The British Ministry of Justice has told the Australian Associated Press that Julian Assange is not eligible for early release from prison in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.

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Imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is not eligible for an early Covid-19 release from prison with other inmates because he is not serving a criminal sentence, the Australian Associated Press has reported.

British Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said Saturday that some low-risk inmates, weeks from release, will be let go with monitoring devices to help avoid a further outbreak of Covid-19 in the nations’ prisons.

So far 88 prisoners and 15 staff have tested positive for the virus in British prisons. More than 25 percent of the nations’ prison staff are quarantining themselves.

“This government is committed to ensuring that justice is served to those who break the law,” Buckland said in a statement. “But this is an unprecedented situation because if coronavirus takes hold in our prisons, the NHS could be overwhelmed and more lives put at risk.”

The Ministry of Justice told the AAP that Assange won’t be among those released because he isn’t serving a custodial sentence. In other words, because he has not been convicted of a crime, and is instead only being held on remand pending the outcome of the U.S. extradition request, he must remain in Belmarsh prison with high-risk inmates–the most serious and hardened criminals.

The Daily Maverick reported this week that there is one other prisoner on remand in Belmarsh, who would presumably also be left to rot in the jail as the virus spreads throughout the British prison system.

Christine Assange, the publisher’s mother, tweeted:

WikiLeaks Ambassador Joseph Farrell released this video:

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He made the remark during a press conference on Monday that was held online due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

To a question about the remarks by some American officials, including Donald Trump, about contacting Iran for suspension of sanctions, Mousavi said “there are too many inconsistencies in the remarks of American officials. But what matters is that all admit to the cruel and illegal nature of the sanctions. We have brought the issue to everyone’s attention, including the Americans. If the US refuses to lend a hand, it could at least refrain from causing further obstacles.”

“We are calling on all independent and civilized countries around the world to disregard the US unilateral and illegal sanctions,” he added.

“We have made repeated requests [for the removal of sanctions] through official and public channels; we have sent letters to presidents and foreign ministers of other countries, as well the Secretary General of the United Nations, but all of the requests have been rejected because of the US’ bullying temperament. We don’t have any faith in the US’ goodwill, but would appreciate it if they at least refrained from causing any more harm,” Mousavi said.

The spokesman stressed that Iran is under the most severe sanctions, and “contrary to the US’ claims, the routes for medicine delivery to Iran are blocked.”

“Because we have been under sanctions for years, we have learned how to overcome the threat through reliance on our domestic resources. But foreign aid would certainly facilitate our efforts to tackle issues,” he added.

Tehran says the US unilateral and illegal sanctions imposed under the guise of the maximum pressure campaign undermine Iran’s ability to effectively fight the coronavirus in the long run without international support.

Last Tuesday, more than 30 members of the US Congress — including Senators Bernie Sanders and Edward J. Markey as well as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, wrote a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, urging the suspension of US sanction on Iran as a humanitarian gesture to 80 million Iranian people at this crucial time.

Among the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19, Iran said 58,226 people contracted the disease, and 3,603 died as of Sunday.

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Henry Kissinger Calls for a New Post-Covid World Order

By Mike Whitney, April 06, 2020

Henry Kissinger thinks the Coronavirus is a threat to his precious New World Order, so he wants President Trump to do whatever he can to protect the system. In an opinion piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the former Secretary of State urged Trump to launch a grand project, like the Marshall Plan, to unify the allies and convince them that the Uncle Sam can still rally the troops in a time of crisis.

COVID-19 a Diabolical Totalitarian Plot?

By Stephen Lendman, April 06, 2020

Today indeed is the most perilous time in world history. COVID-19 is being used by US-led powerful forces to convince ordinary people in the West and elsewhere to sacrifice personal freedoms for greater security.

Their aim is all about eliminating both by getting unwitting populations to accept what harms their well-being and futures.

It’s also about consolidating greater wealth and power, the public none the wiser.

People, Profit and Planned Economy

By Massoud Nayeri, April 06, 2020

The concept of an economic system that puts Profit over People has been explained and discussed many times and in many ways. It just took a tiny virus (COVID-19) to display the contradiction between People and Profit as an urgent national question. In this equation, President Trump, as the voice of most powerful capitalist country on earth (the “GREAT AMERICA”) with his cheerleaders mostly at Fox News and in favor of PROFIT, suggests that “We have to get back to work” as soon as possible. Contrary to this idea, the scientists, medical community and people who are actually in the battlefield fighting this disease are representing the PEOPLE in this equation. Based on the ongoing and rapid escalation in the number of the infected and dead, they believe that the nation is not ready to go back to work.

A Globalized World Economy, COVID-19 and China’s “Health Silk Road”

By Sara Flounders, April 06, 2020

The global COVID-19 viral pandemic has exposed in the sharpest light the contradiction between a globalized world economy and a still existing but archaic capitalist system based on the private expropriation of wealth and resources.

The relentless drive to reap a profit from every type of human interaction now stands exposed as the greatest danger to the people of the whole planet.

Was the Federal Reserve Just Nationalized?

By Ellen Brown, April 06, 2020

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillionavailable to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

Fake Coronavirus Data, Fear Campaign. Spread of the COVID-19 Infection

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 05, 2020

Do not let yourself be misled by the fear campaign, pointing to a Worldwide coronavirus calamity with repeated “predictions” that hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.

These are boldface lies. Scientific assessments of the health impacts of  the COVID-19 have been withheld, they do not make the headlines.

While COVID-19 constitutes a serious health issue, why is it the object of  fear and panic?

COVID-19 Depression: Trump Needs a War

By Kurt Nimmo, April 05, 2020

Critical supply lines foolishly based on the globalist profit-maximizing concept of “just in time” are now breaking down. How long do you suppose unemployed service industry and gig-economy workers will tolerate a serious shortage of food and other essentials before looting stores like the poor and hungry of Palermo? How long before armed citizens begin taking what they need and the military is called in to restore order and confiscate weapons like they did during Katrina? All hell will break loose from Baltimore to Seattle and the government may impose martial law (it can be argued we are already under a soft form of martial-medical law, half of us confined to our homes, the equivalent of house arrest, scared to death of a virus they now say can spread by merely opening of one’s mouth and speaking and thus allowing viral-laden breath to drift in the air). 

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The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying the cruelty of US foreign policy. The economic collapse is showing the failure of neoliberalism and how the empire-economy is not working for the people of the world, including the United States.

The US is losing its global dominance as it demonstrates its own incompetence in response to the pandemic and its viciousness in the midst of this crisis. Other countries are showing leadership and solidarity while the US is escalating its attacks.

This is an opportunity to change direction. What seemed impossible in the recent past is now possible. We must seize the opportunity to create change that ensures the necessities of the people are met and the planet is protected. COVID-19 is one immediate crisis, but the climate crisis, nuclear war and economic insecurity all require solidarity between the people of the world.

End Venezuela Sanctions sign on the Venezuela Embassy, from Venezuela Embassy Protectors Collective.

The World Is Turning Against Washington For Undermining Solidarity During The Crisis

No country can fully recover from COVID-19 or the economic collapse unless these crises are resolved for the whole world. Both the economy and pandemic are global and interconnected as are the looming crises of climate chaos and nuclear war. Rather than showing solidarity with other nations in the midst of the crises, the US is escalating economic sanctions and threatening war while undermining a global response to climate and increasing the risks of nuclear war.

Black Alliance for Peace points out: “The brutality and criminality of the colonial/capitalist system of state violence is reflected most graphically by the illegal and immoral policy of sanctions imposed on 39 nations by the U.S. and its Western allies.” Venezuela, Iran and other nations are being denied the ability to import medicines and medical equipment to protect their populations from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 23, the UN General Secretary António Guterres called for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world” saying nations should “focus together on the true fight of our lives – the #COVID19 pandemic.” Fifty-three countries immediately agreed. Instead of heeding this call, the US has threatened Iran and Venezuela with military attacks and continued the war with Yemen while eliminating the majority of humanitarian assistance to Yemen. These actions were wrong before the pandemic, but in the midst of the pandemic, they are obscene.

China is sending medical supplies and assistance to 89 countries so far as part of its Health Silk Road. It is ignoring US sanctions by sending drugs, test kits, and supplies to Iran and Venezuela. Hard-hit Italy noted that the other EU nations ignored their desperate plea for medical equipment while China responded. China is building positive relationships by providing essential equipment and expertise while the US is trying and failing to get other nations to sign on to a statement blaming COVID-19 on China.

Cuba has sent brigades of doctors and nurses to Italy, as well as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Suriname, and Grenada. Russia has also sent medical supplies to hard-hit countries like Italy. Even Venezuela, suffering from a US economic blockade and threats of a military attack, is sending aid to its neighbors, including Ecuador and Colombia– even though Colombia has joined the US in threatening Venezuela. The US blocked a shipment of coronavirus aid for Cuba from China’s richest man, Jack Ma, including 100,000 facemasks and 10 COVID-19 diagnostic kits, along with other supplies.

Europe is starting to break with the United States. The EU finally sent aid to Iran ignoring US sanctions. France, Germany, and Britain have sent medical goods to Iran through INSTEX — a workaround to export goods to Iran that bypasses US sanctions. This development could have major implications for the ability of the US to unilaterally sanction nations as it provides a way for countries to trade without the US’ financial system. Europe, led by Germany, also backed out of war games against Russia, which would have included a practice nuclear attack, due to the COVID-19 virus.

President Rouhani of Iran sent an open letter to the people of the United States saying, “the war on this virus can only be successful if all nations can win this war together, and no affected nation is left behind.” He urged us to change the direction of the US government, writing, “Future generations will judge the American people based on the actions of their government.”

The zig-zagging incompetence of US policy is evident. During the three months when the Trump administration did not take the virus seriously, the Intercept reports the United States allowed exports of medical supplies and equipment. After examining vessel manifests, the Intercept found “medical equipment needed to treat the coronavirus [was] being shipped abroad as recently as March 17.” This has led to a “persistent lack of medical supplies” in the US.

Now, the US has angered allies by diverting medical supplies to the US. The Washington Post reports that “Berlin expressed outrage over what they said was the diversion to the United States of 200,000 masks that were en route from China, while officials in Brazil and France complained that the United States was outbidding them in the global marketplace for critical medical supplies.” They report the US is also stopping the export of masks to Canada and Latin America.

Even worse, Trump took time from his daily press conference on COVID-19 to escalate threats against Venezuela by sending US naval vessels near Venezuela’s borders. AP reports “The deployment is one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama … It involves assets like Navy warships, AWACS surveillance aircraft and on-ground special forces seldom seen before in the region.”

This followed a phony indictment of President Maduro and other Venezuelan leaders for alleged narcotrafficking that included a $15 million bounty on Maduro. President Maduro wrote an open letter to the people of the world that decried the indictment as illegal and part of a US coup attempt writing, “the U.S. government, instead of focusing on policies of global cooperation in health and prevention, has increased unilateral coercive measures, has rejected requests from the international community to lift or make flexible the illegal sanctions that prevent Venezuela from accessing medicines, medical equipment, and food.” The indictment was announced after Venezuela prevented weapons financed by the US from being sent into Venezuela from Colombia for another coup attempt.

Venezuelans in the US who want to fly back to Venezuela to escape the economic and health crises here are not being allowed to charter flights from Florida. The escalation against Venezuela also included the US-controlled IMF blocking a COVID-19 emergency loan to Venezuela. Venezuela has taken aggressive actions to stop the spread of the virus and has been more effective than the US.

The US also shows disregard for its own people, including those in the military, by firing a US Navy Capt. Brett Crozier after he sought help for sailors on the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier. Crozier wrote his superiors about hundreds of COVID-19 cases and when the letter was leaked, he was fired. As he left the ship, the crew cheered him for standing up for their health and risking his career.  The first government official fired over the virus was one trying to protect people from illness. The US has also directed that reports on COVID-19 in the military be kept secret.

The actions of the US are leading to the reshaping of global leadership.” Patrick Coburn describes COVID-19 as a “Chernobyl moment” and concludes “nobody is today looking to Washington for a solution to the crisis.”

National Security Redefined

The people of the United States have been sold a false definition of national security. The pandemic shows that mass military spending on bombs, weapons, bases, and troops does not provide security. The coronavirus is expected to kill between 100,000 to 240,000 people in the United States if our response goes well and could be more than one million if it is inadequate.  Deaths have already passed 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and could exceed the Vietnam War and World War 1.

We need to redefine national security. David Swanson calls for a real Department of Defense that would prioritize “the twin dangers of nuclear and climate apocalypse, and the accompanying spin-offs like coronavirus.” He points out it would be less expensive to provide financial security and top medical care to everyone on the globe than to fight wars.

Gareth Porter writes, “For decades, the military-industrial-congressional complex has force-fed the American public a warped conception of US national security-focused entirely around perpetuating warfare. The cynical conflation of national security with waging war on designated enemies around the globe effectively stifled public awareness of the clear and present danger posed to its survival by the global pandemic. As a result, Congress was simply not called upon to fund the vitally important equipment that doctors and nurses needed for the Covid-19 crisis.”

The Pentagon was well aware of the threat of a pandemic and anticipated the lack of ventilators, face masks, and hospital beds, according to a 2017 Pentagon plan. Intelligence agencies warned about the threat from influenza viruses for two decades at least and warned about coronaviruses for at least five years. Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council in May 2018  warned that a flu pandemic was the country’s number one health security threat and that the US was unprepared.

In January 2017, Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is “no doubt” Donald Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency. In 2019, HHS organized a month-long simulation involving multiple federal offices that demonstrated the US was seriously unprepared to cope with a pandemic. Despite all of this, the president claimed the virus “surprised the whole world,” and “nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.”

The White House created a National Security Council office on pandemics, but in 2018 that was disbanded by Trump. The Trump administration also ignored a pandemic playbook that would have ensured a more effective response. The Strategic National Stockpile has not been maintained for years, as it competes with the military budget, which shoveled $15 trillion into wars. The unreplenished stockpile is one reason the US does not have sufficient ventilators and other necessary equipment. The US is also weakened by the shortcomings of the for-profit health system including the closing of hospitals.

What would actually protect US national security?

First and foremost, the US must cease its drive to be the dominant power in the world and recognize we are part of a community of nations that must cooperate to take on the many crises that will define the 2020s. This means ending military aggression and regime change efforts by respecting the sovereignty and integrity of other countries, large and small. It means ending our occupation of other nations in the form of hundreds of military bases and outposts and ending our support for other occupiers such as Israel until it stops its colonization of Palestine. Instead of international war “games”, we could hold international exercises on disaster responses to save lives. And it means respecting and obeying international law and joining the International Criminal Court. The US must stop behaving with impunity.

Second, the US must scale down the military to what is required for protection, an actual defensive approach rather than being offensive. This means cutting the military budget by at least 50% and converting all production of military equipment, supplies, and weapons into public entities to remove the profit motive that drives conflict around the world. These resources can be used for social uplift instead of causing death in a peace economy.

Third, the US must move quickly to eliminate threats to human extinction. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to “midnight,” putting the world closer to destruction than at any point since the clock was created in 1947. As Alice Slater writes, we have a virus of nuclear proliferation as nuclear arms control agreements collapse. The US is spending more than a trillion dollars to upgrade nuclear weapons while placing ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons on submarines.

It’s not only superpowers that are engaged in a nuclear arms race, countries like North Korea, which is threatened by the US, and allies like Germany and Saudi Arabia believe they need their own nuclear weapons. The US must commit to the rapid disarmament of all nuclear weapons in cooperation with other nuclear nations and disband the Space Force, which violates the treaty that makes space a global commons.

While COVID-19 is almost certainly a zoonotic disease, David Swanson points out at least some diseases, such as Lyme Disease and Anthrax, have been spread by military labs. Germ warfare is a criminal enterprise and so labs disguised as being for our defense but that create bioweapons need to be closed.

Foreign policy includes trade, which has been designed for corporate profit since NAFTA. The coronavirus collapse shows corporate trade creates weak supply lines. It also hollowed out US manufacturing for cheap labor in Mexico, China, and other nations, creating economic insecurity and leaving us ill-prepared for a crisis. Trade must be remade into fair trade that serves the people and planet, supports industry at home, ends factory farming and creates a balance with nature that will help prevent future animal-based viruses.

A new foreign policy must also confront the climate crisis. This is a global challenge and nations of the world must work together to confront it. The US has been playing a counterproductive role by building fossil fuel infrastructure, becoming a leading oil and gas producer, and holding back global climate treaties. Next week, in our series on “The Decade of Transformation,” we will focus on the environment.

The Time Is Now to Remake US Foreign Policy

The global economic collapse and COVID-19 pandemic are causing widespread suffering and death but will result in change. What that change looks like, positive or negative, is up to us. We must create the new normal that provides for the necessities of the people and protection of the planet. The world must unite in solidarity to confront not only COVID-19 but other crises too.

We applaud countries that are beginning to stand up to US sanctions and work around the US financial system to help countries like Iran and Venezuela. These are positive steps to end US hegemony. We agree with President Rouhani of Iran, it is our responsibility to remake the government so it reflects the best of us.

An immediate step is to end US sanctions. Join us in the Sanctions Kill campaign where the coalition will be organizing webinars and other events to end illegal unilateral coercive measures. There will be an international week of action against imperialism and sanctions from May 25 to 31. We will need to be especially creative to build an effective campaign with tactics that work in this time of physical distancing.

We must also take action now to stop the war on Venezuela. Join the webinar with Carlos Ron, vice foreign minister of Venezuela on Monday night at 6:00 pm Eastern.  Click here for information. Sign onto this demand that the US drop its charges against President Maduro and other Venezuelan officials who have been falsely charged with narco-trafficking. We must be ready to mobilize quickly if the US moves to attack Venezuela, or Iran or any country for that matter while the government believes we are distracted by the pandemic.

We are living in a time of crisis and that can be unnerving. But we have the power to get through this if we mobilize together with a clear vision of the world we wish to create and show our solidarity with each other through our actions. We are one human community  and we need each other to get through the rough times ahead.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. 

All images in this article are from PR unless otherwise stated

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Doomsday Thinking: Imagining End Times

April 6th, 2020 by Greg Guma

On Halloween Eve in 1938, a flood of terror swept the United States. Some people, believing that the world was coming to an end, tried flight or suicide, or just cringed in their homes as “aliens” from Mars attacked New Jersey, then New York and the world.

But it was just a prank, tapping a deep national well of pre-war anxiety, and produced for radio by Orson Welles and his Mercury Players.

Times have changed so radically since then that, in the face of real disasters like the Three Mile Island “partial meltdown” in 1979, the explosion and fire at Chernobyl in 1986, the 2011 earthquake and Tsunami-sparked disaster in Japan or, the election of Donald Trump, or even a deadly virus, many people are deceptively calm. Some simply refuse to believe it.

Are we really so confident about our ability to cope and recover, or have we given in to an overarching pessimism about the future of the planet and fate of humanity?

According to a survey by the Encyclopedia Britannica, in 1980 nearly half of all US junior high school students believed that World War III would begin by the year 2000. If you consider the last decade, it looks like the youth of that period – in their 50s today – were only off by a few years.

Many futurologists, an academic specialty that emerged about 40 years ago, continue to warn that the environment is critically damaged. Yet this sounds positively cautious when compared to the diverse images of social calamity projected through films, books and the news media. Long before Covid 19, pandemics and outbreaks were at the center of dozens of novel and films. Of course, there have always been such predictions. But in the last few decades they have proliferated almost as rapidly as nuclear weapons during a Cold War. Some dramatize a “big bang” theory –global devastation caused by some extinction level event.

Fortunately, a few do chart a slightly hopeful future, one in which humanity either smartens up in time to save itself or manages to survive.

Rather than a desire to be scared out of our wits, the attraction to such stories and predictions may reflect a widespread interest in confronting the likely future. The mass media may, in fact, be producing training guides for the coming Dark Age — if we’re lucky.

Variations on a Theme

Sometimes humanity – or California – is saved in the nick of time by an individual sacrifice or collective action. Sometimes, as in the classics On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove or The Omega Man (remade as I am Legend), we are basically wiped out. Occasionally there are long-term possibilities for survival, but technology breaks down and the environment takes strange revenge. In some cases the future is so dismal that it is hardly worth going on, as in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

In a few cases the end of humanity is just a piece of cosmic black humor.

All of these are speculative visions, many adapted from ideas originally developed in pulp science fiction or from prophetic statements by figures like Edgar Cayce. The films usually offer a way out (audiences generally favor hopeful endings), while deep doom and gloom tend to gain more traction in print. But both scenarios share the assumption that the track we are on leads to a dangerous dead end.

We seem to keep asking the same basic questions: How do we get to catastrophe? And what happens afterward? One obvious way to get pretty close is to misuse technology, especially when the mistakes are made as a result of greed – for power, knowledge or cold cash.

The classic anti-nuclear film The China Syndrome presents a textbook example: greedy corporations ignoring public health and shoddy construction in pursuit of profit. It was a powerful statement in its day, especially given the Three Mile accident just weeks after the film’s release, yet predictable in a way and inconclusive on the prospects for health or quality survival in a nuclear-powered world. We are just beginning to have this discussion again.

An earlier “close call” film, The Andromeda Strain, had a more inventive story and placed the blame on a lust for knowledge (the old Frankenstein theme). But this early techno-triller provided no real solution to the problem of disease or disaster created by scientific discovery. In Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain the threat was a deadly organism brought back from outer space, the same kind of self-inflicted biological warfare that heavy doses of radioactive fallout can become. But in the book and film the blood of victims coagulated almost instantly, avoiding the prolonged agony of dying from a plague or the long-term effects of radiation.

Fear of nuclear power is by no means new. Radiation created many movie monsters in the 1950s, from the incredible 50-foot man and woman to giant mantises, crabs and spiders. But the threat was usually related to the testing or detonation of weapons, not the ongoing use of what was then called “the peaceful atom.” That mythical atom was going to be our good friend in a cheap, safe, long-term relationship.

Since then, and especially since the nuclear accidents of the 1970s and 80s, nuclear plants have provided a basis for various bleak scenarios. Not even Vermont has been spared, though it sometimes appears as a post-disaster oasis. In the 1970s novel The Orange R, however, Middlebury College teacher John Clagett extended nuclear terror into a future where the Green Mountains is inhabited by radioactive people called Roberts. They are dying off rapidly in a country where apartheid has become a device to keep the Roberts away from the Normals.

Using a pulp novel style Clagett lays out the overall situation about halfway through:

“For many years every nuclear plant built had been placed in Robert country, ever since, in fact, the dreadful month in which three plants had ruptured cooling systems, spreading radioactive vapor over much of Vermont, New Hampshire and West Massachusetts. After that no more plants had been built near populated areas; before long, the requirement that the plants should be located on running fresh water and in lightly populated country had brought about the present situation. Norm country was surviving and living high on the power generated in Robert country, where radiation grew worse, year by year.”

In The Orange R Normal people who live in radioactive areas wear airtight suits and laugh hysterically when anyone mentions solar power. All of Vermont’s major streams and bodies of water have heated up, and the deer have mutated into killer Wolverdeer. Still, the book offers a hopeful vision at the end: the Roberts rise up and take over Vermont’s nukes and successfully dismantle the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as a corporate state that is only vaguely described. Most Vermonters have terminal radiation sickness, but for humanity it turns out to be another close call.

Prophecies Go Mainstream

There are simply too many novels about the end of the current civilization, too many to list and perhaps too many for our psychological health. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Only a few decades ago people who accepted the prophecies of Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce were mocked by mainstream society and even some of their close friends. Cayce predicted that the western part of the US would be broken up, that most of Japan would be covered by water, and that New York would be destroyed in 1998 (perhaps he meant Mayor Giuliani’s remake of Times Square). Nearly 400 years earlier Nostradamus, whose benefactor was Henry II of France, said that western civilization would be under heavy attack from the East in 1999, with possible cataclysmic repercussions. Not far off, it turns out.

But what is “lunatic fringe” in one era can become mainstream, perhaps even commercially viable, in another.
The destruction of the West Coast has been featured in numerous books and movies. Hollywood has of course excelled in creating doomsday myths, from the antichrist’s continuing saga in countless unmemorable installments, to total destruction in the Planet of the Apesfranchise, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and many more.

Japanese filmmakers have been equally and famously preoccupied with mass destruction. Decades before the current disaster, they even turned Cayce’s prophecy about their country into a 1975 disaster movie called Tidal Wave. Starring Lorne Greene and Japanese cast, it was imported to the US by Roger Corman. Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) describes it this way:

“Racked by earthquakes and volcanoes, Japan is slowly sinking into the sea. A race against time and tide begins as Americans and Japanese work together to salvage some fraction of the disappearing Japan.” Close, but they missed the nuclear angle.

Predictions to the contrary, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove remains one of the most memorable doomsday movies. Its black humor and naturalistic performances by Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden combine with a devastating premise – that The End may come through a mixture of human error (a demented general) and flawed technology (an extinction level bomb that can’t be disarmed).

There haven’t been many stories based on Nostradamus’ Eastern siege prophecy, although there certainly could be. But a number of films have adapted Cayce’s visions of environmental upheaval. Oddly enough Charlton Heston appears in several, usually as Cassandra or savior. In Planet of the Apes he is an astronaut who returns to Earth only to find his civilization in ruins, apes in charge, and humans living below ground as scarred mutants who worship the bomb. In The Omega Man he is a disillusioned scientist who has survived bio-chemical war and spends his days exterminating book-burning mutants. He discovers an antidote to the plague, but only a handful of people are left to give humanity another chance. The same basic story is told in I am Legend, the book and Will Smith movie. In the latter, Bethel, Vermont serves at the end as a gated refuge from the Zombie apocalypse.

And then there is Soylent Green, a film that presents the slow road to environmental pollution and starvation. This time Heston is a policeman who eventually discovers that the masses have been hoodwinked into cannibalism. They are also so depressed that suicide parlors are big business.

Most of the Heston vehicles were big budget B-movies, exploiting popular anxiety but much less affecting than Dr. Strangelove or Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. On the other hand, they deftly tapped into growing doubts about the future with a Dirty Harry-style response.

After The End

Ecologist George Stewart wrote his novel Earth Abides in 1949, before the Atom bomb scare took hold or the environment seemed like something to worry about. But his story of civilization destroyed by an airborne disease took the idea of rebuilding afterward about as far as anyone. In this prescient book the breakdown of man-made systems is traced in convincing detail, in counterpoint with a story of survival without machines, mass production and, ultimately, most of what residents of developed countries take for granted.

Not many recent books or films are as optimistic about our prospects once humanity has gone through either its Big Bang or Long Wheeze end game. In Margaret Atwood’s multi -volume science fiction saga, for example, man-made environmental catastrophe and mass extinction in Oryx and Crake is followed, in The Year of the Flood, by marginal survival in a strange mutated world.

The optimism of Earth Abides about the ability of human beings to adapt may be a reason why it did not develop the cult following of more dystopian tales. The more dismal the forecast, it seems, the more enthusiastic the following. Apropos, one of the most popular science fiction books downloaded in recent years was The Passage, Justin Cronin’s compelling mixture of vampires run amuck, government conspiracy, and post-apocalypse survivalism.

What most of these stories and films have in common is a basic idea: the inevitability of radical, cataclysmic change. Should we manage to get beyond annihilation, apocalypse, Armageddon or whatever, they predict that we are very likely to enter a new Dark Age. Like most things, this too isn’t a new idea. At the end of his life J. B. Priestley, the British novelist who founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, contemplated such a future. Calling it a “slithering down” he forecast that industrial civilization would one day come to an end.

But even in a Dark Age there is some hope. The life of the planet will likely continue and equilibrium can be reestablished in time. At least many of us continue to hope so. If the devastation is not total, perhaps a new culture can emerge. The main question thus becomes not whether the Earth will survive but how human beings fit in.
Near the end of his life H. G. Wells, the master of science fiction who produced optimistic visions in The Shape of Things to Come and The Time Machine, turned pessimist and wrote Mind at the End of Its Tether. “There is no way out or round or through,” he concluded. Life on Earth may not be ending, Wells believed, but humans aren’t going anywhere. Well, for at least the next few months, for most of us that will literally be true.

Yet compared with the darkest forecasts, the prospect of a post-modern Dark Age starts to sound more hopeful. Maybe it will just be a long Time Out.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Greg Guma / Maverick Media.

Greg Guma is a frequent contributor to Global Research

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Henry Kissinger thinks the Coronavirus is a threat to his precious New World Order, so he wants President Trump to do whatever he can to protect the system. In an opinion piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the former Secretary of State urged Trump to launch a grand project, like the Marshall Plan, to unify the allies and convince them that the Uncle Sam can still rally the troops in a time of crisis. Here’s Kissinger:

“Drawing lessons from the development of the Marshall Plan and the Manhattan Project, the U.S. is obliged to undertake a major effort in three domains. First, shore up global resilience to infectious disease…Second, strive to heal the wounds to the world economy….Third, safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.

While the assault on human health will—hopefully—be temporary, the political and economic upheaval it has unleashed could last for generations. No country, not even the U.S., can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. Addressing the necessities of the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program. If we cannot do both in tandem, we will face the worst of each.” (“The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”, Wall Street Journal)

Kissinger thinks Trump’s “America First” rhetoric has undermined foreign relations and weakened US hegemony. He thinks the administration’s isolationist policies have created a leadership vacuum that China has quickly filled. And he has a point, too, after all, while China sent medical teams and vital supplies to countries hard-hit by the virus, the United States was busy tightening sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, which prevented infected civilians from getting the medications they need to survive. Naturally, China’s humanitarian contributions have been widely applauded while Washington’s conduct has been denounced as petty, vicious and vindictive. There’s no doubt that the Trump administration has ceded the moral high-ground to its arch-enemy, China. Here’s Kissinger again:

“Now, in a divided country, efficient and farsighted government is necessary to overcome obstacles unprecedented in magnitude and global scope. Sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity, to the relation of societies with each other, and to international peace and stability.” WSJ

Of course, when Kissinger talks about “public trust” and “social solidarity” what he really means is that the government needs to settle on an effective public relations strategy that will dupe the sheeple into falling in line. In Kissinger’s lexicon, solidarity is narrowly defined as ‘public support for elitist projects’ like globalization, open borders and the free movement of capital. These are the principles that guide Kissinger’s recommendations not any affection for working people who he regards as stupid mules. Here’s more:

“Nations cohere and flourish on the belief that their institutions can foresee calamity, arrest its impact and restore stability. When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus. To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done.” WSJ

See? What really Kissinger really cares about is the post-coronavirus world order, which he believes will mark the beginning of an entirely new era, an era in which governments will have to respond to unexpected crises, bitter political polarization and the growing prospect of social unrest. Kissinger seems to grasp all of this, but instead of offering a new vision for the future, he clings to the battered remains of a failed system that has exacerbated the wealth gap, triggered one economy-crushing financial meltdown after the other, and widened the arc of instability from North Africa, through the Middle East and into Central Asia. This is the world order that Kissinger wants to preserve, an America-centric imperium ruled by establishment elites, brandy-drooling plutocrats and the Bank Mafia. Is it any wonder why the proles are demanding change? Here’s more:

“The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.” WSJ

“Enlightenment values”?? Is that what we saw in the photos from Abu Ghraib, or the footage from decimated Falluja, or the countless reports of black-sites where kidnapped victims were taken by US Intel Agents and beaten into submission? Do they practice enlightenment values at Gitmo, or at Bagram Air base or in Mosul which was reduced to rubble by heavy artillery and US bombers? Kissinger can blabber about enlightenment values all he wants, but he knows from first hand experience that those values are precariously propped atop a mountain of bloody corpses all sacrificed in the name of the liberal world order. Here’s more:

“Enlightenment thinkers (argued) that the purpose of the legitimate state is to provide for the fundamental needs of the people: security, order, economic well-being, and justice. Individuals cannot secure these things on their own. The pandemic has prompted an anachronism, a revival of the walled city in an age when prosperity depends on global trade and movement of people.” WSJ

There it is again, Kissinger’s favorite theme, ” global trade and movement of people”, the two crumbling pillars of a globalization project that is now on life-support waiting to be euthanized by the millions of unemployed Americans who saw their jobs, their factories and their hopes for the future all go up in smoke due to outsourcing, off-shoring and Kissinger’s glorious “liberal world order.” Even now, while the US economy grinds to a standstill and jobless American workers wait anxiously by their doors for their $1,200 pittance from Uncle Sam, Kissinger continues to bray about the wonderful NWO that has greatly enhanced “security, order, economic well-being, and justice”.

Give me a break.

I agree with Kissinger that the post-Covid world order will be significantly different from the world that preceded it, but that’s as far as I’ll go. In truth, the US-dominated system is unraveling because the people of the world don’t want to ruled by force, because US leaders are incompetent bunglers who cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and because Washington’s arrogant go-it-alone policy-making has turned vast areas of the Middle East and Central Asia into uninhabitable wastelands.

Let’s face it, the United States had a chance to show the world it could be a reliable steward of global security, and they blew it. Nothing Kissinger says is going to change that.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

COVID-19 a Diabolical Totalitarian Plot?

April 6th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Seasonal flu most often getting scant attention is what a real pandemic is all about.

During the 2018-19 flu season in the US alone, running from October to May, there were more than 35.5 million flu illnesses, over 16.5 million medical visits, about 490,600 hospitalizations, and around 34,200 deaths — with no fear-mongering pandemic headlines.

One time long ago I experienced seasonal flu. It drained my energy, killed my appetite, and debilitated me for about three days at home, not hospitalized — after which I felt fine and resumed normal activities.

I needed no potentially toxic drugs to recover. I rested mostly in bed and let the symptoms run their course which they did.

The Mayo Clinic calls COVID-19 a coronavirus strain that can range from asymptomatic to mild to severe, most cases in the first two categories.

People most vulnerable to experience severe symptoms are older with weak immune systems and anyone with chronic conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and issues affecting the respiratory system.

Thailand Medical News (TMN) calls itself a leader in “breaking the latest credible research and developments with regards to the COVID-19 disease,” adding:

“(O)n every issue to date (about the disease), we have been proven correct while it has come to light that establishments like the WHO and the US CDC are the actual perpetrators of fake news and misinformation” that’s harmful to human health.

TMN warned that COVID-19 mutated into “eight distinct…strains…with different clinical manifestations (that are) mutating (further) on average every 15 days.”

Mutations “are fundamentally very similar to each other.” It’s unclear if mutations increase their virulence.

It’s known that COVID-19 is highly contagious, why protective measures are needed to contain its spread.

TMN believes COVID-19 is unlikely to peak or “end in the next few years.” Its archive has 1,173 articles on coronavirus over an extended period of time.

Perhaps like the 1918 -20 Spanish flu, the current outbreak may subside to be followed by one or more new strains that will infect unknown numbers of people.

It’s unknown how serious and long-lasting new strains will be to individuals in countries where they may appear — or what treatment protocols will be most effective.

TMN noted that Big Pharma and governments are taking advantage of COVID-19 to serve their financial and political interests respectively.

The website gets no government support, it said, adding:

It’s “based in a region where corruption, nepotism and ego” are rife. TMN should have explained that things are worse in the West.

The website relies on reader donations. It accepts no ads.

It claims hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are ineffective in treating COVID-19 and may only produce “a dangerous placebo” effect.

I yield to medical experts to judge the veracity of this judgment.

The former is an anti-malarial drug, the latter an antibiotic used to treat respiratory and other bacterial infections.

They’ve been no clinical trials to show if either or both of these drugs are effective in treating COVID-19.

For most individuals ill from the virus, it’s for them (with professional medical advice) to decide if they’re willing to be guinea pigs.

All drugs have side effects. The more potent the drug, the greater the risk of harm to patients by causing other potentially serious issues.

Older individuals with weak immune systems who are dealing with other health issues are most vulnerable to be adversely affected.

Michel Chossudovsky explained what’s vital for everyone to know. In a detailed article I strongly recommend reading carefully, he said the following:

“The unspoken truth is that the novel (COVID-19) coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.”

“This is the true picture of what is happening. ‘Planet Lockdown’ is an encroachment on civil liberties. Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.”

“This crisis is unprecedented in World history. It is destabilizing and destroying people’s lives Worldwide. It’s a ‘War against Humanity.’ ”

“While it is presented to World public opinion as a WHO global health emergency, what is really at stake are the mechanisms of  ‘economic warfare’ sustained by fear and intimidation, with devastating consequences.”

“The economic and social impacts far exceed those attributed to the coronavirus.”

Medical science can resolve health issues. It’s powerless against dark forces that use an issue like COVID-19 for greater wealth and power at the expense of public and personal health, human and civil rights, and societies safe and fit to live in.

Today indeed is the most perilous time in world history. COVID-19 is being used by US-led powerful forces to convince ordinary people in the West and elsewhere to sacrifice personal freedoms for greater security.

Their aim is all about eliminating both by getting unwitting populations to accept what harms their well-being and futures.

It’s also about consolidating greater wealth and power, the public none the wiser.

Global and national crises are manufactured to serve the interests of dark forces.

What’s ongoing now is the mother of them all. The world as we know it is highly unlikely to be the same as COVID-19 plays out and when it ends.

In cahoots with the Obama regime, the Wall Street 2008-09 financial crisis is likely to seen as minor by comparison to a growing tsunami of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, food insecurity, hunger, overall deprivation and human suffering in the West and elsewhere that’s unfolding in real time.

The human rubble will best be understood when the dust finally settles.

If dark forces behind what’s going on prevail, new world order tyranny in the US, West, and elsewhere will replace life as we know it — a grim prospect indeed without mass resistance to prevent loss of our welfare and personal freedom.

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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 CODEPINK

The region suffered hugely from early 20th century power plays by dominant Western countries, aiming to carve out spheres of influence, notably post-WW I. 

America’s turn came later, following the second world war to end all wars, the region punished by its presence, along with Israel wanting to be its dominant player, partnered with Washington.

The imperial scheme assures endless wars of aggression, targeting all sovereign independent states for regime change, notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, others elsewhere, including Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China.

Iran is the main US/Israeli Middle East target, destabilizing the country with harsh sanctions, cyberattacks, saber rattling, war-mongering, sabotage, subversion, assassinations, and spurious accusations.

Oil is the region’s curse, causing it to boil, a modern-day great game ongoing. The previous one pit Britain against tzarist Russia. One powerful empire battled another for 100 years.

Resources became increasingly more important, notably today. World supplies are finite. Major powers scramble for as much as they can control.

Oil is especially valued. No one’s sure how much is left. America, China, Russia and other major nations want control over as much as possible. They’re going all out to get it.

Middle East countries have over half the world’s proved oil reserves. Saudi Arabia’s amount is second only to Venezuela’s.

In the 1940s, the State Department called access to Middle East oil (notably Saudi’s) a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

The Caspian basin is oil and gas rich. Resource wars are waged in both regions for control. America does it aggressively.

Bush/Cheney, Obama, and now Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) assert America’s sovereign right to wage preemptive wars against perceived threats, along with aiming to control global resources, notably oil.

It powers industry and America’s military machine. Candidates Obama and Trump promised peace in our time, their agendas polar opposite, prioritizing endless wars of aggression – pursuing unchallenged global dominance, no matter the human cost.

Post-9/11, US regimes ignored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty provisions, rescinded the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, violated Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention provisions.

Trump notably abandoned the landmark JCPOA and INF Treaty.

