Global Research

The Environmental Protection Agency moved today to restrict the types of research that can be used in public health protection decisions and scientific assessments. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the agency is recklessly giving the public just 30 days to comment on this sweeping proposal. UCS developed a guide to assist you in making a public comment, and if you are able to do so, you should.

The “supplemental” proposal, which builds on a previous effort, would remove from consideration or downweight thousands of scientific papers by public health scientists when the raw data behind these studies cannot be made public. So while these experts are the front lines of the fight against COVID-19, treating patients, researching vaccines, and educating the public about staying safe, the EPA is trying to push this proposal through with as little criticism as they can get away with.

The American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, and scores of other scientific organizations all strongly opposed the original proposal and urged EPA to withdraw it. Now, they will have to pull staff away from protecting our country to write extensive comments to stop the EPA from sabotaging itself. It’s a terrible diversion, but it’s one they must take.

In a letter sent this morning, we asked EPA to extend the comment deadline and hold virtual public hearings. The “supplemental” proposal is significantly broader than the original. According to EPA, it would apply not only to studies behind EPA decisions about vehicle emissions, clean air standards, and clean water protections, but also EPA’s own “state-of-science reports, technology assessments, weight-of-evidence analyses, meta-analyses, risk assessments, toxicological profiles of substances, integrated assessment models, hazard determinations, exposure assessments, or health, ecological, or safety assessments.”

The EPA has not articulated a problem it wants to solve. It faces no deadlines. But agency leaders see an opening. They feel compelled to carry out an idea hatched by tobacco industry lobbyists decades ago. The proposal was developed wholly by political staff. The EPA’s Science Advisory Board initially called it a “license to politicize” science and said that it would compromise the agency’s decision-making process.

Because this is written as a supplemental to the original rule, EPA will only take comments that address the changes made in the supplemental. Therefore, you should articulate how your comments respond to the document that was released today.

At a time when seeking out and utilizing cutting-edge research is a life or death situation, the EPA is moving in the opposite direction. What EPA is saying here is that it wants political control over what research is used in any of the agency’s work. Don’t let them get away with this without a fight. Commit to writing a public comment and we will provide you with the resources you need to be most effective.

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Michael Halpern is an expert on political interference in science and solutions to reduce suppression, manipulation, and distortion of government science.

For the past 40 years, China achieved sustained high-level economic growth, experiencing short-term bumps alone along the way.

On a purchase price basis, what a basket of goods costs compared to the US, China already is the world’s largest economy, though not so far on a GDP basis.

Economic analysts call China’s growth from 1979 to 2019 one of the greatest economic success achievements in modern times.

Initiated by Deng Xiaoping, he called the process “crossing the river by touching the stones” — aided by large-scale domestic and foreign investment, productivity gains, significant economic stimulus and expansive monetary policy.

Last August, Ellen Brown explained that “neoliberalism met its match in China (by) subsidiz(ing) worker costs (and) the costs of its businesses,” adding:

Around 80% of banks are nationalized. “The government owns 80% of the banks, which make loans on favorable terms to domestic businesses, especially state-owned businesses.”

“Typically, if the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are put into bankruptcy, since that would mean losing jobs and factories.”

“(N)on-performing loans are…written off.  No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government.”

Corporations “are largely state-owned.” China’s economic/financial model focuses on longterm considerations, not “short-term profits for private shareholders.”

Instead of pressuring China to adopt a flawed US neoliberal system, Washington should move toward reworking the US economy to operate like China’s.

Brown put it this way:

“The Chinese have proven the effectiveness of their public banking system in supporting their industries and their workers.”

“Rather than seeing it as an existential threat, we could thank them for test-driving the model and take a spin in it ourselves.”

Noted market analyst Jeremy Grantham earlier compared (Wall Street run) Fed policy to beating a donkey, saying:

“We’ve been conned.” We’re manipulated to believe that “debt is everything.” Mounting exponentially, it’s unsustainable.

The Fed “keeps beating (the economy) until it either turns into a horse or drops dead from too much beating.”

Fed policy has nothing to do with longterm growth, everything to do with helping bankers, other corporate favorites, and large investors — at the expense of sustainable growth since the 1990s.

Grantham stressed that the “real world is the quantity and quality of your people, and the quality and quantity of capital spending.”

“Are you building new machines? Are you being inventive?” Are you educating a new generation properly?

“We’re in this death grip that only paper things matter.”

David Stockman called money printing madness and bailouts the “most shameful chapter in American financial history” — grand theft by any standard by wrecking economies to benefit Wall Street and other corporate favorites while waging war on social justice.

Michael Hudson explained that debts too high to be repaid won’t be.

Money power in private hands created unsustainable consumer and corporate debt, record budget and trade deficits, out-of-control national debt, an unprecedented wealth gap, along with Depression-level unemployment, poverty, homelessness, food insecurity and hunger — at a time when things are heading toward getting much worse.

The US is waging war on China by other means, wanting its economic, financial, industrial, technological, and military development undermined.

Was COVID-19 introduced in China by the US as part of its strategy to try achieving the above aims?

Throughout the post-WW II period, the US waged war by hot and other means on numerous countries to smash their infrastructure, massacre their people, crush their economies, and immiserate their population — aiming to transform them into vassal states.

Bottom line: The policy hugely benefitted military, industrial, security, media, and other corporate interests.

It failed to achieve imperial objectives. The US hasn’t won a hot war since WW II ended.

Its wars by other means on Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries fared no better.

China’s resilient economy will likely rebound ahead from its February 2020 slump.

Its manufacturing index plunged from 50.0 in January to below the November 2008 38.8 low in February.

Its service and construction sectors fell from 54.1 in January to 29.6.

On Monday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the nation is “braced for a second economic shock wave as COVID-19 controls kill demand.”

Closure of overseas markets will greatly curtail exports that will dramatically affect China’s economy adversely.

