Tel Aviv’s plans in the face of a “commotion” with public health in Palestine (which is much better than the situation in Israel)? Perhaps, the mainstream media and Human Rights observers should divide their attention between the coronavirus and the conflict in Palestine, before more serious clashes erupt.

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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

It was NATO’s first out-of-area operation, against its own Treaty and without a UN mandate. On March 24, 1999.

Independent Kosovo was established – against UN SC resolution 1244. Thanks to the Clinton administration and Madeleine Albright. CNN’s Amanpour endorsed it generously on TV with her State Department husband, James Rubin, a chief operator in the non-negotiations at Rambouillet. And TIME of course knew the truth too.

Serbia suffered tremendously from the 78 days of indiscriminate, hard bombing. I know because I was there.

Finally, Serbia and its president Milosevic was threatened with total destruction of Belgrade. And gave in.

Western hubris after the Cold War was won? Of course!

Russia was on its knees. International law and the UN Charter sidelined. Militarism embraced. Full spectrum dominance. The winner takes it all! Right – but with the risk of losing it all later. It’s called hubris.

Boomerangs do exist.

Oh, what ignorance. Hardly 5 foreign ministry people in Europe knew a thing about the complexities of Yugoslavia.

And today, 21 years later?

Kosovo – the 2nd Albanian state in Europe – still doesn’t function. Hardliners in that war are still leaders, protected by the Americans who back then called Kosovo “ours” – I know because I interviewed them in Prishtina.

Serbia – moving ahead with no more illusions about a decent treatment by the EU or the US. It’s now Europe’s main friend of China (whose embassy NATO bombed by so-called accident). Huge Chinese air bridge of aid to Serbia these very corona days.

China – well you know what has happened there the last 20 years. And how it is the main builder of a new world order.

NATO – outdated and sharing little but inner conflicts because it should have been closed down when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dissolved.

The EU – unable to handle Yugoslavia, 2015 refugees, Iran/JCPOA or helping its Spanish and Italian brothers and sisters with the corona.. China is able.

The US – moving towards (more) authoritarianism and inner dissolution, rioting and revolver violence: Wait and see how the corona virus’ political dynamics will play out there…

For all the West – A world order loser in deep inner structural crisis.

Yugoslavia was a game changer – TFF said it then and warned about all the Western actions in the most comprehensive ever peace and conflict study of Yugoslavia – a good 2000 A4 pages equivalent.

No, not written years after but while it happened. Predictions more precise than any government’s.

And with lots of alternatives and peace plans lined up too. Because there were alternatives to the destruction of that country and to the bombing for Kosovo. But everything done was – peace-prevention:

Sadly, the West is destroying itself because of militarist hubris. There is no one it can blame for its manifest destiny downwards – except, of course, the Serbs, Russians, Chinese and Iranians and …

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A new survey has discovered that every single American is convinced they will get the coronavirus, highlighting just how entrenched the message about the crisis has become in the US.

The poll by Survey USA finds that 100 percent of respondents said yes to the question “Based on what you know at this hour, what would you say that the chances are that you, yourself, will get sick from the Coronavirus?”

The survey was conducted last week, just as the peak of the panic was hitting. It also found that 21 percent of Americans say their daily life has “been turned upside down” by the virus, which originated in China.

A further 42 percent say it has “changed noticeably”, while 31 percent say it has “been impacted only slightly”.

Six percent say life has “not been impacted at all,” although that has probably changed by now.

Interestingly, only five percent of respondents said that they personally know someone who has been officially diagnosed with the virus, while an overwhelming 92 percent say they don’t.

When asked how concerned they are about the virus, and whether they will be able to get adequate medical care if they catch it, sixty-six percent of respondents over the age of 50 said that they are “extremely concerned” or “concerned”.

Seventy-one percent responded that think the worst is “still ahead,” while just 8 percent believe it is “behind us.”

Asked when they think thinks will return to “normal”, 17 percent pointed to June 2020, while ten percent said they expect the entire year to be lost to coronavirus, and are looking to 2021 for normal life to return.

This is in stark contrast to President Trump’s comments yesterday when he said he’d like to see things get back on track by Easter.

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When is a terrorist group not a terrorist group? Apparently when US foreign policy requires it not to be. This is precisely the case regarding Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch – Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) – the most recent rebrand of Jabhat Al Nusra – which currently occupies the northern Syrian governorate of Idlib.

The US corporate media has recently attempted to generate public sympathy for HTS – as well as animosity toward Syrian, Russian, and Iranian forces seeking to liberate the supposedly one million people trapped under the terrorist organization’s rule.

Another factor behind US media support for HTS is the necessity to explain why NATO member Turkey is providing direct military and material support for a US-designated terrorist organization, and why the US itself is in turn providing Turkey support to do so.

Articles have appeared in Newsweek – for example – framing Russian opposition to negotiations with HTS as negative – and echoing US State Department efforts to support the terrorist organization despite it appearing on Washington’s official Foreign Terrorist Organization designation list.

The article titled, “Russia Warns Against Any U.S. Talks with Militant Group It’s Bombing in Syria,” is actually referring to Al Qaeda’s HTS front when it refers to the “militant group” Russia is bombing in Syria.

Newsweek places Russian statements regarding the US designation of HTS as a terrorist organization in quotes as if to question the veracity of the claim.

However, a visit to the US State Department’s own website reveals a 2018 statement titled, “Amendments to the Terrorist Designations of al-Nusrah Front,” which openly admits:

The Department of State has amended the designation of al-Nusrah Front – an al-Qa’ida affiliate in Syria – to include Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other aliases. These aliases have been added to al-Nusrah Front’s designations as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under Executive Order 13224.

In January 2017, al-Nusrah Front launched the creation of HTS as a vehicle to advance its position in the Syrian uprising and to further its own goals as an al-Qa’ida affiliate. Since January 2017, the group has continued to operate through HTS in pursuit of these objectives.

Thus – according to all sides of the Syrian conflict including Washington – HTS is without doubt – unequivocally a terrorist organization.

And eventually – 5 paragraphs in – Newsweek also admits HTS is a US-designated terrorist organization – and even includes quotes from US military leaders admitting that Idlib is overrun by extremists. Yet the US-based publication still attempts to frame Syrian and Russian efforts to liberate Idlib from these extremists negatively.

Newsweek is just one example of the US corporate media obliquely defending terrorism. The New York Times would provide a much more robust defense.

New York Times Does PR for Al Qaeda in Idlib 

To illustrate just how far the US corporate media is willing to go to bolster Al Qaeda’s HTS and its Turkish and US backers, the New York Times claims its staff actually accompanied HTS terrorists in Idlib in order to write their emotionally manipulative article, “‘The Only Choice Is to Wait for Death’.”

The article’s author – Carlotta Gall – claims:

I made a rare visit into Idlib with a photographer and interpreter on Wednesday, crossing the border from Turkey. We were accompanied by relief workers of a Syrian charity and members of a jihadist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls the province.

While the identity or organization these “relief workers” are affiliated with is never mentioned in the article – they are almost certainly from the so-called “White Helmets” and their presence alongside Al Qaeda HTS militants would only further confirm that they themselves are nothing more than Al Qaeda auxiliaries.

The article contains weepy anecdotes devoid of any actual evidence, playing on the familiar “humanitarian” concerns the US and its media often use to demonize its adversaries and justify its own – very real – aggression and abuse globally.

In this case – the aggression and abuse the US and its media are attempting to justify is the continued existence of Al Qaeda’s HTS in northern Syria and its rule over an alleged population of “one million” civilians.

The article describes Syrian and Russian security operations to liberate Idlib from Al Qaeda with paragraphs like:

There has been no letup for the people of Idlib Province as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, backed by Russian air power, have smashed their way forward, demolishing towns and villages in the south and east of the province with punishing airstrikes.

Only until twenty-five paragraphs into the New York Times’ article, does author Carlotta Gall finally admit HTS is a US-designated terrorist organization, claiming:

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, has been designated a terrorist group by the United Nations but recently allowed Western journalists into Idlib in cooperation with Turkey, which has wanted to build international pressure against Russia and Syria.

In other words – Al Qaeda and its Turkish backers want to build pressure against Russia and Syria who are attempting to liquidate the terrorist organization and restore order to Idlib – and the New York Times is willingly – even eagerly – aiding Al Qaeda and Turkey in doing so.

The US Has Flattened Cities and Nations in Pursuit of “Terrorists” 

Cities held by terrorist organizations – or even entire nations for that matter – have served as a pretext for the United States and its allies to carry out brutal military operations. For example – the alleged presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan served as the pretext for the now 19 year war the US has waged there since 2001.

In 2004 – citing the presence of extremists in the Iraqi city of Fallujah – the US military would flatten the urban center not once – but twice.

One might imagine that the US military and its allies would be eager to move against the northern governorate of Idlib in Syria – admittedly held by the terrorist HTS front.

Yet here the truth about America’s so-called “War on Terrorism” is revealed.

While extremists may have been based in Afghanistan in 2001 or active in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 – that is not why the United States moved against them. The US had overarching geopolitical plans that required the long-term occupation of Afghanistan – with the presence of extremists serving merely as a pretext to pursue these plans.

In Fallujah it was not the militants or their extremism that bothered the United States – as Washington had previously armed and backed many of the groups there in proxy conflicts for decades beforehand and for nearly two decades since – it was their resistance to the US occupation that triggered the two battles for the city.

Al Qaeda in northern Syria serves US interests – the fact that it appears on the US State Department’s own terrorist designation list is merely a political inconvenience at the moment – one the above-mentioned Newsweek article even admits US diplomats are trying to work around.

Newsweek claimed:

James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative on Syria and special envoy to the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), told a press briefing earlier this month he had not seen Hayat Tahrir al-Sham “planning or carrying out international terrorism attacks.” He made similar comments days earlier.

The obvious implications of Jeffery’s comment is that – at the moment and despite HTS’ status as a US-designated terrorist organization – the US does not see it as one. And not because HTS isn’t a terrorist organization – but simply because at the moment – such a designation is not politically convenient for US objectives in northern Syria.

So while the US has flattened entire cities in pursuit of “terrorists,” it currently seeks to complicate and draw out the Syrian conflict – placing the lives of “one million” civilians in the balance – in defense of terrorists.

The malignant nature of US foreign policy is fully illustrated by Washington and the US media’s stance regarding Al Qaeda’s HTS in northern Syria – amid circumstances where unequivocal terrorists threatening the lives of what the US itself claims are “one million” civilians have attracted the attention and support of American journalists and diplomats.

The coordinated nature of this support – spanning the corporate media and the US government itself – indicate just how deep the rot  is within US foreign policymaking and helps explain why – no matter who sits in the White House – this agenda continues forward, unabated and unfazed no matter how much the light of truth is shone upon it.

The fact that large amounts of resources are still being invested by Washington and the US corporate media indicates that US efforts to destabilize and destroy Syria are still very much in play – and now more than ever those seeking to restore order in Syria must guard against complacency.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO   

The planet’s second-most populous region will struggle to survive World War C due to its largely dilapidated health infrastructure and widespread abject poverty, but its chances of success would greatly increase if the South Asian security dilemma temporarily disappeared in order for everyone to focus more closely on the common goal of making it through this crisis with the least amount of damage possible, though that’s only possible if India puts its hegemonic aspirations aside for the time being by undertaking unilateral military steps that contribute to de-escalation and would prospectively be followed up by reciprocal ones by Pakistan.

On Wednesday, the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act was unanimously passed by the Senate.

It’s scheduled to be voted on and adopted by House members on Friday, Trump to sign it into law. Its provisions are largely what was discussed in a previous day article.

There’s plenty in it for monied interests, along with the Wall Street owned and operated Fed supplying trillions of dollars in virtually free money to banks, other corporate interests, hedge funds, and large investors —  more to come as needed.