Peace is a convenient illusion. Multiple US-led wars rage for dominance and resource control. Demand keeps growing. Available supplies shrink.

Oil and gas exploration and drilling intensify. So does competition to control what’s left — war America’s favored option, the Middle East and Central Asia especially targeted.

Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for redrawing the Middle East map, replacing sovereign independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes.

The scheme involves balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran and other regional countries for easier control, looting their resources, exploiting their people.

The region already is cauldron of endless violence and chaos. War on Iran would embroil it in greater mass slaughter and destruction.

Washington and Israel prioritize militarism, conquest, occupation, colonization and exploitation.

In his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained how America operates today, saying:

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

Russia’s September 2015 intervention in Syria at the behest of its government represented Washington’s first serious regional post-Cold War challenge.

Its regime change agenda sustained a humiliating body blow. It’s down, not out, plotting its next moves, against Syria, Iran, and other countries elsewhere, partnered with Israel and other rogue states.

In 1982, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior advisor Oded Yinon published “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s,” still relevant today.

It was translated by noted activist, analyst and outspoken Israeli critic Professor Israel Shahak (1933 – 2001) – retitled “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.” Its premises included the following:

To survive, Israel must dominate the region and become a world power.

Achieving its objective requires dividing Arab nations into small states – balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites.

The idea was modeled after the Ottoman Empire’s Millet (or nation) system – under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel’s 1967 Golan seizure, along with its 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions followed the plan.

Yinon noted “far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967, (created by the) very stormy situation surround(ing) Israel,” resurrected whenever it wishes by preemptive belligerence against Palestinians and regional states, wanting them weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

Yinon’s geopolitical scheme was similar to Nazi Germany’s imperial agenda – conquering, occupying and controlling European countries by brute force.

He believed “(t)he existence, prosperity and steadfastness of (Israel) depend(s) upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs,” based on securing its material needs through winnable resource wars and Arab world divisions.

“All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflicts even more than those of the Maghreb” (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara), he said.

All Gulf states are “built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil.” Jordan in reality is Palestine, Amman the same as Nablus.

Other Muslim states are similar, he claimed, notably Arab ones, saying Israel must either dominate them or “we shall cease to exist within any borders.”

In 1985, Israeli President/Labor party leader Chaim Herzog sounded like Netanyahu, saying:

“We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years.”

“There can be no partner with the Jews of this land,” his view like revisionist hardliner Ze’ve Jabotinsky, in a 1939 letter saying:

“There is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. It was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples. It is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs.”

Ethnic cleansing and slow-motion genocide have been Israeli policies since its 1947-48 aggression, massacring and expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their historic homeland.

Washington and Israel partner to control the Middle East, wars of aggression their favorite strategy – no end of them in sight.

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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 emergency OPEC+ talks that are scheduled for 9 April are the next step in the “New Detente” between the US and Russia even though America won’t formally be represented at that meeting seeing as how Moscow is making moves that show its interest in stabilizing the global energy markets so as to surprisingly save its rival’s sinking shale industry, which could in effect amount to yet another goodwill gesture after its urgent dispatch of counter-COVID aid last week in pursuit of the long-awaited series of “pragmatic compromises” across the world between these two Great Powers.

Brief Backgrounder

The emergency OPEC+ talks on 9 April could pave the path for reviving this recently disbanded mechanism for regulating the global energy markets if it successfully results in a deal, whether on that day or sometime soon thereafter. As a brief backgrounder, Saudi Arabia pulled out of the framework last month in response to Russia refusing to bend to its pressure to further curtail its oil output, which Kremlin strategists then tried to turn to their advantage by attempting to expand their market share at the Kingdom’s expense in parallel with crippling their American rival’s shale industry that’s poised to cause it many more geopolitical problems for them in the coming future if left unchecked. This was explained at length by the author in his analysis at the time about how “Russia’s Rejection Of OPEC+ Was The Result Of Cold Geostrategic Calculations“, which the reader should review if they’re interested in learning more about the rationale behind this decision.

Trump’s Diplomatic Intervention

The immediate consequence of this move was that the oil price crashed to record-low levels precisely at the time when the American economy began to shut down as part of its delayed response to World War C, which in turn triggered a stock market crash that’s since catalyzed an economic crisis much worse in its severity than the initial onset of the infamous Great Depression was. Russia isn’t immune to this economic contagion, but its hefty financial and gold reserves place it in a better position for weathering this storm than its rivals, especially Saudi Arabia in this respect. Accordingly, considering that the Wahhabi Kingdom is responsible for what happened by sabotaging OPEC+ after Russia refused to bend to its demand, the US diplomatically intervened through its Secretary of State to urge Riyadh “to maintain stability in global energy markets”, which was a euphemism for it to return to negotiations with Russia over resolving this issue that adversely affects them all.

Trump, however, went even further, publicly expressing interest in joining these two energy superpowers in their forthcoming talks if need be, which makes sense when considering that the US has also become an energy superpower in its own right over the past couple of years due to its shale industry that nowadays poses such a latent threat to Russia’s long-term geopolitical interests. Bearing his teeth, Trump also threatened that he might impose tariffs on future energy imports if those two continue to “treat [his country] unfairly” by not reaching a deal that would save his precious shale industry. While there’s a chance that the US would indeed tariff Saudi Arabia to prove a point, the real target of this threat is most likely Russia, which Trump intends to compel into successfully clinching a deal with Riyadh. It’s still uncertain whether the forthcoming talks will end with a deal or not, but in the event that they do, then it would be explained by Russia’s desire to advance the nascent “New Detente“.

The “New Detente”

This concept refers to the series of “pragmatic compromises” with Russia that Trump promised to pursue upon entering the presidency but has hitherto been unable to execute due to unflinching opposition from key forces in his permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”). A breakthrough was unexpectedly made on the soft power front of this campaign last week, however, after Russia urgently dispatched counter-COVID aid to the country with Trump’s permission, which greatly contributed to improving Americans’ views of Moscow following over three years of non-stop fake news Russiagate scandals and thus made the public more pliable to passively supporting whatever further outreaches their leader makes towards that state. This was explained a bit more in detail in the author’s piece last week about how “Russia’s Counter-COVID Aid To America Advances The Case For A New Detente“. It’s with this background context in mind that one can better understand why Russia would consider saving its shale energy nemesis.

Moscow’s Damocles’ Sword

Just like any other political actor, Russia recognizes that it’s unrealistic to expect that it’ll always achieve every one of its maximalist goals, and that sometimes it’s better to enter into a “pragmatic compromise” on one or several of them in order to improve its overall strategic standing instead of stubbornly clinging to one objective at the expense of the bigger picture. That outlooks holds true when considering the possibility of Russia once again coordinating oil production cuts with Riyadh and thus reviving the OPEC+ mechanism despite not taking more of its Saudi rival’s market share first nor successfully crushing the American shale industry. Superficially speaking, it might appear as though Russia is retreating after reconsidering what some have described as its risky decision to refuse the original production cuts in the first place, but upon further examination in light of the insight that’s been revealed in this analysis, it can be argued that Russia succeeded in making its counterparts aware of the Damocles’ Sword that it perpetually holds over their heads as leverage, which is a remarkable achievement.

It’s this unsettling realization that Russia could once again disrupt their economies at any time by simply refusing to go along with further proposed oil production cuts that motivates Saudi Arabia and the US to take Moscow much more seriously than before. In practice, this means that the Wahhabi Kingdom might finally come to see the Eurasian Great Power as an equal energy superpower, thus reducing the odds that it’ll ever again act so condescendingly towards it by demanding that it further curtail its production beyond whatever has already been agreed to if its counterpart openly signals that it’s unwilling to budge like last time. Regarding the US, the lifeline that President Putin would be giving the American economy in the midst of its ongoing systemic crisis during World War C would never be forgotten by average Americans and patriotic members of the “deep state” alike, thus facilitating their leaders’ joint vision of a “New Detente” through a series of other “pragmatic compromises” on issues as pressing as NATO, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, et al.

Concluding Thoughts

The unexpected scheduling of an emergency OPEC+ meeting later this week shows just how serious the consequences of the oil price crash have been for the entire world, especially the US, which is nowadays struggling to survive World War C. It was through Trump’s diplomatic intervention that the Saudis decided to see whether this framework could be revived or not, but it should also be said that it “takes two to tango” and that nothing of substance could conceivably be achieved without Russia’s equal participation in this initiative. The very fact that the Eurasian Great Power is tacitly countenancing saving its American shale energy nemesis shouldn’t be interpreted as a “strategic retreat”, but as a “pragmatic compromise” in the spirit of the nascent “New Detente” that it’s been trying so hard to clinch with Trump since the beginning of his presidency. Far from being a defeat for Russian interests, this scenario would actually represent their victory since the US “deep state” is now keenly aware of Moscow’s Damocles’ Sword and thus more willing to “play ball” than ever before.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Corona virus with its mysterious origin is the perfect cover up for the financial crash and the fall of Dollar as the world reserve currency. At the core of it, it is about United States’ last kick to stay as the world top power.

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In the next few days and even months you will start hearing from mainstream corporate news, pseudo-experts (pseudo-economist, analyst, consultant), politicians, governments, world organisations and world leaders that the Corona virus or Covid-19 pandemic has caused recession and massive unemployment.

This is not an entirely false statement, because the lockdown imposed by governments has caused business and companies to shut down for unknown period which mean lost business and it is bad for the economy. But half truth is a lie. Before the occurrence of the Corona virus whose first outbreak was in November 2019 in Wuhan, China, our economic and financial systems are already heading for a crash.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva predicts a global downturn at least as bad as the 2008 financial crisis because of Corona virus. She also suggests more easing in monetary policy (QE) and that poor and developing countries to borrow more predatory loan from the IMF?

Since the financial crisis 2008 which is also known as the Great Recession we haven’t really addressed the issue and instead worsening the situation by giving bailouts to banks and corporations. The Federal Reserve and other countries’ central banks have since implemented an endless QE (Quantitative Easing). The problem with QE is that it is simply printing money out of thin air, it is not money that is backed by value such as gold, making it a FIAT or paper money.

First in the chart below, we see how the Fed has been increasing its assets (aka printing money) especially since 2009 but stopped growing its balance sheet in 2014:

When the Fed stopped its printing in 2014, we can see from the chart below that the ECB stepped right in and carried things on until last year. Apparently not only war that has the term “proxy war”, there is also “proxy printing” between Central Banks.

A Little History of Our Monetary System

US Dollar as Global Reserve Currency is not backed by gold since 1971 when President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system. The Bretton Woods Agreement in July 1944 set up a new global monetary standard replacing the gold standard with USD as the global currency and 1 USD is pegged to 1/35 of an ounce of gold. Other countries’ currencies are pegged to the US dollar. This Bretton Woods agreement gives USA the global dominance in world economy and gave birth to the World Bank and IMF,  both are U.S.-backed organisations that would monitor the new system.

When some countries began to doubt that there were more than 35 USD per ounce of gold, the world rejected US dollar, as a result later on in 1973 USD was tied to oil commodity, which led to the birth of Petrodollar.

Not only that USD is not backed by gold, with the oil industry decline and oil price down to the lowest level in four years, the world reserve currency is in threat of collapsing as the global currency. As long as US dollar remains the world’s most demanded currency, USA can continue printing its FIAT money to fund its network of global military bases, Wall Street bailouts and other bailouts (corporations, the riches), its military industrial complex (read its weapon and arm industry) and tax cuts for the rich.

Then there is also the fractional reserve in banking that only creates more bubble as bank is required to only have 1/10 of the total money it lends. For example, if bank A has a million dollar, it can lend 10 millions to bank B, which can lend 100 millions to a country, since bank B owns 10 millions. This is the fraudulent practice of our monetary system. Not only the bank will get all its money back, bank also charges interest on this ‘fake money’ loan.

The ‘Everything Bubble’ Market

The Fed’s Quantitative Easing Monetary Policy cause an excess amount of money circulating in the market that is used to speculate in the financial market from speculation in the derivative financial instruments and share/stock buybacks.

This graph below shows that there is a linear correlation between the increase in the Fed’s Balance Sheet and the increase in S&P 500 index. Thus supporting the argument above.

weekly change in the Fed Balance Sheet from Deutsche Bank

For x % growth in stock market, The Fed Balance Sheet also grows x %. This means that the rise in stock market doesn’t reflect its fundamental values, but just a hype because of too much money flowing in the market because of the Fed’s QE (Quantitative Easing).

The graph shows that the increase in S&P 500 Index doesn’t reflect the real profit margins, confirming the bubble in the stock market. Source: Real Investment Advice

To summarize, the stock market is ‘inflated’ and the US economy has been stagnant at 2% growth annually since 2000 but at the contrary US’ debt has increased significantly as shown by the graph below.

The other bubble in financial market is the Fed’s bailouts from money printing to the repo market, the banks, the hedge funds, etc. As the Fed’s Balance Sheet and total US’ Debt increase enormously from its projected path hadn’t it suffered the 2008 financial crisis, USA is at risk of default or bankruptcy as the US’ debt now sits at 23 Trillion dollars. The huge burden of debt and its interest payment caused by the ‘economic financial bubble’ created by the Fed by its ‘printing money’ policy to bailout the elites led to a serious potential decline of USA as the top economic power and putting the US dollar as world reserve currency at risk.

Source: Zero Hedge

How Covid-19 Pandemic Fits Into All of This : ‘Kill Two Birds with One Stone’

As the financial collapse is inevitable as the Federal Reserve can’t keep printing money and creates more bubbles that at some point definitely will pop, the Covid-19 pandemic provides the global elites with the perfect scapegoat where it will be blamed (and it already started) for all the economic and financial crisis, for the massif layoffs, and the economic depression. The timing could not be more perfect, the ‘Black Swan’ event needed to cover up all the fraudulent schemes in how our world operates. In the meantime it also provides the distraction needed to blind the masses so they can’t realise and understand what is going on and what has been done to them all this time, of the fraud and plundering done by the banks, corporations and our global elites as the people are busy handling the pandemic and are afraid for their lives.

Corona virus pandemic will also be used to further the global elites’ agenda while plundering of the middle and poor class and more massif amount of transfer of wealth is ongoing. Because for the global elites it is “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.

Not only that the virus pandemic provides the right excuse, scapegoat and cover up for the economic and financial crash which is going to be worse than the 2008 “Great Recession”, it also attacked severely China and Iran, two countries USA perceives as enemies. It also caused huge number of deaths in Italy, the only and the first country in EU to sign China’s Belt and Road Initiative. With the mysterious origin of the corona virus is Covid-19 pandemic “Killing Several Birds with One Stone” strategy?

It seems the Cold War is not over yet. From the no winner of the US-China Trade War, it seems to step up to a Biological War if the corona virus is deliberately unleashed to attack a country or certain countries. But like any other bio warfare, it can spread and resulted in collateral damage as the virus is now spread to almost all over the world and more than half the world population is now under confinement.

While most of the world is figthing the virus pandemic, the battle for world hegemony continues as the global superpower will do everything it can to stay at the top and attack any country it considers as threat or enemy. At the core of it all, it is about United States maintaining its hegemony as the world top power and maintaining its currency as the world reserve currency.

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This article was originally published on Indonesia Merdeka.

Sianny Rooney is an essayist, inquisitive world citizen and an entrepreneur.

Featured image is from Health.mil

One of the most famous paradoxes of this blessed experience called Life, is known as ‘the law of unintended consequences‘; and we are at this very moment of time, in the midst of a manifestation of cosmic Lila which exactly fits this paradox. 

Under the unprecedented blanket regulatory lock-down imposed by governments all over the planet, a highly unlikely opportunity has arisen to fundamentally redress our life circumstances. An opportunity which will positively equip those who need to become aware, to face the uncertainties that lie ahead with courage and fortitude.

The number one opportunity which being stuck in one’s home for most of the working day presents, is to do some long overdue thinking; the kind that taps into that region of ourselves which has been/is particularly starved due to being heavily preoccupied by the daily chores of the standard working week. That part of ourselves which gives genuine direction to our lives, and brings us face to face with the plethora of superficial activities that preoccupy us, most of which we have, up until recently, taken as gospel.

We are being supported in this vital pursuit by changes underway in the natural environment which surrounds us. Changes for the better that result from a sudden flux of a high percentage of the frenetic hustle and bustle which forms the basic daily pattern of our materialistically centred life, and which brings with it a heavy load of pollution, noise and stress, choking both our planet’s natural environment and our own health and welfare.

Pause to consider, how remarkable it is that the impositions imposed by mostly clueless  governments, would have the unintended consequence of enabling much of nature to finally take some decent deep breaths! Enable her sinews to be at least temporarily cleansed from the antithetical materialistic pursuits of the modern world. Pursuits so misguidedly hailed as ‘progress’ and so crassly utilised for achieving the bloated ambitions of corporate giants.

Nature can breathe because motorways are largely free of the noise and pollution caused by rushing cars and trucks, and the air largely free from the constant passage of disruptive commercial jet airlines. The sky is blessedly blue and the sweeter that usual air is full of the sound of Spring inspired birds. It is generally calm – even peaceful. I remember a state like this from my childhood.

Something is happening. Something unusual. And it is coming about due to the ‘law of unintended consequences’ which is actually a cosmic/universal law and not unintended at all, but a direct reflection of Divine Lila. It has provided us with this opportunity- right in the midst of an unprecedented deep-state engendered global crisis – to join in this natural healing process so as to recharge our spiritual batteries and shed our worn-out life styles in favour of a more integrated and conscious sense of purpose.

It’s an opportunity we should not ignore.

Listen carefully: the circumstances facing all of us in the immediate two to three years ahead are going to present a quite unique challenge. Not least because they are being conducted by people either ludicrously unfit for the tasks they find themselves responsible for – or who wish to deceive and exploit us so as to acquire powers to control events which they have no legal right to control.

This means that the first call on our meditations about our immediate futures will be to raise and appraise some very practical considerations; the first of which involves taking a big step towards a much more robust and self sufficient life style. Bear in mind that a return to typical easy access to the ‘daily conveniences’ many have become accustomed to, is no longer a secure bet. Even if governments might make it appear that ‘everything is under control’ and/or ‘things will soon return to normal’. Clearly it is not – and they will not, as by now we are surely well aware – and wishful thinking will not change this situation.

As I mentioned above, we must use this brief open window to shift ourselves towards a much more self sufficient and simple life style. A largely self sufficient life style involves knowing how to cultivate the ground so as to grow our own basic food requirements. And/or if not doing this directly, making sure to be closely associated with supporting colleagues who do – and who are willing to share the harvests that result.

This is not going to be possible within an urban environment at this point in time, given not only that there is insufficient cultivatable land available, but that urban environments are largely unconducive to mental, spiritual and physical health. They do not enhance one’s immune system and ability to build the inner and outer strength vital to staying strong throughout the challenges in store for us.

So to make best use of this period solitary confinement, plot the course that will provide a practical way of taking control of your – and your family’s – destiny. Recognising, of course, that under the imposition of a quasi dictatorship there is only ‘x’ amount of room in which to move.

In this article I am taking a deliberately positive line concerning making maximum use of our largely untapped potentials as creative beings. So let’s recognise this as exactly the moment to tap these blessed creative powers – since many have been far too preoccupied with selfish pursuits instead of dealing with necessities. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ so use this one in a million opportunity to meditate on exactly what your key necessities are and how to best manage them.

This should not be an anxiety based exercise. On the contrary, we are in a time of great energetic cosmic support due to the Earth now being in a particularly powerful alignment with the centre of our galaxy, resulting in the rapid growth of heart based empathetic instincts throughout humanity. It is because dark directed forces know about this, that such an intense effort is being made to block the rising-up which is already well underway in us.

Draw upon this gift we are being sent. It is to strengthen the heart beat of mother Earth and human kind.

If you are not already doing so, start each day with Yoga. Hatha yoga exercises, for example, that have been honed over millennia to bring nourishment to every part of the body and mind. This practice, by co-ordinating breathing and movement, revitalises the chi (energy) of one’s whole being and provides a clearer insight into what is the best and most true action to take each day. A Theseus thread to guide one through the chaos which has been deliberately invoked on this planet.

Couple such practice with a diet rich in immunosupportive foods, preferably direct from the farm.

Yes, the farmers you have linked-up with and offered your support. Hands in the soil and the company of (farm) animals is immensely curative. For millions, it is the life-line to earthed, reawakened health. The forces intent upon pulling us down cannot do so once our spiritual and physical energies are awakened and maintained.  Truly vital right now.

This means, for example, we can devote our new found ‘freedom’ into actions specifically targetted at stopping the roll-out of the microwave radiation 5G weapon. A brutal technology of human paralysis and planetary ecocide, increasingly implicated in playing a covert role in the current ‘Corona Virus’ scam.

The family of man is ONE family. Our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of all others, as theirs is with ours. Selfishness is a disease far more deadly than any Corona Virus. Make use of your period of isolation to rid yourself of narcissistic tendencies, as the ‘Real I’ in each one of us is not the one that seeks self-satisfaction or indulgence in vanities. It is the one that liberates us into recognising our oneness with all life and all peoples, regardless of colour, race or creed.

Treat the domestic imprisonment being forced upon us – as an opportunity – not as cause for fear. In fact see it as a hurdle being placed in front of you so as to make you reach deeper into yourself for the solution! Because that’s what it actually is: a wake-up call without which you might never have the opportunity to discover your divine eternal flame of greatness, of Godliness.

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

What a post-COVID-19 world will look like will best be known in hindsight. Some clues:

The manufactured 2008-09 financial crisis enabled powerful interests to consolidate to greater size and influence.

It facilitated an enormous transfer of wealth from ordinary people in the US and other Western nations to privileged interests.

Force-fed austerity followed in these countries at a time when economic stimulus and putting money in the pockets of ordinary people were needed.

Was the decade-ago financial crisis a prelude for what’s now unfolding?

Was it relatively minor in harm to ordinary people compared to today’s dual public health/economic crisis and what lies ahead that won’t likely abate easily or soon?

Will it change the Western or entire world ahead? Henry Kissinger, aged-96, thinks so.

He headlined a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order,” saying:

“The US must protect its citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch.”

As national security advisor and secretary of state during the Nixon/Ford years, Kissinger’s criminality was and remains breathtaking.

Like other past and current members of the US imperial state, he remains unaccountable for a lengthy laundry list of high crimes too grievous to ignore.

Slowed at age-96, he’s still influential, advising Republicans Dems alike on geopolitical issues with new world order unfairness in mind.

He earlier and likely still advocates culling the world population of useless eaters, once saying:

“Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World.”

He called for making involuntary mass sterilizations and birth control a prerequisite for US aid to these countries, wanting hundreds of millions of people eliminated — including by withholding food aid to nations that don’t control their population growth.

In 1974, his classified National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 called for a global  depopulation “plan of action” to prevent unwanted people from using raw materials and other resources wanted for profit-making so get rid of them.

His scheme was similar to Nazi Germany’s aim to eliminate “inferior” people to preserve the “Aryan master race.”

The scheme is defined in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Along with aggression, it’s the highest of high crimes.

Without public action to stop it, the type post-COVID-19 world Kissinger envisions will be more unsafe and unfit to live in than existing conditions today.

He defied reality saying the Trump regime “has done a solid job in avoiding immediate catastrophe” — ignoring its failure to prepare for a known danger to society that could happen anytime and did this year.

Nor has his regime provided health-related and financial aid to states, local communities, and the US public nationwide in amounts needed — largely leaving them on their own to cope at a time of unprecedented national crisis.

Like earlier public health crises, this one will pass. Of greatest concern is likely “political and economic upheaval” to be left in the wake of what’s now ongoing.

Governments and monied interests are self-serving at the expense of the general welfare.

There’s great risk ahead that ordinary people in the West will lose fundamental human, civil, and social rights on the phony pretext of protecting and preserving national security — along with stiffer neoliberalism to continue transferring enormous amounts of wealth to privileged interests.

Kissinger’s “liberal world order” is the problem to be overcome, not the solution to what’s going on.

“The world’s democracies (and) their enlightenment values” he cites don’t exist.

The world order he envisions ahead should terrify everyone everywhere.

He favors ruler/serf societies with US-dominated NATO enforcing things, endless wars, controlling the public mind, silencing dissent, and eliminating nonbelievers.

His ideal world for privileged interests is dystopian hell for the vast majority of ordinary people everywhere.

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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.

People, Profit and Planned Economy

April 6th, 2020 by Massoud Nayeri

The concept of an economic system that puts Profit over People has been explained and discussed many times and in many ways. It just took a tiny virus (COVID-19) to display the contradiction between People and Profit as an urgent national question. In this equation, President Trump, as the voice of most powerful capitalist country on earth (the “GREAT AMERICA”) with his cheerleaders mostly at Fox News and in favor of PROFIT, suggests that “We have to get back to work” as soon as possible. Contrary to this idea, the scientists, medical community and people who are actually in the battlefield fighting this disease are representing the PEOPLE in this equation. Based on the ongoing and rapid escalation in the number of the infected and dead, they believe that the nation is not ready to go back to work.

Of course, those who serve the nation with their skill and hard work and genuine sincerity want to do their share and be productive members of society in these challenging times. Many small businesses in creative ways are helping their communities not for their own profit but as fellow human beings. From farmworkers to workers in food, transportation, social service industries and of course our professionals have been tirelessly working since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. However, the majority of these workers are not supported by their employers; such as sanitation workers whose basic demand to be equipped with the necessary protective gear has not been brought forward. In fact, the commercial media in these crucial times are censoring the news regarding Amazon and Whole Foods workers, who have been on strike, demanding a safe and protected work environment. These workers are risking their lives every day and just like medical staff without Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can become contaminated as well.

Andrew Cuomo | Outside of City Hall, little American flags o… | Flickr

The question is not simply “get back to work”. The question is during this public health catastrophe, what type of work is needed and how do we implement measures that guarantee the safety of all workers. We need to adjust and convert the lines of production in order to fulfill the vital needs of the people. During this deadly pandemic, do workers need to “get back to work” and build luxury vehicles or with innovating engineering start producing lifesaving types of equipment such as ventilators? Of course, the answer is clear in reality. The “Great America” is suffering from a chaotic organizational syndrome. Not only was the government not quick to convert a section of its workforce to build ventilators; but it also produced an atmosphere whereby States need to compete against each other over ventilators. The insanity is in the DNA of the capitalist economic system. In a press conference, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (image on the right) shook the nation by informing us that “the price of ventilators had skyrocketed from $25,000 each to $45,000, as 50 states and the federal government all bid against each other for the vital oxygen device.” He truthfully admits that “We’re literally bidding up the prices ourselves”!

It is imperative to understand that the lack of decisiveness to resolve any problem at hand without delay is not because of the pathetic personality of some officials. The slow response, negligence, and sloppiness are not Democratic or Republican deficiencies; it is the nature of a government that functions only by the principles of market and profit and not the essential needs of people. The current system is not prepared to deal with extreme natural disasters and their ramifications. By tossing paper towels to the crowd during his visit to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, President Trump not only showed his inability to empathize with the distressed people, but he also illustrated the incompetency of the U.S. government in the time of crisis. Today, the slow response to the COVID-19 virus pandemic by the Federal government follows the same pattern of “leadership” that we have already witnessed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Although we are in a new and unprecedented situation, the conduct of the politicians to this crisis is the same. From the president down they easily justify the death of people in millions for their failed policies. The military intervention in Iraq which was based on the WMD hoax had killed thousands of young Americans overseas along millions of Iraqis who died in their own homeland. The unfortunate response of Secretary Madeleine Albright (a Democrat) to the indelible fact that because of the U.S. sanction, a half-million Iraqi children have died which is more than the children who died in Hiroshima; she calmly said, “We think the price is worth it.” Now we are in a different situation, this time the Americans are dying in their own homeland. President Trump at the end of March with the help of his Army Colonel Dr. Deborah Birx, is selling the projected death toll of 100,000 to 200,000 in the United States as “a good job” and the best-case scenario to the American people!

Indeed this is a global catastrophe and would resolve with transparent and unvarying cooperation between all nations on a global level.  As we hear the news about the tragic situations in Italy, Spain and Iran and now in the U.S.; we also hear encouraging news that this outbreak with the right plan can be relatively managed and contained as in China and South Korea. Cuba’s Interferon Alfa-2B drug* which is effective against coronavirus is hopeful news for the people around the world. It is reasonable to be optimistic in believing that the COVID-19 virus pandemic will be controlled, unfortunately, with a high number of fatalities than we would like to envision, we will defiantly have a post coronavirus era. Considering all of these, what will this new social, political and economical reality look like?

American people have already experienced Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump’s leadership for many years. Both, in many ways, have shown their allegiance to Wall Street and the market economy. It is impossible to envision that either of these detached politicians would introduce any progressive economic plan for the post coronavirus epoch. They have no solution on how to reverse a high unemployment rate which is predicted to surpassed the 24.9% unemployment in 1933, following the Great Depression. The broken Healthcare and outmoded education system will even deteriorate faster after COVID-19 virus is contained. The post COVID-19 virus epoch will create the best opportunity for the gigantic corporations to break apart their rivals in a fierce and merciless competition both nationally and globally. That means the maximum exploitation of both human (workforce) and vital natural resources. It is the powerless majority who suffer the most post crises. The capitalists will ask the masses who are fearful, broke and penniless to sacrifice more so the Free Market can prosper, after all, “We’re all in this together”! However, capitalists in any country are well aware of the possibility of social uprisings which have been the political ramification of post major crisis periods in history, such as the First and Second World Wars. Therefore capitalist states have a tendency to govern with the iron fist to prevent uprisings and revolutions.

In the time COVID-19 virus crisis, the President of the United States and the Ladies and Gentlemen of Congress like a generous caretaker unanimously decided to give a small portion of people’s tax money back to them. Of course, a large portion of this financial aid has been allocated to bail out their own friends in corporations! This crisis especially gives Democrats an opportunity to play their pretentious “solidarity show” with the workers of America with empty promises! Already House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to move quickly to the Phase Four of coronavirus relief plan; while those who are struggling to feed their families are still looking for Phase one to arrive! Of course among the Democrats, the “Socialist” Presidential candidate, Mr. Sanders has introduced his own “Coronavirus Emergency Plan”. Instead of exposing the ominous nature of the capitalist system which is on national display, Mr. Sanders proudly promotes himself as the true savior of the system and encourages the American workers to “Stand Up” and REFORM this outmoded system! However, the coronavirus crisis has ended any illusion that a system that strives for the highest stage in the centralization of capital is not reformable – never has been and never will be.

The ambiguity and application of “stimulus package” for the workers look more like a trap to pacify the workforce. A worker in the U.S. is giving false hope and perspective that a check of $1000 or more will be sufficient enough until they come back to work! However, those workers who have been furloughed or laid off know very well that the weakened economy and high rate of unemployment of a post coronavirus period will make finding a job extremely difficult.

So what is the alternative solution to this insane capitalistic behavior in a time the nation is desperately gasping for oxygen to fight against COVID-19 virus? The answer is a PLANNED ECONOMY.

PLANNED ECONOMY? That is “SOCIALISM” cries the Free Market economist. Certainly, President Trump and his administration would not even entertain the idea and it would be blasphemy in the minds of the Christian Evangelists. However a PLANNED ECONOMY simply means a common sense economy – an economy that puts People above Profit. This perspective makes the system of production that is based on competition -the main characteristics of the “free market”- irrational and obsolete. Today the authorities in the government under the pressure of dire social and economical circumstances are forced to practice a version of a planned economy in disarray. They say the “essential” workforce must operate.  But even the “essential” workforce is not defined as the current “leadership” is scattered, disconnected and above all is antagonistic.

The “Defense Production Act” is a federal law that gives the President the authority to direct private companies to meet the needs of the country. This capitalist plan, however, was meant to be for military equipment for the war against a “visible” enemy! Hence, President Trump, the self-proclaimed “wartime president” who is fighting the COVID-19 virus, the “invisible” enemy is reluctant to direct the companies to produce much-needed ventilators and Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), which are life-saving necessities for all medical staff and their patients confined to the battlefields of any given hospitals during this deadly pandemic. He surrounds himself at his daily Press Conference, with a handful of CEOs of essential and non- essential firms (like the “My Pillow” man) to come up to the podium, one by one and praise his “leadership” without any meaningful commitment. Mr. Trump grossly exaggerated the number of existing ventilators and PPE and quickly accuses the hospital staff of “back door” operation as a reason for the shortages.  Now that he is pleased with his “leadership” in the fight against coronavirus, he brings his military men to announce that his Administration is deploying more U.S. Navy warships to prevent “corrupt actors” (Venezuela) to smuggle narcotics and at the same time warns Iran, do not exploit the crisis coronavirus pandemic. More and more, the Trump administration finds a military solution as a real outlook to fight this disaster and impending social crisis; which historically has been the option for the capitalist countries facing a profound and deep crisis.

In Germany, Hitler introduced a new plan for the economy that simply was a program for the centralization of the economy in Germany. In reality, this capitalist program needed police supervision to be enforced! Hence Hitler appointed Hermann Göring – the founder of Gestapo (secret police of Nazi Germany) – to oversee this novel “centralized economy”!

Is the United States of America moving toward a controlled capitalist mode of production? Certainly, with any great crisis, the social and political contradictions that have been accumulated and suppressed for decades suddenly come to the forefront with great intensity. The coronavirus crisis has exposed the weakness of the United States as an incompetent government to manage peoples’ problems in a rational and effective manner in a time of disaster, while remains as the most powerful and dangerous military force with the huge nuclear and lethal arsenals in the world.

The working people in the U.S. with their international heritage and also their own struggles have sufficient knowledge to organize and offer practical solutions pertaining to a particular crisis. For example, today the GM workers with the help of their engineers and experts are able to produce ventilators as well as masks in a relatively short time while keeping their workplace protected against coronavirus. That simple conversion in production is applicable to all other factories around the country.  Workers who become the main decision-makers in their workplace and are in charge of production, in coordination with the other branches of industries, can easily convert the production lines to respond and fulfill the vital needs of the nation. In other words, the production will be logically planned according to the need of the majority of people and not for the purpose of making profits for a few wealthy people. When the decisions are made in the boardrooms of the gigantic manufacturers and corporations such as General Motors, the production lines must follow the demand of the irrational competitive market even if it results in overproduction. However, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances like today’s coronavirus crisis, it is possible for the executive officers of a large company like GM to compromise and produce items that are vital and in-demand like mask and ventilators; but certainly, that would be a temporary and limited effort mainly to leave a good corporate image as a marketing objective.

The profit-driven economy, limits the potential of production. On the contrary, since the purpose of production in a planned economy is to guarantee a decent living for all, naturally is unconstrained hence more efficient in utilizing the new useful and safe technology, faster and better with the least expenditure.

Certainly, the planned economy is not flawless. There will be errors during each cycle, but through a democratic process, corrections and improvements will be made. Capitalist economists by referring to the Soviet Union and Venezuela as a failed socialized economy reject the idea of the planned economy; but the disastrous Stalinist command economy and the current capitalist economy in Venezuela have nothing to do with the idea of a democratic, transparent and cooperative planned economy. In fact, the astonishing achievements of the Russian workers in a backward capitalist country, who survived the first global capitalist crisis and also the vicious attack by all major military powers right after the 1917 Russian Revolution and before the consolidation of the Stalinist bureaucracy, is a great source of information and aspiration for the American workers today which must be discussed. In the case of Venezuela, the resilience of the Venezuelan people as a sovereign nation is the main source of the U.S. government’s hatred toward the country, not their economic system.

Here in the United States, for any honest person who is suffering to a different degree because of coronavirus crisis, the idea of nationalization of the health care system, pharmaceutical, and all other vital service industries sounds logical and necessary. What is a private hospital good for if their business administrators only think of making more profit from each bed during this crisis? At this crucial time, common sense suggests that all hospitals should be rescued from the insane profit-driven market to serve the infected patients with the best available doctors, nurses and medical equipment, free of charge! It is time to stop the profiteers from turning our hospitals into fancy mortuaries.

The American working people have already shown that their patience is wearing thin. Slowly their voices and demands are reaching the main media. There is no doubt that capitalists in the U.S. and around the world are failing to combat the COVID-19 effectively. In order to end this miserable and chaotic situation in short order, working people collectively have to introduce their own economic plan – that is a planned economy. The coronavirus crisis has forced the workers around the world to either take the lead or let the insane “leaders” destroy humanity and nature like barbarians in fancy clothes. The actual producers and creators must form their own independent revolutionary party and organization at their workplace and in unity with the workers and professionals around the world end the destructive capitalist system which has nothing to offer except deadly diseases, extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness, environmental disasters, creating hell on earth for the millions upon millions of immigrants and refugees and their children and never-ending destructive wars. Time is ripe for a radical change!

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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The global COVID-19 viral pandemic has exposed in the sharpest light the contradiction between a globalized world economy and a still existing but archaic capitalist system based on the private expropriation of wealth and resources.

The relentless drive to reap a profit from every type of human interaction now stands exposed as the greatest danger to the people of the whole planet.

At the same time, China is sending enormous amounts of assistance to countries desperate for medical and personal protective equipment. These massive solidarity shipments demonstrate the superiority of China’s basic socialist planning.

China is sending by air, rail and sea needed medical equipment to 89 countries around the world. This includes test kits, facemasks, protective clothing, goggles, forehead thermometers and ventilators.

Chinese medical workers and planeloads of essential supplies have already been sent to 28 countries in Asia, 26 in Africa, 16 in Europe, 10 in the South Pacific and nine in the Americas. This assistance is China’s most intensive and wide-ranging emergency humanitarian operation since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. (China Daily, March 26)

22 airlifts of medical supplies from China

By contrast the United States, still the largest and richest economy in the world, is overwhelmed by a complete lack of planning and even the capacity to mobilize the population for their own survival. Reported COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now exceed those in China, even though China has almost four times the population and was the first country hit with this new disease. (worldometers.info/coronavirus, April 2)

U.S. for-profit health corporations and government agencies at every level are now turning to China to order essential supplies. This follows two months of racist ridicule, political attacks and rejecting offers of assistance from both China and the World Health Organization.

Totally frustrated with the inability of any arm of the U.S. government to solve these essential supply problems, governors, mayors, charitable organizations, nonprofit and sister-city groups, and major health complexes have each started making their own trade deals with Chinese corporations to get emergency shipments of supplies.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped in and ordered 22 airlifts of supplies from China — but set up their distribution through profit-taking private sector networks. On March 29, a commercial aircraft carrying 80 tons of medical supplies arrived in New York from China. It delivered 130,000 N95 masks, 1.8 million facemasks and gowns, 10 million gloves and thousands of thermometers for distribution in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Similar flights to Chicago and Cleveland were planned for the next two days. (New York Times, March 29)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the state, which is now the epicenter for the coronavirus, is in urgent need of 40,000 ventilators. Unfortunately, ventilators were unavailable. European corporations had already bought up the entire inventory of the largest Chinese ventilator producer.

European Union also overwhelmed

The coronavirus has overwhelmed not only the United States, the center of international finance capital. Other highly developed imperialist countries, including Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Britain, are staggering under its impact.

They were also unable to respond effectively. In order to revive their capitalist corporations and banks after the 2008 global capitalist crash, the European Union had imposed years of austerity and cutbacks in social programs on member countries. after the 2008 global capitalist crash. Now the EU is refusing to share assistance, even with its member countries. with its countries.