SCMP quoted a Chinese manufacturer, saying it “returned to 100% capacity for overseas demand, but sadly the market is either shutting, or about to shut.”

Orders are either delayed or cancelled because of conditions in the US and other countries.

Things are similar to 2008-09, possibly much worse if what’s going on continues through 2020 or longer.

In January and February, Chinese exports fell over 17%, economists projecting greater declines ahead at least short-term.

Global COVID-19 outbreaks aren’t remotely near epidemic and pandemic levels, but there’s risk that things could could reach them in countries hit hardest or globally.

As of Monday, 340,000 cases were reported worldwide, less than 15,000 deaths.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated  at least 38 million US flu illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations, and 23,000 deaths this flu season (beginning last October) through mid-March — the season lasting until end of May.

Worldwide the number of seasonal flu/influenza cases is many times the above numbers with no fear-mongering headlines scaring people to death.

The difference between seasonal flu and COVID-19 is the latter is highly contagious and only experimental cures exist.

Clearly the disease is cause for concern, but proper actions by ruling authorities can control it.

In China, the rate of transmission keeps falling, though it’s unknown whether a new wave could erupt.

Beijing took draconian measures to achieve dramatic results.

No nations are out of the woods, things highly likely to worsen ahead before improving.

Responsible government actions and personal efforts to stay safe are needed to defeat COVID-19.

Like other times of public angst, this too shall pass.

Of much greater concern is whether the public welfare will be gravely harmed in the US and elsewhere on the phony pretext of providing greater security.

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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 world is in the grip of a COVID-19 pandemic that is now impacting relatively poor countries in Africa and South Asia. Rich island continent Australia (population 25 million) has only about 1,000 cases so far and has achieved this through tough travel bans, selective testing, contact tracing, case isolation, quarantine and public education. However there is a big debate in Australia over whether to follow the UK with an aggressive coronavirus suppression program that includes closure of schools and universities.

First some key advice and  disclaimers:

(1) take your medical advice from medical authorities such as your own doctors and from medical organizations such as the World Health Organization [1] and your local medical authorities (e.g. see [2] for Australia) ,

(2)  I am a biological chemist  and not a medical doctor, and

(3) as a 75-year old I am in  a much higher risk group of Australians and therefore have a quite personal interest  in the worsening COVID-19 pandemic.   Consequently in the following analysis I have taken great pains to mostly quote the opinions of medical experts as well as the expert opinions of people directly involved in the issue of whether schools should close (notably teachers).

Least deaths “suppression” option involving hygiene and social distancing, case detection and isolation, household quarantine, and the closing of schools and universities.  

On 16 March 2020 eminent epidemiologist  Professor Neil Ferguson and his colleagues at Imperial College, London,  released an important  research document  entitled “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and health care demand”[3]. This research paper  has compelled the UK Government to take drastic action to suppress the COVID-19 epidemic via a “suppression” scenario involving hygiene and social distancing, case detection and isolation, household quarantine, and the closing of schools and universities.  This “suppression” strategy is modelled to result in much fewer  UK deaths (circa 40,000) as compared to a less stringent “mitigation” strategy not involving  school and university closure  (210,000 deaths) or inaction (510,000 deaths).

Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart, John Burn-Murdoch and Alex Barker of the UK Financial Times have summarized the key findings of this important report (19 March 2020):

“The starting point for analysis is an unchecked epidemic. This would infect eight out of 10 people, according to the researchers, with 510,000 deaths in the UK and 2.2m in the US.… While a vaccine is developed — a process that can take up to 18 months — or antiviral drugs identified, US and UK governments are left with two extraordinary choices. The first is a “mitigation strategy” to reduce the peak of infection while the population builds immunity; the second a more drastic “suppression” approach to quell the epidemic, whatever the cost to the economy, or trauma for social life… Governments are racing to expand critical care. Yet even assuming all patients could be treated, the Imperial researchers conclude mitigation strategies alone would leave about 250,000 dead in the UK and around 1.2m in America… More drastic curbs on society can make a big difference. Short of a complete lockdown on movement, the most effective [“suppression”] scenario modelled involves isolating people with symptoms, reducing everyone’s social contact by 75 per cent, quarantining households and closing schools and universities for five months. If sustained, the measures can choke the epidemic to bring patient numbers to something hospitals could potentially cope [circa 40,000 UK dead]” [4].

Professor Neil Ferguson and his numerous co-author colleagues (16 March 2020):

“We find that that optimal mitigation policies (combining home isolation of suspect cases, home quarantine of those living in the same household as suspect cases, and social distancing of the elderly and others at most risk of severe disease) might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half. However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option. We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be recognised that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased absenteeism… The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package –or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission –will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) –given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed… The strategies differ in whether they aim to reduce the reproduction number, R, to below 1 (suppression) –and thus cause case numbers to decline–or to merely slow spread by reducing R, but not to below 1… In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour, we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months… in such scenarios, given an estimated R0 of 2.4, we predict 81% of the GB and US populations would be infected over the course of the epidemic… In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality… Combining all four interventions (social distancing of the entire population, case isolation, household quarantine and school and university closure) is predicted to have the largest impact [only circa 40,000 deaths], short of a complete lockdown which additionally prevents people going to work… Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits of the UK and US health care systems being exceeded many times over. In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US… We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time” [3].

Australian Government actions to mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic in Australia.

Australia has acted to minimize the COVID-19 epidemic in Australia.The Australian Government headed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison takes its advice from the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, who with  the State Chief Health Officers  constitute the  Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) [5].