By comparison, ordinary Americans get peanuts. Households will get one-time direct deposits of $1,200, married couples to get $2,400, plus an additional $500 per child.

This applies to households earning up to $75,000, $150,000 for married couples, scaled down amounts going to households earning up to $99,000/$198,000 for married couples.

Unemployed workers will get $600 weekly for four months — through July 31.

So-called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance will provide up to 39 weeks of unemployment insurance payments to individuals not otherwise eligible to receive benefits — including the self-employed and others who exhausted their regular and extended benefits.

The bill provides 13 weeks of emergency unemployment insurance for individuals who remain unemployed after they exhausted their benefits and aren’t otherwise eligible for them.

A four-member household, including two children, will get a one-time payment of $3,400, a single individual $1,200 + $600 weekly if unemployed through July 31 in both examples.

Federal unemployment benefits are in addition what individual states provide.

According to US Census Bureau data, median US rent in 2017was $1,012, median mortgage costs $1,513.

An average one-person household spends around $370 a month for food, double this amount for a three-person household.

In 2017, average per capita spending for healthcare annually was $10,224.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, average pre-tax household income in 2017 was $73,573, average annual expenses around $60,000.

The average federal income tax rate is around 20%, after-tax income less than $59,000 — minus state, property, and other local taxes, meaning most households spend borrowed money on top of income to cover expenses.

A family of four getting $3,400 + $600 a week if get federal unemployment benefits for around 17.5 weeks from April 1 through July 31 would receive $13,900 —far below what households need to cover expenses, supplemented by state unemployment benefits if get them.

Individuals are permitted to delay payment of payroll taxes until 2021 or 2022. The same holds for eligible businesses as follows:

They can delay paying payroll taxes through December 2020, pay 50% of them in 2021, another 50% in 2022.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in government loans to business and trillions of dollars in zero-interest Fed money may end up partially or entirely forgiven.

Will unpaid business payroll taxes be treated the same way? Looking ahead, what hasn’t been paid may not be when companies begin emerging from ongoing economic and financial duress.

Dems, including  progressive Bernie Sanders, agreed to suspend business payroll taxes that’s all about weakening Social Security and Medicare trust funds — part of a longterm plan to erode and eliminate them.

He and other Dems agreed to provide business with the lion’s share of benefits, instead of demanding more for American households, including government provided healthcare for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, excluding what covered by insurers.

Taking this step would advance the ball incrementally for universal healthcare, what’s vitally needed, Sanders its most vocal congressional supporter rhetorically.

His voting record shows otherwise, including on Wednesday by supporting the so-called CARES Act.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that the Trump regime temporarily “stopped seizing the wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits of people who are in default on their federal student loans,” citing an unnamed Education Department source.

Through federally controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as perhaps the entire mortgage industry, unemployed homeowners may also get temporary payment relief if qualify, permitting reduced or suspended payments for a fixed period.

According to Federal Housing Finance Agency director Mark Calabria, “(t)hat forbearance is up to 12 months, depending on their particular situation,” adding:

Homeowners “need to contact their servicer…the lender that they send the check to every month.”

“That lender will work with them to be able to work out a payment plan. Obviously, we hope to get them back on their feet as soon as possible.”

The above is not debt forgiveness. Loan obligations will be extended for the period of reduced or suspended payments.

A plan for renters is needed. While many municipalities halted evictions of individuals unable to pay landlords, there’s no federal program that authorizes reduced or suspended payments during the current economic and public health crisis.

Companies receiving bailout help are prohibited from making stock buybacks for the term of the amount provided plus an additional year.

Dividends, capital distributions, and executive bonuses are to be suspended for the same period.

How closely this will be monitored and whether actions will be taken against violators is another matter entirely.

Health insurers are required to cover the cost of COVID-19 tests. The same goes for vaccines when available.

Testing is supposed to be available for everyone in need. Americans are on their own for treatment of all health issues, including COVID-19.

Even federally mandated free healthcare for seniors that began in the mid-1960s when Medicare was established is longer free, especially because supplementary insurance is needed for what Medicare doesn’t cover.

Separately, COVID-19 infections keep spreading. Through Wednesday, around 472,000 were reported worldwide.

In the US, the total exceeds 69,000, New York state its epicenter with around 33,000 cases through Wednesday, New York City hardest hit with over 20,000 cases.

According to NBC News New York, the “NYC death toll spike(ed) 110% in the (last) 36 hours.”

The city has 11,000 ventilators to help severely affected patients breathe. Around 30,000 are needed, likely many more in the days and weeks ahead.

NY Gov. Cuomo slammed the CARES Act, calling $3.8 billion in NY aid a “drop in the bucket” with around $15 billion needed at this time.

Economically and health-wise nationwide, things are likely to get much worse before improving.

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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.

Accelerating Albania and North Macedonia Membership EU Tries to Save Face Amidst Coronavirus Debacle

By Paul Antonopoulos, March 26, 2020

The European Union’s decision to open negotiations with Northern Macedonia and Albania is a propaganda act from Brussels that attempts to reassure members of the Union that countries, even in the midst of the epidemic, want to become members of the organization. This is a cheap propaganda trick that attempts to restore confidence in the European Union at a time when it has completely failed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic that has shown weakness in the alliance.

A Brady Bond Solution for America’s Economic Crisis and Unpayable Corporate Debt

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and Prof Michael Hudson, March 26, 2020

The Fed’s Quantitative Easing since 2008 plus large companies using their earnings for stock buybacks drove the prices of financial assets into a realm of unreality. The result was that markets already were teetering on the brink of fragility. Any rise of normal interest to more normal conditions, or any external shock, was bound to crash the artificial values at which financial markets were priced. The Fed’s policy was to perpetuate this situation for as long as possible by pumping in yet more credit. But at near-zero interest rates, there was little that could be done.

Our Leaders Are Terrified. Not of the Virus – of Us.

By Jonathan Cook, March 26, 2020

It emerged at the weekend that Dominic Cummings, the ideological powerhouse behind Britain’s buffoonish prime minister Boris Johnson, was pivotal in delaying the UK government’s response to the coronavirus – effectively driving Britain on to the Italian (bad) path of contagion rather than the South Korean (good) one.

US Senate’s Final Stimulus Bill – Why It Won’t be Enough

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, March 25, 2020

Middle class and worker households would get $500 billion in the form of direct checks ($250B) and increased unemployment insurance benefits for the next four months ($250B).

Corporations and businesses would thus get $867B–$367B of which would go to small businesses, and another $500B to large corporations like airlines, defense companies, cruise lines, hotels and other companies.

21 Years Since the Beginning of NATO Aggression against Yugoslavia

By Živadin Jovanović, March 25, 2020

During NATO aggression lasting from 24 March through 10 June 1999, NATO missiles killed 1100 soldiers and police officers and more than 2500 civilians, including 89 children. With the exception of the military and police personnel, the accurate list of casualties has not been established as yet, despite a recent statement announcing that relevant efforts would be stepped up. There is even less certainty about how many citizens lost their lives in the meantime, either due to injuries sustained by wounding, or due to malignant diseases caused by the use of weaponry filled with depleted uranium and other banned weapons and ordnances, or during the course of demining of unexploded ordnances, especially the cluster bombs.

Venezuela’s Coronavirus Response Might Surprise You

By Leonardo Flores, March 25, 2020

Within a few hours of being launched, over 800 Venezuelans in the U.S. registered for an emergency flight from Miami to Caracas through a website run by the Venezuelan government. This flight, offered at no cost, was proposed by President Nicolás Maduro when he learned that 200 Venezuelans were stuck in the United States following his government’s decision to stop commercial flights as a preventative coronavirus measure. The promise of one flight expanded to two or more flights, as it became clear that many Venezuelans in the U.S. wanted to go back to Venezuela, yet the situation remains unresolved due to the U.S. ban on flights to and from the country.

How ‘Defense’ Contractors Lobbied for War in Yemen and Reaped the Profits from Death and Destruction

By Ben Barbour, March 25, 2020

Lobbying firms like the McKeon Group, headed by lobbyist Buck McKeon (who was the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in the US Congress), represent both US defense contractors and countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who are ruthlessly bombing Yemen with US made weapons. Through lobbying firms like the McKeon Group and American Defense International, defense contractors such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin spent millions to effectively pressure Congress members. Lobbying efforts focus on key members of committees, such as the aforementioned Armed Services Committee. This incentivizes Congress to approve legislation to sell arms to countries like Saudi Arabia and block any legislation that challenges the unethical arms sales.

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US stock markets lifted today on a tide of investor enthusiasm following the announcement that the Federal Reserve was poised to give the US economy a limitless cash injection.

And in the closed mind of Donald Trump, this is simply the beginning and the end of the matter.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,400 points putting on 7 per cent and the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite nearly matched this.

But even the impregnable ignorance of Trump will be tested to destruction by the analysis coming from the World Health Organisation that the US is due to become the new global epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the Panglossian world of the US president, the material world can be dismissed through an act of will or the utterance of magic words.

Trump thinks that he can simply jump-start the US economy and prevent the pandemic becoming rooted as “a long-lasting financial problem.”

Assuming his new persona as an epidemiologist, public health expert and all-round economics guru, he said that the pandemic and its associated disruptions would not last as long as three or four months.

“Our country was not built to be shut down,” he said. “This is not a country that was built for this.”

And his top officials dismissed the government restrictions just promulgated as a “15-day challenge.”

Meanwhile on the North Atlantic division of planet Earth, upwards of 50,000 people are infected with the coronavirus, with 125 deaths recorded in New York alone out of a provisional national total of 593. This is but the beginning of the curve.

If we bear in mind that the accurate recording of infection rates and associated deaths in the US is hobbled by a pattern of vastly inadequate and unequal health provision — with one in 10 of the population without health insurance — we can be sure that the actual infection rate is higher and the death rate will grow.

It is an unsavoury thought, but President Trump is truly an emperor without clothes.

And the voice telling the US public that nothing covers their president’s metaphorical nakedness is Anthony Fauci, a member of the nation’s coronavirus task force and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose rational voice is a vital counter-narrative to Trump’s meandering mind.

But the only metric which conditions the president’s thinking is the stock market indices — and in very short order there will be a point in which the illusory trajectory described by Trump’s imaginings with be intersected by the guided missile that is reality.

Trump’s notion, tweeted at 3.50am: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF” is the clearest expression that the gap between rational and scientific thought and the unstructured ramblings of an ignoramus with untrammelled power is a serious threat to the US people.

On our side of the Atlantic we still have a very small window of opportunity to take what measures are necessary to mitigate the worst of this epidemic.

The conclusions we can draw from present-day events is that social distancing is the basic building block of our collective attempts to contain this virus, and decisive state action is the essential precondition for ensuring the best possible result.

The political lesson must be that maintaining a clear distance from the US in significant policy matters is an essential precondition of our national interest.

The two pillars of the economic and foreign policy orthodoxy favoured by our ruling class is the closest possible alignment to both the European Union and the US.

The toxicity of these alignments is manifest.

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The European Union’s decision to open negotiations with Northern Macedonia and Albania is a propaganda act from Brussels that attempts to reassure members of the Union that countries, even in the midst of the epidemic, want to become members of the organization. This is a cheap propaganda trick that attempts to restore confidence in the European Union at a time when it has completely failed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic that has shown weakness in the alliance.

Maurizio Massari, Italy’s ambassador to the EU, said earlier this month that “the coronavirus crisis is a test of the EU’s cohesiveness and credibility — one that can only be passed through genuine, concrete solidarity. Europe must act according to the principle of mutual defense and help those members whose security is under threat.” With nearly 60,000 people confirmed infected and over 7,500 deaths, the European Union has failed in this test as no member states came to the aid of Italy and instead looked inwardly towards their own borders.  The European Union’s cohesiveness was exposed as a fantasy when days ago member state Poland closed its airspace to a Russian plane delivering aid to fellow European Union member Italy, forcing the aircraft to take an alternate route that is 1,000 kilometers longer.