None of these imperialist countries is offering anything to the rest of the world as this extreme medical crisis spreads to over 190 countries.

Less than an hour of Pentagon spending

With great fanfare, the U.S. government pledged $62 million from the Agency for International Development to address the pandemic. This is less than what the Pentagon spends in an hour. The enormous $746 billion Pentagon budget — much of which is a subsidy to oil and military corporations — consumes roughly $2 billion a day or $80 million an hour.

While offering no real assistance to any country, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted China and the countries that accept China’s aid, claiming: “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus clearly has demonstrated.” (Los Angeles Times, March 29) The Trump administration has also used the hardships of this global crisis to tighten sanctions and increase threats on Iran and Venezuela.

China’s ‘Health Silk Road’

The coronavirus is arriving in many countries that have already suffered humanitarian crises caused by U.S. wars and sanctions, as well as natural disasters and climate change. So China is setting up what it calls a Health Silk Road. Skilled Chinese medical teams have begun arriving in a growing number of countries, including Iran, Iraq, Italy, Serbia, Venezuela, Pakistan and Cambodia.

On March 11, as the COVID-19 virus abated in China, immediate assistance was also promised to countries in Africa. Equipment alone cannot overcome the health crises in countries lacking a national health care system. However, the 20,000 test kits, 100,000 masks, 1,000 protective suits to be delivered to each African country will have a big impact.

On March 22, a Chinese medical team arrived in Serbia with its first shipment of 16 tons. The European Union had denied any assistance to Serbia, citing U.S.-imposed sanctions.

On March 27, 130 tons of protective gear from China bound for Italy were unloaded in Vienna.

The China-Europe Express, a train line opened more than a decade ago, links 48 Chinese cities with Europe. On March 28 the first freight train to leave China after two months of lockdown departed from Wuhan. Its 19 cars were loaded with locally manufactured medical supplies.

Wuhan had been China’s hardest-hit city by the COVID-19 virus. Now it has a great deal of expertise and newly manufactured medical equipment to offer the world. Reuters reports that a shipment of a million masks and gloves from China arrived in France on March 22.

China develops diagnostic and treatment plans

China’s National Health Commission has compiled an invaluable set of diagnostic and treatment plans. It is sharing them, as well as other technical documents, with 180 countries and more than 10 international and regional organizations.

The commission has also conducted in-depth exchanges with the international community, holding about 30 video conferences on technical issues regarding the coronavirus with more than 100 countries and regions.

One such video conference with the World Health Organization, held on March 12, shared China’s experiences with representatives from 77 countries and seven international organizations. It was viewed online by more than 100,000 people.

Profit system creates disaster

In this global economy, why have offers of essential testing equipment and medical supplies from China, and even from the World Health Organization, been rejected by the Trump administration?

It’s not only because of growing U.S. hostility to China’s stunning level of development. Nor is it driven only by right-wing ideologues.

Medical care exists for profit. Free or inexpensive test kits and medical supplies threaten the capitalist drive to profit out of every human transaction. Pharmaceutical, medical and insurance companies are the most profitable corporations in the U.S. today. Along with oil and so-called defense corporations, they dominate finance capital.

During the crucial two months when these vital supplies could have been quickly ordered or manufactured and stockpiled, there was not yet a strong enough profit incentive to produce them. Medical facilities in the U.S. operate on a lean ship-to-order basis.

The unplanned and competitive nature of capitalist production distorts all social interaction. Wild speculation and bubbles of quick profit are the norm.

As the crisis became obvious to millions, anything assumed to be in possible short supply was immediately hoarded for speculation. This has led to life-threatening shortages of hand sanitizers, facemasks, essential foods and even toilet paper.

Who will pay and who will profit is the fundamental question in all capitalist relations. What is most needed — to fulfill people’s needs — is not part of the calculation.

As early as January, the Trump administration’s own medical experts identified a probable shortage of ventilators as a critical problem. Yet “both the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to define what was needed, who would pay for it and how to solve the problem of supply chains.” (“Alliance with industry does Trump no good in quest for ventilators,” New York Times, March 20)

Knowing that nothing was actually happening to solve any of these problems, Trump continued to make assurances: “We are going to have plenty.”

Many media reports have confirmed that the lack of testing kits arose from the manufacturers’ insistence on exclusive contracts with guaranteed profits. Follow-through and distribution plans were also totally lacking. Even how to keep a count of test results was not worked out in advance.

No planning for the population’s needs, along with chaotic planning for what is profitable, has created a crisis in every hospital in the U.S. Private and public hospitals, competing city, state and federal agencies, local and national charities are now in bidding wars for existing supplies.

Socialist planning is the answer

How was China able to control the virus? How is it now able to begin providing massive assistance to other countries on a global scale?

Clearly, socialist planning and large-scale collective ownership of major industries, including the medical industry, have been decisive.

Even in small developing countries, socialist planning frees up the economy to meet domestic need and even make major contributions to other countries trapped by U.S. economic domination and archaic social relations.

Look at Cuba. A country of only 11 million people, it sends more doctors to developing countries than does the World Health Organization. Cuba has also developed and freely shared with the world a medication that aids in treating those who test positive for COVID-19: Interferon Alfa-2B.

Up to now the U.S. government has not only barred the use of medications from Cuba, it has actually threatened countries that accept them. But as the death toll mounts in the U.S., demands for treatments and medical equipment may force changes in seemingly set-in-stone policies.

China has struggled to overcome past underdevelopment by balancing different forms of central planning, local collective ownership, capitalist incentives and shared ownership with Western corporations and banks. At the same time, the Communist Party has maintained broad political and economic control. It has guided national development plans and controlled what imperialist corporations can and cannot do in China.

China is still a developing country emerging from 200 years of colonial looting and underdevelopment. But it has maintained steady development since its 1949 Communist revolution overturned archaic property relations and imperialist domination. That revolution 70 years ago has made all the difference in this global pandemic.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Featured image: 130 tons of protected gear donated by China, unloaded in Austria, bound for Italy.

University Bailouts, Funding and Coronavirus

April 6th, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

In a set of stable circumstances, funding higher education should be a matter of automatic persuasion.  If you want an educated populace, the tax payer should muck in. In some countries, however, this venture is uneven.  In the United Kingdom, the system remains divided, an echo of class stratification.  In Australia, which took so many of its behavioural and policy cues from ancestral Britain, investment in public education as a measure of Gross Domestic Product does not stack up well, in real terms, with other countries of the OECD.  Its school system is also something of a mild perversion – wealthy private schools receive millions as a windfall; state schools, short of equipment and facilities, starve and moulder.  

This state of affairs is highly unsatisfactory, but it is one made worse by the governance of tertiary institutions that remains, at heart, anti-democratic and oligarchical.  More to the point, they have lost their way, becoming beasts of private endeavour without enterprise; business driven without being entrepreneurial.  Poor, even disastrous investment decisions have been made, most notably the foray into the international student market.  This has often been done without a care about financial reserves or insurance that might cushion any precipitous fall in revenue.  Notwithstanding this, university politburos are putting out feelers for bailouts and financial assistance.  The begging bowl is doing the rounds.

In the United States, colleges have received a small slice – some $14bn of the multitrillion-dollar stimulus measure – to soften the blow caused by COVID-19. And some blow it has been, with LIU Post and Quinnipiac University laying off staff and the distinguished San Francisco Art Institute closing after a stint of 150 years.  Of that, $6bn is in the form of student aid; $7.5bn goes to the institutions.  The American Council on Education is none too pleased, claiming that the institutional portion is less than $8bn colleges and universities have spent in refunds and board charges.  Sector-wide losses are predicted to come in at $50bn.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is an exception, having taken steps to insure itself against a sharp drop in Chinese student revenue.  Moves were made in 2018 by the institution’s colleges of business and engineering to sign a three-year contract with an insurance broker to the value of $424,000, which would cover potential falls of revenue up to $60 million.  As Jeff Brown, dean of the Gies College of Business explained at the time, the insurance would be “triggered” by a fall of 20 per cent in Chinese student revenue in a single year.  “These triggers could be things like a visa restriction, a pandemic, a trade war – something like that that was outside our control.”    

The picture before those seeking relief is not a good one.  Combined with the characteristically shabby, ill-informed corporatism of the modern university, students in the higher education sector are receiving the attentions of an overworked and anxious teaching staff, many on sessional contracts, even as student fees feed the burgeoning managerial complex.  And international student fees, varying from twice to three times the domestic rate, have proven irresistible, leading to a seemingly endless number of appointments in management, marketing and public relations.  A logos-before-learning sentiment prevails.

In the United Kingdom, the question posed by the Financial Times over the weekend was whether universities are “too big to fail”.  Student numbers have galloped away, with University College London finding itself with twice as many it had a decade ago (38,000) and Manchester University still mighty with 39,000.  But this has not stopped the higher education sector’s call for a £7bn bailout.  This has come with the rich assumption that universities, as a matter of course, will receive such assistance, assumed as given by such international ratings agencies as Moody’s.  “It is not axiomatic,” retorts Baroness Cavendish, an adviser to the UK Department of Health and Social Care, “that UK taxpayers should now take on the financial risks of bridging what will be a shortlived hit to revenue – or without a quid pro quo.”

In 2018, the seasoned education specialist Sir Michael Barber, as head of the Office for Students, warned universities that they could not assume an automatic line of credit in the case of a financial crisis.  “The OfS will not bail out providers in a financial difficulty,” reasoned Barber during the Wonkfest higher education festival in London.  “This kind of thinking – not unlike the ‘too big to fail’ idea among the banks – will lead to poor-decision making and a lack of financial discipline, is inconsistent with the principle of university autonomy and is not in the students’ longer term interests.”  In two words: too late.

This makes calls for more funding, or a bailout package, as sharp as a double-edged sword.  Universities should receive generous funding from the public purse but there is also an expectation that such money be spent to advance the cause of education and the welfare of students, neither of which has featured much in the last decade.  The Australian Labor Party, in traditional fashion, has fallen for the magic of higher education in its ideal, rarefied form rather than actual, grounded practice.  That practice, which entails giving tax payer insurance to cover the outcomes of shoddy decision making, is ignored. 

For its part, the position of the Morrison government is best put by Senator James Paterson.  Admittedly, it supplies an incomplete picture, and a disingenuous one at that.  Nonetheless, it carries some weight.  Despite being warned about the China risk, universities, claimed Paterson, “rode the cycle up”.  It was time for them to ride it down.  

Inadvertently, the talk of protecting universities has started to resemble that of holding up financially imprudent banks.  Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek, for instance, has warned of “serious concerns that without federal government action some leading institutions could collapse.”  She proposes “low or no-cost loans to provide stability in coming months.”  She misses a beat on the issue of financial folly. “For years, universities have used income from international education to help fund their world-leading research.”  Such an equation is, if not false, then only a small part of it, ignoring the multi-million dollar amounts expended on non-research and teaching related operations, notably the spread-sheet devotees of management.

With such circumstances in mind, it would surely be fitting for the university in general to start a process of considered self-examination or, as novelist Arundhati Roy suggests with sharp clarity, take advantage of the coronavirus to “break with the past and reimagine their world anew.”  But what we find in certain marked instances is a hearty cri de coeur, a demand for financial padding that will tie things over.  Worst of all, it is a call for generous insurance without a promise of change and without condition.  Woe to the students, the sessional staff and the frontline academics. 

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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]

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According to internal documents, Monsanto and Germany’s BASF knew their products would destroy farms in the United States. The firms disregarded the risks even while they planned on how to profit off farmers who would buy Monsanto’s new seeds just to avoid the damages caused by their products.

The documents (some of them date back more than a decade) have been uncovered during a recent successful $265 million lawsuit brought against both firms by a Missouri farmer. The internal documents were seen and released by the Guardian. They also revealed how Monsanto opposed some third-party product testing, in order to curtail the generation of data that might have worried regulators. In some of the internal BASF emails, employees were even joking about sharing voodoo science and hoping to stay “out of jail.”

“The documents are the worst that I’ve ever seen for any case that I’ve worked on,” said lawyer Angie Splittgerber, a former tobacco industry defense attorney who works with farmers who are suing Monsanto and BASF. “So many of them put things in writing that were just horrifying.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Monsanto has been caught trying to hide the damages that are done with their products.

Records showed that at private meetings dating back to 2009, agricultural experts warned that the plan to develop a dicamba-tolerant system could have catastrophic consequences. Dicamba herbicide would normally kill crops such as soybean or cotton, but Monsanto altered the genes in these crops to create genetically modified varieties that are resistant to the herbicide. This meant that farmers can spray the weedkiller directly on those soybean or cotton plants to destroy weeds but leave the crops unharmed.

The experts told Monsanto that farmers were likely to spray old volatile versions of dicamba on the new dicamba-tolerant crops. They have warned that even new versions were still likely to be volatile enough to move away from the special cotton and soybean fields on to crops growing on other farms.

What is more important, under the system designed by Monsanto and BASF, only farmers buying Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean seeds would be protected from dicamba drift damage. –RT

According to a report prepared for Monsanto back in 2009 as part of industry consultation, such an off-target movement was expected. The company also expected things such as massive crop loss”, “lawsuits” and “negative press around pesticides.” Monsanto’s own projections estimated that dicamba damage claims from farmers would total more than 10,000 cases, including 1,305 in 2016, 2,765 in 2017 and 3,259 in 2018.

Both Monsanto and BASF defended their products, claiming dicamba is safe “when used correctly,” and marketed it as an important tool for farmers. Industry estimates suggest that several million acres of crops have now been reported damaged by dicamba. More than 100 US farmers are engaged in litigation in federal court alleging Monsanto and BASF collaboration created a “defective” crop system that has damaged orchards, gardens and organic and non-organic farm fields in multiple states.

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The Italian Quarantine

April 6th, 2020 by Baret Magarian

A novelist living in quarantine in Florence looks back at Italy’s cultural history and then forward, considering whether something positive might rise from the ruins that the virus will leave in its wake.

Last week I ventured out of my flat in Florence, armed with my auto-certificazione, the document you must possess in order to justify leaving your residence at any time in locked down Italy. As I cycled, trying to snatch a few minutes of permitted daily exercise, I veered for the Piazza del Duomo. I glanced around nervously, on the lookout for any abnormalities, policemen, anxious to avoid any official entanglements or questions. My exodus was marked by the electric flutter of adrenaline. As I gingerly reached the geometrically intricate miracle of Brunelleschi’s dome, I realized that I shared the square only with a military vehicle and some soldiers; no other civilian could be seen. It was disquieting. Did I mention the silence? It was cosmically still, as if I had just alighted on an alien planet that housed a carbon copy of Florence, but utterly bereft of sound and people. Just now the real Florentine sun is starting to ripen and ferment, settling into its springtime incarnation, and as it touched the upper levels of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral and the gargantuan dome that sits atop it, a dazzling, magical clarity resulted. But there was no one to share the moment with. I was alone.

Solitude. This is the inalienable fact of the Italian lockdown. We are all alone suddenly. Ordinary men and women alone in their homes, critically ill patients alone in hospitals (for those who are battling the Covid-19 virus are strictly isolated because of the risk of infection; not even relatives or parents are allowed to remain with them), and those shoppers who must remain at a meter’s distance from one another when they go out for essentials like food and medicine. The only places that remain open in Italy are pharmacies, supermarkets, bakeries, tobacconists, and newspaper kiosks. One of the cruelest privations in terms of everyday social interaction for the Italians—and for me, for that matter—is the loss of the ritual of the espresso, taken at the bar. The very few souls one sees outside are more often than not masked, wary, jittery. I was chastised by one man for walking too close to someone else the other day on a street that was otherwise deserted, like every other street in Florence. At a bakery, a member of staff insisted that I step back from the counter. When I did as she asked she insisted I step back further. To have stepped back any further would have required the demolition of the wall.

For Italians, who are so gregarious, so physically demonstrative, so loquacious, able to throw a party anywhere, even on a street corner, it is a cruel, surreal plight that they suddenly find themselves in. And the city’s ethereal beauty now feels almost sterile without the complementary babble of human emotions and voices that it ordinarily generates. Florence has become like a colossal movie set, after having been abandoned when the production money didn’t come through, an open-air theater for no one. While it is true that its almost metaphysical beauty and purity can now perhaps be apprehended the more clearly, the absence of humanity is elegiac. Perhaps we realize that beauty is inevitably diminished when it is glimpsed in isolation from others.

It is difficult now to imagine that only two weeks ago the city was so different, filled with tourists, all galleries and cinemas and bars and restaurants open, sounds of traffic, street life, singing filling the air. But it’s not just Florence, it’s the whole of Italy. At first it was only the northern region of Lombardy that was placed under quarantine, and in Tuscany we felt some pangs of guilt about that region’s restricted life. Then on March 9 the prime minster, Giuseppe Conte, ordered that the whole of Italy be placed under a lockdown after thousands of Italians fled from the north to Puglia and Calabria. They wanted to reunite with their families, stirred to panic-filled action after there was a leak about the projected quarantine in Lombardy from the League, the opposition party. Conte’s decision was the only real option available to him, for people had now grasped that the most serious thing about the coronavirus is its terrifying level of contagiousness. The next day, Conte ordered the lockdown to go into a higher gear—restaurants and bars that were allowed to stay open until 6pm the previous day were now ordered to shutter completely. Tourists were ordered to leave, hotels and Airbnb’s emptied instantly.

By then the Italian government had already been accused of having messed up, shutting the door after the horse had bolted. It is true that a national alarm had been sounded in January when the virus was first detected to have traveled from Wuhan to Italy. Perhaps a quarantine could have been instigated earlier. In his defense, Conte has displayed exemplary transparency in terms of the communication of his intentions, not electing to disappear whenever the going got too tough. He has proved to be more of an old-fashioned statesman than his counterparts in Europe and America: the UK, for example, is a hothouse of rumors and ambiguity, as Downing Street invites selective journalists to relay its incoherent messages. Similarly, the Italian medical sector—one of the finest in the world, and free to all—has been admirably professional and composed, despite the staggeringly difficult circumstances in which it is now having to function. Bergamo’s deaths are happening now so quickly that the cemeteries and crematoria simply can’t keep up, and the military has been called in to intervene and help.

The post office always used to be a bit of a gossip center where people stopped and chatted, and business was conducted at a leisurely pace.

On the whole, by all accounts, the Italians’ sense of civic duty has been good. Italians were never a populace fueled by a strong sense of social awareness; they were noted for their defiance, their contempt for authority and rules, but now they seem to be united by a common respect for one another and a gentle persistence and determination to do the right thing, to be considerate of others. I went to my local post office a few days ago, which is still functional but now ruled by a new protocol: one must wait outside in an orderly fashion, observing the one-meter social-distancing rule, and then only go inside when another customer comes out. The post office always used to be a bit of a gossip center where people stopped and chatted, and business was conducted at a leisurely pace: now everything has become Calvinistic and severe. But it’s an admirable method; to be overtly emotional now would be disastrous.

Similarly, the staff at supermarkets, the pharmacists, the medical personnel that I have spoken to: they all give off an air of stoicism and resilience. When I took the time to sincerely thank one of the exhausted supermarket staff for his unfailing efforts to meet the needs of his customers, he just brushed off my gratitude modestly. And no one has been panic-buying, at least not in Florence: once Italians were reassured that the supply of food would be constant, they could relax. I spoke to a freelancer in film production based in Rome, and he told me that the Romans have been obeying the rules and keeping their distance. He didn’t think that there was a risk of eventual anarchy breaking out, since Italians are serene by nature, unlike the more volatile Anglo-Saxons. Others I spoke to, such as a language teacher and translator, based in Lucca, found herself missing terribly the screams of her students, camaraderie with colleagues, and the colorful mess of school life.

An interesting quasi-paradox about pre-lockdown Italy is that while bureaucracy was always labyrinthine, glacial, and elaborate—when paying in cash to an Italian bank account, for example, you had to produce your medical card with your tax code and your identity card—everyday life was structured around the concept of improvisation and the idea of making it up as you go along. Now, in lockdown, Italy improvisation’s spark has been snuffed out. But a sense of social responsibility has hesitantly slipped into the space improvisation once occupied.

by Pierpaolo Florio

And yet Italians are extremely resilient people; they are fighters and are famously inventive. Italian painting and literature is glorious. Italy gave the world—arguably—its single greatest feat of architecture (Brunelleschi’s dome), a cosmically equilibrated vision of the afterlife (Dante’s Commedia), exquisite opera (Puccini, Verdi, Rossini), lofty novelists (Lampedusa, Pavese, Calvino), ahead-of-their-time intellectuals (Pasolini), genius filmmakers (Fellini, Visconti), and modernist creators of conundrums (Pirandello). They discovered that the earth was not at the center of the universe (Galileo). They created art so grand that it rivals the splendors of nature (Michelangelo). Contemporary doctors and dentists are among the finest in the world; today Carlo Rovelli is one of the world’s most preeminent physicists. Their artisans and electricians, their plumbers and engineers, their architects and chefs are creative in a way that is instinctive: Italians locate problems and devise solutions to them. They are resilient, and they have history’s wisdom and survival code stamped into their DNA, so I sometimes allow myself to feel tentatively optimistic about Italy’s future and its contortionistic ability to prevail and surmount obstacles and rise above them. Boccaccio’s The Decameron, an absurdly fertile feat of perpetual storytelling, was the product of defiance—defying the plague by telling stories that took place within or outside its orbit. Manzoni’s The Betrothed is another celebrated work that touches on the idea of contagion and disease, evoking Milan’s plague of 1630.

Beyond the obvious claustrophobic nature of the quarantine and its curtailment of social contact, another kind of apprehension or fear sometimes comes spasmodically into focus. It is a fear about society’s fabric falling apart: a sense that, as Yeats puts it, the center cannot hold. It must also be this fear that is uppermost in the minds of people who do not live in the exquisite countryside of Tuscany or close by Florence’s centro storico’s ethereal grace. In Florence’s drab suburbs—Scandicci, Sesto Fiorentino, Campi Bisenzio—a lot of buildings that were constructed in the 1970s resemble dour Soviet tower blocks; the flats inside are often terribly cramped and have no balconies and only run to about fifty square meters. In such suffocating conditions, people’s nerves must be close to frayed. On March 10 the government unveiled a plan for deferred utility bills, wage subsidies, and suspended mortgage repayments for people during the quarantine. These subsidies have yet to materialize, however. Ironically, Italy has received more aid from China than from the EU, despite the latter’s publicly trumpeted promises to do what it takes to keep the country afloat. And on March 22 a medical team of doctors and nurses from Cuba was flown in to help the magnificent Italian nurses and doctors. It seems that Italy’s more immediate neighbors are less concerned about its plight than those from farther climes.

Maybe in some ways Florence has reverted to a kind of medieval severity, has slipped back into a version of what it might have actually once been, stripped as it now is of pleasure and tourism, commerce and lightness. It was here that the rediscovery of Greek texts led to the birth of a new humanism, which in turn ushered in the Renaissance, as facilitated by the wealth and patronage of the Medici family, and the Middle Ages came to an end. In some ways maybe the universal privation of the lockdown might serve to remind us that the little things count, that life shouldn’t always be about immediate gratification, a perpetual searching for pleasure and purchases. At the risk of sounding preachy, could our collective enforced monasticism offer people a chance to recalibrate, to become less shallow and image-obsessed as we seem to be, or at least as shallow as the cell phone culture at large seems to promote and encourage?

Some people I have spoken to—friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic—feel that the Coronavirus pandemic may trigger some kind of existential and ethical change for the better. It is certainly true that it has forced us all to slow down, to spend time alone, to take stock and evaluate our lives, ourselves, our values, not just in Italy but, more and more, increasingly, all over the world. Those who are more naturally disposed toward meditation, introspection, spending time in their own company may be faring better than those who need to be constantly on the go, whose lives are caffeine whirls and frenetic power days. But maybe we should seize upon this pause button willingly, wake up, and connect with reality again on a more essential level. Could that pause button lead to a reboot? One hopes.

Clearly, things were and are getting out of hand on all levels—environmentally, politically, ethically. The fact that nature has already demonstrated spectacular powers of reinvention and auto-healing (I am thinking of the recent purified satellite images of Wuhan and Italy) is something that should leave us faintly awestruck, humbled, grateful. Last night I saw the stars in the night sky from my flat for the first time in my fifteen-odd years of living here. The canal waters of Venice are now transparent, and swans and dolphins have been sighted in the ports of Trieste and Cagliari after this period of radically decreased travel, economic activity, and human emissions. Is the planet trying to tell us something? Is this a chance to reclaim our humanity? It’s tempting to feel that something positive might rise from the ruins that the virus will leave in its wake.

I don’t wish to understate the enormity of the human tragedy that the virus has precipitated and the economic and social devastation it will wreak in society at large. And yet perhaps we can take solace in the fact that the planet has now, by an unforeseen and complex twist of fate—the gradual locking down of the world—been given a temporary reprieve from the toxicity we have been feeding it for time immemorial. Maybe that thought could help provide the light which sustains us in the darkness to come. In the meantime, Italy’s own flame remains diminished but not extinguished.

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The world’s richest country USA is the only developed one without some form of universal healthcare.

Americans get marketplace medicine instead, an inequitable system for a fundamental human right. 

It prioritizes profits over human health, leaving growing millions in the US uninsured, most others way underinsured because of high cost — making healthcare in the US the way it should be for everyone unaffordable.

Should corporate insurers with bottom line priorities over all else decide what medical care they will or won’t pay for and how much?

Should millions of poor and low-income households be deprived of vital healthcare when most needed because it’s unaffordable?

Medical treatment decisions should be made by doctors and other qualified health professionals, not politicians, bureaucrats, or business.

High healthcare costs in the US, double the amount of other developed countries, is the leading cause of consumer bankruptcies.

According to the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) in March 2019, around two-thirds of household bankruptcies were  because of unaffordable healthcare or unpaid time away from work.

Because of high-cost/sharply rising premiums, deductibles and co-pays, healthcare insurance or enough of it for full coverage is unaffordable for most Americans.

The AJPH noted that Obamacare “did not change the proportion of bankruptcies with medical causes.”

Three years after its enactment, medical bankruptcies were slightly higher than earlier. Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) co-founder Dr. David Himmelstein explained why, saying:

“Unless you’re Jeff Bezos, people don’t have very good alternatives, because the insurance that is available and affordable to people, or that most people’s employers provide them, is not adequate protection if you’re sick.”

Most US households live from paycheck to paycheck with scant savings or none at all.

According to the Bankrate personal finance website in January 2019, only 40% of US households have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.

Most Americans are woefully unprepared for the ongoing health and economic crisis that may be the severest in US history before ending at an unknown future time.

The American Public Health Association explained that bankruptcy filers for medical reasons are in worse health and more likely to skip needed treatments and medications, greatly endangering them.

Spreading COVID-19, mass layoffs and unemployment in the US show why Medicare for all is an idea whose time has come with great urgency to enact into law now.

PNHP called for improved universal healthcare for all Americans — everyone in, no one left out, prioritizing public and personal health over profit-making by insurers, Big Pharma, and large hospital chains.

Its website states that “the only permanent solution is to enact a single-payer national health program that would:

  • Cover all US residents for all medically necessary care;
  • Totally eliminate out-of-pocket spending;
  • Guarantee appropriate health resources in all communities based on medical need;
  • Increase public health spending and invest in research to improve population health; and
  • Maintain the capacity to respond to nationwide crises in a unified manner” like what’s occurring in real time now, adding:

“COVID-19 is just one dramatic example of our failure to care for vulnerable patients and marginalized populations.”

Hand-washing, social distancing, sheltering in place, and more draconian lockdowns to contain and eliminate COVID-19 outbreaks ignore core healthcare inequality and inadequacy of our time and earlier in the US — lack of healthcare for everyone in the country, a vital human right not addressed.

Food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare when needed are the most fundamental human rights of all.

In the US, they’re based on the ability to pay, why millions of people in the country live on the edge.

Millions are food insecure. Hundreds of thousands are homeless, and most Americans have no healthcare coverage or not enough.

PNHP co-founder Dr. Steffie Woolhander expressed frustration, saying “(t)he lack of Medicare for all is forcing (doctors and other healthcare professionals) to fight this (battle) with one hand tied behind our back.”

The medical community and society overall “have to conquer coronavirus altogether. That’s the whole idea behind Medicare for all.”

If not now at a time of a growing national emergency, when?

If the medical community and millions of ordinary Americans don’t demand it now, who will?

If that doesn’t express a sense of urgency for a vitally needed human right when most needed, what will?

A Final Comment

According to Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office estimates, administrative/bureaucratic savings would free up enough funds to provide world-class healthcare for all Americans – without increasing total spending.

In January, PNHP explained that Medicare for all can save about $600 billion annually in the US by eliminating middlemen bureaucracy and paperwork that costs over one-third of what’s spent on healthcare — fivefold what Canada spends.

Dr. Himmelstein explained that “(t)he difference (in administrative costs) between Canada and the US  is enough to not only cover all the uninsured but also to eliminate all the copayments and deductibles, and to amp up home care for the elderly and disabled,” adding:

“And frankly…money (will) be left over.”

According to Public Citizen, the US healthcare industry “wants you to think universal healthcare is too expensive.”

“In reality, it’s our current system that’s a wasteful, unsustainable disaster.”

At a time when the vast majority of Americans are hunkered down at home and scared to death about COVID-19, Medicare for all is the only acceptable way to assure healthcare is provided for all Americans when needed.

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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.

Was the Federal Reserve Just Nationalized?

April 6th, 2020 by Ellen Brown

Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.

Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which will be doling out $2.2 trillion in crisis relief, most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillionavailable to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made $1.5 trillion available to the repo market.

It is also the Federal Reserve that will be picking up the tab for this bonanza, at least to start. The US central bank has opened the sluice gates to unlimited quantitative easing, buying Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functions.” Last month, the Fed bought $650 billion worth of federal securities. At that rate, notes Wall Street on Parade, it will own the entire Treasury market in about 22 months. As Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged on 60 Minutes, “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve.”

In theory, quantitative easing is just a temporary measure, reversible by selling bonds back into the market when the economy gets back on its feet. But in practice, we have seen that QE is a one-way street. When central banks have tried to reverse it with “quantitative tightening,” economies have shrunk and stock markets have plunged. So the Fed is likely to just keep rolling over the bonds, which is what normally happens anyway with the federal debt. The debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year. Only the interest must be paid, to the tune of $575 billion in 2019. The benefit of having the Fed rather than private bondholders hold the bonds is that the Fed rebates its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, making the loans virtually interest-free. Interest-free loans rolled over indefinitely are in effect free money. The Fed is “monetizing” the debt.

What will individuals, families, communities and state and local governments be getting out of this massive bailout? Not much. Qualifying individuals will get a very modest one-time payment of $1,200, and unemployment benefits have been extended for the next four months. For local governments, $150 billion has been allocated for crisis relief, and one of the Fed’s newly expanded Special Purpose Vehicles will buy municipal bonds. But there is no provision for reducing the interest rate on the bonds, which typically runs at 3 or 4 percent plus hefty bond dealer fees and foregone taxes on tax-free issues. Unlike the federal government, municipal governments will not be getting a rebate on the interest on their bonds.

The taxpayers have obviously been shortchanged in this deal. David Dayen calls it “a robbery in progress.” But there have been some promising developments that could be harnessed for the benefit of the people. The Fed has evidently abandoned its vaunted “independence” and is now working in partnership with the Treasury. In some sense, it has been nationalized. A true partnership, however, would make the printing press available for more than just buying toxic corporate assets. A central bank that was run as a public utility could fund programs designed to kickstart the economy, stimulate productivity and generally serve the public.

Harnessing the Central Bank

The reason the Fed is now working with the Treasury is that it needs the Treasury to help it bail out a financial industry burdened with an avalanche of dodgy assets that are fast losing value. The problem for the Fed is that it is only allowed to purchase or lend against securities with government guarantees, including Treasury securities, agency mortgage-backed securities, debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and (arguably) municipal securities. To get around that wrinkle, as Wolf Richter explains:

[T]he Treasury will create (or resuscitate) a series of special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) to buy all manner of financial assets, backed by $425 billion in collateral conveniently supplied by the US taxpayer via the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The Fed will lend to SPVs against this collateral which, when leveraged, could fund $4-5 trillion in asset purchases.

That includes municipal bonds, non-agency mortgages, corporate bonds, commercial paper, and every variety of asset-backed security. The only things the government can’t (transparently, yet) buy are publicly-traded stocks and high-yield bonds.

Unlike in QE, in which the Fed moves assets onto its own balance sheet, the Treasury will now be buying assets and backstopping loans through SPVs that the Treasury will own and control. SPVs are a form of shadow bank, which like all banks create moneyby “monetizing” debt or turning it into something that can be spent in the marketplace. The SPV decides what assets to buy and borrows from the central bank to do it. The central bank then passively creates the funds, which are used to purchase the assets backing the loan. As Jim Bianco wrote on Bloomberg:

In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades. This scheme essentially merges the Fed and Treasury into one organization. …

In effect, the Fed is giving the Treasury access to its printing press. This means that, in the extreme, the administration would be free to use its control, not the Fed’s control, of these SPVs to instruct the Fed to print more money so it could buy securities and hand out loans in an effort to ramp financial markets higher going into the election.

Of the designated SPVs, none currently serves a public purpose beyond buoying the markets; but they could be designed for such purposes. The taxpayers are on the hook for replenishing the $425 billion in the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and they should be entitled to share in the benefits. Congress could designate a Special Purpose Vehicle to fund its infrastructure projects, and to fund those much-needed public services including Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief, and similar programs. It could also purchase a controlling interest in insolvent or profligate banks, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and other offenders and regulate them in a way that serves the public interest.

Another possibility would be for Congress to fund these programs in the usual way by issuing government bonds, but to enter into a partnership agreement first by which the central bank would buy the bonds, roll them over indefinitely, and rebate the interest to the Treasury. That is how Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has funded his stimulus programs, with none of the predicted inflationary effects on consumer prices. In fact the Japanese consumer price index is hovering at a very low 0.4%, well below even the central bank’s 2 percent target, although the Bank of Japan has monetized nearly half of the government’s debt. Half of the US debt would be over $11 trillion. Assuming $6 trillion for the current corporate bailouts, that means another $5 trillion could safely be monetized for programs benefiting individuals, families and local governments. (How to do this without driving up consumer prices will be the subject of another article.)

Relief for State and Local Governments

State and local governments, which are on the front lines for delivering emergency services, have for the most part been left out of the bailout bonanza. While we are waiting for action from Congress, the Fed could make cheap loans available to local governments using its existing powers under Federal Reserve Act Sec. 14(2)(b), which authorizes the Fed to purchase the bills, bonds, and notes of state and local governments having maturities of six months or less. Since local governments must balance their budgets, these loans would have to be repaid, but the loans could be extended by rolling them over for a reasonable period, as is done with repo loans and the federal debt; and the loans could be made at the same near-zero interest rate banks can borrow at now. State and local governments are at least as creditworthy as banks – they have a taxpayer base and massive assets. In fact the private banking industry would have been insolvent long ago if it were not for the deep pocket of the central bank and the bailouts of the federal government, including the FDIC insurance scheme that rescued the banks from bankruptcy in the Great Depression.

There is a way state and local governments can take advantage of the near-zero interest rates available to banks even without federal action. They can set up their own publicly-owned banks. Besides giving them the ability to borrow much more cheaply, having their own banks would allow them to leverage their loan funds. A $100 million revolving fund issuing loans at 3% would gross the state $3 million per year. If that same $100 million were used to capitalize a bank, it could issue ten times that sum in loans, grossing $30 million per year. Costs would need to be deducted from those earnings, including the cost of funds; but the cost of funds is quite low for banks today. They can borrow to meet their liquidity needs from their own deposit pool, or at 0.25% in the fed funds market, or at about the same rate in the repo market, which is now backstopped by the central bank.

The blatant disparities in the congressional response to the current crisis have shone a bright light on how our financial system is rigged against the people in favor of a wealthy elite. Crisis is when change happens; this is the time for advocates to unite in demanding change on behalf of the people. As Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis admonished in a recent post:

[T]his new phase of the crisis is, at the very least, making it clear to us that anything goes – that everything is now possible.… Whether the epidemic helps deliver the good or the most evil society will depend … on whether progressives manage to band together. For if we do not, just like in 2008 we did not, the bankers, the spivs [petty criminals], the oligarchs and the neofascists will prove, again, that they are the ones who know how not to let a good crisis go to waste.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Web of Debt Blog.

Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books,including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

The Afrin Liberation Forces carried out a series of attacks on Turkish-backed militants in northern Aleppo. According to the group, its fighters stormed positions of Turkish proxies near Omra killing three of them on March 26. On April 1, the group’s members blew up a vehicle of a field commander, Abu Khalid. The commander and his three bodyguards were killed, while the fourth one was injured. On the same day, Kurdish rebels detonated an IED at a headquarters of Turkish-backed forces in the al-Mahmudiyah neighborhood of Afrin city. The attack resulted in material losses only.

The Afrin Liberation Forces is a brand used by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to distance themselves from regular attacks on the Turkish Army and Turkish-backed groups in northern Syria. They launch their attacks from the YPG-controlled area near the city of Aleppo and have a network of cells within the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin.

Turkish convoys with building blocks and engineering equipment were entering Syria through the Kafr Lusin border crossing on April 1 and April 2. Later, the equipment and building blocks then were delivered to the militant-held part of the M4 highway in southern Idlib. The Turkish military is reportedly planning to use them to set up a group of fortified checkpoints along the highway in order to solidify its presence there. In March, Turkish forces in the area became a target of two IED attacks by radical militants, and Ankara reasonably expects that such attacks could continue in April.

On April 2, two Syrian soldiers were killed and five others were injured in a Turkish artillery strike on a Syrian Army checkpoint near the town of Tell Tamr in the province of al-Hasakah. In 2019, the army established a number of positions in northeastern Syria following a breakthrough agreement with local Kurdish militias. Then, joint Syrian-Russian efforts allowed to limit the Turkish military operation against Kurdish forces and prevent a larger escalation. Nonetheless, sporadic firefights and artillery duels regularly erupt on the contact line between the Turkish Army and its proxies on the one hand and the  Syrian Army and Kurdish militias on the other hand.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition reinforced its military base in the oil-rich area of Rmelan. The US base is located near one of the country’s largest oil fields. It can produce up to 90,000 barrels a day. Earlier, the US military deployed additional equipment and troops to its positions in the area of al-Shaddadi in southern al-Hasakah.

According to the Pentagon, about 500 US troops remain deployed in the oil-rich areas in the provinces of Deir Ezzor and al-Haskah. However, the scale of military activity in the region indicate that the real number of personnel involved is likely higher.

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COVID-19 Depression: Trump Needs a War

April 5th, 2020 by Kurt Nimmo

It is seriously astounding how fast the economy is crumbling. No infusion of funny money will save the American people from the historically severe depression now evolving.

State and federal governments are becoming more authoritarian in response to serious influenza (critical data on the transmission of the disease is absent, muddled, contradictory, and the corporate media feeds a frenzy of fear and paranoia based on conflicting, revised, and often speculative numbers). 