In an evolving response,  travel into Australia for people who are not Australian citizens or residents is now banned. Australian citizens or residents are banned from departing Australia , and those entering Australia must go into quarantine for 14 days. The Australian Government Department of Health provides very detailed  advice  about personal hygiene [hand washing, coughing into elbow or tissue to be discarded], social distancing [no more than 500 people at an outside event, no more than 100 people at an inside event, 1.5 metre spacing between people, 1 person per 4 square metres inside], self-isolation, self-quarantine, and case isolation [2]. Thus it states:

“You must self-isolate if any of the following applies to you: you have COVID-19; you have been in close contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19; you arrived in Australia after midnight on 15 March 2020. If you do not need to self-isolate, you should still protect yourself and others… There is a global shortage of the test kits that pathologists use to diagnose COVID-19. This is why we are doing targeted testing instead of widespread testing”

[2]. The State Government of the island state of Tasmania has declared that, with some exceptions,  anyone (Tasmanians or Mainland Australians) entering Tasmania must self-isolate for 14 days.

The result of such measures is regularly updated by the Australian Department of Health:

“As at 6.30am on 22 March 2020, there have been 1,098 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia. There have been 224 new cases since 6.30am yesterday… Of the 1,098 confirmed cases in Australia, 7 have died from COVID-19. More than 127,000 tests have been conducted across Australia” [6].

Mathematician Dr Joel Miller  (Senior lecturer, Applied Mathematics, La Trobe University, Melbourne) provides a key insight (19 March 2020): “Without any intervention, the epidemic would grow until depletion of susceptible people slows the growth. The prevalence would start to fall when the susceptible population reaches what’s called a critical fraction, 1/R0. Once we pass this threshold a person with COVID-19 will only transmit the virus to less than one other person (because fewer people remain susceptible to infection). For a population of 25 million like Australia, this would require 15 about million infections. COVID-19’s observed doubling time has been about four days. That means every four days the number of cases has been roughly double what it was four days prior. We would calculate it takes about three months for one infection doubling every four days to cause 15 million infections. After the peak, we expect the total time to drop to be about the same as it took to rise. This gives a crude prediction of six months” [7].

Academics  Caleb Ferguson, Richelle Wynne and Scott Newton (20 March 2020):

“According to data from China, around 5% of people who test positive to COVID-19 will experience severe symptoms and require admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) for around four weeks. So, three months into the pandemic, without public health measures to control the spread, we could have expected to see 750,000 severe cases requiring admission to ICU in the first three months. What can our ICUs cope with? We [Australians] currently have just over 2,200 ICU beds” [8].

5,000 doctors signed an open letter to PM Morrison by Sydney  intensive care specialist Dr Greg Kelly calling for an immediate lockdown of Australia (17 March 2020):

“Dear Prime Minister, We, the undersigned Australian medical doctors, are writing to you today because of our grave concern regarding the threat that novel Coronavirus 19 (COVID19) represents to the lives of Australians. We believe that Australian federal and state governments can avert disaster by heeding the lessons of other countries. This means: 1. Immediately implementing the strict measures of lockdown and social distancing that have been shown to be effective at slowing the spread of COVID19 and, 2. Preparing our health systems for a surge of COVID19 and critically ill patients. Taken together, these measures would reduce the numbers and presentation rate of COVID19 patients and allow our health system to cope. Many of us are in contact with colleagues in Italy, Spain and France and they are begging us to learn from their mistakes. With access to intensive care the death rate from COVID19 is likely less than 1%, but in an overwhelmed system without access to intensive care the death rate approaches 4%… On current growth rates the 370 cases in Australia today will be 750 on Friday [20 March] , 1500 on Tuesday next week [24 March], 3000 next Saturday [29 March], 6000 on the 1st of April and 12 000 by the 4th of April… The Italian region of Lombardy which is currently hardest hit by COVID19, is one of the richest areas in Europe with a health system equal to that of Australia’s. Our colleagues there have made herculean efforts to increase their capacity to care for critically ill COVID19 patients. Despite their efforts their systems are completely overwhelmed with corresponding very high death rates and inability to provide intensive care to previously healthy seventy year olds. They describe their situation as like being “in a war zone.” With access to intensive care the death rate from COVID19 is likely less than 1%, but in an overwhelmed system without access to intensive care the death rate approaches 4%” [9, 10].

Australian medical and teaching experts supporting closure of schools to help suppress the COVID-19 epidemic, flatten the infection curve,  and hence better enable medical services to cope.

Dr Hemant Garg (a GP) and almost 2,500 other doctors in a letter to Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt (March 2020):

“[Doctors are] dismayed at the disconnect between the actions being taken within the medical community and the recommendation for actions being passed on to the general population. We should immediately recommend a three to four week closure of schools, cultural and religious places including places of worship, gyms and leisure centres, pubs, bars, theatres, cinemas and concert hall.  This would allow a steady declaration of cases of coronavirus to present to hospitals and fever clinics as their symptomatic phase develops” [9].

Dr Norman Swan (host of the ABC Radio’s  “Coronacast” and “Health Report” programs) (20 March 2020):

“This week, the numbers in Australia are starting to rise steeply, albeit from a low level.  We have a few days to play with but very soon, if the curve isn’t bending then schools and universities are going to have to shut since the international evidence is that around 30 per cent of infections come from young people. And by the way there — sadly — are plenty of young people being ventilated in intensive-care units in Italy and elsewhere… I’d find it challenging to keep the school open with the increasing level of staff absence” [11].

Dr Norman Swan (15 March 2020):

“There are social impacts from closing schools… But probably the right thing to do is close schools now… It is tough but I think we control this epidemic early rather than waiting until the numbers get out of control” [12].

David Smillie (principal, The Grange, a primary and secondary college State school located in Hoppers Crossing in the  outer west of Melbourne, with 50% of its 1,830 students now absent) (20 March 2020):

“Since the Prime Minister’s statement that schools definitely won’t close, I have been inundated with really worried parents. They’re very confused, they’re very scared. No matter how much we talk about theories of containment of the virus, people still think because we’ve got lots of kids on site, they still think the school’s a possible area of infection and they worry about their own children. They know that the public galleries are closed, they know that politicians are sitting 1.5 metres away from each other, Qantas is closing down, people are working from home, but what do they see here? So, we’re hoping that the chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, is correct, and that he’s smarter than the rest of the world and we’re hoping that Dr Norman Swan on ABC is wrong… “We hear that schools aren’t closing but we also hear there’s a great possibility that down the track that they will. So we’re caught, we’re asking teachers to manage two things, preparation for the future and the current curriculum program. They see it in pretty basic terms that rich schools yet again are safe, when state schools have to bear the brunt of it” [11].