Essentially the European Union that is currently the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic has exposed why the Union is dysfunctional and without any solidarity. It has shown a huge gap between words and action. The European Union as an example of the liberal world order endlessly spoke of humanity but have proven they are inhumane. They promoted the idea of efficiency but proven they are actually ineffective. In short, the announcement to progress the European Union membership of Albania and North Macedonia is a cheap propaganda gimmick for Brussels at a time when it is under heavy scrutiny for showing a lack of solidarity and assistance to Italy, raising questions to the credibility of the organization. It is negotiating in a way that has never existed, utterly undefined, with a big question mark as to what will be.

According to a draft decision signed by the bloc’s 27 members, which Reuters had access to, the hope of membership for the two Western Balkans countries has often been shattered in recent years due to the scepticism expressed, primarily by the Netherlands and France, as they correctly highlight that both countries are highly corrupt. However, the start date of the negotiations is not specified and will be subsequently determined when the European Commission prepares the framework for the negotiations.

Michael Roth, Germany’s state secretary for European affairs, wrote on Twitter on March 24, “Congrats to Tirana+Skopje, it’s well deserved,” after the agreement was reached during a videoconference. This was followed by European Union Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi also going to Twitter, saying that he is “very pleased that EU member states today reached political agreement on opening of accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia. I wholeheartedly congratulate both countries. This also sends a loud and clear message to Western Balkans: your future is in EU.”

North Macedonia is unlikely to face resistance in joining the European Union, and is already being rapidly ascended into NATO after it resolved its name issue with Greece. However, the accession is not yet a guaranteed for Albania as Greece raises concerns on the rights and treatment of the Greek minority in occupied Northern Epirus in southern Albania. Approximately 200,000 Greeks of Northern Epirus face daily discrimination with Albanian authorities removing bilingual road signs that display Greek, the confiscation of property belonging to Greeks, and Albanian police even murdering a Greek in a shootout as they removed a Greek flag from a cemetery, among many other forms of discrimination. On these grounds, Greece may veto Albania’s accession, but this is likely to be a temporary measure as the Greek political establishment always eventually capitulate to the demands of Brussels and Germany. Once this issue is resolved, it is likely that Albania with North Macedonia will be accelerated into the European Union, and this will prove necessary as the bloc wants to maintain the illusion that it is not in disarray in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

This begs the questions though on why Albania and North Macedonia would want to ascend into the European Union after seeing the alliance’s treatment of its own long-time member states like Italy. Albania has always been a pro-Western state, owing to the Western world its existence, its occupation of Northern Epirus, and its indirect occupation of Kosovo. It is therefore unsurprising that it wants to be further integrated into the Western world. North Macedonia since the very beginning of its foundations with the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s wanted to join the European Union and NATO, but was prevented to do so because of the name dispute with Greece. With this issue resolved, it now has a clear path towards the bloc. None-the-less, both states are not even remotely close in an economic or so-called democratic sense to be candidates, but will be fast-tracked to help save face after the European Union’s debacle with the coronavirus pandemic.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Congressional Republicans and Dems, together with the White House, agreed on a reported $2 trillion stimulus plan late Tuesday night — the text of the bill not finalized.

The devil is in the fine print and how what’s agreed on is implemented.

The plan will inject less than the reported $2 trillion into the US economy (see below), aimed mainly at helping monied interests.

It’s notably on top of over $6 trillion in virtually free Fed helicopter money for Wall Street, other corporate interests, hedge funds, and large investors.

Around $500 billion is earmarked for large corporations, $367 billion for undefined small business, $130 billion for hospitals, $150 billion for state and local governments, enhanced unemployment insurance, and one-time payments of $1,200 to US households with annual income of $75,000 or less, $2,400 for married couples, as well as $500 per child up to a maximum of two.

Households with incomes from $75,000 to $99,000 will get incrementally less, nothing for incomes above the top threshold.

Enhanced unemployment benefits are only for four months, total benefits for business and households around $1.65 trillion, not $2 trillion — when sustained government help is needed as long as dire economic and public health conditions persist.

Households with little or no tax liabilities will receive the same amount.

Given the high cost of living in the US, especially for urban dwellers, this amount with only help low-income or unemployed Americans short-term at a time of economic crisis and a national health emergency likely to continue for months or longer.

Trump’s aim for US business as usual to resume around mid-April ignores the reality of mounting COVID-19 infections and deaths — around 55,000 and nearly 800 respectively in the US, numbers steadily rising.

The larger these numbers, the more greatly they can expand exponentially — why it’s vital to shelter in place as much as possible and social distance when outside for essential activities until the threat of COVID-19 is eliminated.

By mid-April, the numbers of infected individuals and deaths will likely be much higher than now.

Most retail stores are closed indefinitely, public events cancelled or suspended, normal activities halted.

US states, cities, and towns recommended or mandated lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, and/or social distancing when in public — cordon sanitaire protections against spreading disease.

If current policies in place don’t work, tougher measures will be needed, including a possible national lockdown by presidential executive order or congressional legislation — even though no constitutional provision permits this action.

Earlier federal legislation overrode state rights by mandating civil and voting rights — though way short of what provisions of both measures called for.

These are unprecedented times so unprecedented actions are needed post haste.

On Monday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) called for the following economic relief package:

• “Maximization of the income that can be delivered through existing social insurance and safety net programs during the lockdown and its aftermath.
• Substantial aid to state and local governments.
• Bailouts of industries’ workers, not shareholders, creditors, or senior management.
• Direct cash payments to households.
• Conditions-based triggers that keep aid flowing.”

EPI expanded on the above actions as follows:

Unemployment insurance should be expanded in “vast amounts” for laid off workers.

An array of social benefits should be instituted for US households in need, stressing:

“(T)here’s no reason why…benefits should be…less than” a steady flow of funds to US households needing help.

Mass layoffs and economic contraction are increasing, to what extent and for how long unknown.

EPI: “Economic activity will fall more sharply than in perhaps any other period in modern history, and tens of millions of US employees will be forced to stop working.”

At a time of economic shutdown, it’s the responsibility of government to fill the void — largely at the federal level, at state and local levels as well to the extent they’re able.

There’s no excuse for the world’s richest country not going all out for all its people — its unemployed, underemployed, and low-income households most of all, including hundreds of thousands of homeless and millions of food insecure households.

Key economically is enhancing social safety net programs, mostly to ensure everyone needing healthcare, food, and other essentials have access to it — no one in need left out.

Fundamental reforms of US economic policy should be implemented and “sustained beyond this crisis,” said EPI.

State and local governments are “on the front lines” of securing public health — why they “must be empowered to spend as freely as public health demands.”

Industry bailouts should be directed toward protecting jobs and wages for workers, not “shareholders’ wealth, creditors’ debt, or senior management salaries.”

Firms getting government handouts “must not be permitted to lay off workers, outsource or offshore work, cut workers’ pay or benefits, or reopen union contracts.”

What’s going on is unprecedented in US history, the same true in other countries.

EPI called for “a wraparound insurance policy to make sure that all households get at least some relief and that low-wage workers receive enough to live on during the enforced economic shutdown” — through “substantial cash payments to households.”

Economic stimulus/recovery measures must be sustained “as long as conditions warrant.”

“Cash payments should not be one-time” — what Congress and the White House agreed on, what will only help millions of Americans in need very short-term, way short of what’s needed.

Economists Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson called for a “debt jubilee.”

Roberts explained that debt forgiveness works as intended.

Piling on more debt will make an untenable situation worse.

Wipe the slate clean on “mortgage, student, car, (and) credit card” debt. They’re too “overwhelming” to be repaid — impossible during protracted economic duress.

Hudson stressed that “if the US government can finance $4.5 trillion in quantitative easing for the banks, it can absorb the cost of forgoing student and other debt,” adding:

“And for private lenders, only bad loans need be wiped out. Much of what would be written off are accruals, late charges and penalties on loans gone bad.”

Mismanaged companies like airlines, Boeing, and others should be nationalized or permitted to go bankrupt, not bailed out.

Instead of using their cash flow constructively, they directed billions of dollars for stock buybacks to inflate their valuations to bubble levels, their executives profiting hugely.

How bad will things get and for how long ahead? While only the fullness of time will tell, economist Nouriel Roubini’s outlook is bleak, saying:

“(E)very component of aggregate demand – consumption, capital spending, exports – is in unprecedented free fall.”

Contraction isn’t “V- nor U – nor L-shaped…(I)t looks like a I: a vertical line representing financial markets and the real economy plummeting.”

What’s happening since mid-February exceeds earlier economic downturns — much of the US and other world economies shutting down in a few weeks.

Combatting things economically, financially, and for public health requires “throw(ing) the kitchen sink of unconventional measures at the crisis” — including helicopter money for US households.

The risk of another Great Depression “worse than the original…is rising by the day,” Roubini warned.

Top priority is curtailing the spread of COVID-19 infections and halting them altogether.

As long as the virus forces most people to shelter in place, economic recovery won’t be possible.

At this time, there are about 425,000 cases worldwide, over 55,000 in the US.

If all-out public health measures aren’t prioritized, no matter the cost, there’s risk of exponential increases that could crater economies of the US and other countries catastrophically.

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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 MICHAEL NAGLE/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

Even before the Covid-19 crisis had slashed stock prices nearly in half since it erupted in January, financial markets were in an inherently unstable condition. Years of quantitative easing had loaded so much money into stock and bond prices that stock price/earnings multiples and bond prices were far too high by any normal and reasonable historical standards. Risk premiums have disappeared, with only a few basis points separating U.S. Treasury bills and corporate bonds.

The Fed’s Quantitative Easing since 2008 plus large companies using their earnings for stock buybacks drove the prices of financial assets into a realm of unreality. The result was that markets already were teetering on the brink of fragility. Any rise of normal interest to more normal conditions, or any external shock, was bound to crash the artificial values at which financial markets were priced. The Fed’s policy was to perpetuate this situation for as long as possible by pumping in yet more credit. But at near-zero interest rates, there was little that could be done.

A close parallel to this situation was the state of Third World debt in the mid-1980s. Mexico’s announcement that it could not meet its foreign debt service was the shock that brought ugly financial reality into conflict with the assumption that somehow any government debt could be paid – even debts denominated in a foreign currency. (Mexico and other countries had denominated their bonds in dollars in order to obtain lower interest rates than bonds denominated in their own currencies would have to pay. The assumption was that export earnings would provide hard currencies with which to redeem the bonds.)

The international financial system was rescued by the issue of Brady bonds – “good” new bonds for old “bad” ones. The capital value of these bonds was still far below the original debt, but they had the virtue of setting realistic levels by bringing the debt balance more in line with the actual ability of debtor countries to earn the dollars or other hard currencies needed to service bonds denominated in foreign currencies, mainly the US dollar.

The current crisis requires a similar write-down and recognition that fictitious price levels must give way to reality at some point. In fact, we have reached the end of an illusion – the illusion that bond (and stock) prices could be sustained indefinitely simply by financial engineering, without an economic base capable of producing enough surplus revenue to justify existing bond and stock prices.

So attractive were the former unrealistic bond and stock levels that the markets are still in the “denial phase” hoping that the Coronavirus bailout may be used as an opportunity for yet further infusion of money into the financial markets. But that merely postpones the inevitable adjustment to bring financial asset prices back in line with real economic capabilities.

There certainly is a financial panic, and prices are not necessarily more realistic in a panic than they were in the bubble leading up to it. The question is, what is a sustainable asset-price level? What needs to be supported is a realistic value of stocks and bonds. Bad debts should be taken off the books, not supported in an attempt to recover the unrealistic pre-virus levels.