Critical supply lines foolishly based on the globalist profit-maximizing concept of “just in time” are now breaking down. How long do you suppose unemployed service industry and gig-economy workers will tolerate a serious shortage of food and other essentials before looting stores like the poor and hungry of Palermo? How long before armed citizens begin taking what they need and the military is called in to restore order and confiscate weapons like they did during Katrina? All hell will break loose from Baltimore to Seattle and the government may impose martial law (it can be argued we are already under a soft form of martial-medical law, half of us confined to our homes, the equivalent of house arrest, scared to death of a virus they now say can spread by merely opening of one’s mouth and speaking and thus allowing viral-laden breath to drift in the air). 

I don’t believe the state will be able to meet the needs of a third or more of an unemployed workforce—angry, desperate, and eventually violent as a dystopian nightmare spreads across the land. Congress and Trump’s onetime $1,200 check will certainly not satisfy the unemployed for long—in many cases, that’s not even a month’s rent. Millions of Americans stood by and watched as the Federal Reserve dished out a trillion and a half bucks to the banks and the financial elite. 

Mark Twain said something about history rhyming. It looks like a big fat sonnet is about to unfold and knock us flat. Historians argue whether FDR did or did not secretly agree with Churchill to get the US involved in the war in Europe and thus put an end to a stubborn depression. It did—and the military-industrial machine returned prosperity to depression and war-weary Americans while building a sprawling national security structure behind the scenes to face an exaggerated enemy, a critically flawed Soviet Union and the virus of Lenin’s version of communism. 

While we are obsessed with life, death, and the coronavirus, the Trump administration is moving to re-ignite the war in Iraq, a war that has as its final objective the destruction of Iran. 

From the corporate propaganda media:

President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that Iran was planning a “sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq” and later cited unspecified intelligence he said indicated potential plots by local Tehran-aligned forces there.

“Don’t do it,” the president warned at a press briefing that evening, threatening that his “response will be bigger” this time after U.S. airstrikes last month targeted Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah positions but also reportedly killed Iraqi troops, police officers and a civilian.

It was soon reported Trump ordered “Patriot surface-to-air missiles and a variant of the Navy’s SeaRAM and CIWS, or close-in weapon system, which fires 3,000 rounds a minute” be sent to Iraq to protect US bases. 

Lost in the latest reportage is the fact the rockets fired at US soldiers were a direct response to Trump’s Mafia hit on Iran’s Qassem Soleimani.

A second establishment propaganda mill reported: 

It was not immediately clear what intelligence Trump had obtained to prompt him to issue his tweet on Wednesday… [during a] subsequent press conference he indicated the US’s likely target would be Kata’ib Hezbollah, saying the US had “very good information on the group planning the attack”. He added: “It was led by Iran, not necessarily Iran, but by groups supported by Iran, but that to me is Iran.”

President Trump now has the distraction of a virus and the unfolding of a government-engineered depression to cover what the neocons plan to do in Iraq and Iran. 

Considering Trump had zero reluctance to murder Soleimani in high-tech mob boss fashion, it is entirely possible he will go after Iran’s expeditionary Quds force commander Esmail Ghaani. He is scheduled for a meeting in Baghdad this week. “Ghaani is hoping to unite the Shia factions, and the visit is seen as a test of whether he can match the famed influence of Suleimani.”

Then again, taking into account Trump’s recent vacillations on Iran, he may decline to start another war in the Middle East. He believes the impending depression is “V-shaped” and America will bounce back after increasingly authoritarian COVID-19 measures are put into place and never rescinded. 

If he believes there will be a bounce to prosperity, he is surely deluded. Before the middle of June, it is likely the US will be in a full-blown depression with hyperinflation, food shortages, mass protests, political violence, and the possibility of military rule as laid out in the state’s continuity of government plans for “national emergencies.” 

Oliver North, now handsomely compensated as a patriot-celebrity, in the early 1980s under a compromised Reagan helped put into motion a plan to round-up and intern millions of “troublemakers,” most listed on the Main Core database established by FEMA under National Security Directive (NSD) 69 and National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 55. Main Core is now held by the NSA, FBI, CIA and more than likely the national security state’s corporate public-private partners (a classic example of Mussolini fascism-corporatism). 

The severity of the depression and the reaction by the state will result in the final and complete destruction of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This will be of little concern to folks facing poverty, eviction, homelessness, and the disease, mental illness, alcohol, and drug addiction, and early death that invariably accompanies the fall of managed economies and the failure of government. 

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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.

Boastful Pay Cuts: The Coronavirus Incentive

April 5th, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It has become a source of pride.  Highly salaried executives – often, it should be said, receiving pay very much disconnected from the value of their work – making voluntary pay cuts and telling everybody else about it.  In sport, celebrated figures such as Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo have chosen to reduce their enormous pay packages for the sake of the game.  Both play for football leagues in Spain and Italy, countries ravaged by COVID-19, and both earn amounts reputedly coming in at $100 million a year.  Such sums are scandalous to begin with, but it enables a sort of virtue to be practised, the sort that leaves few scares.  Clubs such as Barcelona and Juventus host an army of non-playing employees, and such armies risk being culled. 

This point is being demonstrated with some force in the United Kingdom, where handsomely paid players in the English Premier League have resisted calls to be virtuous in parting with their own cash in covering the fees of club staff.  One figure keen to shout the message to do more is health secretary Matt Hancock. “Given the sacrifices many people are making, the first thing PL footballers can do is make a contribution.” 

Julian Knight, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee, also had a bone to pick with the Premier League, writing a scolding note to its chief executive Richard Masters about potentially misusing the job retention scheme.

“The purpose of the coronavirus job retention scheme is not to support the economics of Premier League clubs.”   

The targets of economic pain have, inevitably, been the staff and personnel who do not find themselves kicking a ball on the pitch.  Clubs such as Tottenham have furloughed non-playing employees.  Newcastle was first out of the box, reducing the salaries of non-playing staff by 20 per cent. This sent a rather ugly message: If you are not a performer on the field, you will be targets of convenience for the financial razor gangs.

Scratching the surface, and we find dissatisfied players such as Andros Townsend, a member of the English football team, none too keen to be either noble or a target of virtue. 

“Football,” he pleaded on talkSPORT, “is trying to do a lot of good.”  He found it surprising that footballers were “being painted as villains”.  (Tool Townsend might be; sharp, he is not.) 

Reductions in his own salary, and those of his peers, was something he preferred to avoid in the discussion.  The focus was on charitable good works, helping the homeless or donating to charities.  “I am involved in a campaign, Football United, raising money for the emergency trust.” A toast, then, to his achievements. 

The pattern is repeated among other football players who prefer to raise money from the public to support what are, already, publically funded facilities.  Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, for instance, is engaged in establishing a coronavirus fund with the purpose of raising millions of pounds for the National Health Service.  The public can pay for something they already pay for, a truly innovative form of charity.

Across industries, the principle of superfluousness is coming to the fore.  The mightily salaried are making claims of reduction to gain a seat in some heavenly kingdom.  In doing so, they hope that no one will notice a cardinal fact: that the cuts are only to the base salary rather than the whole remuneration package.  This has been particularly so in the airline industry, where executives are kitting themselves out in the vestments of a newly found morality.  British Airways CEO Willie Walsh is accepting a 20 per cent pay cut for the remainder of his contract with International Airlines Group.  Australian airline Qantas has also stormed up the ranks of virtue, with Alan Joyce taking no salary for the rest of the financial year ending in June 2020, while the executive management team accept a 30 per cent pay cut.  Before shedding joyful tears for such consideration, Joyce’s rich rewards from the company should not be forgotten.  According to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, his pay for 2018 was $23.88 million.

Few, in other words, should rush to join the self-congratulatory party.  Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s base salary is $891,667, which he accordingly intends to cut “by 100 per cent through the next six months.”  That constitutes a trifling 6 per cent of his mammoth $14.9 million compensation package.  As Ethan Wolff-Mann of Yahoo Finance notes, that rich package consists of “stock awards, option awards, and other types of compensation that aren’t connected to the company’s stock price.”  Shares, rather than salary, make the difference.

The picture looks equally seedy in the world of education, where the management heavies continue to bleed university budgets.  In Australia, La Trobe University executives, self-termed “leaders”, have embarked on a process of trimming their bloated salaries.  Senior executives who form a 12-strong group have been asked to cede 20 per cent of their pay packets “in the interest of minimising the economic impact of the crisis”.  Vice-chancellor John Dewar explains the reasoning:

While the impacts at La Trobe may not be as severe as some other Australian universities, we will soon be facing a simple choice: ‘share the pain’ across the organisation’s staff or implement a significant cost cutting exercise.” 

Given how executive leadership imperilled the Australian tertiary system by overly investing in the foreign student market, they might do a little more than.

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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]

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With the world’s attention directed towards the coronavirus it may be worth changing focus, and analysing another international incident, the Cuban Missile Crisis. This hugely significant event occurred almost 60 years ago, officially from the 16th to the 28th of October 1962.

While humanity will eventually recover from the coronavirus outbreak, the missile crisis confrontation between America and the USSR came close to destroying our planet. The factors culminating in it were, overwhelmingly, due to American aggression and terror pursued by the John F. Kennedy administration against revolutionary Cuba. Perhaps most serious of all, as the missile crisis was peaking on 26 October 1962, president Kennedy was handed a vital letter in the early evening, written by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

More than 100 US-built missiles having the capability to strike Moscow with nuclear warheads were deployed in Italy and Turkey in 1961. (Public Domain)

In Khrushchev’s lengthy correspondence to JFK, among other things he offered to end the missile crisis with a simultaneous public withdrawal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba, along with the removal of US Jupiter missiles placed in Italy and Turkey, the latter country close to Soviet borders. The Kremlin, we can note, posed no threat of invasion to NATO state Turkey, nor was Moscow directing a major terrorist campaign against Turkey either.

President Kennedy was aware that if he refused Khrushchev’s offer, it would lead to an estimated 33% to 50% increased chance of nuclear war erupting between America and the Soviet Union. Yet Kennedy rejected Khrushchev’s proposal.

The highly regarded author and analyst, Noam Chomsky, wrote of JFK’s act that, “It is hard to think of a more horrendous decision in history – and for this, he is still highly praised for his cool courage and statesmanship” (1). Kennedy’s legacy has been crafted and romanticised to a somewhat surreal extent. When queried on JFK’s record by comparison to then incumbent Barack Obama, Chomsky said, “JFK was far worse, which is not a compliment to Obama”. (2)

Reflecting on the missile crisis Chomsky noted,

“The confrontation finally came down to two basic issues: [1] Would Kennedy pledge that the US would not invade Cuba? And [2] would he make a public announcement that the US would withdraw its Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey, on the border of Russia and aimed at its heartland? On both issues, Kennedy ultimately refused. He agreed only to a secret commitment to withdraw the missiles, which had in any case already been scheduled to be replaced by Polaris nuclear submarines. He refused to make any formal commitment not to invade Cuba”. (3)

It was important that Moscow be seen to capitulate before the eyes of the world, with a public withdrawal of their missiles from Cuba. JFK’s belligerence, it must be stressed again, knowingly made it much more likely that a nuclear conflict would ensue, killing hundreds of millions. The Holocaust, widely recognised as the worst crime in history, resulted in the deaths of around six million people.

With Kennedy rejecting Khrushchev’s proposal, this enhanced risk of nuclear war added to the many other risks – already in place – that occurs when tensions are ratcheted up between the world’s two nuclear and military superpowers. In a direct struggle, America was always the stronger and more dominant of the two rivals, holding incomparable advantages.

By 26 October 1962, the overall chance of a nuclear war starting was now undoubtedly approaching a 90% likelihood – and even surpassing that figure in the hours ahead. Hair-raising incidents, as we will see, bear proof of this.

On October 26th Kennedy was “leaning towards military action to eliminate the missiles” in Cuba, according to Sheldon Stern, the well-informed American author. This would almost certainly have resulted in a nuclear conflict.

JFK had moreover rejected Khrushchev’s offer, primarily because he did not want the obsolete US Jupiter missiles with nuclear warheads removed publicly from Turkey. It was feared that the US-led NATO alliance might crack, should such an agreement be carried out under apparent pressure from the Soviets.

Washington wished to preserve their right to place nuclear-armed weapons, and other advanced technology, wherever it wished. The Russians were afforded no such luxury, as Khrushchev would discover. While he was dispatching his missiles to Cuba by stealth, the Americans had openly encircled Russia with offensive instruments of war.

Kennedy’s disregard of the Khrushchev letter was undertaken in order to preserve US prestige, credibility and strategic superiority over Moscow. There is little doubt that these imperialist ambitions were deemed more important to Kennedy, and his advisors, than reducing the possibility of a sprint to the precipice.

In the event of nuclear war, America would be destroyed along with her NATO allies in western Europe, like Britain and France, as would many other countries, including of course the Soviet Union. However, Kennedy and his colleagues did not seek out their western European friends for counsel during the missile crisis, treating them with aloof disdain. Kennedy previously informed his Secretary of State Dean Rusk that Washington’s allies “must come along or stay behind”. (4)

JFK’s closest ally, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, told his cabinet members that Kennedy’s policies were “escalating into war” but that he felt unable “to stop it”. What Macmillan learnt came almost exclusively from British intelligence.

The day after Khrushchev’s letter arrived, 27 October 1962, a terminal nuclear war nearly broke out. The planet was saved that day only by the action of Vasily Arkhipov, a 36-year-old Soviet submarine officer. (5)

With Kennedy having refused to de-escalate the crisis, a dozen US warships zoned in on a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine located near Cuban shores. The submarine was operating legally in international waters, but it was tracked down by US vessels attempting to force a quarantine. Depth charges were then dropped.

A US Navy P-2H Neptune of VP-18 flying over a Soviet cargo ship with crated Il-28s on deck during the Cuban Crisis. (Public Domain)

The Soviet crew became agitated, and were working in increasingly difficult circumstances. Air conditioning in the submarine had failed, with the heat almost too unbearable to endure. Some Soviet crew members fainted because of rising temperatures and the spread of noxious gases on board.

The submarine’s captain, Valentin Savitsky, wanted to fire their nuclear torpedo at the US destroyers, which consisted of a 15 kiloton weapon, equivalent in power to the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Captain Savitsky said,

“We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all; we will not become the shame of the fleet”. (6)

Losing contact with Moscow many days before, the Soviet crew were left in the dark, and did not know if war was taking place above the surface. Orders to fire the nuclear missile were subsequently blocked by Arkhipov, a man well respected and noted for his bravery in the past. In doing so, Arkhipov “saved the world” as Thomas Blanton commented, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. (7)

Had the Soviet nuclear torpedo been launched, Washington’s response in such a scenario was a large-scale nuclear attack on Russia; including very likely further assaults at the same time on China, Russia’s communist neighbour. The experienced military expert, Daniel Ellsberg, wrote that US plans called for nuclear strikes in any war on Russia and China together. The Chinese did not develop nuclear weapons until October 1964.

Ellsberg recalled that maps in US headquarters “did not demarcate at all between China and Russia. The Sino-Soviet bloc appeared as one giant landmass, with arrows and pins indicating the various targets” (8). Strategies to hit Russia and China with nuclear bombs were, in fact, firmly embedded in the highest echelons of US political and military circles, as noted by Ellsberg, who enjoyed top level clearance.

That the globe’s preservation came down to last minute interventions, reveals much of the shocking standard of leadership provided by Kennedy downwards; to a lesser extent too, Khrushchev and the Kremlin hierarchy. Khrushchev’s decision to station nuclear missiles on Cuban soil was terribly rash, particularly when faced with an aggressive and inexperienced opponent like Kennedy.

Such chilling close calls were not limited to October 27th. In the air, scores of B-52 American bombers were armed with thermonuclear bombs and ready to go. The US pilot, Major Don Clawson, was ever-present in the skies during these high risk manoeuvres. Clawson believes that the most dangerous day of the missile crisis was actually October 26th, and he remarked on that date,

“We were damned lucky we didn’t blow up the world – and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country”.

Clawson reminisces on a list of bungling errors and confusion among the American leadership on October 26th, and more broadly during the missile crisis. Clawson wrote of his air commanders that they “did not possess the capability to prevent a rogue crew or crew member from arming and releasing their thermonuclear weapons” once airborne.

Clawson revealed it was impossible to call the pilots back, once they were sent on a mission. There was no inhibitor in the aircraft systems, so as to prevent an insubordinate pilot from initiating a nuclear attack on Russia. Clawson writes of their nuclear arsenals,

“it would have been possible to arm and drop them all with no further input from the ground”. (9)

The US Strategic Air Command (SAC), officially in charge, had little real control and no idea as to what was taking place. Combining all of these risks, one must conclude that we were highly fortunate to have survived this event. The threat of nuclear war was surely at over 90% in the final days.

A pivotal factor resulting in the missile crisis was indeed due to Washington’s malevolence towards Cuba. The attacks started from the winter of 1959-1960, under president Dwight D. Eisenhower, with CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary air raids on Cuba emanating from nearby Miami, and carried out by Cuban exiles.

The terrorist assaults continued under Kennedy – with speedboat machine gun fire on a Cuban seaside resort near Havana, killing a score of Cubans and Russians, contamination of Cuban sugar shipments, attacks on cargo vessels, and so on.

JFK stepped up the terror operations from August 1962 and, alarmingly, they continued right up to and even through the missile crisis. These blows were designed to soften Cuba up, which the White House expected would lead to “open revolt” on the island, before “final success” which “will require decisive US military intervention” in Cuba. The invasion was scheduled for October 1962, the same month as the missile crisis.

Image on the right: President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara in an EXCOMM meeting. (Public Domain)

On 22 October 1962, Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara told his cabinet associates that “the president ordered us to prepare an invasion of Cuba months ago” (10). The plans were so far advanced that an attack could have been launched within seven days. The Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, and Khrushchev were quite likely expecting a US invasion of Cuba in October 1962. As can be seen, there were mitigating circumstances in Khrushchev’s decision to ship his weaponry to Cuba.

Khrushchev dispatched the missiles as a deterrent to US hostility, and certainly not for the prime purpose of attacking America. He was in addition trying to address the global military imbalance, which was greatly in favour of Washington, with US missiles dotted across Europe with Moscow in mind. Khrushchev wanted to give the Americans “a little of their own medicine”, as he assured colleagues. (11)

Another reason that the missiles in Cuba rankled with Washington, was that it acted as a possible impediment to a US invasion of oil rich Venezuela (12). The US government was then pondering an attack on Venezuela, as deliberated upon in private discussions between JFK and his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General.

Robert Kennedy, as requested by his older brother, was heavily involved in executing the terrorist campaign on Cuba. The younger Kennedy informed the CIA in early 1962 that overthrowing Castro is “the top priority in the United States government”.

These actions occurred on top of a failed invasion of Cuba in April 1961, at the Bay of Pigs (Playa de Giron). Plans for this illegal attack were extensively formulated by March 1960, in the final year of Eisenhower’s tenure. It was Kennedy who pushed ahead with the invasion once Eisenhower departed in January 1961.

Castro, a formidable adversary of the Americans from almost the beginning, had prepared for and anticipated this US attack at the Bay of Pigs; just as he would nip in the bud a number of terrorist acts. The Bay of Pigs invasion degenerated into a fiasco and personal humiliation for Kennedy, while Castro’s image was strengthened. The atmosphere in Washington after the failed attack was “almost savage”, as remembered by US diplomat Chester Bowles following his attendance at a cabinet meeting.

Kennedy swiftly enacted an even harsher embargo on Cuba, in order to punish the islanders for having the gall to repel a US-run invasion. The embargo was a separate consequential factor that led to the missile crisis 18 months later. Chomsky highlighted of the missile crisis’s conclusion that,

“war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands. But we can hardly count on such sanity forever”. (13)

Western politicians and mass media, spinning fanciful tales, applauded Kennedy’s handling of the crisis while portraying it as a humbling defeat for Khrushchev. In reality the latter’s decision to remove the missiles eased, though did not entirely eliminate, the potentially catastrophic situation drummed up by Kennedy and his government.

Washington quickly resumed its rampages against Cuba. Less than two weeks after the missile crisis had supposedly ended, on 8 November 1962 an exile team dispatched from America blew up a Cuban industrial facility, killing large numbers of workers. This atrocity enraged Castro and presumably drew reactions of dismay in the Kremlin.

Six months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, in April 1962 Kennedy had deployed nuclear missiles to the Japanese island of Okinawa – which were virtually identical to those later sent to Cuba by Khrushchev (14). American missiles on Okinawa were in all probability pointed towards China, and comfortably within striking range of Beijing.

Kennedy stationed missiles in Okinawa at a period of growing regional tension, as antagonism simmered between China and US-backed India over a border dispute along the Himalayas. JFK was a popular and revered figure in India. (15)

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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 Noam Chomsky, “How Many Minutes To Midnight?” Guernica, 6 August 2014

2 Daniel Falcone, “Chomsky weighs in on Kennedy Assassination Anniversary: ‘It Would Impress Kim Il-Sung‘”, Truthout, 22 November 2013

3 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Penguin, 1 January 2004), p. 75

4 W. R. Smyser, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall: A Hell of a Lot Better Than a War (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 28 Aug. 2009), p. 167

5 Nicola Davis, “Soviet submarine officer who averted nuclear war honoured with prize“, The Guardian, 27 October 2017, 

6 Rodric Braithwaite, Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation, (Profile Books; Main Edition, 21 Sept. 2017)

7 Callum Hoare, World War 3: How one submarine officer single-handedly saved world from nuclear war, Daily Express, 24 June 2019

8 Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine, (Bloomsbury Publishing; UK ed. edition, 7 Dec. 2017)

9 Noam Chomsky, Who Rules The World? (Metropolitan Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Hamish Hamilton, 5 May 2016), pp. 102-103

10 Gus Russo, Stephen Molton, Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; 1 edition, 28 Oct. 2008), p. 201

11 Raymond Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Revised to Include New Revelations from Soviet & Cuban Sources (Brookings Institute Press; Rev Ed edition, 2 Jun. 1989), p. 10

12 Chomsky, Who Rules The World?, p. 113

13 Chomsky, Who Rules The World?, p. 114

14 Jesse Johnson, “In first, U.S. admits nuclear weapons were stored in Okinawa during Cold War“, Japan Times, 20 February 2016

15 Colonel Anil Athale, “The Untold Story: How Kennedy came to India’s aid in 1962“, Rediff.com, 4 December 2012

Featured image: CIA reference photograph of Soviet medium-range ballistic missile (SS-4 in U.S. documents, R-12 in Soviet documents) in Red Square, Moscow. (Public Domain)

As the number of COVID-19 cases climbed toward a million worldwide on April 2, over 100 human rights groups issued a joint statement warning that governments’ response to the coronavirus pandemic “must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.”

The groups acknowledge that the public health crisis “requires a coordinated and large-scale response” but urge governments “to show leadership in tackling the pandemic in a way that ensures that the use of digital technologies to track and monitor individuals and populations is carried out strictly in line with human rights.”

“An increase in state digital surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association, in ways that could violate rights and degrade trust in public authorities—undermining the effectiveness of any public health response,” says the statement (pdf). “Such measures also pose a risk of discrimination and may disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.”

“These are extraordinary times, but human rights law still applies,” the statement continues. “Now more than ever, governments must rigorously ensure that any restrictions to these rights is in line with long-established human rights safeguards.”

Groups behind the statement are from across the globe and include Amnesty International, Access Now, Big Brother Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Human Rights Watch, Privacy International, Public Citizen, WITNESS, and the World Wide Web Foundation.

Even before the coronavirus outbreak began in China late last year, the country was widely known and criticized for its mass surveillance, including facial recognition technology. In recent months, the Guardian reported in March, “Chinese citizens have had to adjust to a new level of government intrusion” that critics worry will persist even after the pandemic ends.

While the ability to track the virus with digital technology has been pivotal to understanding the outbreak’s development, concerns about how governments and the private sector are using surveillance technology—such as data collection from smartphones—to track people during the pandemic have also emerged elsewhere, such as Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

“Governments risk compounding the harms of this outbreak by running roughshod over our privacy and dignity, and ignoring protections that arose in direct response to overreach during past global crises,” Access Now general counsel Peter Micek warned in a statement. “By selling tools of surveillance as public health solutions, authorities and all-too-willing companies could rewrite the rules of the digital ecosystem in corona-colored ink—which we fear is permanent.”

Amnesty Tech deputy director Rasha Abdul Rahim said Thursday that

“technology can play an important role in the global effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic; however, this does not give governments carte blanche to expand digital surveillance. The recent past has shown governments are reluctant to relinquish temporary surveillance powers. We must not sleepwalk into a permanent expanded surveillance state now.”

“Increased digital surveillance to tackle this public health emergency can only be used if certain strict conditions are met,” added Abdul Rahim. “Authorities cannot simply disregard the right to privacy and must ensure any new measures have robust human rights safeguards. Wherever governments use the power of technology as part of their strategy to beat COVID-19, they must do so in a way that respects human rights.”

The groups’ statement details eight conditions they believe must be met to justify increased digital surveillance as part of coronavirus containment efforts. The conditions include demands for transparency, time limits, restrictions on how data can be used, privacy protections, measures to prevent discrimination, and participation from relevant stakeholders.

“This crisis offers an opportunity to demonstrate our shared humanity,” the statement says. “We can make extraordinary efforts to fight this pandemic that are consistent with human rights standards and the rule of law. The decisions that governments make now to confront the pandemic will shape what the world looks like in the future.”

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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Following the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy, more than 120,000 Albanians residing in Italy returned to their country. Albania, with a population under 3,000,000, has, as of this writing, 243 cases of coronavirus. That is 84 cases per 1,000,000 people. The death toll thus far of 13 represents a rate of 5 per, 1,000,000 people. These numbers are expected to skyrocket due to the lack of basic health services and service infrastructure to manage the crisis. Additionally, with so many Albanians returning from Italy, which has 1,683 cases per 1,000,000 people, and 192 deaths per million, the risk of further spread of the virus is very high.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has issues strict instructions to combat the spread of the virus. Only one person per household will be authorized to leave their house for one hour a day to shop for groceries or other necessary items, and this only after applying for authorization. Consequences for violating this restriction include denial of unemployment benefits and student scholarships for at least one year. Enforcement of this and related restrictions will be done by police and special security forces who will use force against violators. The Prime Minister has even said that retirees, who among the people highest at risk to die from coronavirus, who do not comply with regulations can be considered traitors. Although extreme, this shows the seriousness with which the Prime Minister takes the threat of the disease.

This situation is worsened with the knowledge that there are more than three thousand members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in Tirana. Most of these MEK members are all considered to be administrative retirees, but are confined to work in the MEK’s terrorist camp. Many elderly men and women are spending their senior years behind computer systems in the MEK camp, using media accounts on social networks, to engage in media warfare to oppose the legitimate government of Iran, one that the people chose during the Revolution of 1979. Those people in the MEK’s terrorist camp are at high risk of contracting the disease and dying from it.

This is due to two main factors:  First, the sectarian and colonial way of life of the MEK, which has gathered more than 3,000 people in a crowded military camp, will cause widespread and rapid spread of the virus, should even one member of the camp contract it. With a small national population, and over 100,000 people returning to the country from Italy, which has been very heavily hit by the virus, it is highly likely that someone in the camp will get it.

Secondly, since most members of the cult are older, they are at risk. Around the world, people who have compromised immune systems, respiratory problems or who are over the age of 60 are being particularly cautioned to avoid any activities which might expose them to coronavirus. Many MEK members are over 60, because the organization wanted total dedication to the cause, which its leaders expected to be quickly successful, and therefore discouraged them from marrying and having children, which would have distracted them from their illegal and immoral goals. This has made the Mojahedin camp like an isolated nursing home, and in many countries it is nursing homes where the virus has hit the hardest. Also, their long years of living in a fairly isolated area has prevented their exposure to many minor illnesses, which has left them with lowered immunity.

Because of this, the coronavirus is not only a threat to the survival of this cult, but also to the Albanian people. If cult members become ill with the virus and leave the camp (if allowed to do so) to obtain medical treatment or even to live with relatives, they will expose everyone they contact to the disease. With so many Albanians returning from Italy, which has the second highest number of coronavirus cases, and the third number of recorded coronavirus deaths, in the world, the additional risk posed by the elderly MEK members only worsens the situation for the nation.

There have been some news reports indicating that the outbreak and growth of the coronavirus in Albania can be traced to the MEK camp. Yet that initial reporting has had no follow-up, and it appears that powerful influences may have silenced these reports.

Regardless of the source of the disease in Albania, it is apparent that the MEK, always a terrorist organization, is now unwittingly increasing the risk to the health of the people of Albania. MEK terrorists are incapable of working toward any common good; their terrorist activities now include the possible spreading of coronavirus in a nation ill-equipped to handle it.

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Coronavirus Pandemic Will Inevitably Cause Food Crisis

April 5th, 2020 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

The coronavirus crisis will not end anytime soon. Day after day, news about the catastrophe becomes increasingly frightening and alarming. The numbers do not indicate any sign of a truce and we cannot see improvements in the world scenario in the near future. The crisis will affect all sectors of society, damaging politics, economy, education and all branches of civilized life. However, what is most noteworthy is the impact that the pandemic will have on the most basic item of human life: food.

There will undoubtedly be a global food production and supply crisis. This fact was already expected by all analysts. But everything indicates that the crisis will be even more profound: there is an imminent risk of “food shortages” on the world market due to Covid-19 disruptions in international trade and supply chains, warned the leaders of two UN agencies and WTO. This scarcity will be generated by the growing wave of restrictions on exports, which, in the context of contemporary global society, will invariably cause a drastic decrease in the world circulation of food.

In an unusual statement, Chinese Qu Dongyu, who heads the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), and Brazilian Roberto Azevêdo, director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) published a text warning about the coming crisis and saying that it is important for all nations to maintain their international business, “in particular to avoid food shortages”. In addition, these three international organizations have issued important warnings about the slowdown in the movement of workers in the agricultural industry, which blocks several Western farmers, and with “border delays for containers of goods”, generating “a waste of perishable products”.

The alert issued jointly by the FAO, WHO and the WTO also affirms the need to protect workers in the food sector in order to “minimize the spread of the virus in the sector and maintain the food supply chains”. Finally, concludes:

“By protecting the health and well-being of citizens, countries must ensure that the set of trade measures does not disturb the food supply network (…) In periods like this, international cooperation is essential (…) We must ensure that our response to the covid-19 pandemic does not involuntarily create an unjustified shortage of essential products and exacerbates hunger and malnutrition”.

If, on one hand, the alert is of paramount importance in the current global context, on the other, there does not seem to be any alternative between the pandemic and the scarcity. In order to minimize the effects of the new coronavirus in their territories, States are adhering to more restrictive and protectionist measures, overlapping the security of their population to the global need for the circulation of people and resources. In other words, the coronavirus is changing the history of globalization, increasing the role of the States and revealing flaws and deep deficiencies in international organizations and in the global system of interdependence.

As an immediate reaction to the resurgence of the State as the main international agent, international organizations are beginning to respond with even more globalist speeches, imploring the maintenance of the free movement of products in the context of the pandemic. Maximo Torero, Chief Economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told The Guardian:

“The worst that can happen is that governments restrict the flow of food (…) All measures against free trade will be counterproductive. Now is not the time for restrictions or putting in place trade barriers. Now is the time to protect the flow of food around the world (…) Trade barriers will create extreme volatility, (…) [They] will make the situation worse. That’s what we observe in food crises.”

In practice, how can we expect governments reacting in any other way than what they are currently doing? How can we expect all nations to keep their trade relations intact while their populations die infected by a devastating disease? Perhaps dreaming of free international trade in the present circumstances is the most utopian globalist wish. In fact, the agents of these international organizations are so ideologically committed to the globalist agenda that they are unable to analyze the case concretely and see the simplest: the whole structure of globalization is flawed and in a context of crisis its effects will be devastating anyway. Perhaps trade will continue and the pandemic will kill even more; perhaps trade is restricted and many die of hunger.

The biggest lesson to be learned from the current crisis is that globalization based on financial capitalism and neoliberalism was a very serious mistake. The foundations of the contemporary world are breaking and the discourses on solutions to the problems presented by the pandemic are beginning to increase everywhere. International organizations harden their globalist discourse and warn on the need to protect international trade, while States are stepping up security measures and downplaying the importance of the circulation of products and capital. Finally, what will be the winning speech? Will we see a return to state leadership or the birth of a new globalization? The only certainty so far is that the post-pandemic world will be very different from the previous one. Perhaps, the best thing to do is thinking about a world with greater food sovereignty and less inequality between nations.

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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

On March 31 the US Secretary of State issued a press statement proposing a “pathway” by which all Venezuelans would live happily ever after. At least that is what Mike Pompeo seems to wish. He “call[s] on all Venezuelans, whether military or civilian, young or old, of all ideological tendencies and party affiliations, to consider this framework carefully and seriously.” The 13-point document was posted on the US State Department website with the title “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela”. Let’s take a serious look at it.

General observations

An initial major observation can be made even before reading the 13 paragraphs. If this is a proposal meant as a recommendation to resolve an impasse between parties, it will not accomplish its goal because no “serious” proposal can be made unilaterally and much less by a non-friendly government. In the recent past, attempts of international mediation have been flatly dismissed by Washington suggesting US preference for unilateral political and other interests vis-à-vis Venezuela.

A second related general observation – that shouldn’t even need to be explained – must be made about the fact that Venezuela is a sovereign country. All other governments should stay out unless the legitimate government of the country makes a specific request. More than 120 governments recognise the Maduro government as legitimate including the United Nations.

The title is also controversial. Unless by “transition” is meant bringing peace from a conflictive situation, which is what the Maduro government has been asking to the extreme rightwing opposition for years, there is no other transition to be considered. As for “democratic”, the notion used by Washington has lost its real meaning over time, especially when it comes to regime change aspirations.

Those three observations alone would have been enough to suggest that this plan was a foolish decision to make. In fact, it is a non-starter. But for the sake of completion let’s take a look at some of the 13 points.

After a review we noticed that there are seven mentions of lifting “sanctions” at each of seven steps if they are followed according to the “framework”. The author has already referred to the inappropriate use of the word “sanctions” in general. Its use in this context confirms that they are intended to be “a penalty for disobedience”. The preferred denomination is unilateral coercive measures.

What is Venezuela supposed to do in order for the US administration to remove the “penalty for disobedience”? In short, Venezuela is asked to break its 1999 constitution while it is trampled upon during the “transition”, accept the Monroe Doctrine, and open its doors to neoliberal policies and give up its self-determination.

The “democratic transition” breaks the constitutional order

For instance, the first point in part asks for, “Full return of the National Assembly (AN)…National Constituent Assembly (ANC) is dissolved.” This is basically asking a) to legitimise an AN that was in contempt for forcing illegal membership; b) to reinstate Juan Guaidó as the speaker disregarding the election that took place last January when he refused to participate; and c) break the constitution dissolving the constitutionally elected ANC.

Point number 5 requires the AN to approve a “Council of State” Law, “which creates a Council of State that becomes the executive branch”. But this is already being done. In fact, last March 31 president Nicolas Maduro attended the constitutional Council of State in order to deal with “a new imperial onslaught in the middle of the combat with the Covid-19” and to provide advice to the national government according to Articles 251 and 252 of the Venezuelan constitution.

Point number 6 gives another example where the constitutional order must be broken during the “transition”. It states, “All of the powers assigned to the President by the Constitution will be vested exclusively in the Council of State.” Article 251 establishes, “The Council of State is the highest consulting body of the Government and the National Public Administration.” It does not take on the powers of the president.

The “democratic transition” enforces the Monroe Doctrine

This is made clear in a very short paragraph as the third point of the pan. “All foreign security forces depart immediately unless authorized by 3/4 vote of the AN.” US president James Monroe of the 19th Century “Monroe Doctrine” fame must have applauded from his tomb together with all other US presidents that followed who have made similar requests to all Latin American countries at one time or another. This is a reference to the presence of Cuban security advisors and health professionals. But also likely to the close Moscow-Caracas relationship since Hugo Chavez was president to this day with president Maduro. Russian military personnel have been engaged in training of Venezuelan Armed Forces in the use and maintenance of weapons, as well as joint military exercises.

 The “democratic transition” opens the door to neoliberal policies

Here we quote point 9 in full: “The international community provides humanitarian, electoral, governance, development, security, and economic support, with special initial focus on medical care system, water and electricity supply. Existing social welfare programs, now to be supplemented with international support, must become equally accessible to all Venezuelan citizens. Negotiations begin with World Bank, IMF, and Inter-American Development Bank for major programs of support.” This does not require any further explanation except to emphasise that Venezuela’s self-determination will be lost.

The happy ending according to Washington’s script of this political play or farce to be performed in Caracas is that “presidential and AN elections are held” in 6-12 months. But this is a play that is not produced in Venezuela. In fact, Venezuelans will not be participants and protagonists in this play, as it is their constitutional right now. They will be reduced to perform minor roles in a corner of the US “backyard” of Latin America.

The Venezuelan government has predictably rejected the US plan. Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza stated publicly to Mike Pompeo, “decisions in Venezuela are made in Caracas.” The US must have been ready for that reaction because the day after making the “democratic transition” plan public it deployed warships off the coast of Venezuela supposedly to “protect American people” from the scourge of illegal drugs coming from Venezuela. Never mind that the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime reports that 84% of cocaine arrives to the US via Guatemala by the Eastern Pacific and not by the Caribbean.

Here is an idea how the US can help for a real democratic transition framework in Venezuela: end all “sanctions” unconditionally, return to Venezuela all properties seized so Venezuelans can get on with their productive lives to restart the economy, and call on the radical Venezuelan opposition to peacefully and democratically participate in the political life of the country.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Overreaction and big-pharma profiteering from Covid-19 is a repeat of the 2009 H1N1 “Swine Flu” scandal. Why has the corporate media that would eventually expose the 2009 scandal failed to inform readers today that the same corrupt interests are leading the Covid-19 response?  

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Amid Covid-19 hysteria – “real journalists” across the Western corporate media are shamelessly and eagerly fanning the flames of hysteria, panicking the public and ensuring both the government and corporate special interests that influence their policy remain firmly in control.

This includes the stockpiling at the taxpayers’ expense of drugs produced by big-pharma to allegedly fight Covid-19.

This story may sound familiar to some readers because the exact same scenario – albeit on a smaller scale – unfolded 10 years ago during the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” outbreak.

In hindsight, the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) of a “pandemic” was revealed to be the work of financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and WHO “experts” whose advice paved the way for the “pandemic” designation and the hysteria-justified policies that followed.

Among the big-pharma corporations involved was Roche – who not only provided H1N1 test kits, but also its “Tamiflu” drug to government stockpiles.

Ten years ago – “real journalists” at media platforms like Reuters would even report that Tamiflu was later found to be ineffective and that the stockpiles where a waste of money. A 2009 Reuters article written by Kate Kelland titled, “Stockpiles of Roche Tamiflu drug are waste of money, review finds,” would note:

Researchers who have fought for years to get full data on Roche’s flu medicine Tamiflu said on Thursday that governments who stockpile it are wasting billions of dollars on a drug whose effectiveness is in doubt.

The article also notes:

Tamiflu sales hit almost $3 billion in 2009 – mostly due to its use in the H1N1 flu pandemic – but they have since declined. 

Reuters writer Kate Kelland falls short of mentioning Roche’s financial ties to WHO experts who designated the appearance of H1N1 as a “pandemic” helping pave the way for both public hysteria as well as Roche’s profits from it selling what was essentially a useless drug to government stockpiles.