Agata Kula-Lugg (secondary school teacher and mother of 2  young children) (20 March 2020):

“Aside from concerns about my own safety and my family’s safety, I’ve been following the news very closely for the last three days and there doesn’t seem to be any mention of teachers when they’re talking about schools. Because if they did mention teachers, they’d have to admit that this is completely unsafe. Schools are not set up for social distancing” [11].

Dr Kerryn Phelps (general practitioner,  former AMA president and former independent Federal MP)(ca 16 March 2020):

“Within a very short timeframe we’re going to have to look at the closure of schools and closure of universities for a couple of weeks in order to help with limitation of transmission” [13].

Anthony Albanese (Leader of the Opposition Labor Party) (ca 16 March 2020):

“What I don’t want is the government to be too far behind here. I can’t see how [school closures] won’t happen at some stage. What we need, though, is for those decisions to be essentially recommended by the medical officers – if they say that is where it’s going to go, we need transparency” [13].

Dr Andrew Miller (president of the WA branch of the Australian Medical Association) (ca 16 March 2020:

“The schools, we need a bit of preparation time, but it will be coming. Sometime in the next few weeks we would expect the government would be looking closely at that. I suspect what will happen is that schools won’t go back after the holidays” [13].

Angelo Gavrielatos ( president of the NSW Teachers Federation):

“We’ve certainly made representations [re sending home pregnant, older and vulnerable teachers]. We expect the Government to make a quick announcement with respect to those more vulnerable members. These are unprecedented times, and now is the time for the Government to demonstrate its obligations to the health and wellbeing of all its employees” [14].

Professor Ian MacKay (virologist, University of Queensland) (ca 16 March 2020):

“If we were really serious about flattening the curve [of spread of the virus] we would have to think about closing schools. But we have to balance that against all the social disruption that would cause, including taking people out of various jobs so parents could look after small children at home… We know children get the virus, but are they creating a major part of the transmission chain, or are they having low viral loads and not passing the virus on? We need to find that out so we can have a better understanding of the role that schools play in transmitting the virus” [15].

Professor Nigel McMillan (director,  Menzies Health Institute, Griffith University) (16 March 2020):

“Schools will close eventually, it’s really a matter of when, not if… With all due respect to the prime minister, I wonder what he thinks those students do when they’re out of school (now), if they’re not hanging around malls or anything. We may close schools but we’re not closing education. And I think schools are well prepared for this” [16].

Australian medical experts and politicians opposing school closures.

Associate Professor  Kamalini Lokuge ( Australian National University Research School of Public Health) (18 March 2020): “Our essential workers, our doctors, our nurses, those who supply our food, our electricity – they need to be able to send their kids to school” [13].

Dr Brett Sutton (Victorian chief health officer) (ca 17 March 2020):

“There is currently limited information on the contribution of children to transmission of Covid-19. The WHO-China joint mission noted the primary role of household transmission and observed that children tended to be infected from adults. Previous work suggests that the potential reduction in community transmission from pre-emptive school closures may be offset by the care arrangements that are in place for children who are not at school. There is a particular risk associated with the fact that children may require care from vulnerable grandparents or may continue to associate (and transmit infection) outside of school settings. Broadly the health advice on school closures from previous respiratory epidemics shows the health costs are often underestimated and the benefits overestimated. This may be even more so in relation to Covid-19 as unlike influenza the impact on otherwise healthy children has been minimal to date” [13].

Daniel Andrews (Victorian premier) (ca 16 March 2020):

“As much as I know parents are concerned, if you were to do that, you would do more harm than good. It is never good not to follow unanimous and clear advice from the health experts. There will be a time when schools will be significantly disrupted, some already have been where there has been individual cases. In many respects, the best place for the kids at the moment is at school. I am not criticising people for being scared or anxious, it is a natural thing” [13].

Steven Marshall (South Australian premier) on extending school holidays (ca 16 March 2020):

“This is not a political decision, it is not an ideological decision, it is an evidence-based decision, which has been informed by the brightest minds in Australia, and they’re making it very clear. Children should go to school and to preschool and to kindy, here in South Australia, and around the country, and not to do so doesn’t diminish the risk – in fact, it increases the risk and it reduces our response as a nation so the coronavirus. It will harm our ability to tackle the coronavirus. So this couldn’t be any clearer. The advice was unequivocal” [13].

Professor Brendan Murphy (Chief Health Officer of Australia) (18 March 2020):

“So it will be hard for schools, but it would be much, much, much harder for society if the schools were closed. We want our children to be looked after in schools. If they were at home, we know that they probably wouldn’t stay at home, they would probably congregate anyway and if transmission were occurring, it would happen” [17].

Scott Morrison (Coalition Prime Minister of Australia) (18 March 2020): “That [school closure] will put peoples’ lives at risk. Let’s keep our heads as parents when it comes to this. Let’s do the right thing by the country and by each other and follow the proper advice. There is a national public interest here in keeping schools open. If that were different and if that became different, then premiers and chief ministers and I would certainly come to a different view” [17].

Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) (17 March 2020):

“The AHPPC met on Tuesday 17 March to consider the issue of school closures in relation to the community transmission of COVID‑19. The Committee’s advice is that pre-emptive closures are not proportionate or effective as a public health intervention to prevent community transmission of COVID-19 at this time… Previous studies suggest that the potential reduction in community transmission from pre‑emptive school closures may be offset by the care arrangements that are in place for children who are not at school. Children may require care from older carers who are more vulnerable to severe disease, or may continue to associate (and transmit infection) outside of school settings. Broadly, the health evidence on school closures from previous respiratory epidemics shows the costs are often underestimated and the benefits are overestimated. This may be even more so in relation to COVID-19 as, unlike influenza, the impact on otherwise healthy children has been minimal to date. School closure is associated with considerable costs. Studies have estimated that around 15% of the total workforce and 30% of the healthcare workforce may need to take time off work to care for children. This burden will be significant and will fall disproportionately on those in casual or tenuous work circumstances. At this stage, the spread of COVID-19 in the community is at quite low levels. It may be many months before the level of Australian community infection is again as low as it is at the moment… More than 70 countries around the world have implemented either nationwide or localised school closures, at different times in the evolution of the local COVID-19 epidemic, however it should be noted the majority of these have not been successful in controlling the outbreak. Some of these countries are now considering their position in relation to re-opening schools. Singapore has had success in limiting the transmission of COVID-19 in the community without closing schools” [18] [however the successful period in Singapore coincided with school holidays and when students returned they were temperature-tested [12]].

Final comments

We Australian laypersons are left in a quandary – which medical experts should we believe? I am biased because as a 75-year old I am in a relatively high risk group.  However as a scientist and humanitarian I am sold on the objective  argument from the epidemiologists and mathematicians that it is crucial that actions should be maximal and fast to prevent exponentially increasing huge numbers of serious infection cases that will overwhelm medical personnel and facilities. Thus Australia presently only has  2,200 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds [8].

Some 70 countries – surely on the basis of advice from their own medical  experts – have closed schools as a key “social distancing” measure [14]. No doubt school closures will be economically very disruptive but what value does a society place on the health of teachers and school children? Sensible arrangements can be made, for example, to keep schools open for the children of  health and other emergency workers, and indeed   for the children of other parents with special circumstances. Many Australian parents have already removed their children from school, whether from the poorly funded  state schools or from the much better funded private schools.

To control the spread of COVID-19 Australia has introduced bans on non-essential mass outdoor gatherings of 500 people or more, on indoor gatherings of 100 or more, and on an indoor personal space of less than 4 square metres for an individual.  However  so far the Australian Government  has not opted for the mass closure of schools where each student is typically confined in class to the 1 square metre occupied by a desk and chair. Teachers young and old and their charges are exposed to very small “social distances” with hundreds of people each day at school, whereas everyone else in Australia  is sensibly exhorted to maximize “social distance” to help curb the epidemic.

Admittedly as a layperson,  I suspect that the refusal of the Australian Coalition Government  to close schools will eventually be overtaken by events and reversed, but in the process valuable time would have been lost in which to minimize infection in a scenario  of exponentially increasing infection. As eminent UK epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson and his 30 research colleagues stated (16 March 2020):

“We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time” [3].

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

This article was originally published on Countercurrents.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). 

Notes

[1]. World Health Organization (WHO), “ Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public”: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

[2]. Australian Government, Department of Health, “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) health alert”: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert

[3]. Neil M. Ferguson and 30 colleagues. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and health care demand”, Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, 16 March 2020: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf.

[4]. Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart, John Burn-Murdoch and Alex Barker, “The shocking coronavirus study that rocked the UK and US”, Financial Times, 19 March 2020:  https://www.ft.com/content/16764a22-69ca-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

[5]. Australian Government, Department of Health, “Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC)” : https://www.health.gov.au/committees-and-groups/australian-health-protection-principal-committee-ahppc#members

[6]. Australian Government, Department of Health,” Coronavirus (COVID-19) current situation and case numbers”: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers

[7]. Joel Miller, “Scott Morrison has said we’ll face at least 6 months of disruption. Where does that number come from?”, The Conversation, 19 March 2020: https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-has-said-well-face-at-least-6-months-of-disruption-where-does-that-number-come-from-134025

[8]. Caleb Ferguson, Richelle Wynne and Scott Newton: “How we’ll avoid Australia’s hospitals being crippled by coronavirus”, The Conversation, 20 March 2002:  https://theconversation.com/how-well-avoid-australias-hospitals-being-crippled-by-coronavirus-133920 .

[9]. Melissa Davey, “Thousands of Australian doctors call on government to ramp up coronavirus response”, Guardian, 17 March 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/thousands-of-australian-doctors-call-on-government-to-ramp-up-coronavirus-response

[10]. Dr Greg Kelly and 5,000 other doctors, “Open letter from Australian doctors to Australian federal and state governments re. coronavirus COVID19 response” : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYb_XOzPsGaRsUPOK_XacES857iti_qIrSKm6YKaC8sLpxmg/viewform

[11]. Margaret Burin, “As coronavirus spreads keeping a school open becomes a fraught challenge”, ABC News, 20 March 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-21/coronavirus-covid-19-schools-open-close-principal/12072018

[12]. Norman Swan, “Coronavirus Q&A”, ABC News, 15 March 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-15/dr-norman-swan-recommends-proactive-national-lockdown/12057956

[13]. Paul Karp and Melissa Davey, “Why Australia is not shutting schools to help control spread of corona virus”, Guardian, 16 March 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/why-australia-is-not-shutting-schools-to-help-control-the-spread-of-coronavirus

[14]. Conor Duffy and Brad Ryan, “Why are schools open in Australia when coronavirus is prompting closures overseas?”, ABC News, 19 March 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-19/coronavirus-why-is-australia-keeping-schools-open/12070702

[15]. Conor Duffy and Sophie Scott, “Should I keep my children home from school due to coronavirus?”, ABC News, 16 March 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-16/should-i-keep-my-children-home-from-school-due-to-coronavirus/12058200

[16]. Kelly Burke, “Coronavirus Australia: school closures inevitable, says health expert”, 7 News, 16 March 2020: https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-australia-school-closures-inevitable-says-health-expert-c-747069