A successful way of coping with overpriced bonds and other debts:

Our situation is similar to Third World debt in the early 1980s after Mexico triggered the Latin American debt bomb by explaining that it did not have the money to service its foreign bonds. Prices for Third World bonds plummeted as investors calculated the dollar-earning power of countries that had to export goods and services (or sell off their assets) to pay their foreign-currency debts. But their export proceeds simply could not cover the debt service that was owed.

The Sovereign Debt market was trading at such low prices that these foreign government bonds had become illiquid. Unable to obtain further credit, countries confronted by this financial state of affairs were threatened with political instability.

The Federal Reserve’s long Quantitative Easing and support of the financial markets has provided the appearance of stability. This artificial life support has been viewed as saving banks and large companies, pension funds and state and local finance from insolvency. But in doing this the Fed has been fighting what looks like a losing battle against reality. The Fed has been supporting illusory values that cannot be sustained.

The reality is that large swaths of the post 2008 corporate bond market boom have seen a proliferation of corporate bonds that cannot be paid. The fracking industry is only the most visible example. Airlines, entertainment, hotels and retail companies are facing losses that threaten their solvency.

The Fed fears a free market when it comes to asset prices. Or at least, it fears the political and economic consequences of withdrawing artificial support. Reality forced the Fed into the mid-March support and already a larger intervention has been announced. According to the New York Times, for the first time in history, the Federal reserve announced that it would buy cororate bonds, including the riskiest investment-grade debt. [1]  It seems the Fed also intends to purchase stocks (see this).

This is the “Denial stage” of the illusion that has resulted in crisis– the illusion that the stock and bond run-up could be turned from government manipulation into an actual market reality.

Where is this supposed to end? The Fed could buy up all the bonds – from corporate junk to state and municipal bonds as a way to prevent their prices from falling. At an extreme, this business-as-usual scenario would lead to the Fed owning the junk bond market, municipals, and a large swath of the stock market.

This could have a silver lining: having concentrated the debt in its own hands, the Fed would then have a free hand to write off the debt, privatize the companies and start all over again with a lower debt overhead. That is what China’s central bank has been doing: simply forgiving debt that is owed to itself. The Fed would swap “good” public debt (good in the sense that the government can print the money to pay) for bad (meaning unpayable) debt.

Bringing financial markets in line with reality would mean writing off a large swath of corporate debt and realizing that much corporate equity “wealth” has been created by decapitalizing corporations in stock by-backs instead of investing in the country’s productive capacity, including decent wages for workers. The American airline industry over the last decade has spent as much as 96% of its cash on stock buybacks – giving financial wealth to their CEOs and share holders rather than investing in their business. Such financial wealth, if not underpinned by real wealth, is built on quicksand, and it is now disappearing as asset markets plummet. So stock buybacks and other artificial ways to “create wealth” were “investments” that have had drastically negative returns.

To implement a rationalization of bond and stock prices bringing them in line with reality, it has to be in the interest of holders of these securities. Acknowledging that bonds are not worth as much as the price at which the Fed is supporting them will not appeal to bondholders as long as prices are artificially supported. A bond-swap (new good bonds for old bad bonds) can only be achieved in a situation where it is more realistic and less risky to have a sound good bond than a low-priced (or fictitiously high-priced) bad bond.

Therefore, the Fed should let prices sink to their “market” level without interference. The Fed is trying to support the unsupportable. By doing this, it has blocked a reasonable solution bringing financial asset prices in line with the realistic ability to carry debt.

Without the Fed’s support, bonds would need to be written down and stock prices would continue to plunge. That would prepare the ground for something like the Brady Bond solution for Third World debts in the 1980s. Latin American and other Third World bonds were selling around 25 cents on the dollar in the wake of Mexico’s announcement that it could not pay its scheduled debt in 1982. There was widespread recognition that Latin American governments couldn’t pay their bonds. That was because these bonds were denominated in US dollars, and foreign governments can only print their own currency. When they did this to throw domestic money onto foreign exchange markets to trade for hard currencies with which to pay their debts, their exchange rates plunged. [2]

Brady bonds addressed the problem by a swap of “good bonds for old.” The new bonds received IMF and other support, and were based on what foreign countries actually could pay in foreign exchange (mainly U.S. dollars). Bondholders could swap their old bonds, which were selling from 15 to 25 cents on the dollar, for new bonds priced higher than the market price but less than the original issue, but which at least were secure and less risky. They were “reality bonds.”

The government can organize something similar for corporate bonds after the market takes the artificial QE-added values out. However, to create a market environment for such an alternative, the Fed must let bonds and stocks fall to their natural “realistic” level recognizing that the existing debt overhead can’t be paid. Then, new “reality bonds” can be issued and the economy can start again with a non-crippling debt level. As panic will take the market price below the reality price, the new debt instruments will have higher values than the market panic prices. Alternatively, a good estimate of the real value of the bonds could be made with the debt written down to that level. If that can be done, it would avoid a panic fall to a lower level.

Banks and major creditors would have to absorb much of the loss resulting from the runup of stock and bond prices to overvalued levels. But something similar was a feature of the Brady reforms, which called for burden sharing by banks (the London club) and also governments (the Paris club) who had to provide debt relief. If the debt-writedown makes banks insolvent, they can be nationalized. When more normal conditions return, the banks can be privatized. This would also provide an opportunity to increase competition by breaking up “banks too big to fail” and to again separate commercial from investment banking. In other words, nationalization would be a way to increase competition and restore Glass-Steagall stability to the financial system.

The alternative is that we will face reality without a solution.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

Dirk Bezemer provided much help in this article.

[1] Jeanna Smialek, “The Fed Goes All In With Unlimited Bond-Buying Plan,” The New York Times, March 23, 2020. This report adds: “Because the Fed cannot take on substantial credit risk itself, the Treasury Department backs its emergency lending, using money from a fund that contains just $95 billion. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday suggested that the new money in the Republican bill could be leveraged by the Fed to back some $4 trillion in financing.”

[2] The situation was much like German reparations in the 1920s. (See Michael Hudson, Trade, Development and Foreign Debt).

Two Turkish soldiers were injured and two vehicles damaged in Syria’s southern Idlib on March 24. Their military convoy was targeted by a roadside bomb explosion near the village of Sfuhun. Turkish troops based at the al-Barah observation post were conducting a patrol along the contact line between the Syrian Army and Idlib armed groups.

This became the second attack on Turkish forces in Greater Idlib in less than 7 days. On March 19, two Turkish soldiers were killed and several others injured, when an IED exploded near their convoy near the village of Muhamabal.

Pro-militant propaganda claims that the attacks were carried out by the ‘criminal Assad regime’ in an attempt to destabilize the situation. Turkish media outlets pay scant attention to the situation reporting about some unidentified radicals. The open secret is that Turkish forces have become the target of attacks by groups that Ankara has been supporting with its  opposition of the anti-terrorist operations of the Syrian Army. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Houras al-Din, the Turkistan Islamic Party and similar organizations see the creation of a buffer zone along the M4 as a grave threat to their interests and survival. Therefore they are sabotaging the deal by blocking the highway and fuelling military tensions in the region. In the near future, they may even stage a large false-flag attack on Turkish forces near the contact line planning to blame the ‘Assad regime’ for it and thus  relaunch military hostilities between the Turkish Army and the Syrian Armed Forces.

Violations of the ceasefire regime by Idlib radicals are also increasing. Recently, ATGM, mortar attacks and artillery shelling were reported near Kafr Nubl, Saraqib, Kansafra and Kabinah. Turkish-backed groups claim that this week they destroyed a Syrian Army battle tank and  bulldozer north of Saraqib.

Members of Turkish-backed Faylaq al-Madj raided the village of Sukariya, near the town of Tell Abyad, in northeastern Syria. They attacked locals wounding dozens of them and looting their property. Earlier in March, members of Turkish-backed militant groups protested in the area of Operation Peace Spring because there had been a significant delay of salaries from Ankara. Turkish sources claim that Turkey is actively working to put an end to looting and attacks on locals. Nonetheless, such incidents continue to erupt on a regular basis.

Several explosions were reported near positions of the Syrian Army and Iranian-backed forces at al-Bukamal. Local sources claim that they were a result of actions by ISIS cells. Over the past months, al-Bukamal became a target of dozens of Israeli and US strikes. ISIS terrorists are likely trying to exploit this.

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Although it was nearly twenty years ago, I can remember 9/11 like it was yesterday. I remember the shock of hearing about the planes crashing into towers, at first believing it was a tragic accident and quickly learning it to be otherwise. I remember being told that 19 hijackers, part of a fundamentalist plot to destroy America, were behind the attacks and that the mastermind was a man in a cave in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden.

As all of America was glued to their television screens, many rushed out to give blood in an effort to at least do something to help one another. George W. Bush’s answer for Americans was to go to work and then go out and shop. Americans dutifully complied. But the government’s answer, in tandem with mainstream media, was also to be afraid. Very afraid. Americans also complied with this request, perhaps more than any other.

In the days and weeks after the initial shock, a college professor informed me about a bill called the PATRIOT ACT that would essentially eviscerate much of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. After class, I questioned him further about the bill, which he explained, and suggested that if I really wanted to understand what was happening, I should read 1984 by George Orwell. I went home and did just that and was surprised to learn that not only was he right, but that I was watching what I was reading happen in front of me in real life.

I watched as the fear of speaking your mind and saying certain words became known as freedom. I watched as Americans came to assume that their communications were listened to, frightened of what they said, but justifying it as they praised their country for being unlike the totalitarian governments of the past. Peace became war. Any suggestion that invading Afghanistan was wrong was unpatriotic. In fact, any criticism of the government was considered unpatriotic and anyone who valued freedom over temporary security was borderline a traitor.

I watched as the United States became The Homeland and I watched as my friends had their window busted out of their car because they did not have one of those ridiculous window flags.

Still, shortly after the event itself, I began speaking out against the erosion of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I questioned the official story of 9/11 and fought against the passage of the PATRIOT ACT. In those days, anyone who did either of these things was considered either woefully ignorant and naive or a traitor who was giving moral support to the enemy.

I spoke out after 9/11 and was largely alone with a few notable exceptions. I was forced to watch the majority of my fellow Americans give away the most precious thing they had, the things which no other country could lay claim to, and the thing that they claimed they were supporting war to protect. America gave away a huge chunk of its rights in the wake of 9/11 and, though they were promised the measures were only temporary, twenty years on we have never received them back.

Instead, police officers are now often indistinguishable from military soldiers, the United States is still in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Ukraine, and a host of theatres across the world where its undefinable “interests” apparently lie. It is now a foregone conclusion that cellphone, internet, and all other communications are monitored. It is well understood that the iron fist of the state can come down with lack of due process and the Second Amendment is under daily attack. Torture is now general practice for foreign and domestic arrestees.

Now, here we are close to twenty years later. Americans once again have a shadowy nemesis for which our government has once again failed to provide adequate information. Once again, the governmental response is not a robust rethinking of how we got to be where we are, (in this case how medical care is provided, who has access to it, or the overarching philosophy behind it), but a massive police state, quasi martial law, and the evisceration of what is left of the liberties and rights they didn’t give away twenty years ago or give away gradually in the time between.

This time, it is not so much the President leading the charge to burn the Constitution, but Governors all across the country, acting in concert with one another. But they aren’t acting alone. Because of the massive propaganda mouthpiece of the mainstream media blasting hysteria and panic as well as the desired conclusions they intend for their audiences to reach, many Americans are demanding that their rights be taken away and that they and their fellow citizens be forced off the streets and into their homes at gunpoint.