The BBC – however – in their article, “WHO swine flu experts ‘linked’ with drug companies,” would report:

Key scientists behind World Health Organization advice on stockpiling of pandemic flu drugs had financial ties with companies which stood to profit, an investigation has found. 

Roche was mentioned by name by the BBC (emphasis added):

The advice prompted many countries around the world into buying up large stocks of Tamiflu, made by Roche, and Relenza manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.

 A New Decade – A New Scandal  

Today, the same WHO and the same Roche are poised to once again both fuel and leverage public hysteria and once again fill government warehouses and acquisition orders with Roche products ranging from testing kits to vaccines and anti-viral medication.

So where is Kate Kelland of Reuters’ article reminding readers of what she reported on 10 years ago about useless Roche medications that somehow found their way in large quantities to government warehouses? Where is her article about medications that were never used and all done at the expense of Western taxpayers?

Nowhere.

Instead, Kelland’s recent articles have focused on reinforcing the official narrative surrounding Covid-19 and justifying increasingly drastic measures taken to panic the public and implement emergency spending that will undoubtedly benefit pharmaceutical corporations like Roche all over again.

Did Kate Kelland of Reuters forget what she wrote 10 years ago? Or are we seeing a pattern where a complicit media covers up these facts to ratchet up hysteria, and reports on abuse, corruption, and scandals only after those involved have filled their coffers and removed themselves far from any prospect of accountability?

Either way – a much easier question to answer is – should we trust media platforms like Reuters – platforms that concurrently promote criminal wars and other forms of corporate abuse – to inform us in times like this – or should we assume that responsibility ourselves – researching first and foremost the conflict of interest and motivation that drive corporations, the media, and governments to fuel public panic and benefit from it?

We must look into the science and statistics ourselves – apply critical thinking and draw our own conclusions. Then – invest in individuals, organizations, and institutions whose activities are in line with what is really happening rather than what corporations want us to think is happening and what aligns best with their profits rather than our individual and collective public health.

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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.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.

But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science – fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

Initial reported figures from China and Italy suggested a death rate of 5 per cent to 15 per cent, similar to Spanish flu. Given that cases were increasing exponentially, this raised the prospect of death rates that no healthcare system in the world would be able to cope with. The need to avoid this scenario is the justification for measures being implemented: the Spanish flu is believed to have infected about one in four of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920, or roughly 500 million people with 50 million deaths. We developed pandemic emergency plans, ready to snap into action in case this happened again.

At the time of writing, the UK’s 422 deaths and 8,077 known cases give an apparent death rate of 5 per cent. This is often cited as a cause for concern, contrasted with the mortality rate of seasonal flu, which is estimated at about 0.1 per cent. But we ought to look very carefully at the data. Are these figures really comparable?

Most of the UK testing has been in hospitals, where there is a high concentration of patients susceptible to the effects of any infection. As anyone who has worked with sick people will know, any testing regime that is based only in hospitals will over-estimate the virulence of an infection. Also, we’re only dealing with those Covid-19 cases that have made people sick enough or worried enough to get tested. There will be many more unaware that they have the virus, with either no symptoms, or mild ones.

That’s why, when Britain had 590 diagnosed cases, Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, suggested that the real figure was probably between 5,000 and 10,000 cases, ten to 20 times higher. If he’s right, the headline death rate due to this virus is likely to be ten to 20 times lower, say 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent. That puts the Covid-19 mortality rate in the range associated with infections like flu.

But there’s another, potentially even more serious problem: the way that deaths are recorded. If someone dies of a respiratory infection in the UK, the specific cause of the infection is not usually recorded, unless the illness is a rare ‘notifiable disease’. So the vast majority of respiratory deaths in the UK are recorded as bronchopneumonia, pneumonia, old age or a similar designation. We don’t really test for flu, or other seasonal infections. If the patient has, say, cancer, motor neurone disease or another serious disease, this will be recorded as the cause of death, even if the final illness was a respiratory infection. This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections.

Now look at what has happened since the emergence of Covid-19. The list of notifiable diseases has been updated. This list — as well as containing smallpox (which has been extinct for many years) and conditions such as anthrax, brucellosis, plague and rabies (which most UK doctors will never see in their entire careers) — has now been amended to include Covid-19. But not flu. That means every positive test for Covid-19 must be notified, in a way that it just would not be for flu or most other infections.

In the current climate, anyone with a positive test for Covid-19 will certainly be known to clinical staff looking after them: if any of these patients dies, staff will have to record the Covid-19 designation on the death certificate — contrary to usual practice for most infections of this kind. There is a big difference between Covid-19 causing death, and Covid-19 being found in someone who died of other causes. Making Covid-19 notifiable might give the appearance of it causing increasing numbers of deaths, whether this is true or not. It might appear far more of a killer than flu, simply because of the way deaths are recorded.

If we take drastic measures to reduce the incidence of Covid-19, it follows that the deaths will also go down. We risk being convinced that we have averted something that was never really going to be as severe as we feared. This unusual way of reporting Covid-19 deaths explains the clear finding that most of its victims have underlying conditions — and would normally be susceptible to other seasonal viruses, which are virtually never recorded as a specific cause of death.

Let us also consider the Covid-19 graphs, showing an exponential rise in cases — and deaths. They can look alarming. But if we tracked flu or other seasonal viruses in the same way, we would also see an exponential increase. We would also see some countries behind others, and striking fatality rates. The United States Centers for Disease Control, for example, publishes weekly estimates of flu cases. The latest figures show that since September, flu has infected 38 million Americans, hospitalised 390,000 and killed 23,000. This does not cause public alarm because flu is familiar.

The data on Covid-19 differs wildly from country to country. Look at the figures for Italy and Germany. At the time of writing, Italy has 69,176 recorded cases and 6,820 deaths, a rate of 9.9 per cent. Germany has 32,986 cases and 157 deaths, a rate of 0.5 per cent. Do we think that the strain of virus is so different in these nearby countries as to virtually represent different diseases? Or that the populations are so different in their susceptibility to the virus that the death rate can vary more than twentyfold? If not, we ought to suspect systematic error, that the Covid-19 data we are seeing from different countries is not directly comparable.

Look at other rates: Spain 7.1 per cent, US 1.3 per cent, Switzerland 1.3 per cent, France 4.3 per cent, South Korea 1.3 per cent, Iran 7.8 per cent. We may very well be comparing apples with oranges. Recording cases where there was a positive test for the virus is a very different thing to recording the virus as the main cause of death.

Early evidence from Iceland, a country with a very strong organisation for wide testing within the population, suggests that as many as 50 per cent of infections are almost completely asymptomatic. Most of the rest are relatively minor. In fact, Iceland’s figures, 648 cases and two attributed deaths, give a death rate of 0.3 per cent. As population testing becomes more widespread elsewhere in the world, we will find a greater and greater proportion of cases where infections have already occurred and caused only mild effects. In fact, as time goes on, this will become generally truer too, because most infections tend to decrease in virulence as an epidemic progresses.

One pretty clear indicator is death. If a new infection is causing many extra people to die (as opposed to an infection present in people who would have died anyway) then it will cause an increase in the overall death rate. But we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world.

Covid-19 can clearly cause serious respiratory tract compromise in some patients, especially those with chest issues, and in smokers. The elderly are probably more at risk, as they are for infections of any kind. The average age of those dying in Italy is 78.5 years, with almost nine in ten fatalities among the over-70s. The life expectancy in Italy — that is, the number of years you can expect to live to from birth, all things being equal — is 82.5 years. But all things are not equal when a new seasonal virus goes around.

It certainly seems reasonable, now, that a degree of social distancing should be maintained for a while, especially for the elderly and the immune-suppressed. But when drastic measures are introduced, they should be based on clear evidence. In the case of Covid-19, the evidence is not clear. The UK’s lockdown has been informed by modelling of what might happen. More needs to be known about these models. Do they correct for age, pre-existing conditions, changing virulence, the effects of death certification and other factors? Tweak any of these assumptions and the outcome (and predicted death toll) can change radically.

Much of the response to Covid-19 seems explained by the fact that we are watching this virus in a way that no virus has been watched before. The scenes from the Italian hospitals have been shocking, and make for grim television. But television is not science.

Clearly, the various lockdowns will slow the spread of Covid-19 so there will be fewer cases. When we relax the measures, there will be more cases again. But this need not be a reason to keep the lockdown: the spread of cases is only something to fear if we are dealing with an unusually lethal virus. That’s why the way we record data will be hugely important. Unless we tighten criteria for recording death due only to the virus (as opposed to it being present in those who died from other conditions), the official figures may show a lot more deaths apparently caused by the virus than is actually the case. What then? How do we measure the health consequences of taking people’s lives, jobs, leisure and purpose away from them to protect them from an anticipated threat? Which causes least harm?

The moral debate is not lives vs money. It is lives vs lives. It will take months, perhaps years, if ever, before we can assess the wider implications of what we are doing. The damage to children’s education, the excess suicides, the increase in mental health problems, the taking away of resources from other health problems that we were dealing with effectively. Those who need medical help now but won’t seek it, or might not be offered it. And what about the effects on food production and global commerce, that will have unquantifiable consequences for people of all ages, perhaps especially in developing economies?

Governments everywhere say they are responding to the science. The policies in the UK are not the government’s fault. They are trying to act responsibly based on the scientific advice given. But governments must remember that rushed science is almost always bad science. We have decided on policies of extraordinary magnitude without concrete evidence of excess harm already occurring, and without proper scrutiny of the science used to justify them.

In the next few days and weeks, we must continue to look critically and dispassionately at the Covid-19 evidence as it comes in. Above all else, we must keep an open mind — and look for what is, not for what we fear might be.

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John Lee is a recently retired professor of pathology and a former NHS consultant pathologist.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

EU Demands Serbia to Help Kosovo During Coronavirus Crisis

April 3rd, 2020 by Paul Antonopoulos

The Working Group for the Chapter 35 of the Serbian National Convention on the European Union (EU) has called for the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo to create a cooperation to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We witness the coronavirus pandemic (COVID19) representing a great danger everywhere in the world and the health systems increasingly burdened with the number of infected patients. The pandemic has shown that the spread of the disease goes beyond borders, national and ethnic origin or religion of the affected, and can only be combatted through joint action, cooperation and solidarity. Cooperation is necessary primarily for the sake of humanity and responsibility for human lives in these difficult times,” the press release reads.

In times of crisis, the EU proclaims that Kosovo is in fact Serbia’s responsibility. This unprincipled nature of the EU is solely guided by the interests of its major members and aims to palm off the medical responsibility of the illegal breakaway province of Kosovo back to Serbia. The EU did nothing to suppress Albanian separatism. In fact, the EU supports the illegality of Kosovo’s independence by deploying over 1,000 police officers under the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo mandate and all member states with the exception of Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia, recognizing Kosovo’s independence.

The EU Task Force on Chapter 35 calls for communication channels between medical staff in Serbia and Kosovo to be open as it would allow the exchange of information on the pandemic to be crossed over on a daily basis. This could also perhaps even contribute significantly to the reconciliation of the two entities. Even though Serbia is under EU pressure to help Kosovo, Belgrade should not give in to any concessions offered by Brussels on the Kosovo issue. The promise of EU membership will certainly be mentioned.

The EU is trying to force Serbia to expend their resources to send aid to Kosovo without expecting any acts of good will from the Albanian side. This is a policy that requires Serbia to treat Kosovo as its own territory while the EU still attempts to make Belgrade accept that Kosovo is an independent state. A

similar appeal was sent to Serbia from the EU at the time of the migrant crisis when the EU also isolated itself of the problems in Kosovo and asked Belgrade to cooperate with Pristina in controlling migrant flows and make records of illegal immigrants traveling via Kosovo in 2015 and 2016.

While Serbia is expected to help Kosovo, despite the EU’s insistence that it is independent, Serbia is not able to assist the Republika Srpska in Bosnia. As part of Bosnia’s independence deal, two entities were formed, the Serbian-majority Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Hezegovina, where the majority of Muslims and Croatians in Bosnia live. Sarajevo’s political leaders are vetoing the decision of the Republika Srpska National Assembly to introduce a state of emergency in its territory to stop the spread of the coronavirus. For political reasons, Muslim Bosnians are stopping life-saving security measures, which are supported by the international community, and while Serbia is expected to help Kosovo, it cannot help the Republika Srpska.

Bosnia blocked the Republika Srpska so that the borders between the two entities could not be closed as the Serbian entity wanted to do. However, if we look internationally to places like Australia, states in the same country have closed their own borders to those who do not live in a particular state. According to the laws of Bosnia, Republika Srpska cannot close their border without approval from Sarajevo.

Therefore, Sarajevo’s moves are about antagonism and political contradiction at a time when coronavirus can engulf both entities of the country. The Bosnian Muslims have no argument for denying measures to protect people from coronavirus and are using this situation to stir up ethnic tensions rather than seeing this as a medical issue. As already showed earlier, it is not a contradiction to close the borders of the entities as many states and regions around the world have closed their borders despite being the same country.

The Republika Srpska are trying to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously and its National Assembly even voted in a majority to declare a state of emergency. Even EU High Representative to Bosnia, Valentin Incko, welcomed the decision and the commitment of Republika Srpska President Željka Cvijanović to use extraordinary powers in the interest of public health. Incko also pointed out that stopping the spread of the coronavirus and saving the lives of citizens must be priorities for all Bosnian authorities. However, his recommendations did not go into the realm of pressuring Bosnian authorities, and so long as the borders remain open, the people of Republika Srpska remain susceptible to higher rates of infection.

While Serbia is expected to assist Kosovo on the behalf of the EU, despite not being an EU member and the EU insisting on Kosovo’s independence, Belgrade also cannot assist Republika Srpska without being accused of interfering in Bosnian affairs. It is little wonder then that Belgrade has lost interest in appeasing Brussels and no longer responds to promises of EU membership, and rather it continues to build its relations with traditional ally Russia as well as emerging superpower China.

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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

The world pays constant attention to the coronavirus, occupying the news agencies with a high coverage of the pandemic. Meanwhile, on the global periphery, geopolitics continues at full throttle, with several conflicts occurring unnoticed by most people outside the affected regions. The case of Yemen is a clear example of what we are talking about here. Recently, the conflict in the country completed five years of uninterrupted fighting, reaching the regrettable marks of more than 10,000 killed in the confrontation, in addition to almost 100,000 killed by the social ills caused by the war, such as hunger, mainly among children. The poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula has become a strategic area in strong dispute and a real geopolitical thermometer for Middle East tensions, especially between the two regional powers most involved in the conflict, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are increasing their rivalry day after day.

The most noteworthy attitude is that of Saudi Arabia, which, aligned with the western axis, has been taking increasingly aggressive stances in the country, causing unnecessary suffering to the local population and prolonging the terror and fear in the region. Human Rights Watch data show that Saudi Arabia has been behind fundamental rights abuses against the Yemeni population, especially in the al-Mahrah region, since at least June last year, when such crimes began to be investigated. HRW Middle East Director Michael Page stated in an interview with PressTV:

“Saudi forces and their Yemeni allies’ serious abuses against local-Mahrah residents is another horror to add to the list of the Saudi-led coalition’s unlawful conduct in Yemen (…) Saudi Arabia is severely harming its reputation with Yemenis when it carries out these abusive practices and holds no one accountable for them”.

Among the abuses reported by HRW, we highlight illegal arrests, torture, kidnappings and compulsory transfer of detainees to Saudi Arabia. In addition, other international crimes had previously been reported by the organization as being committed by the American coalition against Houthi resistance in the region, including bombing homes, businesses and hospitals. In February, at least 30 Yemeni civilians died from airstrikes conducted by Saudi military in the north of the country, in the district of Jawf al-Maslub. The attack was said to have been conducted in response to the downing of a Saudi aircraft by the Houthi forces. In the words of Houthi movement spokesman Yahya Saree:

“As usual, when the most brutal US-Saudi aggression receives painful strikes in the military confrontation fields, it replies with great folly by targeting civilians.”

In March, a fleet of 450 American soldiers landed in Yemen, in addition to an uncertain number of troops from the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. According to information from al-Mashhad, this was the first stage of a project to send 3,000 American and British troops to Yemen, which will land in the regions of Aden, Lahai, Saqtari, Shabweh and al-Mohreh, thus completing a true siege of the country in all geographical directions. In addition, two American warships docked at Balhaf, Yemen’s main natural gas export port. American movements would be motivated in the region to supposedly “fight terrorism”, but several military analysts have already made it clear that the United States intends to intervene in the Yemeni government and install fixed bases in the region, “stabilizing” the situation in the country.

The crisis in Yemen is a real humanitarian catastrophe, with dimensions similar to those of the Civil War in Syria. However, the attention given to the poorest country in the Middle East is minimal, especially in times of the pandemic. Once again, COVID-19 is being used as a “smokescreen” to distract worldwide attention while illegal and aggressive movements are taking place in specific regions of the planet, as has recently become clear with the Israeli advance in the West Bank and the arrival of thousands of American troops to Yemen.

Yet, another factor that is absolutely ignored, being even more serious than military aggression, is the public health crisis and food insecurity generated by Saudi aggression. Yemeni Health Minister Saif al-Haidri recently warned of the neglect with which international society has dealt with the situation, which he called a “disastrous in the shadow of war”. These are his words:

“approximately five and a half million children under the age of five are suffering from malnutrition (…) One child dies every ten minutes in Yemen (…) 80 percent of children in Yemen live in a state of stunting and anemia due to malnutrition (…) Two hundred thousand women of childbearing age or some of they are pregnant or have given birth to malnourished children, which threatens the lives of children”.

Indeed, while the world is distracted by the coronavirus, crimes against humanity are committed with impunity and millions of people starve to death without any humanitarian assistance. Yemen has yet to record any cases of COVID-19, but what can we expect for the near future when Western troops arrive in the country at all times, since the US and Europe are the regions most affected by the pandemic? What will be the future of the Yemeni crisis? Will the West bring peace or the pandemic to the poorest country in the Middle East?

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image: Rubble aftermath of a Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni neighborhood in 2015. Almigdad Mojalli/Voice of America

Advice for People Fearful and Under Duress

April 3rd, 2020 by Barbara Nimri Aziz

We have a natural impulse to extend protection to the very young and to the old first; we offer sympathy and succor to traumatized refugees too.

That’s reasonable. Our seniors and our children require attention as the most vulnerable; immigrants need support in unfamiliar surroundings.

Professors speaking about historical precedents for the COVID-19 emergency invoke the Great Depression and chaotic hospital scenes from World War II. But, hey: we know about that, and more, first-hand!

Yes. So, why not consider us elders, along with our immigrant citizens as assets at this time of crisis and fear–untapped resources? We have abundant practical advice for people fearful and under duress, counsel based on our past experience.

We may not operate computers as nimbly as the young, but priorities are changing. As the COVID-19 crisis makes apparent, some skills become redundant; you’re unmoored from your once brawny anchors. When you’re really scared and grope for alternatives, turn not to apocalyptic movie scenarios but to what seniors have seen and done before you were born, what immigrants were shy to share. Our histories may offer guidance and solace in today’s disaster. We can tell you about our strategies and you can discover how we managed to cope. We’re here as a result, aren’t we?

If elders didn’t suffer a pandemic, we endured other plagues, and we survived because of habits we devised, here not only because America offered sanctuary and opportunity, but also because we rebuilt our lives resourcefully. Heard of ‘rationing’? –A great, simple strategy. Improvisation too. Both painless habits.

We’re grateful to our energetic daughters and grandsons who happily set up our phone apps and install our Netflix. You’ll Google anything—even if we don’t really need it– from potato peelers to airline bookings, and hearing aids– all delivered to our distant home. (Yes, we succumbed to that pampering.)

Surely now’s the time we can reciprocate with tips we learned from our less indulgent, less fast-paced and frugal past.

We can tell you how to recycle cardboard and plastics, invigorate a stew for a second meal, review the merits of baking soda, trim your hair, repair a car or bicycle tire, forage for wild edible plants, disinfect fresh vegetables, substitute one spice for another, preserve surplus food, stitch a face mask.

To survive we adjusted our social skills too, learned dexterity needed to endure wars’ deprivations.

Separated from loved ones, prayer became more routine; we rationed essentials, prioritized limited resources, reused clothes. We hunkered in underground shelters during a bombing blitz, slept on cold floors, coupled with our husband even with mother-in-law and children just meters away. We used water instead of toilet paper—it works great, left hand only (you can learn). We recycled bath water for cleaning, rewashed cotton diapers and sanitary cloths.

These are a few elders’ memories and tips. We’d welcome a chance to share them, granted you’ll doubtless improve on them too.

Then, we are millions of immigrants, refugees from wars (often of U.S. making) who’ve witnessed waves of attacks. Day-after-day we lost a loved one, often unable to perform the last rites for our dearest ones. We turned to caring for our wounded, dared to shelter underground resistance fighters. We rushed from one place to another, seeking somewhere to hide. We left behind a child, an aged parent, a sick friend. We also devised ways to avoid nagging mothers or garrulous brothers. Families became closer, and humor emerged from shared traumas. We endured more than bombardments; sometimes we were hunted down by government commandos, attacked by desperate citizens or rebel militias.

A more threatening curse imposed on us by outside enemies was embargo. Our Iraqi, Venezuelan, Iranian, Vietnamese, Palestinian and Syrians citizens can tell you about embargo-created deprivations, death and isolation– a battering more deadly and invasive than any physical assault. These are contemporary U.S.-perfected and murderous applications of economic and cultural embargoes, sieges sanctioned and extended by the lofty, noble United Nations. (Iraq’s embargo was endorsed in 1990 by the U.N. Security Council/General Assembly, and adhered to worldwide for 13 years! The Vietnam embargo, imposed by the U.S. after its defeat, extended for two decades.)

Documentation of the sanctions-war on Iraq (imposed in 1990 ended only in 2003!) augmented by US-led military bombardment, is hardy remembered today. (My accounts from Iraq during that period published by U. Press Florida, joined those of the International Action Center and published in the 1990s were reports from the field. Later came a Harvard study based on secondary sources.)

Three warning notes from personal experience in Iraq suffice to suggest the trauma Americans, their European and Australian supporters of that war will themselves confront in their neighborhoods very soon.

The first from my friend, sculptor Mohammed Ghani, on my initial visit to Iraq in 1989. Foremost among the memories he felt compelled to share rose from the just ended Iran-Iraq war. “Every day, passed cars with coffins strapped on top, holding the bodies of our sons (back from the battlefield of Al-Faw). Every day, every day; they drove by: one, two, then another, another”, he moaned.

Hardly a year later came the invasion of Kuwait and the first U.S. Gulf War. Among those I interviewed soon after was journalist Kthaiyer Mirey. Among institutions smashed by American bombings in 1991 was Shamaiya Hospital for psychological diseases. Hospitalized for alcoholism, Mirey managed to escape from the bombed smoldering ruins. Many staff were killed; feckless survivors along with some patients escaped. “The dead and wounded”, Mirey told me, “were abandoned; then the dogs entered the debris to clean up.”

Third, was my own witness of an eternal line of martyrs,  their portraits imprinted on banners –Iraqi soldiers who’d fought ISIS (under U.S. occupation during the past decade).

Images of overwhelmed morgues and columns of unaccompanied hearses have reached us from Italyand Spain this week. That will become part of the American landscape.

Young Americans are not yet ready for this; perhaps resourceful elder veterans and refugee victims from U.S. wars abroad can help sustain us. (Then there’s the comfort of our voice.)

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Author-anthropologist BN Aziz has published widely on Nepal and returned from an extended stay there last December. Her journalism articles on Nepal are posted at www.RadioTahrir.org.

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The old adage should say: Nothing is certain but death and taxes… and Karma. Karma is as real as it gets. The various holy books made sure to state that ‘What ye sow so shall ye reap’ AKA ‘What goes around comes around.’ Karma has many flavors, but the end result is always the same: What one does will eventually come back to revisit in some form or manner. 

In 1914 the whole of Europe and parts extended were in a world war. This war was not what was advertised as ‘Good vs. Evil’. No, it was a war between major imperialist, colonialist nations for increased power and control.

The propaganda was such that the USA got itself involved to back up our British ally, or should I say our British ‘Big brother’ at the time. The negative energy generated by this ghastly war saw millions of young men (and women) dead, with devastating physical destruction throughout the region. As it is with major weather changes, energy, which can be positive or negative, does influence our atmosphere… for good or for bad. Well, the Spanish Flu from 1918-20 saw 500 million people infected, as the war had already reached its devastating peak. Coincidence, or an expression of Bad Karma? That war was not at all what many historians like to classify as ‘Just War’. It was simply a power grab war initiated by one group of super rich against another. Period!

My nation has had such Bad Karma going back to what we did to the Native Americans and then to the Mexicans, as we gobbled up their lands. Think about this: Who now owns and operates (with help from the super rich corporations) most of the gambling casinos nationwide? The Indians! All those problems with the undocumented (AKA ‘Illegal Aliens’) center around areas that were part of our imperialist ‘Manifest Destiny’. These actions were in lands that were once Mexican: Lower California, New Mexico, Arizona and of course, the home of the Alamo, Texas. Karma dictates that we took their lands by force and now we have to deal with those people, like it or not! We dropped two A-Bombs on Japan, unnecessarily, occupied that country, and then THEY outcompeted us as economic adversaries for years to come. Which of the two countries made the better cars being driven in the USA during the 60s, 70s and right into the present time: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler… or Honda, Toyota and Nissan?

If one wants to speak about Bad Karma, just look back to 2002- 2003 and our most disgraceful, illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Our nation’s economy and moral compass are still reverberating from those heinous deeds, which still eat up over HALF of our federal taxes  going for military spending.That was the start of the Bad Karma created by ourselves and our NATO partners in crime. Then, factor in the horrendous carpet bombing of Libya and our excursion into Syria, and you have the present day refugee crisis that is affecting Europe and the Middle East. One additional outgrowth of this has been the rise of  tremendous Neo Nazi right wing movements throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and even the Southern Hemisphere. Who has been the greatest ‘kick starter’ for this Bad Karma? As Sinclair Lewis put it so succinctly: “Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag”. Others later on added “…. and carrying a cross.” The bottom line is that this incessant American exceptionalism has been the rallying point for the Super Rich who run things to hammer home to their minions. Thus, WE are the mess that We created with Bad Karma.

The new pandemic that the entire world is suffering from slowly reached our shores. Another example of Bad Karma is how this current administration manhandled things from the get go. Instead of preparing to better protect its citizens, especially the front line medical and hospital community, our (so called) leaders called it a HOAX for weeks on end… while the Chinese and Russians practiced due diligence.

Imagine if Amerika had stocked up on protective masks, ventilators, hand washing solutions and of course medicines that the Chinese found to be helpful. Imagine if, at the very beginning of this Pandemic USA, our Congress and administration would have instituted what the Universal Basic Income advocates were trumpeting for years? Then, by today April 2nd 2020 the FED would have created checks of $ 1000 per citizen per month, in addition to extended unemployment insurance and loans to small business. Funny how, when the Sub Prime bubble burst in 2008, despite the right wing wolves’ threats about our terrible deficit, the FED  electronically created the money to bail out the banks. Once again, they have electronically  created the money for this stimulus. Yet, when Bernie Sanders and millions of others have been calling for Medicare for All… they yell ‘ We can’t afford it!!’

So, as our citizens are dying for lack of proper care, and ditto our economy, the Bad Karma keeps on rolling along. Time for the mega millions of us to start taking control of the conversation and create some Good Karma.

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

The events of the last century as well as today reveal that not only the “simple” people fail in the resistance against totalitarianism and fascism. Intellectuals, too, fail to live up to their responsibility despite an academic education and the opportunity to gain insight into political, economic and socio-psychological contexts. The current worldwide exceptional situation, the deliberately created panic, the disproportionate restriction of civil liberties, the selection of elderly and sick fellow citizens and the economic crash landing, which will drive millions of people into unemployment and hopelessness, hunger and finally to death, requires of us all most urgently to be wise, to distinguish between truth and lie and to act accordingly.

“Have the courage to use your own intellect!”

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Age of Enlightenment, people began to free themselves from medieval thinking. From then on, human affairs were to be guided primarily by human reason. The individual was to free himself from narrow-mindedness, credulity and arbitrary authority, and personal freedom of action (emancipation) was to be extended.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant defined “Enlightenment” in the year 1784 as follows: “Enlightenment is man’s exit from his self-inflicted immaturity. Immaturity is the inability of his mind without the direction of another.” According to Kant, the immaturity of man is then self-inflicted when it is not a lack of understanding that is the reason, but the fear of using one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Kant coined the motto of the Enlightenment: “Sapere aude!”, which means “Dare to know”, or as Kant explained it: “Have the courage to use your own intellect!” Enlightenment is therefore the maxim to think for oneself at all times.

But why do people often remain underage throughout their lives – and this also even though they have long since grown up and would be able to think for themselves? Kant said the reason is laziness and cowardice. Being underage is comfortable and independent thinking is a “grumpy business”. So it would be easy for others, Kant said, to become “guardians” of these underage people. These guardians would also do everything to make sure that the underage people do not only find the step to maturity arduous but also dangerous.

Underage behavior today

Have we today, in the 21st century, already shed this underage behavior? What about our courage to think for ourselves in the present uncertain situation? Is it not more comfortable for a spoiled and lazy person to make use of the guidance of an authority or a leader, to be in harmony with a supposedly powerful person and his mass media and to belong to the circle of his court vestments? He is then always on the “right” side. Doubts and moral scruples do not then oppress him, since he can always refer to the supposedly infallible power.

It is difficult to think for oneself and to be responsible for the consequences of such mature behavior. Doubts overtake the seeker of truth, the nightly sleep becomes restless. If a self-thinking person then also comes to unpleasant truths that are in conflict with the powerful and with political correctness, previous companions quickly turn away from him. The result of this courage can be loneliness. Loneliness, however, not in the sense of being alone, but in the sense of refusing dialogue.

The German-Jewish professor and writer Hannah Arendt experienced such a refusal in connection with a journalistic slander campaign following the publication of her report on the Eichmann trial in 1961: “Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report of the banality of evil”. For her this experienced refusal of dialogue was “the extreme form of human misery”(p. 34).

Do what? Think for yourself at all times!

Every individual has to contribute to the solution of the urgent problems of our time. And of course we are able to do so when we are aware that it depends on each and every one of us. Why not have the courage to make use of your own intellect, have the courage not to suppress the monstrousness of today, but to really and to stand up against it – intellectually,  emotionally, politically. In the face of all odds, have the determination to find the truth and thus to preserve the dignity as a human being. Overcoming the inertia of the heart and acting.

According to Albert Camus, every person has a more or less large sphere of influence. The Swiss writer Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) put it this way: “No government and no battalions (…) are able to protect law and freedom where the citizen is not able to come to the front door himself and see what is there”. (Zürich short stories)

The upbringing of the adolescent at home and at school is very important for development of such responsible behavior in the adult age of elementary importance. The basis is an education of conscience and a sustainable education in values and virtues from early childhood on. What every society urgently needs in order to be able to cope with the future well and to shape it in a self-determined way are responsible fellow citizens who take responsibility for the general welfare of the people.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a qualified psychologist and educationalist.

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The European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), an association of post-Soviet states, effectively serve a similar function to each other as an economic bloc. Unlike the 27-member EU, the EEU has only 5-members as many post-Soviet states allege it is nothing but an attempt to revive the Soviet Union, which the countries of the West do not want to promote. The West’s resistance has brought no economic benefit to it and this geopolitical duel was reflected in the limited success of sanctions against Russia. However, the credibility of the EU and the liberal orders continues to diminish as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic actually creates a unique opportunity for the EU and EEU to integrate into a single system, or at least move closer together.

Russia’s dominance of the EEU is both a positive and a negative for Eurasian integration. Russia’s large market forms the basis of the integration potential of the EEU, however, limited economic growth, sanctions and its participation in global geopolitics create risks for the Eurasian integration process. However, Eurasian integration would be in the interest of EU as it will connect European states to new markets in Central and East Asia far more efficiently and quickly then by other means. The EU claims that it works towards common markets and efficiency but does not seriously consider connecting Lisbon on the Atlantic Ocean to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

The EU is losing its position as a top trading partner of the EEU, and it’s not just because of China’s growing importance. As a trading partner of the EEU, China has already surpassed most of Europe. The role of the EU as a trading partner of the whole EEU is due to the important role of the EU for Russia. However, Russia has been slowly turning eastward from the EU for years now as the future leading economies of the world will shift from the West to Asia.

Coronavirus is certainly accelerating this reality as the entirety of the Anglosphere and Western Europe head towards a severe recession unable to handle the economic pressures of the pandemic. This pandemic and economic downturn effectively means that only China and Russia will compete for investments in the extremely resource rich Central Asia. As EU economies begin to recover in the aftermath of the coronavirus and their energy demands are not being met access to Central Asia may become a priority. Ironically, Russia is the only means for the EU to enter the markets of the post-Soviet countries outside of Eastern Europe. Therefore, with the liberal order severely damaged in the face of coronavirus, it will have to be acknowledged in the West that the EEU project as a whole is a force for good and the EU will have to admit it made a mistake by not initially recognizing the EEU.

With this in mind, the EU must show independent foreign policy and resolve its disputes with Russia, even if Washington insists on enacting hostiles relations with Moscow. As the EU originally began as an economic union without much of a political nature, by returning to their roots will mean naturally a change in foreign policy. If the economy is the concentrated expression of politics, then mutual economic interests should be the foundation of reconciliation between Brussels and Moscow.

French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the leading voices in normalizing relations with Russia, despite his harsh rhetoric against Moscow time to time. Let’s consider Macron’s Facebook post from last year where he said

“progress on many political and economic issues is evident, for we’re trying to develop Franco-Russian relations. I’m convinced that, in this multilateral restructuring, we must develop a security and trust architecture between the European Union and Russia.”

With Macron stressing that Russia is part of Europe, he expanded on General de Gaulle’s famous phrase that Europe stretches “from Lisbon to the Urals,” to say that Europe extended to Vladivostok, close to the North Korean border. Macron is one of the most powerful voices in Europe and strongly endorses a weakening of U.S. influence in Europe through various means, including criticism of NATO and suggestion to have it replaced with a European military.

The EEU’s vision of Lisbon to Vladivostok as a common space is the best way to avoid a crisis on the Eurasian landmass. For countries like Ukraine who are stuck between both East and West, the integration of the EU and EEU would actually serve as a stabilizing factor. Therefore, as the coronavirus has exposed weaknesses in the liberal globalized order, an opportunity has actually emerged where the EU and EEU can more closely align and integrate.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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Selected Articles: The Bigger Picture Is Hiding Behind A Virus

April 3rd, 2020 by Global Research News

A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”

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Critical Shortage of Ventilators and Protective Gear Persists

By Stephen Lendman, April 03, 2020

Governor of hard-hit NY state Anthony Cuomo stressed that if a patient “needs a ventilator” and they’re all in use because of an insufficient supply, “the person dies” from suffocation.

That’s the disturbing reality of a critical national shortage at a time when they’re vitally needed.

As daily COVID-19 infections increase exponentially in the US, numbers on Friday will way exceed 250,000 by day’s end.

Can We Trust the WHO?

By F. William Engdahl, April 03, 2020

The most influential organization in the world with nominal responsibility for global health and epidemic issues is the United Nations’ World Health Organization, WHO, based in Geneva. What few know is the actual mechanisms of its political control, the shocking conflicts of interest, corruption and lack of transparency that permeate the agency that is supposed to be the impartial guide for getting through the current COVID-19 pandemic. The following is only part of what has come to public light.

COVID-19: Cover for Military Attack on Iran and Iraq?

By Kurt Nimmo, April 03, 2020

Now that the American people are consumed with fear and loathing of an overblown virus “pandemic,” the neocons around Trump see a chance to finally and decisively deal with Iran—not simply by blocking humanitarian aid but also piling on more sanctions and, possibly within a matter of days or weeks, attacking Shi’a militias in Iraq and possibly launching a long-promised direct military attack on Iran proper. 

The Bigger Picture Is Hiding Behind a Virus

By Jonathan Cook, April 03, 2020

Under cover of the public’s fear, and of justified concerns about the state of the economy and future employment, countries like the US are transferring huge sums of public money to the biggest corporations. Politicians controlled by big business and media owned by big business are pushing through this corporate robbery without scrutiny – and for reasons that should be self-explanatory. They know our attention is too overwhelmed by the virus for us to assess intentionally mystifying arguments about the supposed economic benefits, about yet more illusory trickle-down.

Why Did Russia Just Halt Domestic Gold Purchases?

By Zero Hedge, April 03, 2020

In recent years, as Kitco notes, the Russian central bank has dominated the gold market, consistently increasing its gold reserves every month for the last three years. According to data from the World Gold Council, the Russian central bank bought 158.1 tons last year. The WGC data shows that the central bank bought 8.1 tons of gold in January.

New York Fed December 2019 Plans to Throw $2.93 Trillion at Wall Street’s Trading Houses

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, April 03, 2020

The New York Fed’s repo (repurchase agreement) loan program began on September 17 when repo loan rates spiked from approximately 2 percent to 10 percent – meaning either liquid funds were not available to loan or the mega banks on Wall Street were backing away from lending to certain counterparties. Repo loans are typically between banks, hedge funds and money market funds on an overnight basis and are made against good-quality collateral. Since that time, the New York Fed has been making these loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars weekly.

10 Signs the U.S. Is Heading for a Depression

By Mike Whitney, April 03, 2020

Thursday’s jobless claims leave no doubt that the country is in the grips of another severe recession. More than 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the last week. That number exceeds the gloomiest prediction of more than 40 economists and pushes the two-week total to an eye-watering 10 million claims.

China Rolls Out the Health Silk Road

By Pepe Escobar, April 03, 2020

When President Xi Jinping was on a phone call in mid-March with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, before the arrival of a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Milan full of medical help, the key takeaway was the Chinese pledge to develop a Health Silk Road (Jiankang Sichou Zhilu).

That was in fact already inbuilt in the Belt and Road Initiative playbook since at least 2017, under the framework of enhanced, pan-Eurasian health connectivity. The pandemic only accelerated the timeline. The Health Silk Road will run in parallel to the multiple overland Silk Road corridors and the Maritime Silk Road.

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Syrian Army positions in the town of Saraqib came under joint shelling from the Turkish Army and Turkish-backed armed groups late on April 1. Strikes were carried out from the area of Almastumah, where Turkish military positions are located. The April 1 incident became the second attack on Syrian Army troops in the area in the last 3 days.

At the same time, Turkish forces continue their military buildup in the Idlib de-escalation zone. Two more convoys with armoured vehicles and artillery pieces crossed the border into Syria. Before the start of Ankara’s Operation Spring Shield in February 2020, the number of Turkish troops in Idlib was estimated at 5,000. Syrian sources say that by April 2020 this number reached 7,000.

And there are no indications that Turkey is going to use this force to put an end to the presence of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups in the region. Rather, it sees these groups as important allies and the pillar of its policy aimed at strengthening its control over northwestern Syria and turning it into a quasi-state under a Turkish protectorate.