[17]. Dan Jervis-Bardy, “Student numbers down at Canberra schools due to coronavirus concerns”, Canberra Times, 18 March 2020: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6685297/student-numbers-down-at-canberra-schools-amid-covid-19-concerns/

[18]. Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) coronavirus (COVID-19) statement on 17 March 2020:  https://www.health.gov.au/news/australian-health-protection-principal-committee-ahppc-coronavirus-covid-19-statement-on-17-march-2020

In Times of Crisis, How to Prevent an Economic Meltdown and Avoid Privatizing Profits and Socializing Losses

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, March 23, 2020

The crisis and public measures to fight it (drastic travel restrictions, social distancing, worker quarantines, etc.) have provoked a major global economic meltdown and perturbed supply chains domestically and around the world. Moreover, they have profoundly shaken financial markets already vulnerable, after years of easy money policies and round after round of so-called ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE) by central banks, which have encouraged unsustainable debt levels by pushing interest rates down at historically low levels, irresponsible large fiscal deficits by governments during prosperous times, which have enriched the very rich, and runaway unregulated financial speculation that have had the same result.

COVID-19: Trump Companies Fall, Hundreds Lose Jobs

By Telesur, March 23, 2020

President Trump’s company — significantly reliant on tourism, conventions, and restaurant income — has been sharply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with at least two properties closing and three hotels laying off staff, according to the Washington Post.

In the wake of the crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic in the world, many countries have adopted some strict policies to prevent mass contagion. In the United States, some states ordered the closure of bars and restaurants and imposed special restrictions in some places, which has affected Trump’s businesses and companies in Florida, Las Vegas, New York, Washington, among others.

While Dumping Their Stocks, US Senators Misled the Public on Coronavirus Crisis

By Jacob Crosse, March 23, 2020

According to reports published by the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, National Public Radio (NPR) and ProPublica, and confirmed on the US Senate database for financial disclosures, at least four sitting senators, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Richard Burr, and the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, in a textbook example of “insider trading” dumped millions of dollars worth of stock after a receiving a classified briefing on January 24. During the briefing, all members of the US Senate were informed of the “emerging public threat” regarding the novel coronavirus.

Spinning Fear and Panic Across America. Analysis of COVID-19 Data

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 20, 2020

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, thousands of small enterprises across the land have been spearheaded into bankruptcy. Millions of families have lost their lifelong savings as a result of the collapse of stock markets. Precipitated into a debt trap, they may lose their homes.

And that scenario will not “recover” in two weeks. It’s a long term depression. What we are dealing with is the destabilization of the US economy and an engineered transfer of billions of dollars of money wealth. 

Iran’s IMF Request Shows Just How Desperate Tehran has Become

By Andrew Korybko, March 20, 2020

Requesting an IMF loan usually doesn’t mean that a country is on the brink of collapse, but the situation is altogether different in Iran’s case after the Islamic Republic asked for $5 billion worth of emergency assistance to help it deal with a series of interconnected and increasingly cascading crises that threaten to totally upend everything that it’s achieved since 1979. The combination of crippling American sanctions, the compliance with the aforesaid by the US’ “comprehensive global strategic partner” India (formerly one of Tehran’s top energy partners) out of fear of so-called “secondary sanctions”, the uncontrollable outbreak of COVID-19 in the Islamic Republic, and the authorities’ mismanaged response to all of this has putting the country on the path to regime change, as the author warned in his earlier analysis titled “Iran: Regime Change By Coronavirus?“, with the global pandemic serving as the catalyst for possibly bringing this dark scenario into fruition.

The Coronavirus, Fear, and Elitist Driven Market Insanity

By William J Murray, March 20, 2020

The headlines about seven dead in Seattle the first week of March emptied out stores and brought commerce to a standstill in that city. Shops and restaurants emptied out. With no guidance from federal, state of local officials the panic buying spread throughout the United States endangering the lives of millions of people as they coughed, sneezed and fought each other over toilet paper in Costco stores nationwide.

Coronavirus, Vaccines and the Gates Foundation

By F. William Engdahl, March 20, 2020

By 2019 Bill Gates and the foundation were going full-tilt boogie with their pandemic scenarios. He made a Netflix video which made an eerie imaginary scenario. The video, part of the “Explained” series, imagined a wet market in China where live and dead animals are stacked and a highly deadly virus erupts that spreads globally. Gates appears as an expert in the video to warn, “If you think of anything that could come along that would kill millions of people, a pandemic is our greatest risk.” He said if nothing was done to better prepare for pandemics, the time would come when the world would look back and wish it had invested more into potential vaccines. That was weeks before the world heard about bats and a live wet market in Wuhan China.

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You were told, by Western mass media outlets, to pity Uyghurs, an ethnic Chinese minority group from Xinjiang Province. You were instructed to ‘stand by them’, and to “defend their rights”.

They told you that Uyghurs are being discriminated against, and that China is, unfairly, trying to destroy their culture.

What you are not supposed to know is that many seemingly unrelated occurrences that you are following on your television screens or from the pages of your newspapers, are actually directly connected to the Uyghurs and their militant, pro-Western “World Uyghur Congress (WUC).”

You read about the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suddenly exploding, antagonizing Russia, even provoking the European Union, and sending more and more occupation troops into neighboring Syria. You could be forgiven for thinking that he has gone insane.

But no, there is actually a steely logic to his actions. For decades, Erdogan has believed that the Turkic minority ethnic group, mainly found in China’s Xinjiang Province, is the proverbial birthplace of the Turkish nation. When he was the mayor of the city of Istanbul, he even erected a small statue of a Uyghur, in the historical Sultan Ahmed neighborhood.

After the war in Syria erupted, or more precisely, after the West began an attempt to overthrow President Assad, Turkey brought militant Uyghurs from China, and began using them inside the Syrian territory. I described this in my lengthy essay “March of the Uyghurs”, published by this magazine (New Eastern Outlook). The longer version of the essay will soon be published as a book.