My opposition to the potential Lockdown is twofold but principally it is based on the fact that over two hundred and thirty years of rights and liberties should not be shredded on the basis of any threat, real or imagined. Americans either have rights or we don’t. There is no asterisk in the Constitution that states the Bill of Rights is null and void in the event of a terrorist attack or a virus outbreak. If we do not maintain our rights in a time of crisis, then, simply put, we do not truly have rights at all.

If we do not maintain these rights, our country, such as it is, ceases to exist.

As Peter Hitchens, one of the few critics of this Lockdown mentality (happening all over the world and, in his case, Britain) wrote in his recent article for the Mail Online,

All the crudest weapons of despotism, the curfew, the presumption of guilt and the power of arbitrary arrest, are taking shape in the midst of what used to be a free country. And we, who like to boast of how calm we are in a crisis, seem to despise our ancient hard-bought freedom and actually want to rush into the warm, firm arms of Big Brother.

Hitchens’ article is well worth reading, not only for his views but for his critique of the scale of the pandemic, which is highly questionable.

Secondly, we are quickly driving this country to a second Great Depression where unemployment is at levels never before seen and where only the 1% and the major banks have anything resembling wealth. This Depression will be so devastating that it will make the first look weak in comparison, not just because of employment but because of the real human toll after decades of globalism, Free Trade, and urbanization have gutted this country of its workforce, manufacturing, healthcare, education, production capabilities, and general living standards. With more Americans living urban lives and fewer and fewer farms by the day, the Second Great Depression will kill many more people than the virus and leave those left alive scrounging for crumbs at the bottom. Already, since the beginning of this virus emergency, we have witnessed a huge transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the higher and we will no doubt witness more as this insane Lockdown attempt continues.

After the Lockdown passes, Americans will complain about low wages and lack of work. They will wait in lines for benefits that may or may not exist and that will be lower than their current living standards require. Unlike the loss of their rights, the benefits will be temporary. But Americans won’t be able to fully blame Wall Street this time around since it was the media and the people who listen to it who were howling in the streets for Lockdowns and shutdowns. They will have gotten what they wanted as well as the opportunity to live to regret it.

So here I am, twenty years after a writing career began as a result of generally good people who were frightened into giving away their rights, writing about exactly the same thing yet again. Of course, there may be time to reverse the direction in which we are heading. The next few weeks will most likely determine that matter. One thing is for certain, however, if Americans give up their rights now, they will never get them back.

I don’t have any illusions about the effect this article will have on the direction we are heading as a nation. Instead, I expect it to bring about more criticism, more insults, and more claims that I am no longer “credible” as the propaganda repeaters seen on the major cable networks are credible. But it will be worth it, for no other reason than to register my voice so that, for the record, there was at least a few people who retained their sanity through this worldwide era of panic and did not willingly sacrifice his rights on the altar of fear.

If we are able to step back from the abyss, perhaps the “credibility” and respect that I lose from peers as a result of this article will someday be returned. But if we are not able to step back, I can’t imagine anyone will be able to remember anything I’ve said here and, if that is the case, it probably wouldn’t matter if they did.

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Brandon Turbeville writes for Activist Post – article archive here – He is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1500 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, civil liberties and, most notably, geopolitics and the Syrian crisis. His most recent release is a book of poetry, Dance, Amputee. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. He is from Columbia, SC. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Activist Post

You can almost smell the fear-laden sweat oozing from the pores of television broadcasts and social media posts as it finally dawns on our political and media establishments what the coronavirus actually means. And I am not talking about the threat posed to our health. 

A worldview that has crowded out all other thinking for nearly two generations is coming crashing down. It has no answers to our current predicament. There is a kind of tragic karma to the fact that so many major countries – meaning major economies – are today run by the very men least equipped ideologically, emotionally and spiritually to deal with the virus.

That is being starkly exposed everywhere in the west, but the UK is a particularly revealing case study.

Dragging their heels

It emerged at the weekend that Dominic Cummings, the ideological powerhouse behind Britain’s buffoonish prime minister Boris Johnson, was pivotal in delaying the UK government’s response to the coronavirus – effectively driving Britain on to the Italian (bad) path of contagion rather than the South Korean (good) one.

According to media reports at the weekend, Cummings initially stalled government action, arguing of the coming plague that “if that means some pensioners die, too bad”. That approach explains the dragging of heels for many days, and then days more of dither that is only now coming to a resolution.

This was 2 weeks ago. 1000s had already died all around the world, the WHO was already begging government's to enforce distancing & to "test test test." This gross negligence by the Johnson's gov should never be forgotten nor forgiven. #UKlockdown pic.twitter.com/islqkivW8l

— Jack Duncan🌹 (@JackDunc1) March 23, 2020

Cummings, of course, denies ever making the statement, calling the claim “defamatory”. But let’s dispense with the formalities. Does anybody really – really – believe that that wasn’t the first thought of Cummings and half the cabinet when confronted with an imminent contagion they understood was about to unravel a social and economic theory they have dedicated their entire political careers to turning into a mass cult? An economic theory from which – by happy coincidence – they derive their political power and class privilege.

And sure enough, these hardcore monetarists are already quietly becoming pretend socialists to weather the very first weeks of the crisis. And there are many months more to run. 

Austerity thrown out 

As I predicted in my last post, the UK government last week threw out the austerity policies that have been the benchmark of Conservative party orthodoxy for more than a decade and announced a splurge of spending to save businesses with no business as well as members of the public no longer in a position to earn a living.

Since the 2008 financial crash, the Tories have cut social and welfare spending to the bone, creating a massive underclass in Britain, and have left local authorities penniless and incapable of covering the shortfall. For the past decade, the Conservative government excused its brutalist approach with the mantra that there was no “magic money tree” to help in times of trouble.

The free market, they argued, was the only fiscally responsible path. And in its infinite wisdom, the market had decided that the 1 per cent – the millionaires and billionaires who had tanked the economy in that 2008 crash – would get even filthier rich than they were already.

Meanwhile, the rest of us would see the siphoning off of our wages and prospects so that the 1 per cent could horde yet more wealth on offshore islands where we and the government could never get our hands on it.

“Neoliberalism” became a mystifying term used to reimagine unsustainable late-stage, corporate capitalism not only as a rational and just system but as the only system that did not involve gulags or bread queues.

Not only did British politicians (including most of the Labour parliamentary party) subscribe to it, but so did the entire corporate media, even if the “liberal” Guardian would very occasionally and very ineffectually wring its hands about whether it was time to make this turbo-charged capitalism a little more caring.

Only deluded, dangerous Corbyn “cultists” thought different.

Self-serving fairytale 

But suddenly, it seems, the Tories have found that magic money tree after all. It was there all along and apparently has plenty of low-hanging fruit the rest of us may be allowed to partake from.

One doesn’t need to be a genius like Dominic Cummings to see how politically terrifying this moment is for the establishment. The story they have been telling us for 40 years or more about harsh economic realities is about to be exposed as a self-serving fairytale. We have been lied to – and soon we are going to grasp that very clearly.

That is why this week the Tory politician Zac Goldsmith, a billionaire’s son who was recently elevated to the House of Lords, described as a “twat” anyone who had the temerity to become a “backseat critic” of Boris Johnson. And it is why the feted “political journalist” Isabel Oakeshott – formerly of the Sunday Times and a regular on BBC Question Time – took to twitter to applaud Matt Hancock and Johnson for their self-sacrifice and dedication to public service in dealing with the virus:

Spare a thought today for high-paid corporate journalists like this one who are now being forced to work overtime to find creative ways to make the government look good – and cover up their failure to hold the Tories to account for years of austerity that ravaged health services https://t.co/uYyREKEhqK

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 23, 2020

Spare a thought this morning for health secretary @MattHancock who has such enormous responsibility right now and is working crazy hours trying to help the nation beat this. The hourly judgements he and @BorisJohnson have to make are so difficult.

Be ready. Over the coming weeks, more and more journalists are going to sound like North Korea’s press corps, with paeans to “the dear leader” and demands that we trust that he knows best what must be done in our hour of need.

Saved by the bail-outs 

The political and media class’s current desperation has a substantive cause – and one that should worry us as much as the virus itself.

Twelve years ago capitalism teetered on the brink of the abyss, its structural flaws exposed for anyone who cared to look. The 2008 crash almost broke the global financial system. It was saved by us, the public. The government delved deep into our pockets and transferred our money to the banks. Or rather the bankers.

We saved the bankers – and the politicians – from their economic incompetence through bail-outs that were again mystified by being named “quantitative easing”.

But we weren’t the ones rewarded. We did not own the banks or get a meaningful stake in them. We did not even get oversight in return for our huge public investment. Once we had saved them, the bankers went right back to enriching themselves and their friends in precisely the same manner that stalled the economy in 2008.

The bail-outs did not fix capitalism, they simply delayed for a while longer its inevitable collapse.

Capitalism is still structurally flawed. Its dependence on ever-expanding consumption cannot answer the environmental crises necessarily entailed by such consumption. And economies that are being artificially “grown”, at the same time as resources deplete, ultimately create inflated bubbles of nothingness – bubbles that will soon burst again.

Survival mode 

Indeed, the virus is illustrative of one of those structural flaws – an early warning of the wider environmental emergency, and a reminder that capitalism, by intertwining economic greed with environmental greed, has ensured the two spheres collapse in tandem.

Pandemics like this one are the outcome of our destruction of natural habitats – to grow cattle for burgers, to plant palm trees for cakes and biscuits, to log forests for flat-pack furniture. Animals are being driven into ever closer proximity, forcing diseases to cross the species barrier. And then in a world of low-cost flights, disease finds an easy and rapid transit to every corner of the planet.

The truth is that in a time of collapse, like this decade-long one, capitalism has only “magic money trees” left. The first one, in the late 2000s, was reserved for the banks and the large corporations – the wealth elite that now run our governments as plutocracies.

The second “magic money tree”, needed to deal with what will become the even more disastrous economic toll wrought by the virus, has had to be widened to include us. But make no mistake. The circle of beneficence has been expanded not because capitalism suddenly cares about the homeless and those reliant on food banks. Capitalism is an amoral economic system driven by the accumulation of profit for the owners of capital. And that’s not you or me.

So homelessness can be ended just like that. 🤷‍♂️
https://t.co/yehwW3OuQH

— JJG (@joejglenton) March 22, 2020

No, capitalism is now in survival mode. That is why western governments will, for a time, try to “bail out” sections of their publics too, giving back to them some of the communal wealth that has been extracted over many decades. These governments will try to conceal for a little longer the fact that capitalism is entirely incapable of solving the very crises it has created. They will try to buy our continuing deference to a system that has destroyed our planet and our children’s future. 

It won’t work indefinitely, as Dominic Cummings knows only too well. Which is why the Johnson government, as well as the Trump administration and their cut-outs in Brazil, Hungary, Israel, India and elsewhere, are in the process of drafting draconian emergency legislation that will have a longer term goal than the immediate one of preventing contagion.

Western governments will conclude that it is time to shore up capitalism’s immune system against their own publics. The risk is that, given the chance, they will begin treating us, not the virus, as the real plague.

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This essay first appeared on the author’s blog site, Jonathan Cook’s blog.

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

The Democratic establishment is deriving some delusionary cheer from it.  The line of candidates for the presidential nomination has thinned, many falling out and proceeding, suicidally, to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden. 

The case of Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard is particularly telling.  At points, she has spoken with sober detachment on the US imperium.  Herself an Iraq War veteran, she preferred to eschew military intervention and regime change tools of foreign policy.  The US record on that matter is lengthy, ignominious and bloody.  Peter Harris, writing in The National Interest, suggested the ideas of a realist at play, at least in a fashion; “that the United States must sometimes tolerate the existence of brutal foreign governments, especially if they share a common interest in fighting the same terrorist groups as America.” 