Just recently, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, one of the groups that Turkish forces protect from the Syrian Army, executed a civilian accusing him of spying for Syrian government forces. 68-year Rifaat Mahmoud al-Daqqah, a former member of the Syrian Parliament, was detained by militants in May 2019. Terrorists claimed that he was providing the Syrian military with information on terrorists’ positions in the southwestern part of Greater Idlib, mainly around the town of Kabani.

Al-Daqqah, originally from the town of al-Janoudiyah, abandoned his position in the Syrian Parliament in 2011, in the early days of the crisis. Back then, militants pressured many officials and service members to defect by threatening their lives, families and businesses.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other Idlib groups regularly arrest and execute civilians, accusing them of spying for Syria, Russia or Iran. In most cases, they do not bother to support these claims with any evidence, rather they use such claims as a pretext to terrorize and subjugate the local population.

These atrocities happen right under the nose of Turkish observation posts, which have supposedly been set up by the Turkish military to restore security in the region. Nonetheless, it seems that Ankara has no problem with the execution of civilians, training of suicide bombers, arming of al-Qaeda-affiliated  groups or public calls to cleanse a majority of the population living in the government-controlled part of Syria as long as organizations doing this serve its foreign policy interests.

On April 1, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, paid an unofficial visit to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. He reportedly met with several influential Iraqi commanders and politicians, discussing with them the current security and political situation in Iraq. In March Brig. Gen. Ghaani visited Syria, where he inspected the frontlines in the northern province of Aleppo.

Ghaani succeeded former Quds Force commander Brig. Gen. Qassam Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US strike on Baghdad Airport in January 2020. His visit to Iraq comes amid the ongoing US effort to regroup its forces in Iraq and reinforce them with Patriot air defense systems. Two Patriot batteries are already there.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump announced that the US has “information” and “belief” that “Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq.” Top US officials often make such claims before conducting strikes on targets affiliated with Iran and/or before announcing a new round of sanctions.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

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The official figures for 24 countries across Europe show, not only that overall mortality is not increasing, but – so far – it is actually well below recent averages.

The statistics were gathered by the European Monitoring of Excess Mortality for Public Health Action (EuroMOMO), an international partnership of agencies from 24 European nations aiming to promote preparedness for public health emergencies.

They track “excess mortality”, meaning the number of officially recorded deaths vs the average death rate.

We recommend you check their website, where each country is broken down by age demographics. Today, we’re focusing on their maps.

Here is the map showing Europe’s excess mortality for Week 12 of 2020 (19th-25th March):

MOMO Europe mortality, week 12 2020

As you can see, currently, the vast majority of Europe shows “no excess”. That means deaths are either at or below expected levels. Italy is the one obvious exception. But note it is only on “high”, not “very high”.

For some context, maybe we should compare it to previous years.

Here is week 6 of 2019:

MOMO Europe mortality, week 6 2019

As you can see, it’s generally much worse. Several countries in “above average”, Spain and Portugal on “high”, and France is even “very high”.

We didn’t have a global lockdown in 2019.

Here are weeks 1 & 2 of 2018:

MOMO Europe mortality, week 1 2018

MOMO Europe mortality, week 2 2018

This was the height of the huge 2017/18 flu season. As you can see, Europe was greatly affected.

We didn’t have a global lockdown in 2018.

Week 2 of 2017 was even worse:

MOMO Europe mortality, week 2 2017

The whole of Western Europe experienced a huge spike in excess mortality, especially bad in all the Mediterranean countries.

We didn’t have a global lockdown in 2017.

Obviously, things may change (week 13’s results are due tomorrow), but – as it stands – the 2020 figures are substantially lower than the previous three years.

So, the question is, if we didn’t have a lockdown in 2017, and we didn’t have a lockdown in 2018, and we didn’t have a lockdown in 2019….why do we have a lockdown now?

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Governor of hard-hit NY state Anthony Cuomo stressed that if a patient “needs a ventilator” and they’re all in use because of an insufficient supply, “the person dies” from suffocation.

That’s the disturbing reality of a critical national shortage at a time when they’re vitally needed.

As daily COVID-19 infections increase exponentially in the US, numbers on Friday will way exceed 250,000 by day’s end.

Medical workers on the front lines of treating the sick are most vulnerable to become infected.

On Thursday, National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest RN union, addressed Trump by letter, saying the following:

“Across the nation, our health care workforce does not have the personal protective equipment it needs to safely care for patients without risking exposure to the virus,” adding:

“As a result, health care workers are at risk of illness and death, which puts our entire health care system at risk of collapse.”

“Further, when health care workers are exposed to the virus, they risk transmitting the virus to their families, patients, and communities.”

“If our country fails to immediately protect our health care workers, we will fail to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.”

By invoking the Defense Production Act, Trump can order companies to produce ventilators, personal protective gear, and whatever else is needed for medical staff to treat COVID-19 patients.

He barely used it. Last Friday for the first time, He called on General Motors to produce ventilators, what it’s gearing up to do anyway.

For the most part, he chose to let the private sector decide how and to what extent it’ll deal with the COVID-19 crisis to produce equipment, gear, and medications needed.

True enough, factories can’t covert from producing cars or appliances to medical supplies overnight.

During WW I and II, US auto makers shifted from passenger cars to aircraft, tanks and guns to support the war effort.

A similar approach is needed now to wage war on and defeat COVID-19.

It includes mass-producing COVID-19 test kits, providing medical staff with needed supplies, treating infected individuals, feeding the hungry and food insecure, and providing households with helicopter money to get by.

Instead of a national coordinated effort to deal with the public health crisis, directed by the Trump regime, governors in the 50 states are left to cope with it on their own.

They’re forced to compete for scarce supplies, trying to outbid each other to get what’s needed, an untenable situation.

National Nurses United called for the Trump regime to order mass production of essential equipment and supplies needed to wage war on COVID-19 — as authorized under Title III of the Defense Production Act.

NNU also urged the White House to immediately release and distribute from the strategic national stockpile large numbers ventilators, PPE, testing equipment, and life-support ECMO machines that are used for patients with life-threatening conditions like severe lung damage from infection.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported medical staff on the frontlines of treating COVID-19 patients are “frustrated that they’re being sent into a deadly battle without the protective gear they need for themselves and their patients.”

Things are especially dire in NYC where over 90,000 infections were reported and over 1,000 deaths, including seven medical workers.

American College of Emergency Physicians board member Dr. Ryan Stanton expressed frustration, saying:

“We are the richest country in the world, and yet we can’t protect our health-care providers when fighting the deadliest virus we’ve dealt with in most of our lifetimes,” adding:

“There’s a significant level of distrust with physicians and nurses and others because we feel the requirements and suggestions for PPE are being downgraded because of availability and not because of science.”

While most Americans shelter in place at home, medical staff show up daily on the job to treat sick patients.

On Tuesday, executive director Henry Garrido of District Council 37, representing emergency medics, nurses’ aides,  respiratory therapists and other NYC public workers, said the following:

“Our members are exhausted. They are scared. (But) (t)hey continue to soldier on.”

NYC registered nurse Karine Raymond said because conditions are worsening without let-up, she’s seriously thinking of writing her will.

“Nurses aren’t going to walk out,” she said.  “We’re very realistic. We’re doing the best we can.”

“We’re trying hard to try and help these poor souls without unduly opening ourselves up to anything dangerous. If we go down, then there’s nobody left to care for the patients, is there?”

According to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, around half of NYC hospitals reported that they’re critically short of respirators, masks, hand sanitizers, and other essential items needed to treat COVID-19 and other patients.

Rochester, NY UR Medicine’s director of infection equipment Ann Marie Pettis said

“(o)ur days are spent frantically searching for personal protective equipment,” adding:

Staff is forced to re-use single use items. “(T)his goes against everything we have known from the scientific evidence and what we have always taught our staff.”

Hospitals in the US nationwide face similar conditions that jeopardize medical staff and patients.

On Friday, a Lancet medical journal editorial slammed the US healthcare system, saying:

“The USA is a stark reminder of the divide that exists in countries without a universal health-care system.”

“For people who do not have private medical insurance, (the COVID-19 crisis) might see them face the choice of devastating financial hardship or poor health outcomes, or both.”

During 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreaks in the US, “individuals with poorer health outcomes were those in the lowest socioeconomic groups.”

“This same group of vulnerable people have now been caught in the middle of a major health emergency as a result of long-standing differences in affluence.”

America’s poor and low-income are most vulnerable to be harmed economically, financially, and health-wise at all times in the US, especially at times like now.

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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.

US Unemployment to Exceed 40% by End of April?

April 3rd, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Official US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers have been rigged since the neoliberal 90s to conceal the dismal state of the US labor market.

New millennium low unemployment in the US is a myth.

Based on how unemployment was calculated in the 1980s, the real rate exceeded 20% before the dual economic/public health crisis.

The official pre-crisis BLS sub-4% U-3 number is state-sponsored deception. The data are corrupted as follows:

Millions of discouraged workers are excluded from monthly reports, treated as nonpersons, individuals wanting work, giving up after failing to find it — the numbers sure to skyrocket ahead.

The Labor Department’s so-called “birth-death model,” estimating net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from others no longer operating, is deception to add jobs that may not exist.

The BLS assumes workers from non-operating companies are employed elsewhere. From 30 – 50,000 more jobs are added monthly, assuming new business creations whether or not they exist.

The BLS admits misreporting, saying “(t)he confidence level for the monthly change in total employment is on the order of plus or minus 430,000 jobs.”

In more normal times, headlined monthly unemployment numbers conceal the US job market’s deplorable state.

Since the neoliberal 90s, the state of America’s economy has been dismal for its working class, struggling to get by.

Most jobs created are low-or-poverty-wage, poor-or-no-benefit temporary or part-time ones. Most households need two or more to survive.

For growing millions today, it’s a life and death struggle. If unemployment benefits run out and no substantial federal relief comes to the rescue, millions of Americans won’t have income to feed their families, pay rent, service mortgages, cover medical bills, and obtain other essentials to life.

Until the current dual crisis erupted, America’s privileged class never had things better.

Throughout most of the new millennium, ordinary Americans have endured protracted Depression conditions — now deepening because of what’s going on.

Economist John Williams reengineers US government data, based on how it was calculated in the 1980s.

He estimated that US unemployment could reach 43% in April. At the height of the 1930s Great Depression, it was around 25%.

He believes another Great Depression is unfolding in real time, the worst to come as socio-economic turmoil is just beginning.

“Extraordinarily unstable circumstances continue in the global markets,” he stressed, adding:

“Economic, financial market, and political turmoil likely have just begun, despite ongoing, massive systemic manipulations and interventions.”

“Collapses loom for (the US) first and second quarter GDP.” The state of the nation for its ordinary people is coming apart at the seams in unprecedented fashion.

If looming US economic Depression looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it likely is one — the so-called duck test.

In the last two weeks, an unprecedented 10 million US workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits.

The previous single-week high was 695,000.

Layoffs continue, millions more US workers to be laid off or furloughed by employers.

Beleaguered Boeing offered buyouts to its entire 161,000 workforce, the once bellwether US company perhaps close to bankruptcy without far more federal aid than offered.

Before current crisis conditions end, Americans will understand what they’re all about far better than textbooks or expert talking heads can explain.

Living through them creates awareness more keenly than any other way.

With most Americans living from paycheck to paycheck in more normal times, public angst, misery, and desperation ahead may be unprecedented.

Economist Mark Zandi estimates that about 15 million US mortgage holders could stop servicing them if current conditions continue throughout the year.

Tens of millions of Americans are hunkered down. Shops along Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile are closed and boarded-up to prevent looting.

Where visible, merchandise was removed from windows. Round-the-clock lighting and alarm systems also protect them.

Security guards man empty/enclosed shopping malls. Some upscale retailers like Tiffany, Gucci, Dior, Versace, and others emptied their stores of merchandise to protect it. Police provide more protection.

Nearly 300 million Americans are under some form of lockdown in 38 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico — about 90% of the US population, perhaps heading for mandating it nationwide.

The order excludes going out for food, prescription drugs, medical appointments, and what else is essential like caring for elderly relatives.

With most people sheltering in place at home, farmers may be hard-pressed to find workers needed for planting and harvesting crops.

A similar scenario exists abroad, risking less food, possible rationing, and higher prices ahead — unless price controls are instituted as during WW II because of shortages, much of the output in the US and other countries going to the war effort.

If things play out this way in the months ahead, poor, low-income, and even middle-income households will be hard-pressed to make ends meet.

The worst of scenarios would mean unprecedented hard times.

During WW II I remember as a young boy in grammar school, I was well fed and clothed, deprived of nothing I recall at a time of rationing except my favorite bubble gum, nearly all of which went to US military personnel.

Things now are different with much of the economy shutting down or heading in this direction at a time when most households have little or no savings and consumer debt is at an all-time high.

There’s high risk of many thousands of mostly small, but some medium-and-large-size businesses as well, shutting down and not reopening when the coast is clear.

Before current crisis conditions erupted, millions of US households were and remain food insecure.

Feeding America calls itself “the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States including in disasters and national emergencies,” adding:

“The most vulnerable people in our communities need us now more than ever.”

The organization launched a COVID-19 Response Fund, “a national food-and fund-raising effort to support people facing hunger and the food banks who help them.”

It’s working with school districts and government agencies to supply “school meals (for children) outside of” classrooms.

It’s trying to build an inventory of food supplies. Along with likeminded efforts nationwide, Feeding America faces unprecedented challenges in the current environment.

A decade ago, around 50 million Americans were food insecure, according to the US Department of Agriculture, the number lowered to 37 million in 2018, the true number likely higher.

If dire economic conditions continue throughout year or longer, the number could increase two-or-threefold.

Feeding America explained that “(f)ood insecurity does not exist in isolation, as low-income families are affected by multiple, overlapping issues like lack of affordable housing, social isolation, chronic or acute health problems, high medical costs, and low wages” — and, of course, unemployment that already skyrocketed and heads higher.

A Final Comment

After the October 1929 stock market crash, prelude to the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, in March 1930, said:

“We have passed the worst…(D)uring the next 60 days,” things will begin normalizing.

In his book titled Lords of Finance, Liaquat Ahamed said

“when the facts refused to obey Hoover’s forecasts, he started to make them up.”

Government agencies were pressed to issue false data. Some officials refused and resigned, including head of the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Judging him by his rhetoric and actions, Trump is a modern-day Herbert Hoover.

Weeks earlier claiming COVID-19 outbreaks would abate, not rise, he added that “(w)e’re going very substantially down, not up.”

With global outbreaks exceeding one million, the US is by far the most adversely affected country with around one-fourth of the world total.

It’s largely because of Trump regime indifference to growing national crisis conditions — states and local communities left mostly on their own to cope.

Limited federal aid is offered when mountains of it are needed, especially for hardest-hit areas like NY, especially NYC with around 93,000 reported cases.

A state of emergency exists in city hospitals overrun with infected patients.

ER Dr. Darien Sutton explained that “(i)t almost seems like it’s never stopping.People keep coming and coming and coming, and there’s just no space to put them.”

Medical staff are exhausted from trying to cope with an untenable situation. On the front lines of providing treatment, they’re highly vulnerable to infection.

Who’ll treat the sick if many medical professionals join their numbers?

One NY doctor expressed what countless others feel, saying: “It is terrifying. It is really terrifying.”

Instead of going all-out to help beleaguered states and cities, Donald (Herbert Hoover) Trump continues to ignore growing needs nationwide, instead saying:

The economy will “pop back like nobody’s ever seen before.” Echoing DJT, Mnuchin made similar comments.

Serving monied interests and themselves exclusively, they, other regime officials, and most congressional members are indifferent to the health, welfare, and fundamental rights of ordinary people everywhere.

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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.

This morning, the Department of Labor (DOL) released data on initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims, showing that UI claims jumped from 211,000 in the week ending March 7th to 6.6 million in the week ending March 28th.

This is more than a 3,000% increase in three weeks. This kind of upending of the labor market in such a short time is unheard of.

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The figure shows initial UI claims over time. The spike at the end shows the unprecedented territory we are in right now. (Note: Because the x-axis covers more than 50 years and the increase in the last two weeks is so drastic, the last two observations appear to be in a vertical line.)

What the labor market is currently experiencing is far more extreme than anything we’ve ever seen, including the worst weeks of the Great Recession.

It’s worth noting that UI claims do not include many workers who are out of work due to the virus, including independent contractors, those who don’t have long enough work histories, those who had to quit work to care for a child whose school closed, and more, so the actually number of people out of work is higher than today’s’ data show us. One of the most effective parts of the CARES ACT, the relief and recovery act that Congress passed last week, is a $250 billion expansion of unemployment insurance, including an increase in the level of benefits and the creation of a Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program which will be available to many workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance. These provisions are very important and will help millions. However, the broader stimulus package contains many weaknesses that reduce its effectiveness, which is regrettable because the job loss we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Based on new GDP forecasts, we project that nearly 20 million workers will be laid off or furloughed by July, with losses in every state. And importantly, the GDP forecasts these projections are based on include the impact of the CARES Act and they assume that Congress will pass another relief package focused on aid to states. That implies that far more than 20 million workers will be laid off or furloughed if there is not another meaningful relief and recovery bill.

It’s important to step back from today’s UI numbers and remember that this labor market crisis didn’t have to happen. Due to failed leadership, we twice missed the chance to avert widespread job loss. Now policymakers must act to avoid greater damage. Given the incredible deterioration of the labor market in a matter of weeks, federal policymakers will absolutely need to come back and provide more desperately needed relief, and more support for the recovery once the lockdown is over.

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Russia’s urgent dispatch of counter-COVID aid to America was both symbolic and substantial in the sense that it improved the country’s reputation among average Americans which in turn advances Trump’s years-long case for a “New Detente” between these two Great Powers.

From Russia With Love

Observers could be forgiven for not believing it when they first heard the news, but Russia just urgently dispatched counter-COVID aid to America in a real-life scene that seems ripped from the pages of political fiction. Had anyone speculated about this scenario just a few short months ago, practically nobody would have believed them, but World War C is truly turning the world upside down faster than anyone could have expected. This humanitarian assistance was sent after Trump agreed to his Russian counterpart’s proposal during a phone call earlier this week, with President Putin likely offering his country’s aid in order to help the American people caught in the new global epicenter of this crisis and also to show his unwavering solidarity with the US during this time of need just like how he reacted immediately after he found out about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Looking beyond his noble intentions, it’s clear that this move was both symbolic and substantial in the sense that it improved the country’s reputation among average Americans which in turn advances Trump’s years-long case for a “New Detente” between these two Great Powers.

Soft Power…

Regarding the soft power angle, Russia killed several birds with a single stone, though it should always be remembered that it wouldn’t have been able to do this had Trump not approved. The fake news that up to 80% of its earlier aid to Italy was “useless” has now been debunked and all but forgotten after a country much more powerful than the Southern European one (and which arguably exerts a strong degree of hegemonic control over its affairs) accepted President Putin’s similar proposal for humanitarian assistance. Seeing as how the planet is now fighting World War C, this could serve to remind the average American of their country’s wartime alliance with the USSR during World War II against the shared scourge of fascism. Not only could that improve Russia’s overall standing in their eyes following four years of interconnected fake news scandals, but it could also have the effect of getting them to passively agree to any forthcoming moves that Trump might eventually propose related to easing the sanctions regime against that country. While their geopolitical rivalry still undoubtedly exists and probably won’t go away anytime soon (if at all), now is the perfect time for these two to consider the wisdom of more closely cooperating with one another on all fronts.

…And Substance

Their joint struggle against COVID-19 has captivated the world’s attention precisely because of how unexpected it was that Russia of all countries would end up sending humanitarian assistance to America. Trump willingly gave Russia an historically unprecedented soft power victory, but he did so with keen strategic calculations in mind. He’s been facing intense opposition from some of his permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) over the past few years over his desire to enter into a “New Detente” with Russia, which the author explained more in detail in his August 2019 analysis about how “The ‘New Detente’ Is Proceeding Apace, And China Should Be Very Concerned“. In a nutshell, the US believes that reaching a series of “pragmatic compromises” with Russia over Syria, Ukraine, and other issues could facilitate that country’s rapprochement with the West and thus comparatively lessen its growing strategic dependence on China by default, which Moscow turned to more out of necessity than choice following the sudden commencement of the New Cold War in 2013-2014. The problem, however, is that so-called “Cold Warriors” and other anti-Russian hawks believe that this strategy is fated to fail because they simply don’t trust Moscow.

Defying The “Deep State” (With Saudi Help?)

Therein lays one of the geneses of the Russiagate conspiracy (the other being to discredit Trump’s populist policies at home), but Trump brilliantly realized the mutual benefits of letting President Putin score a soft power victory in order to advance their countries’ shared strategic interests related to the “New Detente”. With Americans now more aware than ever before that Russia isn’t the “dastardly villain” that many of them have been brainwashed by the “deep state” and its surrogates (both in Congress and the Mainstream Media) into believing, they might naturally be more in support of Trump’s original promise to enter into a meaningful rapprochement with the country after Moscow sent them aid that literally saved people’s lives. Before getting to that point, however, Trump and President Putin appear to be on the verge of a “goodwill experiment” to test one another’s true intentions given what the American leader said about his country potentially joining rumored Russian-Saudi oil talks to reverse the recent price crash that devastated the global economy at its most vulnerable moment. Should this initiative succeed and all three countries establish a mechanism (whether formal or informal) to restore the oil price, then the next phase of the “New Detente” might begin shortly after.

Concluding Thoughts

The US and Russia are already in talks on a wide array of issues including energy geopolitics in Europe, NATO, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea, et al., so it’s only natural for them to finally make some progress on reaching the long-awaited series of “pragmatic compromises” that Trump originally wanted to clinch during the first year of his presidency but was prevented from doing so by his “deep state’s” fake news Russiagate scandals. Now is the perfect time for defying the “deep state” with the support of the American people after they’ve come to suddenly have a much more favorable view of their country’s rival after it urgently dispatched humanitarian assistance to them with Trump’s support in order to help everyone improve their odds of surviving World War C. This soft power “coup” was made possible by Presidents Trump and Putin cooperating in pursuit of their shared interests, but it might (inadvertently in terms of Russian motivations) have the potential to become a strategic “coup” with time if Russia’s eventual rapprochement with the West lessens its growing dependence on China and thus places the People’s Republic in a comparatively more disadvantageous position than before. That’s certainly not Russia’s intent, but few doubt that it’s the US’.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

It was Rahm Emmanuel who said the state should never let a “good crisis go to waste.”

In regard to Iran, the neocons will not let the COVID-19 “crisis” go to waste. It is a perfect cover for escalating tension with the Islamic Republic. 

It is more than obvious the geopolitical ignoramus Donald Trump is under the influence of a gaggle of neocons chomping at the bit to kill tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Iranians. 

“Trump, who did not detail the plot, made the threat less than an hour after receiving a foreign intelligence briefing at the White House,” reported USA Today. “Later at a briefing, Trump said the intelligence indicating an attack was sound.” 

Iranian-backed militias in Iraq continually threaten to attack U.S. and allied forces, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Threats arrive in a daily stream.

Some of the more visible threats have been issued by the Kataib Hezbollah militia, the group responsible for rocket attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq that have killed American troops and contractors.

Iraqis have repeatedly and overwhelmingly demanded the US occupation forces leave the country, a demand rejected by Trump and his neocon foreign policy controllers. 

From FRN: 

Iraq’s parliament last month [January, 2020] voted to have the US troops removed from the country, heeding a call from former Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi to take urgent measures and end the presence of the foreign forces as soon as possible.

The Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution to work to end the foreign troop presence in the Arab country in the wake of a US targeted assassination of a top Iranian general and a commander of Iraqi popular forces.

“U.S. intelligence out of the Middle East suggests that Iran or Iran-backed forces are planning a potentially serious attack against U.S. military personnel in Iraq, said officials monitoring the information,” The War Street Journal reported on April Fools Day.

The late CIA whistleblower Victor Marchetti documented how the agency has specialized in lies and deception since its inception in the late 1940s.  As a special assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA,  Marchetti knew a thing or two about the role played by US intelligence, its pathological lies, and obsessive-compulsive secrecy.  

The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA’s euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing—for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy—so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to you about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it.

Due to an avalanche of lies and distortions issued by the state and the corporate media’s dutiful stenographic repetition of war propaganda, omission of facts, distortions of reality, and endless demonization of official enemies, many Americans are unable to see what should be more than obvious—the rocket attacks on illegal US bases in Iraq following a lawful order by the Iraqi government demanding US troops leave the country are a completely justified and warranted response to a never-ending occupation. 

Ignored is the historical fact Shi’as in Iran and Iraq share religious and cultural ties and have done so for centuries, well before the region was carved up by Britain and France following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. 

Iran’s Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri told The Tehran Times the rocket attacks on US bases are a “normal reaction by the Iraqi people and resistance forces against U.S. ‘satanic measures’… Americans are well aware that the people of the region and the dear people of Iraq are opposed to their military presence in these countries and it is their normal reaction.” 

Now that the American people are consumed with fear and loathing of an overblown virus “pandemic,” the neocons around Trump see a chance to finally and decisively deal with Iran—not simply by blocking humanitarian aid but also piling on more sanctions and, possibly within a matter of days or weeks, attacking Shi’a militias in Iraq and possibly launching a long-promised direct military attack on Iran proper. 

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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.


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

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Syria’s Ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Ja’afari has reiterated a call by his country for immediate and unconditional lifting of all US economic sanctions, a few days after the coronavirus killed the first patient in the Arab country. 

In a letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres and president of the UN Security Council Zhang Jun, Ja’afari lambasted remarks by US State Department official James Jeffrey who accused Damascus Monday of using “cynical ploys” and urged Syrians to “count” on Washington in “delivering humanitarian assistance to people in need”.

Ja’afari said such “irresponsible and misleading” comments by US officials “are just an attempt to cover the US crimes and violations against the sovereignty, independence and safety of the Syrian territories and against the security, peace and prosperity of the Syrian people”.

The senior Syrian diplomat also said that since 1979, Washington has been imposing arrays of unilateral and crippling economic sanctions against Syria, whose impact have been particularly aggravating since 2011 when a foreign-backed militancy began in the country.

He said the previous as well as the current US administrations have issued at least eight executive orders on further tightening the economic blockade on the Syrian nation.

Ja’afari said the unprecedented economic embargoes on Syria’s banking, energy, investment, import, export, communications and the air, sea and land transport sectors are all imposed with the aim of depriving the Syrians of their basic rights.

The US economic sanctions have devastating impacts on Syria and moved its ranking in the Human Development Index to the list of the least developed countries in the Human Development Report 2016, Ja’afari further said.

Such coercive measure, he added, have disrupted the process of delivering humanitarian aid to Syrians and undermined their ability to meet their basic needs.

Elsewhere in the letter, the Syrian envoy to the UN said the Arab country is facing an additional pressure in curbing the new pandemic, which demands implementing urgent measures by Damascus “to provide the basic infrastructure and the necessary potentials for the health sector”.

The COVID-19 disease, caused by a new coronavirus, jumped from wildlife to people in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year and is currently affecting 203 countries and territories across the globe. It has so far affected more than 955,400 people and killed over 48,580.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

Official figures by the Syrian government show that as of Thursday, 10 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and two others have lost their lives so far.

Ja’afari condemned “hostile” US polices against Syria as a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and of the principles of international law, particularly during the current pandemic.

He also called for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from all the Syrian territories, particularly its oil and gas fields, in order to allow Damascus to commence the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation of oil and gas plants and to use the income “for the interest of the Syrian people exclusively”.

Damascus “affirms that it has mobilized all of its available human, medical and food resources to serve all the Syrians wherever they are in the face of this global pandemic”, Ja’afari said.

“Any collective and international effort for curbing the spread of this dangerous pandemic cannot be accomplished in light of the continuity of the policy of imposing economic siege by some governments, including the US, on more than two billion people in our world,” he said.

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Being completely and responsibly aware of the seriousness and danger of the current pandemic, and supporting all rational and necessary public health policy measures, which do not harm more than they help the people and their livelihood, and following them fully in our countries of residence.

And even more being alarmed and horrified by the endless flow of appeals and calls for help from our families and friends in Serbia, warning us of the coup d’état that took place in Serbia; the physical and mental terrorization of the entire population there; the chaos in the health care system, caused by the incompetence and corruption by the ruling party; the impending famine and life-threatening shortages of medication caused by the impending 24/7 curfew, and after having done all in our power so far, by sending money to our families and friends as soon as the pandemic was announced (which is what we have done for decades regularly, in terms of billions of US Dollars annually).

We, Serbs from the diaspora, and our non-Serbian friends who support and care about the state and the people of Serbia ask and demand that you pressure Aleksandar Vucic, the irrational and dangerous individual who, unfortunately and tragically, is the current president of Serbia and the usurper of all power and institutions of that state, to immediately stop taking advantage of the pandemic to terrorize and mistreat the citizens of the country of Serbia, as well as the numerous refugees and migrants who got stuck there, by his totalitarian rule, hysterical and panic-inducing behavior, and incompetence in basic health public policy implementation by his party membership, which care more for pleasing the morbid dictator than for the health and wellbeing of the citizens.

Just a few examples will provide evidence about the danger of further keeping of this individual in power there:

Although the world was well aware of the pandemic, Aleksandar Vucic continued to press a vast number of citizens into obligatory attendance in his election rallies – it was especially evident in the town of Valjevo, where state-owned enterprises’ laborers had to greet him in the middle of the pandemic, which caused the town of Valjevo to be among the three greatest centers of the epidemic in spite of its relative remoteness and small size. His party machine forced hundreds of thousands of people to endure its door-to-door signature gathering in the early days of the epidemic, causing the spread of the virus throughout the country!

During his constant and unnecessary TV appearances at the time of the tragedy in Italy, Aleksandar Vucic had lined up a number of obedient and cowardly health officials and they all downplayed the tragedy of the people in Italy, making fun of the panic-stricken human beings everywhere, and recommending a shopping spree in Milan due to its lack of tourists! It wasn’t only embarrassing to the citizens of Serbia but excessively cruel and sadistic too!

Once Aleksandar Vucic became aware of the seriousness of the pandemic, he publicly panicked, held endless incoherent, perplexing and totally unnecessary press conferences, and caused distress among the population, especially among the senior citizens of Serbia (to whom he announced that Serbia’s cemeteries shall not be big enough to bury them), as well as transferred the blame for the infections appearing in Serbia onto Serbian citizens returning home from abroad (where they went in search for jobs, which they lost because of Vucic’s incompetence and corruption in Serbia), never accepting the fact that he and his party and government officials had visited the infected areas in the US, the EU and China, and returned to Serbia without any quarantine or any other precaution in order to ensure the safety of anyone around them. The returning citizens of Serbia were accused of bringing the pandemic into the country although no quarantine measures were introduced at the points of entry, and no advice was given by the government regarding self-isolation and/or any other methods of preventing infection. When they were belatedly introduced, they were inhumane and incompetent, causing more possible infections than preventing them!

Aleksandar Vucic had prohibited anyone over 65 years of age from leaving her/his place of residence, without providing any organized and meaningful care for such citizens, regardless of their family, financial and/or health situation. He also imposed an unnecessarily long curfew on all citizens of the country without any adequate measures to provide food and/or medicine to the people in need but started fining those caught in “breaking” the rules (mostly out of necessity!) by issuing them citations up to 10 times of the value of the average monthly income of a typical Serbian family. He even prohibited going out to walk dogs while, at the same time, throughout this period, keeping the sports betting places, gambling dens and mini-casinos open, since these are the major income-generating operations for his party, and money laundering mechanisms for his corrupt mafia apparatchiks.

Aleksandar Vucic has even closed green markets all over Serbia, depriving the impoverished masses of affordable nourishment and the farmers at least some income to survive through these harsh times. He has imposed a curfew even on the peasant population in barely populated Serbia’s villages – preventing the farmers to go to their fields during the most crucial season for food production. This will most certainly cause a famine in the months to come – most citizens of Serbia cannot afford to pay the imported food today, let alone the inflated prices after the pandemic ends.

Aleksandar Vucic’s regime has started arresting opposition politicians (ineffective as they are!), such as the Republican Party leader, in addition to depriving them of participating in the sessions of the Parliament (which was unconstitutionally suspended) and/or appearing in the media, which are now completely under his control.       

We demand that Aleksandar Vucic be pressured to:

1. Return the power to the legitimate institution of the Republic, which should manage this crisis together with medical experts and not by a panic-stricken madman;

2. Resign and allow for the formation of the National Unity and Salvation Government, which will implement proper and adequate measures to get Serbia through this crisis and establish the framework for the elections for the new Constitutional Assembly to recreate democracy and normal political, social and economic life for all the citizens and nationalities of Serbia.

We insist that NO ONE from any of the previous governments and/or Parliaments (either from the so-called “in power” parties or the “opposition” ones) may be included in the new government, and that DIASPORA SERBS MUST BE INCLUDED in it.

This is urgent and absolutely morally obligatory since this madman is about to impose a 24/7 curfew upon the impoverished and already weakened population there, and cause irreparable damage to the state and the economy, and a long-term national tragedy manyfold worse than any virus or war could. Aleksandar Vucic – not the virus – is the supreme danger to the human race there.

The same is true for the criminal and totalitarian regime in Montenegro, under Milo Djukanovic, which has abused the situation to suppress political opposition and non-obedient nationalities and religious communities in that mini-state, as well as for the Bosnia-Herzegovina Sarajevo based officials, dominated by the 1990s Islamist radicals and corrupt incompetents, who have postponed health-protection measures only because the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina entity government had proposed them first.

If no serious and immediate pressure is brought upon these officials, especially on Aleksandar Vucic, the situation in the Balkans will deteriorate beyond control and might result in a human tragedy much worse than all the wars in the 1990s.

Thank you for your help and humane concern!

Your citizen and voter,

Višeslav Simić – Professor of Public Policy, Governing Strategy and State and Economy at Tec de Monterrey, Mexico. Ph.D. in Public Policy; Master in International Cooperation in Emergency Situations & Humanitarian Projects Management; B.A. in Diplomacy and International Relations.

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The Trump administration is dispatching US Navy warships to the Caribbean Sea in an effort to turn up the pressure on Venezuela.

The initiative was announced by President Donald Trump and other high ranking officials in a press conference Wednesday.

The move is allegedly part of a wider “anti-narcotics” operation in the region, which in addition to Navy destroyers will reportedly involve AWAC surveillance aircraft and on-ground special forces units. The Associated Press reported that the operation is one of the largest in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

“We must not let malign actors exploit the [coronavirus] situation for their own gain,” Trump said.

The military deployment came on the heels of the Department of Justice (DoJ) levying “narco-terrorism” charges against top-ranking Venezuelan officials, as well as a “democratic transition” plan unveiled by the State Department.

On March 26, the DoJ accused President Nicolas Maduro, National Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello and several other officials of conspiring with FARC rebels to “flood” the US with cocaine.

Critics have pointed to the dearth of concrete evidence implicating top Venezuelan leaders and to the fact that data from US agencies shows that only a small fraction of drug routes pass through Venezuela, with most cocaine entering US territory via Central America and Mexico.

A map produced by the US Southern Command shows the main drug-smuggling routes in Latin America connecting Colombia and Ecuador with Guatemala and Mexico via the Pacific Ocean.

A map produced by the US Southern Command shows the main drug-smuggling routes in Latin America connecting Colombia and Ecuador with Guatemala and Mexico via the Pacific Ocean.

On Tuesday, the State Department unveiled a “framework for a peaceful democratic transition in Venezuela,” calling for Maduro’s resignation and the establishment of a transition government headed by opposition and Chavista officials to oversee new elections.

The Trump administration pledged to lift sanctions against Venezuelan individuals and key economic sectors, but only after Maduro left office and all security agreements with Russia and Cuba were terminated.

The US has vowed to ramp up unilateral sanctions until the Maduro administration accepts the deal.

For its part, the Venezuelan government blasted the military deployment, with Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez calling it “an attempt to attack Venezuela with lies and threats.”

Rodriguez added that Venezuela has “robust” anti-narcotics policies and would be ready to “coordinate” actions against drug trafficking in the region.

Washington’s naval operation comes days after the controversial sinking of a Venezuelan coast guard boat off the coast of the Caribbean island of La Tortuga.

According to the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense, the patrol ship “Naiguata” located a Portuguese cruise ship, the “RCGS Resolute,” in Venezuelan territorial waters and ordered the vessel to accompany it to port. The “Resolute” allegedly refused the instructions and proceeded to ram the “Naiguata,” which subsequently sank as a result of the impact.

The cruise ship owner, Columbia Cruise Services, has disputed this account, insisting that the “Resolute” was “subject to an act of aggression by the Venezuelan Navy in international waters,” while carrying no passengers.

On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro suggested the ship “was being used to transport mercenaries.” He also claimed that “someone from the north called” to prevent Dutch authorities from inspecting the “Resolute” at its current mooring in the Curacao port of Willemstad.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva, for his part, has pledged to collaborate with Venezuela and Holland in the investigation of the “unfortunate” incident.

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The Bigger Picture Is Hiding Behind a Virus

April 3rd, 2020 by Jonathan Cook

Things often look the way they do because someone claiming authority tells us they look that way. If that sounds too cynical, pause for a moment and reflect on what seemed most important to you just a year ago, or even a few weeks ago. 

Then, you may have been thinking that Russian interference in western politics was a vitally important issue, and something that we needed to invest much of our emotional and political energy in countering. Or maybe a few weeks ago you felt that everything would be fine if we could just get Donald Trump out of the White House. Or maybe you imagined that Brexit was the panacea to Britain’s problems – or, conversely, that it would bring about the UK’s downfall.

Still feel that way?

After all, much as we might want to (and doubtless some will try), we can’t really blame Vladimir Putin, or Russian troll farms spending a few thousand dollars on Facebook advertising, for the coronavirus pandemic. Much as we might want to, we can’t really blame Trump for the catastrophic condition of the privatised American health care system, totally ill-equipped and unprepared for a nationwide health emergency. And as tempting as it is for some of us, we can’t really blame Europe’s soft borders and immigrants for the rising death toll in the UK. It was the global economy and cheap travel that brought the virus into Britain, and it was the Brexit-loving prime minister Boris Johnson who dithered as the epidemic took hold.

The bigger picture

Is it possible that only a few weeks ago our priorities were just a little divorced from a bigger reality? That what appeared to be the big picture was not actually big enough? That maybe we should have been thinking about even more important, pressing matters – systemic ones like the threat of a pandemic of the very kind we are currently enduring.

Because while we were all thinking about Russiagate or Trump or Brexit, there were lots of experts – even the Pentagon, it seems – warning of just such a terrible calamity and urging that preparations be made to avoid it. We are in the current mess precisely because those warnings were ignored or given no attention – not because the science was doubted, but because there was no will to do something to avert the threat.

If we reflect, it is possible to get a sense of two things. First, that our attention rarely belongs to us; it is the plaything of others. And second, that the “real world”, as it is presented to us, rarely reflects anything we might usefully be able to label as objective reality. It is a set of political, economic and social priorities that have been manufactured for us.

Agents outside our control with their own vested interests – politicians, the media, business – construct reality, much as a film-maker designs a movie. They guide our gaze in certain directions and not others.

A critical perspective 

At a moment like this of real crisis, one that overshadows all else, we have a chance – though only a chance – to recognise this truth and develop our own critical perspective. A perspective that truly belongs to us, and not to others.