Turkey dragged Uyghur jihadi cadres and their families through Indonesia and other countries, supplying them with Turkish passports, for the length of the journey. It trained them in so-called refugee camps, mainly in the Hatay area (historically Syrian territory, arguably grabbed by Turkey after WWI)), eventually injecting them into Idlib (a Syrian province). There, often under the influence of combat drugs, Uyghur combatants committed crimes against humanity, murdering hundreds of men, women and children, while de-populating entire villages and towns. They have been cooperating with various terrorist groups, mainly from the Arab countries, which are still holding the area.

I interviewed several Syrian families who had fled in horror from the slaughter. I also interviewed Syrian commanders on the borders of the areas held by the terrorists, in 2019. Both the civilians and armed forces testified that they had never encountered such brutality in their entire lives.

Turkey, a NATO member, was basically doing a favor for its Western allies. The Uyghurs were injected into the Syrian jihadi battlefields, in order to get hardened even further, and eventually to return to China, disrupting peace as well as the vital “Belt and Road Initiative” – the great internationalist project of President Xi Jinping.

The restive Indonesian island of Sulawesi has also been used, although to a lesser extent, for the training of the Uyghur combatants.

Now, Turkish forces are holed up in the Idlib Governorate, directly engaging the Syrian army, while threatening the Russian military with yet another war.

Russia complains that Turkey has failed to separate terrorists from the legitimate opposition. This is actually defining the situation in extremely mild terms. Turkey is directly supporting terrorists in the Idlib area, and that includes several offshoots of what used to be known as ISIS, and by all means the Uyghurs and their contingents.

Ankara wants to rule over the region, once again, as it used to, in the past. But now it is playing an extremely complex game; it wants to re-build its empire by pitching NATO, the U.S., Europe, the terrorists, Islamists and Russia against each other.

For Turkey, the Uyghurs have just been another pawn in its brutal imperialist game.

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Even in Afghanistan – the new momentum is directly and indirectly related to the Uyghurs.

Syria is being liberated by its armed forces, and the terrorists are being gradually and silently evacuated by the Western allies, mainly Turkey. Where do they go? One of the countries is, of course, Afghanistan. Already two years ago, I was told in both Kabul and Jalalabad that ISIS were moving in huge numbers, to Afghanistan, where they operate predominantly in the rural areas.

There is no doubt that Uyghur jihadis are in Afghanistan, too. Now that thy are well-trained and hardened, they are ready to re-enter China, but also the former Soviet republics, even Russia.

All this goes in accordance with the U.S. and NATO plan.

Plus, the West recently, has been adding various distorted ‘sentimental elements’ to the conflict, portraying the Uyghurs living in Xinjiang as “victims”, twisting reality and suddenly playing what could be described as the “Muslim card”.

China has, historically, no issues with the Muslim people (it is the West that does, through colonialist and neo-colonialist adventurism). A visit to the old Chinese capital of Xi An would clearly illustrate how the Han and Muslim cultures have been inter-connected. Xi An is where the ancient “Silk Road” used to originate from, connecting China with Central Asia, and what is now defined as the Middle East, as well as the rest of the world.

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In December 2012, Global Times reported:

“The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an organization that is reportedly found to be linked to terrorist groups and receives money from Western political organizations, has long played an important role in smearing China’s policies in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and cementing Western media stereotypes of China.

Some Western media and politicians, together with the WUC, have hyped and smeared China’s policies in Xinjiang but remain silent about information released by the Chinese government or its media.

The WUC is headquartered in a low-rise building in Adolf-Kolping-Strasse near the railway station and commercial district of Munich in Germany.

The building, with an unnoticeable exterior, has become the heart of separatists from China’s Xinjiang and the mastermind behind many separatist activists in Xinjiang.

WUC’s core aim to split Xinjiang from China has never changed, Weinsheimer, a German scholar on China’s ethnic groups, told the Global Times.”

Reports like this are usually dismissed by Western propaganda and mass media as an attempt of the Chinese pro-government newspapers to cover up human rights violations against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

However, from my first-hand investigation in Turkey, Europe, Syria, Indonesia and several other parts of the world, it has become clear that China is using an even-handed approach, while facing an extremely dangerous terrorist threat on its own territory.

Even in Hong Kong, the “Uyghur issue” has been used by the West and Taiwan, as recently as in December 2019. I covered it, and as always, I have clear photographic proof.

What Global Times reported was actually only a soft reaction to the brutal policy of the West, which is aimed at breaking the most populous country on earth – PRC – into pieces.

That is why I periodically address this topic, which is so unpopular, even hidden, in the West.

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The Uyghurs are at the frontline of the West’s combat against China.

Washington, London, Berlin have several fronts open against Beijing. Various different types of fronts, too: economic, political, ideological, and even military.

To harm China (and Russia, Iran, Venezuala and others) is the main goal of Western foreign policy.

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is ready to assist the United States, Europe and NATO (particularly Turkey) in their efforts to hurt China, and to disrupt BRI (Belt and Road Initiative).

Why? It is because BRI is the worst nightmare for Western neo-colonialism. I explain it in my recent book: “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives”. China is deeply involved in this tremendous project which I often describe as the final stage of global de-colonialization. Russia is increasingly participating, too; in various cases even taking the lead.

The West cannot offer anything positive, optimistic. It is smearing China and Russia, and overthrowing or intimidating governments which do not want to sacrifice millions of their people on the altar of brutal extreme capitalism and Western imperialism. The Western mass media is warning writers not to use such “outdated terms”. Rubbish: they are not outdated; they are real! Imperialism never ended. Colonialism is still plundering and ruining dozens of countries on all continents.

China and Russia, as well as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Cuba and others, are fighting for the wretched of the world. As simple as that.

*

The WUC and its ‘president’, Dolkun Isa, have clearly decided to take the money and accept the diktat of the West.