Such mild and calculating cynicism did not go down well in certain Democratic quarters.  Gabbard was accused of being a Russian asset by the perennially loathing Hillary Clinton.  Her politics on the US imperium, questioning of its international engagements, notably in Syria, struck Clinton as odd, even to the point of being mildly treasonous.  The remarks from Clinton on the “Campaign HQ” podcast are worth quoting in full: “She’s the favourite of the Russians, they have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not, because she’s also a Russian asset.  Yeah, she’s a Russian asset, I mean totally.  They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”

This posturing libel by Clinton had a disruptive effect.  Gabbard might have laughed them off as the mad bile of the defeated, but she took it seriously enough to take to the courts.  In January, Gabbard initiated defamation proceedings, claiming that Clinton lied “publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent.”  The complaint makes accurate reading, at least when it comes to portrayals of Clinton, she with “a stranglehold over the Democratic party”.

Gabbard, like Bernie Sanders, has also had her issues with the dark machinery of the Democratic National Committee.  In September 2019, she made her sentiments clear.  “There’s just been a lack of transparency … lack of transparency means lack of trust in the process and that they’re trying to take the power away from votes to actually be the ones to decide who continues to move forward in this campaign.” 

One point at issue was the restrictions placed by the DNC on who should qualify for candidate debates, using individual donors and polling averages as criteria.  It was a decision taken without explanation and, as tends to be the nature of DNC machinations, behind closed doors.  The DNC also preferred to adopt polls – again, without explanation – that tended to disfavour Gabbard, despite her meeting the donation threshold.  Despite the muck levelled at her, she managed two delegates on Super Tuesday.  True to form, the DNC again showed its colours by tinkering with the donor prerequisite to give former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg a chance.  The establishment cheer squad was clear flexing some muscle.

Gabbard’s remarks on that particular bit of manipulation were hard to impeach.

“The fact that a billionaire can come in and have that kind of influence to change rules of the DNC – all of a sudden, not coincidentally, to be able to benefit Michael Bloomberg … They are picking winners and losers before voters have the opportunity to do so.”

With the party machinery marshalled against her, Gabbard’s chances were always small.  She also proved a bit too individual for her party colleagues, preferring to vote “present” when it came to the two articles of impeachment drafted against President Donald Trump.  It was a heresy that brought out the pitchforks. 

“Look, I did not take the easy vote,” Gabbard reflected.  “I took the vote that I felt was in the best interest of our country and standing in the centre to be able to bring the country together, to be able to begin this reconciliation that I think is so necessary in this terribly divided moment in our country.” 

Last week, Gabbard’s will had crumbled.  Rather than being proudly defiant, she showed that she was a lady for turning.  Hatchets would be buried and differences set aside.  “After Tuesday’s election, it is clear that Democratic Primary voters have chosen Vice President Joe Biden to be the person who will take on President Trump in the general election.”   

The statement is rich with presumption, though might sadly prove to be the case, given the Democratic tendency to self-immolation.  “Although I may not agree with the vice president on every issue, I now that he has a good heart, and he’s motivated by his love for our country and the American people.”  Her skills on spotting that heart must be other-worldly in nature. “I’m confident that he will lead our country, guided by the spirit of aloha respect and compassion, and thus help heal the divisiveness that has been tearing our country apart.”  A misplaced confidence, if ever there was one.    

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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]

Here in Washington state, a spokesman for the nursing home that is the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak said on Sunday that he and his colleagues “had seen some residents go from no symptoms to death in just a matter of hours.” COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, does not necessarily progress little by little toward a critical stage.

The spokesman’s comments about the unpredictability and volatility of COVID-19 reminded me of how our planet is responding to climate change. While scientists measure climate change in fractions of degrees Celsius, its symptoms stubbornly refuse to emerge slowly and incrementally. We can no longer expect that weather patterns and glaciers and ecosystems will continue to change bit by bit. They may reach a tipping point and then collapse suddenly and perhaps even irreversibly—like a patient in a nursing home who seems fine one day but is dead the next.

As with climate change, the impacts of the coronavirus are unevenly distributed. Some places are harder hit than others, and some people are more vulnerable than others. Moreover, the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 has been remarkably similar to how it has handled climate change: with a combination of denial and delaying tactics that will ultimately cost the public far more than taking quick action. And not just in dollars: Coronavirus denial could get people killed, by discouraging them from taking precautionary measures.

Here are some key strategies from the climate-denial playbook that are now showing up in the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus:

Downplay the danger. While public health officials caution people to wash their hands, maintain social distance, and avoid large public gatherings, President Trump and some of the conservative media personalities who support him have been spreading a very different message, asserting that COVID-19 is no worse than the common cold or the flu. (Trump even called the disease “coronaflu.”) Trump has speculated that the World Health Organization’s estimated mortality rate of 3.4 percent “is really a false number” and claimed that thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people recover from the disease “just by sitting around and even going to work.”

It has become difficult to believe anything the president says about the coronavirus, considering that it was less than three weeks ago when he posted this tweet:

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020

Even now, with the disease spreading exponentially and public health agencies issuing warnings, the president, a self-described germaphobe, continues to shake hands with person after person and to make statements minimizing the risk to the American public. This is similar to how Trump has attacked climate assessments from his own government, saying he doesn’t believe human activities are causing economically damaging climate change. However, the president’s attempts to downplay the risks of coronavirus may be less effective than his dismissal of climate risks, say experts interviewed by E&E News, “given the virus’s immediate effect on human lives and the financial sector.”

Reject, restrict, or misrepresent the experts. The Trump administration has worked overtime to rid government reports and policies of references to the scientific consensus that human activities are destabilizing the planet’s climate. Trump has proposed a 26 percent budget cut for the Environmental Protection Agency, which is tasked with climate regulation.

Similarly, the administration has dramatically downsized epidemic-prevention activities at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), shut down the entire global health security unit of the National Security Council, eliminated the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund, and postponed an annual intelligence report warning that the United States is unprepared for a global pandemic. The president’s latest budget proposal would cut the CDC budget by almost 16 percent, and the Department of Health and Human Services budget by almost 10 percent. Trump claims he can bring in public-health experts on demand, as if they are gig workers who sit at home waiting for the government to call with an assignment.

Although the president has been briefed about the coronavirus outbreak by experts at the CDC and other government agencies—and brags about his “natural ability” to understand COVID-19—he routinely commandeers the microphone to make inaccurate statements about the number of Americans infected, the likelihood that the disease will spread, and the speed at which a vaccine can be introduced. After a meeting with GOP senators yesterday, for example, Trump said the virus “will go away” and made one of many misleading comparisons with seasonal flu: “So you have 8,000 [flu deaths] versus 26 [coronavirus] deaths at this time—with all of that being said, we’re taking this unbelievably seriously, and I think we’re doing a very good job.”

"Stay calm. It will go away."

Pres. Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat after meeting with GOP leaders, telling @marykbruce that "everybody has to be vigilant and has to be careful," but "a lot of good things are going to happen." https://t.co/LGAuScwblO pic.twitter.com/8yeSaJnnWn

— ABC News (@ABC) March 10, 2020

Delay action. When it doesn’t work to simply deny that a problem like climate change or COVID-19 exists, the administration has been slow to take action and direct resources to the problem. For example, Trump asked for only $2.5 billion to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, with half of that money to be diverted from other programs. Congress instead authorized $8.3 billion in emergency funding.

Now that it has become clear that the virus will become widespread and may have a severe economic toll, Trump is proposing to cut payroll taxes, provide assistance to hourly workers who have to stay home from their jobs, and give bailouts to the travel and hospitality industries. Economists generally agree that it is far more costly to deal with problems like the coronavirus and climate change later rather than sooner. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of adaptation.

The coronavirus response in the United States is now shifting from containment and precautionary measures to a pandemic-style response, but that shift is still happening community by community, rather than as a society-wide program to mobilize resources. The same is true of climate change, with some cities and states taking climate action but the federal government on permanent pause.

Make it political. When the president makes himself the messenger on a public health issue such as climate change or coronavirus, the message automatically becomes political. It also becomes less credible, because only one-third of American voters view Trump as an honest person, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. Trump is a lousy coronavirus response spokesperson for the same reason that Al Gore was problematic as a climate campaigner: Having a politician as the spokesperson for a public health issue virtually guarantees that a lot of Americans will not take the issue seriously—and makes it easier for conspiracy theories and disinformation to thrive.

Some of the GOP senators who met with Trump yesterday reportedly asked him to make Anthony Fauci the face of the coronavirus response. That’s a great suggestion. Fauci, a prominent medical expert who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would focus on the science, not the political spin. And you’d never see him on television spreading germs from person to person along a rope line.

Blame someone else. When things aren’t going well, Trump’s first impulse is to blame anyone but himself. He points the finger at China and India for their climate-altering emissions and claims the Paris climate agreement gives those countries an unfair advantage over the United States.

In the case of the coronavirus, Trump initially accused China of not being transparent about the outbreak but more recently has focused his attention on the media and the Democratic Party, claiming that “fake news” about COVID-19 is causing markets to tank, and that the coronavirus situation has been exaggerated “far beyond what the facts would warrant.” The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., even told Fox News that Democrats hope the coronavirus “kills millions of people so they can end Donald Trump’s streak of winning,” a comment he later justified by saying he is “entitled to speak, with hyperbole.” Meanwhile, both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence tried to blame former president Barack Obama for the slow rollout of coronavirus test kits, even though the delay was caused by a policy adopted during the Trump administration.

Ignore the physical reality. Although the president’s thinking on both the coronavirus and climate change seems to be evolving from “hoax” to “serious,” he and his administration are still treating these public health issues as if they can be fixed with a well-placed tweet or budget appropriation, rather than through long-term investment in preparation and mitigation. This is a profound failure to acknowledge that even the most powerful humans on the planet cannot rewrite the laws of physics.

As author and climate activist Bill McKibben wrote in his newly launched climate newsletter at The New Yorker, “a physical shock like COVID-19 is a reminder that the world is a physical place. That’s easy to forget when we apprehend it mostly through screens, or through the cozy, contained environments that make up most of our lives. We seem to have a great deal of control, right until the moment that we don’t have any. Things can go very, very wrong, and very, very quickly. That’s precisely what scientists have been telling us for decades now about the climate crisis, and it’s what people have learned, from Australia to California, Puerto Rico, and everywhere that flood and fire has broken out.”

President Trump may eventually learn this lesson, too. But for the elderly residents of that nursing home near Seattle, and the hundreds of thousands of people around the globe who are dying annually from climate impacts, things have already gone very, very wrong.

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Dawn Stover is a contributing editor at the Bulletin. A science writer based in the Pacific Northwest, her work has appeared in Scientific American, Conservation, Popular Science, New Scientist, The New York Times, and other publications. One of her articles is included in the 2010 Best American Science and Nature Writing, and another article was awarded a special citation by the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism.

Featured image: President Trump visited the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on March 6, 2020. From the left: Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, CDC director Robert R. Redfield, and CDC associate director Stephan Monroe. Credit: White House photo by Shealah Craighead

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the United States unlike any other event in recent history, proving to be far more disruptive to American society, and far most damaging to the U.S. economy, than even the events of 9/11. 

The U.S. response is something President Trump has likened to a “war,” going so far as to label himself a “wartime President,” leading the U.S. against “the toughest enemy” in a struggle in which he vows “total victory.” If the fight against the coronavirus is a war, then the virus clearly took the U.S. government by surprise. “Certainly we didn’t get an early run on it, Trump noted in a press conference on March 17. “It would’ve been helpful if we knew about it earlier.”

It is the job of the U.S. intelligence community to provide senior U.S. government policy makers, including the president, with advance warning about potential crises. The U.S. taxpayer pays a premium for this service; in 2020, the budget for the National Intelligence Program, which includes all programs, projects and activities of the U.S. intelligence community, was $62.8 billion.