Think back to the old you, the pre-coronavirus you. Were your priorities the same as your current ones?

This is not to say that the things you prioritise now – in this crisis – are necessarily any more “yours” than the old set of priorities.

If you’re watching the TV or reading newspapers – and who isn’t – you’re probably feeling scared, either for yourself or for your loved ones. All you can think about is the coronavirus. Nothing else really seems that important by comparison. And all you can hope for is the moment when the lockdowns are over and life returns to normal.

But that’s not objectively the “real world” either. Terrible as the coronavirus is, and as right as anyone is to be afraid of the threat it poses, those “agents of authority” are again directing and controlling our gaze, though at least this time those in authority include doctors and scientists. And they are guiding our attention in ways that serve their interests – for good or bad.

Endless tallies of infections and deaths, rocketing graphs, stories of young people, along with the elderly, battling for survival serve a purpose: to make sure we stick to the lockdown, that we maintain social distancing, that we don’t get complacent and spread the disease.

Here our interests – survival, preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed – coincide with those of the establishment, the “agents of authority”. We want to live and prosper, and they need to maintain order, to demonstrate their competence, to prevent dissatisfaction bubbling up into anger or open revolt.

Crowded out by detail 

But again the object of our attention is not as much ours as we may believe. While we focus on graphs, while we twitch the curtains to see if neighbours are going for a second run or whether families are out in the garden celebrating a birthday distant from an elderly parent, we are much less likely to be thinking about how well the crisis is being handled. The detail, the mundane is again crowding out the important, the big picture.

Our current fear is an enemy to our developing and maintaining a critical perspective. The more we are frightened by graphs, by deaths, the more we are likely to submit to whatever we are told will keep us safe.

Under cover of the public’s fear, and of justified concerns about the state of the economy and future employment, countries like the US are transferring huge sums of public money to the biggest corporations. Politicians controlled by big business and media owned by big business are pushing through this corporate robbery without scrutiny – and for reasons that should be self-explanatory. They know our attention is too overwhelmed by the virus for us to assess intentionally mystifying arguments about the supposed economic benefits, about yet more illusory trickle-down.

There are many other dramatic changes being introduced, almost too many and too rapidly for us to follow them properly. Bans on movement. Intensified surveillance. Censorship. The transfer of draconian powers to the police, and preparations for the deployment of soldiers on streets. Detention without trial. Martial law. Measures that might have terrified us when Trump was our main worry, or Brexit, or Russia, may now seem a price worth paying for a “return to normality”.

Paradoxically, a craving for the old-normal may mean we are prepared to submit to a new-normal that could permanently deny us any chance of returning to the old-normal.

The point is not just that things are far more provisional than most of us are ready to contemplate; it’s that our window on what we think of as “the real world”, as “normal”, is almost entirely manufactured for us.

Distracted by the virus 

Strange as this may sound right now, in the midst of our fear and suffering, the pandemic is not really the big picture either. Our attention is consumed by the virus, but it is, in a truly awful sense, a distraction too.

In a few more years, maybe sooner than we imagine, we will look back on the virus – with the benefit of distance and hindsight – and feel the same way about it we do now about Putin, or Trump, or Brexit.

It will feel part of our old selves, our old priorities, a small part of a much bigger picture, a clue to where we were heading, a portent we did not pay attention to when it mattered most.

The virus is one small warning – one among many – that we have been living out of sync with the natural world we share with other life. Our need to control and dominate, our need to acquire, our need for security, our need to conquer death – they have crowded out all else. We have followed those who promised quick, easy solutions, those who refused to compromise, those who conveyed authority, those who spread fear, those who hated.

If only we could redirect our gaze, if we could seize back control of our attention for a moment, we might understand that we are being plagued not just by a virus but by our fear, our hate, our hunger, our selfishness. The evidence is there in the fires, the floods and the disease, in the insects that have disappeared, in the polluted seas, in the stripping of the planet’s ancient lungs, its forests, in the melting ice-caps.

The big picture is hiding in plain sight, no longer obscured by issues like Russia and Brexit but now only by the most microscopic germ, marking the thin boundary between life and death.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog.

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.

Civil unrest is coming and things are about to get ugly.

The powers that ought not to be are engineering a global economic collapse by shutting down businesses and putting nearly everyone on lockdown and strict quarantine in response to the Covid-19 plandemic.

The ramifications of this organized chaos will begin to unfold in the next couple of weeks as more and more people become unemployed, broke, stricken with cabin fever and desperate for things to be fixed.

In this video Dan Dicks of Press For Truth visits downtown Vancouver in the height of the pandemic as businesses are preparing for the worst, to explain what’s happening, who’s behind it all and most importantly what you as an individual can do about it!

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Commentary by Gary G. Kohls

In the above video from Press For Truth Canada  the storefronts of high-end businesses in downtown Vancouver BC have been boarded up like they did before the G20 riots a few years ago that were discovered to have been actually started by government agent provocateurs.

Burglary and looting has been rampant in Vancouver (and many other cities) since businesses were ordered to shut down – and now businesses have been told to take everything out of their shops or they’ll lose it.

This astute reporter warns us that the Power Elites are deliberately collapsing the middle class economy, with the banks intending to legally take over the small businesses (and homes that can’t pay their mortgages), knowing that what is happening is not just accidental, but rather planned.

One can assume that the coming civil unrest will naturally create chaos and that the military/police state will “come to the rescue” so they can create “order out of the chaos”.

As an aside, two of the last 3 nights of Amanpour & Company contained major interviews with top US military commanders who are gearing up to “help” with the coronavirus crisis.

Also noted on the ticker tape of my local TV station is that Trump has ordered US Naval warships to the coast of Venezuela – allegedly because of the illegal drugs being smuggled into the US – yeah right!

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As the gold market continues to deal with global liquidity issues, and virus-lockdown-related disruptions between paper and physical pricing as extremely high physical demand creates shortages, Russia made a surprise announcement on Monday.

Starting April 1, Russia will be suspending its domestic gold purchases:

Since April 1, 2020, the Bank of Russia has suspended the purchase of gold in the domestic precious metals market.

Further decisions on the purchase of gold will be made depending on the development of the situation in the financial market…”Russia’s central bank said.

In recent years, as Kitco notes, the Russian central bank has dominated the gold market, consistently increasing its gold reserves every month for the last three years. According to data from the World Gold Council, the Russian central bank bought 158.1 tons last year. The WGC data shows that the central bank bought 8.1 tons of gold in January.

Although Russia will not be adding to its gold reserves in the near future, analysts are not expecting the central bank to start selling its gold anytime soon.

So the question is – why is Russia stopping its domestic purchases? We see four main possibilities…

1) Russia reached a limit on the relative size of gold reserves to overall reserves…

Gold accounts for over 20% of Russian international reserves, which is a high level historically and compared with other central banks.

“The central bank probably doesn’t want to increase gold’s share in reserves, while the size of reserves is falling,” said Tatiana Evdokimova, an analyst at Nordea Bank in Moscow.

2) Ease tightness in global gold markets

This would have a manifold benefit by helping enable increased ownership of physical precious metals around the world, and potentially supporting the case for more de-dollarization.

It would also reduce the huge premiums that are being paid for physical gold (why would they want to pay up for it).

3) Offer domestic producers profit opportunities

As we have detailed previously, even though there’s literally thousands of tons of gold bars sitting in vaults around the world, it’s been hard to get metal when and where it’s needed, and so premiums for physical bullion is extreme to say the least.

Given the huge physical premiums in precious metals (and a plunge in crude profits for the nation), it would make sense to enable producers to sell into global markets at a sizable profit

“The central bank is now signaling to gold sellers that they should redirect their supplies externally,” said Dmitry Dolgin, ING Bank’s chief economist in Russia. “Global demand seems to be high.”

4) They no longer like gold…

This seems unlikely, as Bloomberg notes, Russia’s relentless gold buying in recent years has been a key pillar of support for the market, putting a floor under prices as investors ditched safe havens and bought riskier, higher-yielding assets.

The bullion stockpile held by Russia’s central bank is valued at about $120 billion.

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So why is Russia ending its domestic purchases when the rest of the world is piling in? Perhaps they see what’s coming and are fully prepared…

What will $120 billion (at current prices) be worth when the dollar dies?

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All images in this article are from Zero Hedge

The world has gone amok. In fact, the world has been amok for decades, but COVID-19 has laid bare for all to see the pretenses, political fairytales, socio-economic and geopolitical travesties and bloodletting of the uber-powerful. It also provides the ideological pretext for massively expanding ongoing pandemics, particularly the exacerbation of long-enduring scourges, the POVERTY PANDEMIC, the DECOMPOSITION OF THE STATE and REGIME CHANGE MANIA. They have caused and will generate exponentially more suffering and death than COVID. Be that as it may, COVID is exploits and exposes the debilitating effects on our health infrastructure and economic/social systems of these other longstanding, billionaire-engineered pandemics.

The assault on the public policy and services apparatus is man-made and deliberate, including the weakening of its capacity to fight COVID. This pandemonium is occurring, not only overseas but right in our own inner-cities, the First Nations, our rural communities, our suburbs and our long-term care homes. COVID’s one positive attribute is that it shines a billion bright candles on the hollowing-out, for the benefit of the very few, of our collective health and other life-essential institutions.

Iron Maiden Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, at the bidding of the uber-rich and powerful, launched the neo-liberal agenda of dismantling the social and economic fabrics of continents. The Bushes, Clintons, Tony Blair, Stephen Harper and Barack Obama and their billionaire sponsors accelerated this process and compounded it through endless wars, mind-bending color revolutions and illegal regime change operations. Rust Maiden Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s de-facto prime minister of foreign policy, made this ideological war her own and took it to dizzying heights.

Why Rust-Maiden-Chrystia-Freeland, one might ask? Because everything she meddles with turns to rust and dust. And she meddles a lot, at home and abroad. Let us count the ways.

Chrystia Freeland blocks a team of Cuban doctors from coming to Manitoba First Nations to provide emergency medical assistance. This, despite the fact that First Nations communities are drastically underserved, left with no defenses against the virus. According to a Manitoba Chief, “Canada does not have enough health care workers to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and to address the numbers of upcoming cases in First Nation communities”. Ms. Freeland’s excuse for her blockage: “Canada’s health care system, which is staffed by outstanding health care professionals, has the capacity to deal with this extraordinary challenge”.

First Nations know Freeland’s statements to be patently misleading; the health system is already unable to care for the general population and COVID-19 may become an acute humanitarian issue for their peoples, given that their life expectancy and other social indicators are already much worse than Canada’s average. Member of Parliament Niki Ashton takes Freeland to task. “First Nations are not getting the support they need,” she says. “Some communities are having their doctors pulled. Many can’t do the testing. Others need field hospitals urgently. There’s no time to wait.” Prime Minister’s Trudeau’s National Reconciliation, as delivered by Freeland, goes beyond willful neglect.

Cuba’s Interferon Alpha 2B is a proven drug to treat COVID-19. It is a key contributor to China’s Coronavirus success story and is used to positive effect in Italy and many other countries around the world. Yet Canada still claims that there is no cure for COVID-19. Why are PM Justin Trudeau, Ms. Freeland and the Canadian/American pharmaceutical industry, with the help of the necrolytic mainstream media echo-chamber, pontificating that there is no cure, all the while rejecting Interferon Alpha 2B. Because Big Pharma wants the exclusivity of COVID-19 vaccines with decades-long patents even if it will take them 12 to 18 months to develop them. Why deprive Canadians of the Interferon Alpha 2B life-saving treatment, given that Canada could quickly draw up a joint agreement? Why is the Trudeau/Freeland tandem so Cuba-averse all of a sudden? Another vital relationship is rusting, if not biting the dust, on the altar of USA sanctions.

Neither Rust Maiden Freeland nor PM Trudeau are calling out the White House cabal for blocking vital Coronavirus equipment from getting into Cuba? Why are they embarrassing all Canadians by being silent and complicit in the US siege against Cuba, blocking food and the entry of all manner of other life-essential products from entering or leaving Cuba? Ever since Justin Trudeau was cowed into reversing himself after praising Fidel Castro when he died, our PM has been at the beck and call of Washington. That day, Canada’s Foreign Policy, as fashioned by Pierre Trudeau among others, died.

Chrystia Freeland, under the orders of the captains of industry, mining and finance, has been the Conductor-in-Chief of the Lima Group Orchestra and of the Guaidó Folly; Guaidó was unceremoniously dumped two days ago by Pompeo. While Trump is going apoplectic about COVID-19 and desperately trying to divert attention by threatening fire and brimstone against Venezuela with warships, fighter jets and death-spewing drones, Rust Maiden Chrystia Freeland is cheering him on and working hard at tightening the noose around the necks of all Venezuelans; further compounded by her supporting the International Monetary Fund’s refusal to lone Venezuela the crucial funds it needs to defend against COFID-19. Her actions and Trudeau’s acquiescence ensure that the Venezuelans’ “to dust thou shalt return” occurs prematurely.

Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland have boosted the oppression of Palestinians via absolute support for the Israeli Zionist Apartheid Regime and the silencing of the human rights opposition, in Canada and abroad, including supporting the heinous blocking of life-saving COVID equipment into Gaza. Freeland conceals Saudi Arabia’s murdering of tens of thousands of Yemenis (over 100,000 war dead, plus 85,000 children dead from malnutrition, with another 14 million Yemenis on the brink of famine, according to the UN). These horrifying numbers don’t even take into account the deadly havoc that COVID-19 will visit on these greatly weakened populations. Chrystia Freeland also feeds the ignominious crime-against-humanity dictatorship that is Saudi Arabia by supplying Export Development Canada resources (our taxes at work) and approving killing-machine contracts. This is the regime that, let’s not forget, is also one of the architects of the present drastic collapse of oil prices that is crippling Alberta’s economy. When will Premier Jason Kenny call out Freeland and Trudeau on this? He won’t of course because Saudi Arabia is made of the same cloth.

Rust Maiden Chrystia Freeland chooses ideology over economic sanity and urgently needed medical treatment capacity, precisely at the time when COVID-19 is at its worst. Her actions internationally and domestically are undermining some of the laudable efforts that her own government is making to fight COVID-19. Prime Minister Trudeau has a decision to make.

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This article was originally published in December 2019.

One has to wonder how much money it would take for the New York Fed to throw at Wall Street before the New York Times reports to its readers on the biggest Wall Street bailout by the Fed since the financial crisis.

Last Thursday, December 12, the New York Fed announced that over the next month it would shower the trading houses (primary dealers) on Wall Street with a total of $2.93 trillion in short-term loans. The money is for a Wall Street liquidity crisis that has yet to be explained in credible terms to the American people and yet the New York Times does not appear to have an investigative reporter assigned to investigate what’s really going on just 11 years after those same trading houses blew themselves up in the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression and took the U.S. economy along for the ride.

The New York Fed’s repo (repurchase agreement) loan program began on September 17 when repo loan rates spiked from approximately 2 percent to 10 percent – meaning either liquid funds were not available to loan or the mega banks on Wall Street were backing away from lending to certain counterparties. Repo loans are typically between banks, hedge funds and money market funds on an overnight basis and are made against good-quality collateral. Since that time, the New York Fed has been making these loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars weekly.

The New York Times covered the subject in September. Then an eerie silence took hold in October and November as the Fed continued to pump out over $3 trillion in cumulative loans to Wall Street’s trading houses. On December 8 and December 12, the New York Times simply ran articles by Reuters on the Fed’s loans, which are the first of their kind since the financial crisis.

The $2.93 trillion that the New York Fed will funnel to Wall Street over the next month consists of up to $120 billion each weekday in overnight loans through January 14 and $440 billion in term loans ranging from 3-days to 32 days. In addition, during the last week of the year (on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) the Fed will bump up its overnight loan offerings to $150 billion from $120 billion, thus providing an additional $90 billion that week.

Adding to the suggestion that liquidity remains tight on Wall Street despite the Fed’s loans, the New York Fed offered a $50 billion 32-day term loan this morning and it was oversubscribed by $4.25 billion.

To read complete article on wallstreetonparade.com click here

Dow Jones Industrial Average, September 17, 2019 through December 13, 2019

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There was never any doubt. However, February 4, 2019 in Caracas, constituted an opportunity for me to briefly shake hands with Nicolás Maduro, to fleetingly gaze into the former bus driver’s humble eyes, and then listen to him address a small, intimate foreign delegation. In this unique setting, one’s political and personal appreciation skyrocketed to a new qualitative level. Today, glancing (and cringing in anger it must be admitted) at the false U.S. charges against Maduro, preferring not to transcribe the ugly words on paper so as to maintain the purity of the written sentiment already almost impossible to put into words, the accusations are patently unbelievable.

Analyzing the phoney charges, not from the legal/judicial point of view, but rather from a moral/political optic, a person characterized by these false accusations would be one who is completely individualist. It would concern a person guided and consumed by the unique and exclusive goal of serving oneself by amassing a fortune. The pursuit of an egotistical lifestyle driven by the goal of accumulating the profits arising from the criminal activities being alleged constitutes the epitome of the values at the very base of capitalism and imperialism. Part of that moribund system with no future, now consumed by its own individualism, indicating to what extent such selfishness may even lead to self-destruction, and have no qualms at all of bringing down others in its wake, as we saw in World War II.

However, the Nicolás Maduro I heard speak on February 4, 2019, from a very close vantage point, personified the very opposite of individualism. The encounter took place only a few weeks after the first coup attempt led by the U.S. and the Lima group. He spoke to us for about two hours. His complete devotion to the cause of the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuelan sovereignty, the legacy and teachings of Commander Hugo Chávez was unmistakable. The audience was riveted, and as far as the author of these lines is concerned, it could only be compared to the magnetic attraction of a Fidel Castro, laced as it was with Fidel’s style of sincerity and coherent logic, and an appropriate mix of seriousness and humour.

As far as the themes Maduro touched upon, one that stood out that day and which takes on even more importance in view of today’s false accusations, was Venezuela’s civic-military union. This subject takes on further significance now because it is central to the success of Maduro’s stance since January 2019. It has clearly frustrated the U.S. to the point of taking this latest desperate step. Returning to the Caracas meeting, Maduro took the audience through what seemed to be every step of the meetings he had held across the country, and an on-the-spot check-up of all sectors of the armed forces, as well as with the militia and local social organizations. It was as if we were there with him. He embodied the notion of being just one more soldier among the millions of Venezuelans ready to give his life to defend their cause.

Ready to sacrifice his life? Yes, this is the impression he left. Only several months later there was in fact a U.S.-inspired assassination attempt against him. However, he survived and bounced back to work. In fact, since January 2019 and leading up to March 26, 2020, when a bounty was placed on his head, just like in the old Wild West, there has been an unprecedented, non-stop media campaign, attempting to conduct a political and psychological war against Maduro, coupled with further coup attempts.

History has catapulted Maduro into a unique position. He has become, so to speak, a “martyr” in his own lifetime, such is his heroic resistance to the U.S.-led alliance aiming to smash him and the Bolivarian Revolution. Thus, when Cuban colleague Iroel Sánchez “nominated” Maduro as “Man of the Year” for 2019, irrespective of Time magazine preferences, it rang a bell. Maduro’s ability to seemingly enjoy the “cat’s nine lives” throughout 2019 “endorsed” this nomination. From January 2019 to March 26, 2020, how many times was he supposed to have been eliminated?

The evolution of this incessant U.S.-led offensive against Maduro, and the heroic and historical resistance, served to further embody the notion that Maduro is completely and selflessly devoted to the common good of Venezuela. It seems evident that Maduro’s personal conviction is that he would die only with a rifle in his hand defending Venezuela, if it would ever come to that. This altruistic quality is diametrically opposed to the selfish individualism embedded in capitalism, which is the basis of the type of charges falsely imputed to Maduro.

Can anyone seriously imagine that someone completely devoted to the collective well-being of his people, including making the ultimate sacrifice if necessary, would in any way be involved in the alleged underground illicit activities?

Does this evaluation take the issue too far by personalizing Maduro? It is obviously just to assert that one should oppose the U.S. attempts to overthrow Maduro by any means necessary, irrespective of what one thinks of Maduro. However, on March 26, 2020, the U.S., by putting a bounty on his head, is forcing world public opinion to take a stand on Maduro. This is a good situation because it forces the issue of Maduro to emerge in public, front and center. The historical evolution since Maduro was first elected president in 2013, demonstrates that the leading antidote to the U.S. goal of regime change for Venezuela, is President Nicolás Maduro himself.

The author of these lines has never been a great fan of those who claim to defend the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela’s right to self-determination and sovereignty, while smuggling in establishment buzzword narratives of “authoritarian government” and “dubious elections” in reference to Maduro.” Of course, they have a right to their opinion and their verbal support for Venezuela’s right to self-determination is most welcome. However, by providing credibility to the U.S. narrative, does this not do more harm than good, providing as it does a “respectable” cover for the U.S. narrative as a pretext foreign intervention? After all, in the indictment, the very first sentence describes “the former Maduro regime.”

Whether one likes it or not, especially since the bounty has been put on his head, the leadership which has maintained Venezuela’s sovereignty is definitively embodied in the person of Maduro. He also allows Venezuela to go to any negotiating table from a position of strength, rather than on its knees. As far as progressives are concerned, is there a middle ground between Maduro on the one hand and the defence of Venezuela’s right to self-determination on the other?

Why not just tell the truth, turn the tables on the U.S. and state that the alleged crimes against Maduro are exclusive to the U.S. and its capitalist system, from which the Bolivarian Revolution and its present leader, Nicolás Maduro, are immune? History has proven this. As the saying goes, the best defence is an offence.

It is time for Canadians to once again go on the offensive, even in the current difficult conditions caused by Covid-19. After all, it is obvious that the Trump administration is sadistically counting on the spread of the virus in Venezuela and the fact that this Latin America country is fully dedicating its resources, already hit by crippling U.S. sanctions, to contain the deadly virus and save lives, sparing no cost.

Venezuela and its president are simultaneously engaged in a war on two fronts, against the virus and now the escalation of the March 26 indictment by the U.S. As Canadians, we have to rise up to this historic situation with its impact for Venezuela, Latin America and indeed the world.

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This was originally published on REDH.

As much as Covid-19 is a circuit breaker, a time bomb and an actual weapon of mass destruction (WMD), a fierce debate is raging worldwide on the wisdom of mass quarantine applied to entire cities, states and nations.

Those against it argue Planet Lockdown not only is not stopping the spread of Covid-19 but also has landed the global economy into a cryogenic state – with unforeseen, dire consequences. Thus quarantine should apply essentially to the population with the greatest risk of death: the elderly.

With Planet Lockdown transfixed by heart-breaking reports from the Covid-19 frontline, there’s no question this is an incendiary assertion.

In parallel, a total corporate media takeover is implying that if the numbers do not substantially go down, Planet Lockdown – an euphemism for house arrest – remains, indefinitely.

Michael Levitt, 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry and Stanford biophysicist, was spot on when he calculated that China would get through the worst of Covid-19 way before throngs of health experts believed, and that “What we need is to control the panic”.

Let’s cross this over with some facts and dissident opinion, in the interest of fostering an informed debate.

The report Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted was co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci (image on the right) – the White House face of the fight –, H. Clifford Lane, and CDC director Robert R. Redfield. So it comes from the heart of the U.S. healthcare establishment.

The report explicitly states,

“the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

On March 19, four days before Downing Street ordered the British lockdown, Covid-19 was downgraded from the status of “High Consequence Infectious Disease.”

John Lee, recently retired professor of pathology and former NHS consultant pathologist, has recently argued that,

“the world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of the total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu).”

He recommends, “a degree of social distancing should be maintained for a while, especially for the elderly and the immune-suppressed. But when drastic measures are introduced, they should be based on clear evidence. In the case of Covid-19, the evidence is not clear.”

That’s essentially the same point developed by a Russian military intel analyst.

No less than 22 scientists – see here and here – have expanded on their doubts about the Western strategy.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, has provoked immense controversy with his open letter to Chancellor Merkel, stressing the “truly unforeseeable consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe.”

Even New York governor Andrew Cuomo admitted on the record about the error of quarantining elderly people with illnesses alongside the fit young population.

The absolutely key issue is how the West was caught completely unprepared for the spread of Covid-19 – even after being provided a head start of two months by China, and having the time to study different successful strategies applied across Asia.

There are no secrets for the success of the South Korean model.

South Korea was producing test kits already in early January, and by March was testing 100,000 people a day, after establishing strict control of the whole population – to Western cries of “no protection of private life”. That was before the West embarked on Planet Lockdown mode.

South Korea was all about testing early, often and safely – in tandem with quick, thorough contact tracing, isolation and surveillance.

Covid-19 carriers are monitored with the help of video-surveillance cameras, credit card purchases, smartphone records. Add to it SMS sent to everyone when a new case is detected near them or their place of work. Those in self-isolation need an app to be constantly monitored; non-compliance means a fine to the equivalent of $2,800.

Controlled demolition in effect

In early March, the Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases, hosted by the Shanghai Medical Association, pre-published an Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai. Treatment recommendations included, “large doses of vitamin C…injected intravenously at a dose of 100 to 200 mg / kg per day. The duration of continuous use is to significantly improve the oxygenation index.”

That’s the reason why 50 tons of Vitamin C was shipped to Hubei province in early February. It’s a stark example of a simple “mitigation” solution capable of minimizing economic catastrophe.

In contrast, it’s as if the brutally fast Chinese “people’s war” counterpunch against Covid-19 had caught Washington totally unprepared. Steady intel rumbles on the Chinese net point to Beijing having already studied all plausible leads towards the origin of the Sars-Cov-2 virus – vital information that will be certainly weaponized, Sun Tzu style, at the right time.

As it stands, the sustainability of the complex Eurasian integration project has not been substantially compromised. As the EU has provided the whole planet with a graphic demonstration of its cluelessness and helplessness, everyday the Russia-China strategic partnership gets stronger – increasingly investing in soft power and advancing a pan-Eurasia dialogue which includes, crucially, medical help.

Facing this process, the EU’s top diplomat, Joseph Borrell, sounds indeed so helpless:

“There is a global battle of narratives going on in which timing is a crucial factor. […] China has brought down local new infections to single figures – and it is now sending equipment and doctors to Europe, as others do as well. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the U.S., it is a responsible and reliable partner. In the battle of narratives we have also seen attempts to discredit the EU (…) We must be aware there is a geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’. Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.”

That takes us to really explosive territory. A critique of the Planet Lockdown strategy inevitably raises serious questions pointing to a controlled demolition of the global economy. What is already in stark effect are myriad declinations of martial law, severe social media policing in Ministry of Truth mode, and the return of strict border controls.

These are unequivocal markings of a massive social re-engineering project, complete with inbuilt full monitoring, population control and social distancing promoted as the new normal.

That would be taking to the limit Secretary of State Mike “we lie, we cheat, we steal” Pompeo’s assertion, on the record, that Covid-19 is a live military exercise: “This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

All hail BlackRock

So as we face a New Great Depression, steps leading to a Brave New World are already discernable. It goes way beyond a mere Bretton Woods 2.0, in the manner that Pam and Russ Martens superbly deconstruct the recent $2 trillion, Capitol Hill-approved stimulus to the U.S. economy.

Essentially, the Fed will “leverage the bill’s $454 million bailout slush fund into $4.5 trillion”. And no questions are allowed on who gets the money, because the bill simply cancels the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the Fed.

The privileged private contractor for the slush fund is none other than BlackRock. Here’s the extremely short version of the whole, astonishing scheme, masterfully detailed here.

Wall Street has turned the Fed into a hedge fund. The Fed is going to own at least two thirds of all U.S. Treasury bills wallowing in the market before the end of the year.

The U.S. Treasury will be buying every security and loan in sight while the Fed will be the banker – financing the whole scheme.

So essentially this is a Fed/ Treasury merger. A behemoth dispensing loads of helicopter money – with BlackRock as the undisputable winner.

BlackRock is widely known as the biggest money manager on the planet. Their tentacles are everywhere. They own 5% of Apple, 5% of Exxon Mobil, 6% of Google, second largest shareholder of AT&T (Turner, HBO, CNN, Warner Brothers) – these are just a few examples.

They will buy all these securities and manage those dodgy special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) on behalf of the Treasury.

BlackRock not only is the top investor in Goldman Sachs. Better yet: Blackrock is bigger than Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank combined. BlackRock is a serious Trump donor. Now, for all practical purposes, it will be the operating system – the Chrome, Firefox, Safari – of Fed/Treasury.

This represents the definitive Wall Street-ization of the Fed – with no evidence whatsoever it will lead to any improvement in the lives of the average American.

Western corporate media, en masse, have virtually ignored the myriad, devastating economic consequences of Planet Lockdown. Wall to wall coverage barely mentions the astonishing economic human wreckage already in effect – especially for the masses barely surviving, so far, in the informal economy.

For all practical purposes, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) has been replaced by the Global War on Virus (GWOV). But what is not being seriously analyzed is the Perfect Toxic Storm: a totally shattered economy; The Mother of All Financial Crashes – barely masked by the trillions in helicopter money from the Fed and the ECB; the tens of millions of unemployed engendered by the New Great Depression; the millions of small businesses that will simply disappear; a widespread, global mental health crisis. Not to mention the masses of elderly, especially in the U.S., that will be issued an unspoken “drop dead” notice.

Beyond any rhetoric about “decoupling”, the global economy is already, de facto, split in two. On one side, we have Eurasia, Africa and swathes of Latin America – what China will be painstakingly connecting and reconnecting via the New Silk Roads. On the other side, we have North America and selected Western vassals. A puzzled Europe lies in the middle.

A cryogenically induced global economy certainly facilitates a reboot. Trumpism is the New Exceptionalism – so that means an isolationist MAGA on steroids. In contrast, China will painstakingly reboot its market base along the New Silk Roads – Africa and Latin America included – to replace the 20% of trade/exports to be lost with the U.S.

The meager $1,200 checks promised to Americans are a de facto precursor of the much touted Universal Basic Income (UBI). They may become permanent as tens of millions of people will be permanently unemployed. That will facilitate the transition towards a totally automated, 24/7 economy run by AI – thus the importance of 5G.

And that’s where ID2020 comes in.

AI and ID2020

The European Commission is involved in a crucial but virtually unknown project, CREMA (Cloud Based Rapid Elastic Manufacturing) which aims to facilitate the widest possible implementation of AI in conjunction to the advent of a cashless One-World system.

The end of cash necessarily implies a One-World government capable of dispensing – and controlling – UBI; a de facto full accomplishment of Foucault’s studies on biopolitics. Anyone is liable to be erased from the system if an algorithm equals this individual with dissent.

It gets even sexier when absolute social control is promoted as an innocent vaccine.

ID2020 is self-described as a benign alliance of “public-private partners”. Essentially, it is an electronic ID platform based on generalized vaccination. And its starts at birth; newborns will be provided with a “portable and persistent biometrically-linked digital identity.”

GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, pledges to “protect people’s health “ and provide “immunization for all”. Top partners and sponsors, apart from the WHO, include, predictably, Big Pharma.

At the ID2020 Alliance summit last September in New York, it was decided that the “Rising to the Good ID Challenge” program would be launched in 2020. That was confirmed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) this past January in Davos. The digital identity will be tested with the government of Bangladesh.

That poses a serious question: was ID2020 timed to coincide with what a crucial sponsor, the WHO, qualified as a pandemic? Or was a pandemic absolutely crucial to justify the launch of ID2020?

As game-changing trial runs go, nothing of course beats Event 201, which took place less than a month after ID2020.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with, once again, the WEF, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, described Event 201 as “a high-level pandemic exercise”. The exercise “illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”

With Covid-19 in effect as a pandemic, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was forced to issue a statement basically saying they just “modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction”.

There’s no question “a severe pandemic, which becomes ‘Event 201’ would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions”, as spun by the sponsors. Covid-19 is eliciting exactly this kind of “cooperation”. Whether it’s “reliable” is open to endless debate.

The fact is that, all over Planet Lockdown, a groundswell of public opinion is leaning towards defining the current state of affairs as a global psyop: a deliberate global meltdown – the New Great Depression – imposed on unsuspecting citizens by design.

The powers that be, taking their cue from the tried and tested, decades-old CIA playbook, of course are breathlessly calling it a “conspiracy theory”. Yet what vast swathes of global public opinion observe is a – dangerous – virus being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.

The most plausible scenario for our immediate future reads like clusters of smart cities linked by AI, with people monitored full time and duly micro-chipped doing what they need with a unified digital currency, in an atmosphere of Bentham’s and Foucault’s Panopticum on overdrive.

So if this is really our future, the existing world-system has to go. This is a test, this is only a test.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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10 Signs the U.S. Is Heading for a Depression

April 3rd, 2020 by Mike Whitney

1– Unemployment is off-the-charts

Thursday’s jobless claims leave no doubt that the country is in the grips of another severe recession. More than 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the last week. That number exceeds the gloomiest prediction of more than 40 economists and pushes the two-week total to an eye-watering 10 million claims.

According to CNBC:

“Those at the lower end of the wage scale have been especially hard-hit during a crisis that has seen businesses either cut staff outright or at best freeze any new hiring until there’s more visibility about how efforts to contain the coronavirus will work.

“We’ve lived through the recession and 9/11. What we’re seeing with this decline is actually worse than both of those events,” said Irina Novoselsky, CEO of online jobs marketplace CareerBuilder.” (CNBC)

According to New York Magazine:

“Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis projected Monday that job losses from the coronavirus recession would reach 47 million and push America’s unemployment rate to 32.1 percent — more than 7 points higher than its Great Depression–era peak.”

2– Service Sector has been walloped by the virus

Services account for 70% of the US economy, but presently the sector is in meltdown. According to the analysts at Wolf Street: “Employment contracted sharply and hours were reduced for those still employed. “The employment index plunged from +6.1 to -23.8, also the lowest level on record…

Retailers got whacked. The Retail Sales Index of the Texas Retail Outlook Survey collapsed from the already beaten-down level of -2.5 in February to an epic all-time low of -82.6 in March… (Also) the general business activity index collapsed from the beaten down level of -5.0 to a historic low of -84.2….

Comments from retail executives were somber:… “Most of our business has gone to zero except for essential locations such as hospitals, military bases and prisons… We are contemplating at this moment sending most employees home while our owners determine whether they can afford to pay reduced salaries and cover benefits for a short period while we see if things improve or worsen” (Wolf Street)

3– Economic carnage extends across sectors

Business Insider: “Recession risks are rising as coronavirus spreads around the world…The crisis will clobber airlines, shipping, hotels, and restaurants…

“Sectors reliant on trade and the free movement of people are most exposed,” said Benjamin Nelson, a Moody’s vice president and co-author of the report.

Carmakers, gaming, and retail will be hit hard by supply chain disruptions, the analysts said…

“A lengthy outbreak would affect economic activity for longer, leading to heightened recessionary dynamics and a more significant demand shock,” Moody’s said. “A sustained pullback in consumption would hurt corporate earnings, prompt layoffs, and weigh on consumer sentiment.”(Business Insider)

Car sales have also dropped dramatically in the last two weeks. On Wednesday, Hyundai reported that sales had seen a decline of 43 percent for March compared to the same period in 2019. That’s a drop from 61,177 vehicles in March 2019 to just 35,118 during the same month in 2020. All other car manufacturers are experiencing similar weakness in demand.

4– The Bloodbath on Wall Street continues

U.S. shares sold off again on Wednesday for the third time in four days wiping out most of last week’s bear market rally. The SandP 500 dipped 114 points while the Dow Jones lopped-off nearly 973 points by the end of the session. Analysts now believe that last week’s 20% surge was a temporary reaction to Trump’s multi-trillion dollar fiscal plan. By a 9 to 1 margin, investors are now betting that stocks have further to fall.

“Investor pessimism today is as bad as it has been,” said Dennis DeBusschere of Evercore ISI. “All estimates of when this will end are being pushed out…”

Before the outbreak of the virus, traders believed that low rates, liquidity injections and easy credit would keep stocks on a permanent upward trajectory. But the daily deluge of bad news coupled with an economy that is in freefall has undermined confidence in the Central Bank sending stocks into a tailspin. The Dow closed Wednesday at 20,943, which is three times higher than its March 9, 2009 low of 6,547. Stocks still have further to fall.

5– Struggling consumers can no longer carry the US economy

An article at The Medium explains how the composition of the workforce has changed since the 2008 financial crisis. Gig workers make up are a significant part of the workforce, but they do not have the protections or benefits of most wage earners. These independent contractors will impacted the most by the sudden downturn in the economy. Their ability to consume will also weaken the post-crisis recovery and lead to slower growth. Check out this short excerpt from A crippling collapse in consumer spending is coming:

“From restaurant workers, caterers, and Uber drivers to office and hotel cleaning staff to event venue staff to people supplementing earnings with AirBnB revenue, income is cratering across the country for hourly and gig workers. And most have little to no financial cushion…

Thirty-six percent of U.S. workers are now involved in the gig economy…. Most gig and hourly workers are walking a financial tightrope. They will not be able to afford even a short-term hit to their earnings. It will mean a further spike in auto loan and credit-card delinquencies. It will mean a spike in healthcare-driven bankruptcies. It will mean unpaid rent. And it will mean consumer spending will plummet…. A sudden shock to gig and hourly-worker earnings will have seismic implications for the economic and political future of the U.S….

More than 15.5 million Americans work in restaurants. Of those workers, roughly 3 million live in poverty….Unpaid rent will eventually lead to landlord defaults… Consumer spending now accounts for roughly 70% of the U.S. economy. Reportedly, government stimulus may not reach consumers until the end of April. Gig and hourly workers need help now.” (“A crippling collapse in consumer spending is coming”, The Medium)

How many of these gig workers will fall through the cracks, lose their apartments or rental units, and wind up on the streets, homeless and destitute?

6– Americans continue to stockpile food

According to the Wall Street Journal: “In the past two weeks, Americans have hoarded food as restaurants close their dining rooms and more are told to stay home from work and school. General Mills, which makes Cheerios cereal, Yoplait yogurt and Progresso soup, on Wednesday said retailers in North America and Europe are purchasing more of its products and its factories are running at near capacity to meet the demand….(WSJ)

“Consumers across the globe are still loading their pantries — and the economic fallout from the virus is just starting...

“You could see wartime rationing, price controls and domestic stockpiling,” said Ann Berg, an independent consultant and veteran agricultural trader.” (Bloomberg)

CNBC: “Psychologists ..weigh in on why our brains push us to panic buy — even when authorities are assuring the public there’s no need to. According to Paul Marsden, a consumer psychologist at the University of the Arts London,…

“It’s about ‘taking back control’ in a world where you feel out of control…When people are stressed their reason is hampered, so they look at what other people are doing. If others are stockpiling it leads you to engage in the same behavior. People see photos of empty shelves and regardless of whether it’s rational it sends a signal to them that it’s the thing to do….” (CNBC)

7– Most Americans have no savings

From Yahoo Finance:

Saving money continues to be a challenge for Americans….

Since 2015, GOBankingRates has asked Americans how much they have in savings. Each year, the survey results have shown that a majority of adults don’t even have $1,000 in a savings account…

This year, GOBankingRates asked more than 5,000 adults, “How much money do you have saved in your savings account?” Respondents could choose from one of seven options:

The survey found that 58 percent of respondents had less than $1,000 saved.