Included in this budget is a small, specialized intelligence unit known as the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), which operates as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The mission of the NCMI is to serve as the lead activity within the Department of Defense (DoD) “for the production of medical intelligence,” and to prepare and coordinate “integrated, all-source intelligence for the DoD and other government and international organizations on foreign health threats and other medical issues to protect U.S. interests worldwide.”

For a small agency, the NCMI packs a large punch in terms of the overall impact of its product. For example, in April 2009—two months prior to when the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially declared the global outbreak of H1N1 influenza a pandemic, NCMI published an intelligence product, known as an “Infectious Disease Risk Assessment,” which predicted that a recent outbreak of the Swine Flu (H1N1) would become a pandemic.

The positive work done by the NCMI in relation to the H1N1 outbreak contributed to the creation of the 2012 “National Strategy for Biosurveillance,” designed to help facilitate a full-time institutionalized process for obtaining timely and accurate insight on current and emerging biological risks. President Obama himself noted the critical role played by “accurate and timely information” during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic that enabled decision makers, including himself, to “develop the effective responses that save lives.

“The sooner we can detect and understand a threat,” Obama wrote in the introduction to the first National Strategy for Biosurveillance, “the faster we can take action to protect the American people.”

Providing this early detection of a threat is the mission of the NCMI. When it comes to diseases like H1N1 and the coronavirus, this task falls under the remit of the NCMI’s Infectious Disease Division, whose baseline requirement, according to a former commanding officer, Air Force Col. (Dr.) Anthony M. Rizzo, “is to understand the risk of every type of [endemic] infectious disease in every country.”

“When we think of the word biosurveillance, we think of the kinds of things that the public health community does—collecting cases, taking cultures, deciding which disease is which,” Rizzo said. “But we in the intelligence community are looking way before that to determine [if there are] threats on the horizon.”

The NCMI’s job, Rizzo noted, is predictive in nature—not to explain what is happening, but rather “what we believe is going to happen.” To do this, NCMI has access to the resources of the totality of the intelligence community, including intercepted communications, satellite imagery, and sensitive human intelligence, including covert sample collection.

The coronavirus was clearly part of the NCMI’s remit. And yet its first Infectious Disease Risk Assessment for COVID-19 was issued on January 5, 2020, reporting that 59 people had been taken ill in Wuhan, China. This report was derived not from any sensitive intelligence collection effort or independent biosurveillance activity, but rather from a report issued to the WHO by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, dated January 5, 2020.

The next day the CDC warned American citizens to take precautions if traveling to China, followed a day later with the activation of a COVID-19 incident management team within the CDC Emergency Management System. This, however, is not the kind of predictive analysis that U.S. policymakers needed if they were going to get ahead of the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike 2009, when the NCMI provided a full two months heads up about the threat of a Swine Flu pandemic, in 2020 the Trump administration was taking its cues from the WHO, which waited until January 30, 2020 to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The NCMI had been relegated to a mere observer, having failed in its mission to provide timely, predictive analysis of pending epidemiological threats.

Almost everything the NCMI knew about the current situation in Wuhan came from the WHO, which had been working very closely with Chinese authorities from the Chinese Center of Disease Control (CCDC) to determine the origin and nature of the coronavirus outbreak. While a great deal of attention has been paid to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in the city of Wuhan, which sells live poultry, fish, and several kinds of wild animals to the public, a detailed investigation by the Joint Field Epidemiology Investigation Team, a specialized task force working under the auspices of the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CCDC), found that the COVID-19 epidemic did not originate by animal-to-human transmission in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as originally believed, but rather human-to-human transmission totally unrelated to the operation of the market.

Moreover, by analyzing the characteristic of some 27 genomes of the COVID-19 virus provided by the Chinese and published by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GSAID), research scientists were able to determine that the “most recent common ancestor” for the coronavirus could be dated back to as early as October 1, 2019.

The importance of this date as it relates to the NCMI is that in mid-October 2019 a delegation of 300 U.S. military athletes arrived in Wuhan to participate in the 2019 Military World games. China has suggested that these personnel might have introduced the coronavirus infection to Wuhan, citing their own research thatsuggests that the virus was introduced into China from elsewhere, and Japanese and Taiwanese studies that point to the U.S. as the likely source of the virus. There is, however, no independent evidence to support these allegations.

The importance of the U.S. military athletes rests in the fact that the NCMI is responsible for conducting threat briefs for all deployments of military personnel world-wide, which meant that a Wuhan-specific Infectious Disease Risk Assessment would have necessarily been prepared in support of this deployment. Infectious Disease Risk Assessments are the bread-and-butter intelligence product produced by the NCMI’s Infectious Disease Division, one in which the totality of the medical intelligence collection and analytical capabilities would be utilized.

The production of a Wuhan-specific Infectious Disease Risk Assessment would have created a window of opportunity for the NCMI to have collected the kind of medical intelligence that could have provided early warning about the existence of the coronavirus. Moreover, these athletes should have been subjected to screening upon return as part of the national biosurveillance program, providing yet another opportunity for early detection of the coronavirus if anyone had been exposed to it during their travel.

The CDC has recently acknowledged, during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on March 11, that its biosurveillance program has uncovered evidence that Americans who had previously died to what had been originally diagnosed as influenza have, through post-mortem testing, been found to have actually have perished from the coronavirus. Normally, the details obtained from this kind of biosurveillance would be widely shared to better understand the scope and potential spread of the infection, as well as to better pin down the source and timing of the infections.

However, the initial meetings regarding a national-level coronavirus response conducted under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, where intelligence gathered as a result of any such biosurveillance activity would logically be discussed, were all treated as classified events, under orders from the National Security Council. As a result, many people who otherwise would have been present were excluded, and those who did attend these meetings were precluded from discussing what occurred. This lack of transparency on the part of the Trump administration only fuels speculation about the reasons for meetings normally conducted in the open suddenly being classified, as well as precisely what information is being hidden from the public.

The sufficiency and efficacy of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic remains to be seen. As President Trump noted on March 17, however, it would have been helpful to have had advance warning. That was the job of the NCMI, and they failed. This failure may have been a result of complacency, incompetence, or just a byproduct of circumstance. Regardless of the reason, the NCMI needs to learn from this experience, and reexamine the totality of the intelligence cycle—the direction, collection, analysis and feedback loop—associated with its failure to adequately predict the coronavirus pandemic. This reexamination should ensure that the U.S. will not be caught flat-footed the next time around, because there will be a next time around.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, including his forthcoming, Scorpion King: America’s Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).

Featured image: A researcher works in a lab that is developing testing for the COVID-19 coronavirus at Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation on February 28, 2020 in Nutley, New Jersey. The facility develops novel therapies for some of the world’s most difficult diseases. At least 53 countries have reported cases of infection. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

The recent explosion of COVID-19 cases in the South East Asian region has contributed to the globally growing pandemic that has impacted our global social order and may have many dramatic unforeseen consequences to come.

It has exposed the fragility of our dynamic inter-connected systems, the lack of adequate response from world leaders in an aggressively deteriorating situation, and perhaps worst of all, the apathy and ignorance of a significant segment of the global population to the severity of the pandemic.

It is not necessary to re-cap here on the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Beginning in China, the virus ultimately found its’ way to West Asia, South East Asia, Australia, Europe (which has been the worst hit to date, even surpassing China is some respects) and ultimately America. The danger it presents is indisputable, especially to the most vulnerable of us.

Governments have issued various controls to help contain the spread of the virus, but has had limited success.  The virus infection rates still continue to rise as medical infrastructures are now being strained, with a frightening prospect that when overburdened, the death tolls will begin to rise, much like the case of Italy.

But why is the spread of the virus still increasing and the situation still deteriorating?

A lot has to do with the continuous movement of people who are spreading the virus around and abroad, despite movement control orders that have been issued to curb and control such movements.

France and the United States of America still see mass gatherings occurring.  Italy before the pandemic crippled the country had a lax attitude towards the severity of the disease and disregarded the government’s advice to maintain social distancing. This is also happening in South East Asia with the recent Muslim Tabligh gathering in Malaysia, with an estimated 12, to 16 thousand people attending. This particular incident was one of the catalysts for the recent spike in Covid-19 cases in Malaysia and South East Asia.

Is this incident the fault of an apathetic populace or a group that is inanely selfish as to put the lives of others at risk for their own pursuits?

Not entirely.

While it is true that there were many who were more adamant about attending such gatherings, rather than obeying the movement control orders out of some misplaced notion of religiosity, individualism or human rights, the truth is many were also not aware of the severity of the virus’s impact upon the larger community, because of ignorance, or having been taken in by half-truths and fiction from various sources that had spread false information and “fake news”.

Information, that emphasizes the allegedly low death rates associated with of the virus; that the virus only survives in certain climates; that it is no worse than the common cold; and even the latest on how the virus can be treated with simply drinking warm water to flush out the virus from one’s system, have all contributed towards prevailing misunderstandings and misconceptions about Covid-19.

This illustrates one of the greatest ironies of our times, in that social media, while it has enabled us to become more connected and informed, has also allowed for such fallacies to spread and pollute discourse and thus  affect policy and decision-making.

And the bureaucracy of the larger governments, slow-moving as is their nature, were not quick enough in many instances, to address the rumors and misinformation in an effective manner. By the time they acted, the virus had spread to such a degree, that lockdown and containments were the only drastic options left.

Many of the falsities are still being propagated to this day with some members of the elite classes and “well-learned” members of the public still defying movement controls and arguing technicalities over the directive.

Governments need to play a more dynamic role in the face of this crisis, but they  also need to draw a lesson from this crisis as well, that education of the population, clear directions and communications are also important to manage a crisis such as this.

Liberties are important in times of peace, but a clear leadership is needed in times of crisis.

There has been a lot of slow and overly cautious response from the governments and not enough pro-active decision making. People have been stricken by the disease because of all the misinformation, lack of education on the situation, and poor forms of governance in managing it.

Should there be a much larger threat looming on the horizon, far worse than COVID-19, given our current handling of the crisis, it is truly doubtful we could manage the next one at all.

However, with all the gloom that has been addressed, the ray of hope that can be gleaned is the willingness of so many people to stand vigilant against wrongdoings and misinformation.

The dedication and proactiveness of the medical community who argue against such misinformation, while serving on the frontlines to battle the disease is commendable.

The police and law enforcement personnel who are out there enforcing the movement control order putting themselves at risk to help the community retain a semblance of order also deserve our accolades.

The people who continuously reach out to educate others of the disease and of the important steps to take in managing it, while calling out those who continue to disregard the severity of the situation, are also doing a commendable job.

All these groups and others I have not highlighted could play a constructive role, once the crisis is over. They could help Malaysia and the world to be better, stronger and wiser.

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Hassanal Noor Rashid is Programme Coordinator at the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Though often discussed in relation to nuclear war or a similarly chaotic scenario, “continuity of government” plans can be triggered even by popular, nonviolent opposition to an unpopular war abroad. It exists solely to keep the current system in place, regardless of the cost.

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 Last week, Newsweek published a report entitled “Inside The Military’s Top Secret Plans If Coronavirus Cripples the Government,” which offers vague descriptions of different military plans that could be put into effect if the civilian government were to be largely incapacitated, with a focus on the potential of the current novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to result in such a scenario.

The article’s author, William Arkin, largely frames these plans as new, though — buried deep within the article — he eventually mentions that such contingency plans can be traced back to the Eisenhower administration (though they were in place before) and have since been developed and updated by most subsequent administrations, largely through the issuance of executive orders. Arkin also points out that some of these “Continuity of Government”, or COG, plans include the “devolution” of leadership and Constitutional authority, which he notes “could circumvent the normal Constitutional provisions for government succession, and military commanders could be placed in control around America.”

Screenshot from Newsweek

 

 

Yet, there are key aspects of COG and its development that Arkin leaves out. For instance, in his timeline on how such plans have developed in the post-World War II era, he conveniently fails to mention any of the Reagan administration’s major changes to COG, including the Reagan-era Executive Order on which all current COG programs are based. Indeed, many of the “extra-Constitutional” aspects of COG that Arkin mentions began during the Reagan administration, when these plans were redrafted to largely exclude members of Congress, including the Speaker of the House, from succession plans and even moved to essentially eliminate Congress in the event of COG being implemented, with near total power instead being given to the executive branch and the military. It was also during this time that the “devolution” aspect of COG was hammered out, as it created three president-cabinet “teams” to be stationed in different parts of the country outside of the nation’s capital. Arkin’s decision to not mention how COG was a major focus of the Reagan administration is striking given that that administration poured hundreds of millions of dollars annually into COG planning and development and also conducted COG drills on a regular basis.

Furthermore, the Miami Herald revealed in 1987, that the COG programs of that era were deeply connected to what the Herald termed “a virtual parallel government outside the traditional cabinet departments and agencies” that began operating “almost from the day Reagan took office” and included military and intelligence operatives as well as many of Reagan’s closest advisers, including then-CIA Director William Casey. The Herald further claimed that this “parallel government” had been responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal (i.e. “involved in arming the Nicaraguan rebels”) as well as “the drafting of martial law plans for national emergencies,” i.e. COG, as well as “the monitoring of U.S. citizens considered potential security risks.” This “parallel government” planned to use COG to install itself as the ruling power of the country and to detain potential opponents of a U.S. war with Nicaragua in the event that the Reagan administration moved to invade the country.

Other key players in those Reagan-era COG developments, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, former CIA Director James Woosley and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, are also left unmentioned in Arkin’s article. Not mentioning Cheney and Rumsfeld are particularly glaring omissions given that they were involved in the implementation of aspects of those COG plans that went live in the wake of the September 11 attacks, when both men were serving in key posts in the George W. Bush administration.

While Arkin’s omission of the role of the Reagan administration and leading neoconservatives in the development and use of COG is significant, arguably more significant is his failure to mention one of COG’s major components, one that has gone essentially unmentioned by well-known media outlets for well over a decade – Main Core.

The government’s database of “potential troublemakers”

When Reagan issued Executive Order 12656, he created COG plans that could be implemented during “any national security emergency,” which the E.O. loosely defines as “any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.” E.O. 12656 also put the National Security Council (NSC) in charge of developing and administering COG policies.

The NSC official placed in charge of this “secret” COG program was Oliver North, whose name would later become infamous for the key role he played in the Iran-Contra Scandal. During the Iran-Contra hearings in the late 1980s, then-Representative Jack Brooks (D-TX) attempted to ask the following question to North: “Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?” Brooks, however was immediately cut off by Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who stated ” I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that, sir.” Brooks protested, but North was ultimately not required to give an answer.

As the de facto leader of COG development and planning during the Reagan administration, North oversaw the creation of a controversial database that later became known simply as “Main Core.” The Main Core database, first built using the stolen PROMIS software (more information on PROMIS here and here), was essentially a list of American dissidents and “potential troublemakers.” A senior government official with a high-ranking security clearance and service in five presidential administrations described the database to journalist Chris Ketcham in 2008 as follows:

A database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.”

In 1993, Wired magazine stated that:

Using PROMIS, sources point out, North could have drawn up lists of anyone ever arrested for a political protest, for example, or anyone who had ever refused to pay their taxes. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon’s enemies list or Sen. Joe McCarthy’s blacklist look downright crude.”

Main Core is the aspect of COG that is most often ignored in reporting on these types of plans, with Arkin’s article being just a more recent example. While most of the rare mentions of COG in the mainstream touch on how those plans would result in the implementation of martial law and the suspension of the Constitution, they even more rarely — if ever — mention Main Core. Indeed, the last “mainstream” reports on Main Core were written over a decade ago — all in 2008 — by Chris Ketcham in Radar, by Scott Horton in Harper’s and by Tim Shorrock in Salon.

Given that COG is now creeping back into mainstream reporting, revisiting Main Core is essential as the database still exists and has grown considerably since Oliver North first oversaw its creation in the early 1980s. In Ketcham’s 2008 article on the subject, he quotes then-senior government officials who said that, at the time, the number of “unfriendly” Americans on that database was approximately 8 million. Ketcham further notes that, in the event COG is implemented, these individuals could be subject to anything ranging from “heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”

Tim Shorrock, in his coverage of Main Core, noted that the database was seen in use at the White House following the September 11 attacks and there is strong evidence pointing to it having been used by the George W. Bush administration to guide its domestic surveillance activities in the post-9/11 era. A government official who had told a reporter about having seen the database operational at the White House following September 11th “turned white as a sheet” when the reporter mentioned the name “Main Core” specifically. Shorrock’s reporting also details how Main Core includes vast amounts of information on those “unfriendly” Americans, including the fruits of the vast domestic surveillance programs of the NSA and other U.S. federal agencies that continue today and are now set to be expanded due to the current coronavirus crisis.

In a report written last year on the involvement of U.S. and Israeli intelligence and their private sector allies in pushing for new, troubling pre-crime programs, I noted that Main Core is not only available to U.S. intelligence but also Israel’s intelligence apparatus and that Israeli intelligence was involved in the creation and expansion of Main Core. That report also detailed how Main Core was used by members of Reagan’s NSC to blackmail members of Congress, a practice that is likely to have continued under subsequent administrations. It also noted how Main Core today likely involves the same software now used by every U.S. intelligence agency and numerous other federal agencies that is marketed by Palantir, a company created and owned by Trump ally Peter Thiel. Palantir’s software boasts “predictive policing” capabilities and tracks a category of person using the label “subversive,” very much in keeping with the spirit of Main Core.

Main Core and Bill Barr’s Power Grab

Though Main Core was reportedly in use after September 11 to target “unfriendly” individuals for increased domestic surveillance, concern that COG plans in the age of coronavirus could take a more drastic turn and involve the detention of Americans included in that database now seems more plausible than ever. On Saturday, Politico reported that the Department of Justice has demanded new “emergency powers” during the current pandemic and these powers include being able to indefinitely detain Americans without trial. Politico also noted that the DOJ’s controversial new requests “span several stages of the legal process, from initial arrest to how cases are processed and investigated.” Per the DOJ’s requests, indefinite detention would emerge through a new ability whereby the Attorney General or a judge could pause court proceedings whenever courts are “fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”

What Politico did not include in its report is that current Attorney General William Barr has spent the past several months fine-tuning and implementing a “pre-crime” program. Officially known as the “National Disruption and Early Engagement Program” (DEEP), it aims to “identify, assess and engage” potentially violent individuals “before they strike.” Barr first announced this program last October in an official memorandum and therein stated that the program was to be implemented sometime over the course of 2020 and would involve “an efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all lawful means.”

A training conference for that program took place this past December and involved members of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and “private sector partners.” One recent DOJ statement regarding an arrest made last year in Nevada, claimed that that specific case was part of the DOJ’s “National Disruption and Early Engagement Program,” suggesting that this program is already in use — at least in some parts of the country.

In his memorandum, Barr further notes that the program’s “early engagement tactics” were “born of the posture we adopted with respect to terrorist threats” following the September 11 attacks, essentially stating that this pre-crime program will utilize methods from the “War on Terror” domestically and on a massive scale.

Given the context of the current coronavirus crisis, the DOJ’s recent request for sweeping new powers and the role of Main Core in COG plans, one part of Barr’s pre-crime memorandum stands out. In the part of the document where Barr outlines what actions will be taken once an individual is deemed potentially violent or threatening, he writes that those individuals will be subject to detention, court-ordered mental health treatment and electronic monitoring, among other measures.

The possibility of pre-crime detention was also present in the DOJ’s recent request for new “emergency powers” in light of the coronavirus crisis, as it specifically asks that those new powers apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings.” Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told Politico that the inclusion of the term “pre-arrest” likely means that “you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying.”

Thus, if DOJ is granted these new powers it has requested, the William Barr-led Department of Justice will not only be authorized to indefinitely detain Americans without trial, it will be able to detain them without any proof of those detainees having committed a crime or even having plans or the intent to commit a crime. Instead, the DOJ only needs to argue that the individual was “mobilizing towards violence,” an extremely vague phrase that could potentially be used against anyone who expresses discontent with the government or government policy.

Furthermore, with the FBI having recently flagged “conspiracy theorists” (and by extension those who distrust or question government narratives of both past and present) as a “domestic terror threat,” the DOJ could even make the case that failure to blindly trust government narratives presents a threat to the public order. Given that the Main Core database in its current form contains bulk surveillance gathered from social media, phone conversations/messaging apps and even financial information (i.e. purchasing history, etc.) on Americans deemed unfriendly “often for the slightest and most trivial reason,” this unprecedented power grab by the DOJ has an authoritarian and Orwellian potential to target legitimate dissent like never before.

With the specter of COG now snaking its way into mainstream discourse during the coronavirus crisis, it is essential that Americans stay vigilant, as these Orwellian and dystopian “solutions” to allegedly protect us from the current pandemic have been in place long before COVID-19 made its appearance on the world stage or landed on U.S. shores.

It is also essential to remember that COG, Main Core and the DOJ’s pre-crime program were all created and are currently controlled by extremely corrupt and fundamentally untrustworthy individuals who have not only been involved in innumerable scandals over the years, but have also installed and supported some of the most authoritarian, savage and horrific dictators the world has ever seen. To trust them with such unprecedented and dangerous powers in a period of national confusion and panic is tantamount to beckoning the horrors of those dictatorships — past and present — to come home to roost.

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Whitney Webb is a MintPress News contributing journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

Last Monday, a bipartisan group of Senators and a coalition including libertarian and progressive activists thwarted a scheme to ram through the Senate legislation renewing three provisions of the USA FREEDOM Act (previously known as the USA PATRIOT Act). The bill had already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and most expected it to sail through the Senate. But, instead, Senate leadership had to settle for a 77-day extension.

Senate leadership was also forced to allow consideration of several amendments at a later date. Included is Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment that would forbid the FISA court from issuing warrants targeting American citizens.

Deep state supporters claim the expiring business records provision (which authorizes the collection of our communications and was at the center of Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations), lone wolf provision (which allows government to subject an individual with no known ties to terrorists to warrantless surveillance), and roving wiretaps provision (which allows government to monitor communications on any device that may be used by a targeted individual) are necessary to keep Americans safe. But, since Congress first passed the PATRIOT Act almost 20 years ago, mass surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, and bulk data collection have not stopped a single terrorist attack.

The legislation does have “reforms” aimed at protecting civil liberties, but these new protections contain loopholes that render the protections meaningless. For example, the bill requires those targeted for surveillance to be notified that the government spied on them. However, this requirement can be waived if the government simply claims — not proves but just clams — that notifying the target would harm “national security.”

The notice provision also only applies to the target of an investigations. So, if you were caught up in a federal investigation because a coworker is being targeted and you shared an office computer, or if a store clerk reported to the government you and others bought pressure cookers, the government could collect your phone records, texts, and social media posts without giving you the chance to challenge the government’s actions.

The bill also makes some reforms to the special FISA court, which serves as a rubber stamp for the intelligence community. These reforms are mainly aimed at protecting political campaigns and candidates. They would not stop the FISA court from rubber-stamping surveillance on organizations that oppose the welfare-warfare-surveillance-fiat money status quo.

Anything limiting warrantless wiretapping and mass surveillance should be supported. However, nothing short of repeal of the USA FREEDOM Act will restore respect for our right to live our lives free of the fear that Big Brother is watching. The path to liberty, peace, and prosperity starts with eliminating all unconstitutional laws and returning to a system of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, sound money, and a foreign policy that seeks peaceful commerce and friendship with all instead of seeking new monsters to destroy.

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