“It’s always concerning when a large part of the population is seemingly living paycheck to paycheck because when unexpected personal or financial hardships occur, it can be challenging to recover without adequate savings,” Jason Thacker, head of consumer deposits and payments at TD Bank, said.” (“58% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds”, Yahoo Finance)

8– Household debt is at an all-time high

From CNBC: “Household debt surged in 2019, marking the biggest annual increase since just before the financial crisis, according to the New York Federal Reserve.

Total household debt balances rose by $601 billion last year, topping $14 trillion for the first time, according to a new report by the Fed branch. The last time the growth was that large was 2007, when household debt rose by just over $1 trillion....

“The data also show that transitions into delinquency among credit card borrowers have steadily risen since 2016, notably among younger borrowers,” Wilbert Van Der Klaauw, senior vice president at the New York Fed, said in a statement.” (“Household debt jumps the most in 12 years, Federal Reserve report says”, CNBC)

9 — Many businesses might not survive long enough to get stimulus

Many businesses shut their doors either for a lack of customers or on orders from state or local governments as emergency declarations began rolling across the country in mid-March,. Yet it could be weeks more before the business loans, bigger unemployment checks and direct payments to individuals from the stimulus plan flow into the economy.

Small businesses account for almost half of U.S. private employment. A complete collapse of even some of those enterprises not only would dash the dreams of entrepreneurs and threaten the livelihoods of many, it risks sapping the power of an eventual economic rebound as the financial distress ripples through to landlords, vendors and lenders.

Already, 50,000 retail stores have shut in just over a week across the country, putting more than 600,000 workers on furlough, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The National Federation of Independent Business, had a record 13,000 people register for a webinar it hosted Monday on the stimulus plan and financial resources….After the webinar ended, more than 900 emails flooded in, she said, with business owners asking: “Am I going to have anything left? Will I be evicted? Will I have to file for bankruptcy? Will I be able to reopen?”

“The emails almost make me want to cry,” Milito added. “What I’m hearing from members is fear, uncertainty and almost heartbreak.” (“Stimulus May Come Too Late for U.S. Businesses Already Stretched”, Bloomberg)

10– Food banks are seeing a sudden, sharp rise in demand

This is from Newsday:

“Emergency food programs are bracing for a wave of new recipients in the coming weeks as more Long Islanders are expected to lose their jobs, get furloughed or have work hours and wages reduced. At the same time, volunteers — many of them at high risk of contracting the virus — are staying home to protect themselves and needy people from getting sick.

Compounding the problem is a crippled national supply chain that delays food deliveries by weeks.

“It’s a perfect storm of tragedy on top of each other,” said Jean Kelly, executive director of the Interfaith Nutrition Network, a Hempstead soup kitchen. “Everything that could go wrong is going wrong.”

Soup kitchens and pantries in many communities closed temporarily in recent weeks to protect volunteers or because sponsoring agencies, such as houses of worship and nonprofits, also shut their doors.

“The reason they’re closed is they don’t really have an infrastructure of people to work there….The majority of the food pantries are operated by volunteers. The average age is in their 70s. They’re fearful of contracting the coronavirus.” (“Demand at LI food pantries rise as volunteers and food supplies fall”, Newsday)

Final Note from an article titled: “Americans Are Worried About The Coronavirus. They’re Even More Worried About The Economy”

“An overwhelming majority of Americans are really concerned about the economy. … A Morning Consult poll conducted between March 20 and March 22 found that 90 percent of Americans said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that the coronavirus would impact the economy…Americans are also worried about job security — 49 percent said they were worried about losing their job, according to an Economist/YouGov survey conducted between March 22 and March 24.” (FiveThirtyEight)

Not surprisingly, some polls suggest that “more Americans are worried about the effect of the coronavirus on the economy than about their own health.” I would include myself in that group, which is why I hope that President Trump expands his economics team by adding more experienced, top-notch economists who can help him navigate this unprecedented and potentially-catastrophic crisis. This isn’t the time for the B Team (Kudlow, Mnuchin) to making decisions that will impact the entire country.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

COVID-19: The Capitalist Emperor Has No Clothes

April 3rd, 2020 by Ajamu Baraka

The systemic failure of the capitalist order triggered by the coronavirus has reinforced the growing awareness that extreme wealth inequality is a fundamental characteristic of the system.

“Billions of dollars were allocated to business while millions of people are facing an increasingly desperate situation.”

As the capitalist emperor strolls down the avenue of U.S. public opinion butt-naked but for the first time since the 1930s, more and more people are starting to realize that they were not crazy. The brutal failures of the capitalist system that they saw were not a figment of their imagination or a diversion from their own personal failures. Instead, they were the awful reality of degradation, dehumanization and social insecurity embedded in the system. Many could see that reality but wouldn’t allow themselves to believe their own eyes and experiences. They couldn’t call it out like the kid in the fable – until now.

The claim that the U.S. was an exceptional nation and that the capitalist order represented the highest expression of human development has been shattered by the second global collapse of the capitalist order within twelve years. Millions thrown out of work, global supply chains disrupted, trillions disappeared in the capitalist casino euphemistically called the stock market… The state’s feeble and class biased response to COVID-19 has resulted in a costly lesson in class politics for the U.S. public.

The dictatorship of the capitalist class has survived because the class reality of the dictatorship has been obscured. Limited democracy, social democracy, white nationalism in the form of patriotism, the corruption of unions, the post-war compromise between capital and labor, state subsidies for the expansion of the white middle-class, debt-driven consumption and cross-class white suppression of the democratic and human rights of African Americans provided the material and ideological basis for the perpetuation of the dictatorship throughout most of the 20th century and into the 21st.

“The claim that the U.S. was an exceptional nation has been shattered by the second global collapse of the capitalist order within twelve years.”

Howeverthe systemic failure of the capitalist order triggered by the coronavirus has reinforced the growing awareness among the population that extreme wealth inequality is not just a temporary quirk that can be remedied with tax and some redistributive policies but a fundamental characteristic of the system.

For example, the debate that took place leading up to the passing of the legislation by Congress to address COVID-19’s impact dramatically exposed a capitalist class agenda that was objectively opposed to the interest of the entire working class, the poor, and the declining middle-class.

The people saw that billions of dollars were allocated to business while millions of people are facing an increasingly desperate situation.They are facing their second pay period without a full check and they are weeks away from receiving any kind of meaningful relief. But the peoples’ bills continue to mount up while the multinational corporations get bailed out. April rent and mortgage payments are due and with everyone home and eating more but with less money for food, thousands are being forced to go without or rely on food pantries. The $1,200 payoff is an insult.

And with the tragic reality of the shamefully inadequate public healthcare system in the U.S. and the rumors that private insurance healthcare premiums might increase 40% next yearthe capitalists want to shut down any discussion around Medicare for All along with any discussion on nationalizing the healthcare industry.

“The $1,200 payoff is an insult.”

While millions are losing their employer-based healthcare coverage, Biden says that nothing has changed his opposition to Medicare for All. Another neoliberal Democrat.

This is not being missed by many people.

The demystification of capitalism and a realistic understanding of the role of the U.S. in the global order is a good thing and that will be the silver lining coming out of this current crisis.

The precipitous decline of U.S. power and prestige is visible for all to see. The world sees that it is the Chinese who are sending ventilators to Europe. The world also sees that several states and U.S. federal agencies like FEMA are being forced to buy ventilators and face masks from China.

The world also recognizes that the U.S. lost its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite its enormous war machine and the failed attempt to effect regime change in Syria.

The public outside of the U.S. know that there is absolutely nothing exceptional about this nation, except for its inability, up until now, to see itself the way that millions see it – as a declining power that is morally corrupt and a danger to itself and the world.

“The world sees that it is the Chinese who are sending ventilators to Europe.”

The ability to see the emperor and all his nakedness and know they are seeing the truth, reflects the loss of what Danny Haiphong and Robert Sirvent  call the ideology of “American exceptionalism and American innocence.”

That shift in consciousness is occurring slowly and unevenly. But let there be no doubt what this change in consciousness will result in. It will not mean that the rulers will surrender power to the aroused masses without a fight. No, it only means that the subjective factor – a revolutionary consciousness – will catch up with the objective factor of the ongoing crisis of the Pan-European white supremacist colonial/capitalist patriarchy. These are the conditions for a revolutionary advance.

That moment is on the horizon. Can you see it?

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Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

China Rolls Out the Health Silk Road

April 3rd, 2020 by Pepe Escobar

When President Xi Jinping was on a phone call in mid-March with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti, before the arrival of a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Milan full of medical help, the key takeaway was the Chinese pledge to develop a Health Silk Road (Jiankang Sichou Zhilu).  

That was in fact already inbuilt in the Belt and Road Initiative playbook since at least 2017, under the framework of enhanced, pan-Eurasian health connectivity. The pandemic only accelerated the timeline. The Health Silk Road will run in parallel to the multiple overland Silk Road corridors and the Maritime Silk Road.

In a graphic demonstration of soft power, so far China has offered Covid-19-related equipment and medical help to no fewer than 89 nations – and counting.

That covers Africa (especially South Africa, Namibia and Kenya, with Alibaba in fact announcing it will send help to all African nations); Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru); the arc from East Asia to Southwest Asia; and Europe.

Key recipients in Europe include Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia and Poland. But Italy, most of all, is a very special case. Most are donations. Some are trade – like millions of masks sold to France (and the US).

Less than a year ago Italy became the first G-7 nation to sign a memorandum of understanding formally joining Belt and Road – much to the displeasure of Washington and the Atlanticist galaxy in Brussels and beyond.

Earlier this year in Sicily, I discussed these intricacies in detail with Enrico Fardella, Professor of History at Peking University  and an expert on China-Mediterranean relations.

Italy is supported on myriad fronts – not only at the highest political level but also via the Chinese Red Cross, Sino-Italian associations, tech/logistics Chinese companies and donations from Alibaba, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo. There are three Chinese medical teams in Italy at the moment.

This all ties up with the larger Belt and Road picture, featuring investments in Genoa and Trieste, two key ports and future Belt and Road nodes.

This Chinese soft power offensive is carefully calibrated to offset the current paralysis of global supply chains. China is now working overtime to supply many parts of the world with medicine and related healthcare items – always with the Belt and Road framework in mind, as if doubling down on Globalization 2.0.

That spells out the interconnectivity of nations that badly need development and infrastructure along with the need for good health systems and practices.

And that prepares the terrain for, when Covid-19 is more or less tamed and the Chinese economy fully recovered, the Belt and Road reboot: an inexorable historic trend based on a new economic model that Beijing deems more equitable, and in the interests of the Global South.

‘Chinese lie‘

A Health Silk Road is already in effect when we see China, Russia – and Cuba with its first-class health system – sending teams of doctors and virologists as well as planes with medical equipment to Italy, and China sending drugs, test kits and supplies to illegally sanctioned Iran.

China immediately understood what was at stake as it saw Covid-19 ravage many hot points of world-famous Made in Italy. With its offer of skilled, cheaper manufacturing, China had initially lured key Italian fashion houses to outsource their production to China, and most of all to Wuhan.

The connectivity – which has been there for decades – works both ways. Chinese investors started to arrive in northern Italy in the early 1990s. They bought a string of factories; renovated them; created their own, top Made in Italy brands; and brought in tens of thousands of skilled Chinese seamstresses to work in these factories.

There are plenty of direct flights from Wuhan to Lombardy – to serve at least 300,000 Chinese who have moved permanently to Italy to work in Chinese-owned factories producing Made in Italy.

So it’s no wonder Doctor Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of the Mario Negri Pharmacology Institute in Milan, became a superstar in China.  In an interview that went viral, Remuzzi talks about his explosive findings in conversations with general practitioners in Lombardy.

Here’s Dr. Remuzzi, at 4:19: 

 “Do you know what happened? Certain family doctors, who have the best antennas in the territory, at least the most able and attentive ones, have told me recently that they were seeing grave cases of pneumonia, which we had never seen in other years.

These pneumonia cases had nothing to do with typical flu pneumonia, they were interstitial pneumonias, they had to do CT, radiography [to diagnose it], and this was seen in October, November, December. So this virus has been circulating a long time.”

That was indeed in parallel with or even before the first coronavirus cases in Wuhan in mid-November. It’s been already scientifically established that the virus strains in Wuhan and in Lombardy are different. Which came first, and where from, remains a matter of incendiary debate.

Inevitably the Health Silk Road would have to be dismissed by the Atlanticist gang as a disinformation ploy exploiting the pandemic to “destabilize” and weaken Europe. That’s the narrative promoted by EUvsDisinfo, an NGO whose personnel love to blast Russia and China for a living.

So for the Brussels bureaucracy, the Health Silk Road is not about saving lives; it’s about “destabilizing” the EU and improving Xi Jinping’s domestic image after China lied, lied and lied again about the extent and severity of coronavirus. That happens to be the exact same narrative of the Trump administration, US corporate media and US intelligence.

Does it matter? Not for those 89 nations that are receiving much-needed help and equipment. The dogs of demonization bark while the Health Silk Road caravan passes.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Chinese doctors in face masks deployed overseas. Photo: Facebook

Countries throughout the globe are focusing on the eradication of the COVID-19 pandemic which has infected nearly a million people and killed over 45,000.

During the early phase of the detection of the virus in the People’s Republic of China, the United States administration of President Donald Trump dismissed the threat of COVID-19 and refused to implement emergency measures on a national scale.

By early April, the crisis was evident for all to witness. Millions were rendered unemployed in the U.S. where the official propaganda of the state and corporate community is that the economy was expanding at a rapid rate with no threat of recession.

At present the threat of another Great Depression on the scale, or exceeding, the downturn of 1929-1941, which only mass resistance and the implementation of the New Deal were able to ameliorate during the 1930s, is within the realm of possibility. It was only the advent of the second imperialist war of 1939-1945 which pulled the U.S. out of the Depression.

On a domestic level with the U.S. discourse very much centered on the level of benefits being given to various sectors within the economy as relates to the $2.2 trillion stimulus package approved by Congress and the president, while the role of foreign affairs has escaped public scrutiny. Healthcare workers, rightly concerned, are demanding personal protection equipment to prevent the outbreak from further spreading among physicians, nurses and other employees.

The bulk of the allocations mandated by the stimulus package will go towards maintaining the profitability of the largest corporations in the world. Undoubtedly, millions living inside this country will suffer social and healthcare challenges for months if not years to come.

However, on an international level, the Pentagon and State Department are continuing their imperialist policies towards the nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America. These military and economic attacks on various geo-political regions defy the general international atmosphere of seeking cooperation in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres made an appeal to all those involved in military conflicts around the world to immediately ceasefire. The motivating factor in his statement was designed to mobilize all necessary resources to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guterres said in a statement on March 23 that:

“The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war.

That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put armed conflict on lock-down and focus together on the true fight of our lives…. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives. Silence the guns; stop the artillery; end the airstrikes.” (See this)

Nonetheless, the White House has not announced any disengagement or withdrawal initiatives related to the numerous military actions the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are involved in around the globe. Quite to the contrary, nations such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, among others, remain under active threat by Washington.

Bombing Operations in Somalia amid Intensified Attacks on Iran, Venezuela and Zimbabwe

The U.S. has been interfering in the internal affairs of the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia for many decades. Numerous aerial strikes have been conducted against Somalia for more than a decade.

In recent weeks, many Somalians condemned an airstrike which killed civilians under the guise of anti-terrorism operations during February. These purportedly precision bombings often massacre people who are designated as “terrorists” by the Pentagon. In Somalia there is an ongoing guerrilla conflict between the al-Shabaab Islamist organization which Washington claims is backed by Al-Qaeda and the U.S. supported Federal Government based in the capital of Mogadishu.

Consequently, any attack is justified by claiming that the targets of these unannounced bombings are terrorists. The U.S. is backing thousands of African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) troops who have been inside Somalia since the late 2000s. AMISOM is in Somalia to provide security for the central government in Mogadishu. Irrespective of AMISOM’s presence, the efforts to eliminate al-Shabaab have not been successful. In addition, to providing weapons and training for AMISOM and the Federal Government in Mogadishu, the Pentagon has deployed soldiers from the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

An article published on the Intercept website says of the Somalia situation:

“A U.S. Africa Command press release issued the day of the strike near Janaale, a town about 60 miles south of the Somali capital Mogadishu, said that five ‘terrorists’ were killed and that there were no civilian casualties. But Farhan Mahmoud Mohammed, a resident of Janaale who spoke to The Intercept by phone last Friday (March 13), told a different story. Mohammed’s 13-year-old son Abdi Farhan Mahmoud was on his way to school when a U.S. missile struck a mini-bus taxi he was riding in. Mahmoud was decapitated in the strike, his father said. He could hardly bear to look at the boy’s charred face. Another passenger in the minibus, 70-year-old Abdirahman Ali Waadhoor, was also killed in the attack, according to his son Abdullahi Abdirahman Ali. ‘My father is a disabled man. He never had a problem with anyone.’ said Ali, who lives in London and saw pictures of his father’s corpse on his phone.” (See this)

In response to the criticism of the airstrikes in Somalia, AFRICOM is now saying they will provide a quarterly report on civilian casualties. Such a statement implies that the military operations in Somalia will continue indefinitely.

AFRICOM in the Sahel

The South American state of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been targeted for regime-change for over two decades since the beginning of the Revolution. 2019 saw a heightening of destabilization efforts against the administration of President Nicolas Maduro when an opposition figure with a questionable following was recognized as the head-of-state by the U.S. and its allies.

On April 1, there were reports of the deployment of a U.S. Naval warship being deployed close to the Caribbean shores of Venezuela ostensibly to guard against the trafficking in illegal drugs. Without any evidence the U.S. government has charged President Maduro with being involved in the importation of cocaine into the country.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been an epicenter for the spread of COVID-19. Yet the Trump administration maintains draconian sanctions against the Middle Eastern nation preventing the government from acquiring much needed medications and healthcare equipment.

Members of Congress have sent a letter to the State Department calling for the lifting of sanctions against Tehran. An article published by Press TV reported that:

“In a letter sent on Tuesday (March 31) to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, over 30 members of Congress — including Senators Bernie Sanders and Edward J. Markey as well as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar — urged the Trump administration to step in with humanitarian aid rather than worsening the situation.”

Language from the letter says:

“Rather than continue to invoke new sanctions in the Iranian people’s hour of need, we urge you to substantially suspend sanctions on Iran during this global public health emergency in a humanitarian gesture to the Iranian people to better enable them to fight the virus. Additionally, we encourage the US to find a way to deliver aid directly to the Iranian people to support the Iranian people’s fight against Coronavirus. By targeting an entire economy that supports more than 80 million people, US sanctions make it harder for ordinary Iranians to obtain basic necessities like food and hygienic supplies essential to stemming the pandemic and that are basic to survival.”

In the Southern African nation of Zimbabwe the U.S., Britain, the European Union (EU) and their allies imposed sanctions against this country some twenty years ago. Recently the UN Secretary General appealed to the imperialist states to lift sanctions against Harare.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported on April 1 noting:

“Government has welcomed recent calls by top United Nations officials for the removal of sanctions on Zimbabwe and other countries in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic that is ravaging the world. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet last week called on the international community, principally the US, to roll back sanctions imposed on many countries, with Zimbabwe being one of them. They said such embargoes were hampering the fight against the pandemic that has so far killed over 36,000 people and infected at least 800, 000 worldwide.”

The Struggle Against COVID-19 is an Anti-Imperialist Effort

Consequently, the U.S. ruling class cannot argue honestly that it is seriously committed to battling the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing its war policies around the world. Any escalation of military interventions will only worsen the overall global health situation.

Progressive forces in the U.S. must condemn these acts of destabilization and conflict engineered by Washington. Only the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society can provide long term solutions to the problems of the world.

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

Featured image: AMISOM troops occupying Somalia from Uganda; all images in this article are from the author

The ongoing Syrian-Emirati rapprochement, epitomized most recently by President Assad praising Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed as “humane” for the latter’s pledge of “support and solidarity” to Syria during World War C despite the UAE’s leading role in causing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, proves that the Arab Republic pursues a policy of realpolitik that’s completely at odds with the principles-based one that some of its Alt-Media surrogates previously claimed that it espouses.

Assad Praises MBZ As “Humane” Despite The UAE’s War On Yemen

The Alt-Media Community was taken completely off guard after Al-Masdar reported over the weekend that President Assad praised Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed (MBZ) as “humane” for the latter’s pledge of “support and solidarity” to Syria as it struggles to survive World War C, especially since many of its members have been actively raising awareness of the UAE’s half-decade-long history of carrying out war crimes in Yemen, which has directly contributed to creating what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Syria is a member of the Resistance alongside Iran, Hezbollah, and other affiliated groups such as Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) and Yemen’s Ansarullah (popularly referred to as the “Houthis” by the Mainstream Media), so it certainly comes off as surprising that its democratically elected and legitimate leader also “vowed to boost ties with the Gulf emirate” despite the UAE jointly leading the war of aggression against the aforementioned Yemeni movement. That said, all of this is only surprising if one really believed the narrative that was promoted by Syria’s pro-government surrogates in the Alt-Media Community over the past years that the country supposedly pursues a principles-based policy, which is arguably debunked by the ongoing Syrian-Emirati rapprochement and shown to have actually been a policy of realpolitik this entire time.

The Relevance Of Russia’s “Balancing” Strategy

The author elaborated more in detail on the trajectory of this trend in his November 2018 analysis about how “The Reopening Of The UAE Embassy Might Signal Syria’s Pivot To The GCC“. To summarize, the main point put forth was that Russia is actively working behind the scenes to broker Syria’s return to the Arab League in order to advance its regional “balancing” strategy in the Mideast whereby the Eurasian Great Power envisages itself working closely with non-traditional partners such as the GCC and “Israel” in order to “balance” Iran. So as to “encourage” Syria to go along with its grand strategy in spite of the speculation that some of its leadership might be suspicious of this vision, Russia has refused to shoulder full responsibility for the country’s economic recovery so that it’s naturally compelled to “diversify” its sources of support instead, as explained by the author in his piece from April 2019 asking “Why Isn’t Oil-Rich Russia Helping Its Syrian ‘Ally’ Survive The Fuel Crisis?” Agha Hussain, an independent researcher based in Rawalpindi who specializes in Middle Eastern affairs and history, published an informative article in January of this year about how “Wealthy Gulf States Plan to Spend Big to Coax Syria Away from Iran“, which supports the author’s original prediction.

Will Syria Return To the Arab League?

Increasingly desperate to reduce its planned dependence on Russia, the relationship of which the latter was always reluctant from the get-go to enter into and thus never established like Damascus wanted, Syria had no choice but to look elsewhere for support, ergo its ongoing rapprochement with the UAE. Syrian writer and political analyst Ghassan Yousef believes that the country could leverage its influence over neighboring Saudi Arabia and nearby Egypt in order to facilitate Syria’s return to the Arab League that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said last November was a “long overdue” move which would become “an integral part of the final settlement of the Syrian crisis” upon its realization. The top Russian diplomat’s proposal was preceded by the UAE and its Saudi & Bahraini allies condemning regional rival Turkey the month prior for what they described as its “aggression” in Northeastern Syria, with the Emirates’ Foreign Ministry reaffirming the “UAE’s firm stance and rejection of all that affects the sovereignty of Arab national security”. This invocation of (pan-)”Arab national security” is an intriguing infowar tactic that the author first described in his December 2017 analysis about how “The UAE Is Helping America By Propagating A Warped Form Of Arab Nationalism“.

Abu Dhabi Endorses Assad

The GCC nowadays considers Turkey and that country’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood to nearly be equal to the same threat that they regard Iran as posing, so it naturally follows that they’d throw their diplomatic weight behind Syria after Ankara’s military advances along its northern border region. Realizing that “Russia’s Reshaping Syria’s ‘Deep State’ In Its Own Image” in order to erode Iran’s long-standing influence in the Arab Republic, and acknowledging the fact that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is a shadow of its former self after nearly a decade of Hybrid Warso it therefore no longer poses any credible threat to the GCC and Russia’s joint “Israeli” ally for the indefinite future, Emirati charge d’affaires to Damascus Abdul-Hakim Naimi declared in December during an event marking the UAE’s National Day that “I hope that safety, security and stability in the Syrian Arab Republic will prevail under the shadow of the wise leadership of Dr. Bashar al-Assad.” The UAE’s support of the Syrian leader deepened (possibly by Russian design) after Presidents Putin and Erdogan reached their latest ceasefire deal in Idlib, which de-facto further entrenched Turkey’s military presence in the Arab Republic and thus gave a boost to the UAE’s efforts to “rehabilitate” President Assad under the banner of “Arab Nationalism”.

Concluding Thoughts

International Relations are all about interests, not principles, and those states which claim to be driven by principles are more often than not presenting themselves as such in order to take advantage of the anticipated soft power benefits of doing so which in turn ultimately advance their interests in one way or another. The Alt-Media dogma that the movements, leaders, and/or states that one supports are “always doing the right thing” is debunked by President Assad praising MBZ as “humane” for his pledged “support and solidarity” during World War C despite the Emirati Crown Prince being responsible for carrying out war crimes in Yemen, especially those targeting supporters and members of the Ansarullah, which is a fellow Resistance member. If Syria really practiced a principles-based policy, then its democratically elected and legitimate leader would never praise anything that MBZ does as “humane”, but the fact of the matter is that the Arab Republic has practiced a policy of realpolitik this entire time despite what some of the country’s Alt-Media surrogates have claimed over the years. This isn’t to make any value judgement whatsoever, but simply to point out an undeniable fact that should hopefully help observers better predict Syrian policy going forward.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

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Now, that almost all of us, all over the world, have been forced into staying in what could be easily defined as house arrest, there is suddenly plenty of time to read books, to watch great films, and to listen to splendid music.

Many of us, for years, have been sadly repeating again and again: “if only we would have time…”

Now there is plenty of it – plenty of time. The world has stopped. Something terrible is happening; something we never wanted to occur. We sense it, we are terrified, but we do not know precisely, what it is. Not now, not yet.

Fiction has become reality. Albert Camus and his Plague. Jose Saramago and Blindness.

We did not really know that something like this could take place; even those of us who have close to zero trust in the wisdom of Western civilization.

Today, again, I read the same argument that has been sending chills down my spine, each time it is repeated. And repeated it is being, now regularly, at least in Europe. There, Fascism is clearly back. Dr. Luboš Motla Czech theoretical physicist, who was an assistant professor at Harvard University from 2004 to 2007:

“And they believe that the structures which allow them to survive – the governments, banks, and so on – are ‘evil’. Some are just financially illiterate. But others know what they are saying, and rejoice in demanding that trillions be sacrificed in order to infinitesimally increase the probability that a 90-year-old will avoid infection and live a little bit longer. They don’t accept their dependence on society and the system at all. They don’t realize that their moral values, their ‘human rights’, are only available if paid for by prosperous societies.”

A doctor… my God! A “prosperous society” means, obviously, a capitalist, Western society. Imperialism, neo-colonialism! To the people like him, clearly, not every human life is equal. ‘Value’ depends on age, and perhaps on race?’

It has always been like this, in the West, but at least it was concealed, somehow. Now it is out in the open. And I am shaking. Not from fear, but from revulsion. I definitely do not want to live in “Motl’s world.”

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But back to the main topic of this essay.

Now we finally have that proverbial time to read, to watch films, and to listen to music. Involuntarily, but time we have, nevertheless. We also have plenty of time to think, think, think.

The great and now diseased Uruguayan writer, an icon of the left, Eduardo Galeano, once told me, at his favorite Café Brazilero in Montevideo:

“In order to be a great writer, one has to be a great listener, first.”

I have to add: And a great reader, observer.

You can only produce great books, films and essays, after you listened to thousands of people speak; people rich and poor, bright and senseless. And after reading hundreds of books, and watching hundreds of excellent films.

It is impossible to change the world for better, after only consuming the cheapest pop and porn.

My Russian/Chinese mother, a painter and architect, has always told me, ever since I was a child:

“Even if you end up being an abstract painter, you cannot cheat the basics: you have to first learn how to draw a face, a human body. You have to know the classics, philosophy… Only then you can let your fantasy to go wild.”

Now, with the repulsive era of the COVID-19, we are all grounded.

Time to catch up on what we have been neglecting, in terms of those intellectual inputs.

We are seated down on our sofas, we open our laptops, ready to download great films and music, and… and… nothing!

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Go to Netflix and try to order something very basic, like films belonging to the brilliant Japanese new way cinema. Try to watch the latest, incredible Iranian contemporary film, or some wonderful Czech masterpieces such as “On the Roof”, or “Terrorist Woman” (“Teroristka, in Czech”).

You will not succeed.

Go to Apple TV, and you will encounter the same result, “almost nothing”.

Sure, you can still watch some excellent international films if you fly the Emirates, or Air France, but remember, you are grounded!

In a panic, you rush to YouTube, only to discover that if you speak Russian or Czech or Spanish or Chinese, you can watch the best from these countries, mostly for free, but only in their original tongues, no subtitles. But if you want to share them with your friends and family members, who rely on English, you will only encounter trailers and short excerpts.

How many languages do my readers speak? I understand 8, at most 9. Therefore, I cannot watch films in Vietnamese, Chinese, Farsi. They all have excellent directors.

Countries like Russia and China are making all their classic films available, and for all, right there, online. But the U.S.-U.K. censors and greedy distributors make sure that you will never be able to watch them for free, or even for a fee, in English or with English subtitles.

You are supposed to watch Hollywood crap, and toothless BBC upgraded sitcoms. You don’t like it? Tough luck!

At some point, you start frantically searching for different ways of how to get your hands on the important works of art.

Many, after several days of futile attempts and searches, simply give up and begin to watch whatever shit is available.

For years and decades, like a beaver, I have been accumulating DVDs and CDs, from all over the world. At present I have some 800 CDs, between Asia and Latin America, and hundreds of DVDs, even VHSs.

There is a reason for it – and I always knew that there would be. I do not trust the regime.

I have never relied on the electronic formats of films and music, or on storing my stuff in some ‘cloud’ and on sticks, or hoping that what I want would always be available through Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV and other brutal businesses.

At this moment, my predictions have come true: you cannot even watch Fellini’s La Dolce Vita on Apple TV! Or, forget about the best films made by Pasolini, early (socialist realism) films by Kurosawa, 1930’s Shanghai New Wave, or most of the masterpieces by Tarkovsky.

Yes, I have accumulated a tremendous film and music library, in all formats.

I repeat: I simply don’t trust the Western regime.

Especially now, when making the world population dumber and dumber, more and more complacent, is becoming, as it appears to me, the main goal of the Western apparatchiks.

Remember when they created those “zones” for DVDs? That was the beginning. Our planet was fragmented, in the name of business, and of copyright protection. But in fact, the reason was absolutely clear: people were not supposed to understand each other. They were not supposed to understand directly how the others saw the world. Only the “hubs” like London, New York or Paris were allowed to decide and pre-chew, how the conquered part of humanity could interact, intellectually, culturally and ideologically.

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The books; oh yes, the books!

They have not started burning books, yet, as they did in Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451”. I repeat, not yet.

But the system has made sure that books which even slightly challenge the system are hardly made available to the public.

It goes without saying that I made sure to count on two massive personal libraries, in both Asia and in Latin America.

Remember, they told you how ‘un-ecological’ printing paper books really was? Funny, you were never told how toxic tablets, computers and mobile phones are. What you were also never told is that if you begin to rely fully on electronic books, the tap can be closed, at any moment, and doing what you do, you will be locked out from the information.

In Asia and South America, I accumulated thousands of essential (and not so essential) books. And I am a proud co-publisher of a small, but vigorous publishing house Badak Merah (‘Red Rhino’). And I never agree to publish any of my own, more than 20 books in 35 languages so far, electronically, before they are first printed on paper.

These days, paradoxically, unless you live in London or Paris, New York, but also Moscow, Beijing or Havana, the chances are that you will not get books of your choice in those huge, bookstore chains, at least at the first attempt.

You will get bombarded from the moment you enter the store, with junk, pop, and feel-good stuff, until they distract you from all the serious, essential topics.

Actually, I am not even sure that in the West, these days, it is possible to build a great personal library, from scratch, anymore!

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Yet, it is almost impossible to analyze “emergencies” (both real and ‘injected’) like the coronavirus, without consulting philosophers and the above-mentioned novelists, like Saramago, Camus and Bradbury.

To understand Chinese and Russian philosophers would be very handy for comprehending, why both countries have so successfully combated the virus, and are now helping dozens of nations all over the world; even those that have been tormenting them for years and decades. To read and understand Cuban revolutionary, internationalist thinkers, would shed some light on the present situation, too.

But the chances are, you will not be allowed to do all that.

Yes, the taps are closing, and Westerners are increasingly resembling zombies, or, more precisely, ISIS.

Mostly, they cannot get their hands on important books that would make them think, analyze and understand. But most of the time, people don’t even have any desire to read, watch and listen to things that would help them to comprehend what is taking place around them, anymore.

Instead of listening to the human beings on all the continents, individuals, particularly those living in the West, predominantly hear only about themselves. It is some sort of “selfie-style” interaction with the world. Or a Porn Tube-style one, which relies more on one’s hand, than on one’s brain.

Individuals who live in this sort of realm, are taught to take simple commands, to react without thinking too much, and above all, to obey.

In the meantime, intellectual collapse is approaching; or it is already here.

Now, people like me, are realizing that they are not allowed to read, watch and listen to what they want, anymore. But at least we have already listened to a lot, before. And we have great ammunition of books, films, music.

We are still writing about what is happening.

But soon, perhaps very soon, the great majority of individuals, will stop to even worry about such topics. They will simply accept: shut up and accept, and read, watch and listen to what is pushed down their throats. Or, to use new terminology – they will self-quarantine, intellectually.

If such a scenario arrives, it will become irrelevant whether COVID-19 or some other epidemy is destroying our human race. Because it would not be a human race, anymore.

That is why, right now, we have to defend each and every human being, each life, whether sick or healthy, even if the person is 90 or 100 years old. And we have to defend great books, films and music, because in them is our knowledge, our humanity, as well as the key to our survival.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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.

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Sneak Attack by Iran on US Forces Coming?

April 2nd, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

At a time when responsible leadership is vitally needed to deal with a national health and economic crisis, the US is led by an incompetent, self-serving, geopolitical know-nothing demagogue who’s indifferent toward public health, safety and welfare.

The US ship of state is rudderless, no courageous captain in charge to steer it safely through troubled waters.

Whatever the outcome of today’s unprecedented crisis in modern times, it’s highly likely that millions of ordinary Americans will be grievously hurt, many irreparably, because of an uncaring ship of state’s captain and crew — serving monied interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare at a time when large-scale federal help is most needed no matter the cost.

Trump is the latest in a long line of US bellicose presidents — waging wars of aggression in multiple theaters, along with economic, financial, and medical wars on sovereign states unwilling to sacrifice their sovereign rights to US interests.

Iran is a prime target because it’s free from US control, hydrocarbon-rich, and Israel’s main regional rival.

Longstanding US plans aim to replace its legitimate government with pro-Western puppet rule — by whatever it takes for Washington to achieve its imperial objective no matter the human cost.

Along with his other faults, Trump is a congenital liar. On Wednesday, he turned truth on its head, tweeting:

“Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on US troops and/or assets in Iraq,” adding:

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

Fact: Iran, formerly Persia, hasn’t attacked another country in centuries.

Fact: Its leadership threatens none now.

Fact: Its geopolitical agenda features the pursuit of peace, stability, and mutual cooperation with other nations — hostile actions toward none.

Fact: In contrast, the US under both right wings of its war party is permanently at war with invented enemies threatening no one — at home and abroad.

Fact: No nations threatened US national security since WW II ended, clearly none today.

Are Trump and hardliners surrounding him planning belligerent actions against Iran and/or other invented enemies as a diversionary tactic to try shifting public attention from homeland economic and public health duress to invented barbarians at our gates.

The Trump regime is waging all-out war on Iran by other means.

Its “maximum pressure” aims to inflict “maximum” pain and suffering on the Iranian people to turn them against their leadership.

Time and again, reality shows it doesn’t work. When people face crisis conditions because of war or other dire circumstances, they most often rally around their government for whatever for whatever help it can provide — because who else can they turn to.

It was true in Britain during the Nazi blitz, true as well in Libya during US-led NATO aggression, and true now in Syria and Iran.

Instead of winning hearts and minds in nations worldwide, Washington’s imperial agenda turned countless millions of people into US haters.

The Pentagon reportedly is planning for possible war on Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) that are connected to the country’s military — falsely claiming they’re controlled by Iran, falsely calling Tehran a threat to US national security.

On Tuesday without supportive evidence, Pompeo accused “Shia militias” of attacking Americans in Iraq, falsely blaming Iran as a pretext for possible US war on Iraqi PMUs, along with stepped up hostile actions against Iran.

Separately, Pompeo’s spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus repeated the Big Lie that won’t die about an Iranian nuclear threat, knowing none exists.

She ignored repeated IAEA assessments and annual US intelligence community reports that Tehran’s legitimate nuclear program has no military component — in contrast to nuclear armed and dangerous Israel that gets no public attention.

In response to Trump regime threats, Press TV reported that Iran “stands ready to defend its interests in the region.”

Reuters cited an unnamed US intelligence source, falsely claiming that “a potential attack by Iran or Iran-backed forces had been building for some time” — citing no evidence because there is none.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi denounced hostile Trump regime rhetoric and policies, saying:

“While the (UN) secretary-general and the international community are emphasizing the need for halting the tension-creating and warmongering measures amid the outbreak of coronavirus, (US) moves are against the official and announced will of the Iraqi government, parliament and people, create tensions, and could steer the regional situation towards (greater) instability and catastrophic conditions.”

Mousavi called for the Trump regime to withdraw its destabilizing forces from Iraq as its government and people demand.

According to former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter,

“Iran is prepared to defend itself using the totality of its defense resources,” adding:

“Any US move against Iran would be a miscalculation with devastating results.”

“Recent military moves in the region indicate that the US is preparing for some sort of major action in Iraq.”

US forces in Iraq were shifted from smaller bases to two larger ones — Al Qaim and Al Asad.

Air defense Patriot missiles are being installed on these bases — on the phony pretext of defending against an Iranian attack not forthcoming.

No evidence suggests Iran intends to attack US or other foreign interests anywhere.

Indisputable evidence shows that Washington is an unprecedented threat to humanity at home and abroad.

Instead of pursuing global leadership in combatting the COVID-19 public health emergency, winning hearts and minds at home and abroad, Trump regime actions are polar opposite.

It failed to address the crisis with all-out efforts contain it domestically and treat its infected citizens and residents.

Instead, it prioritized an unprecedented wealth transfer from ordinary Americans to its privileged class while mobilizing Pentagon forces for possible escalated aggression abroad.

It let a golden opportunity to win allies worldwide and supporters at home pass it by — because it failed to come to the aid of nations and people everywhere in need.

Its ability to create unlimited trillions of dollars digitally enables it to do what other nations can’t accomplish on their own.

Instead of choosing a constructive path, its policymakers went the other way, largely ignoring public need in deference to wealth and power interests.

Meanwhile, a COVID-19 health crisis festers at home, worsening daily, outbreaks and deaths mounting steadily.

US states and communities are unable to cope because of lack of enough personal protective equipment (PPE) and woefully inadequate help from Washington when it’s most needed.

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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.