Simultaneously, by hosting the headquarters of the WUC on its territory, Germany, once again, has decided to play an extremely negative role in global politics. No wonder, German flags are now flying all over Hong Kong, alongside the U.S. and U.K. ones, whenever the rioters decide to hit the streets. Germany foolheartedly backs the Hong Kong rioters, as well as the WUC.

By now, both Germany and Turkey have made up their minds, by joining forces with Washington and London, against the People’s Republic of China and its right to live a safe existence. It is a very dangerous situation, but it is real, and there is no reason to hide the reality.

The Uyghur extremists were designated to detonate both China and the progressive part of the world.

China is trying to calm the situation down, to negotiate in good faith. It is not easy.

The West, Turkey and the extremist Muslim forces operating all over the world, are pressing the radical Uyghurs and their WUC into a horrendous and bloody confrontation with Beijing.

It is time to make the situation known. The West’s game, deadly and enormously dangerous, must be exposed.

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Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

Below are an interview I gave to the Herland Report prior to the coronavirus explaining our precarious economic situation and Michael Hudson’s article today explaining that the way out of the economic crisis is a debt jubilee.  As the debts cannot be paid, it makes far more sense to forgive them than for all of us to sink with them. Debt cancellation is not an expression of idealistic egalitarianism. It is a practical alternative to prolonged depression and worse economic polarization with all of its social and political implications.

The central point of my interview is that deregulation and concentration of the economy and its financialization has made another severe depression unavoidable—unless possibly there is a debt jubilee as Michael Hudson recommends.  See this. 

The question we face is whether our leadership can understand that more debt is not the answer.  So far “solutions” seem to be to make more loans, thereby continuing to build up debt. As existing debts—mortgage, student, car, credit card—are so overwhelming that they cannot be paid, adding more loans is like throwing fuel on a fire.

Debts have to be cancelled as they are smothering individuals, businesses, and the economy. Our economic culture is accustomed to thinking that debt must be paid. The belief is that to reward those who did not live frugally and avoid debt subsidizes and encourages bad behavior. But in this case, unless debts are forgiven the frugal and responsible go down with everyone else.  As I have emphasized for 20 or more years, globalism stopped real family income growth by offshoring high-value added jobs.  Under Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve used debt expansion to take the place of income growth in order to continue to fuel aggregate consumer demand.

Debt forgiveness has a long history of success.  The ancients used it repeatedly, and in 1948 in Germany, the replacement of the Reichsmark with the Deutsche mark wiped out 90 percent of government and private debt, resulting in “the German miracle.”

Government debt is not the problem that private debt is.  Government can pay off its debt by printing money, but individuals and businesses cannot.  As Hudson says,

“if the U.S. government can finance $4.5 trillion in quantitative easing for the banks, it can absorb the cost of forgoing student and other debt. And for private lenders, only bad loans need be wiped out. Much of what would be written off are accruals, late charges and penalties on loans gone bad.”

Debt forgiveness for banks and large corporations implies some nationalization so that the public sees some fairness in the bailouts of debt.  Essentially, quantitative easing was debt forgiveness for too-big-to-fail financial institutions.  The Federal Reserve purchased the banks’ bad loans and put them on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.  Unlike a bank, the Federal Reserve cannot go broke.  Our economic culture also sees nationalization as socialism and an awful terrible thing.  I addressed that issue on March 14, see this. 

Our ingrained ways of thinking can easily prevent a solution to the current crisis, which is building as I write.

Here is a link to Hudson’s article.

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

The COVID-19 virus outbreak is taking lives around the world while at the same time exposing the weaknesses and absurdity of the capitalist system. The most advanced capitalist countries have already shown that they are unprepared and helpless in swiftly managing to control the inevitable public health emergencies; just as they are incompetent to take preventive measures and respond to the natural disasters such as Fires, Floods, Hurricanes and Earthquakes. Capitalism as an economic system is obsolete, destructive and pernicious.

With the news of COVID-19 virus outbreak, at first, the “leaders” downplayed the seriousness of the situation, then in a chaotic manner, they made people fearful of an unknown future while preaching for them to be calm!

So far, to different degrees, this scenario has been repeated in every capitalist country. In the United States, at daily White House briefings, authorities in charge toss around one solution after another just to contradict themselves the next day. For days they kept promising that soon everybody would be able to be tested for COVID-19 virus, while in fact only a few wealthy people had access to these tests and the lab results. The only constant advice has been to wash your hands and “Social Distancing”.

But “Social Distancing” which does prevent the spread of the virus to a certain degree, also exasperates other underlying and excruciating problems for the majority of people. It is unclear how long this could last. This temporary solution actually raises more questions for the average American with extended family that live in one household.

How is a single mother with two school-age children, who lives paycheck to paycheck suppose to deal with “Social Distancing”? Is a voluntary quarantine, “Social Distancing” and not going to work really practical for the low income working families? Abigail Hess, CNBC Reporter in her article titled “Widespread school closures mean 30 million kids might go without meals” reminds us the sad reality that “Amidst school closures, many fear that millions of students will go hungry.” Undoubtedly any temporary solution even in the best circumstances, such as financial aid and relief programs (stimulus package), would not change the unprecedented inequality, the underlying 21st-century problem.

The ruling elites in the U.S. have already concluded that the current system of governing is a dead-end path that demands a new system of governance. On March 18th, President Trump declared himself as the “Wartime President” to contain the spread of Coronavirus.

That is a day after Defense Secretary Mark Esper assured everyone that “the U.S. military, including the National Guard, is actively seeking ways to help dampen the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. …In that context, our second focus has been on supporting the president and the whole-of-government approach to the Coronavirus [emphasis added].” 

This will be the first time that the U.S. military is helping the government by putting its “medical foot” on U.S. soil to “protect” the lives of the American people. But by admission of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Jonathan Rath Hoffman “the U.S. military’s skills are not best suited for treating respiratory diseases [emphasis added]”! It is needless to remind readers that historically when the U.S. military is assigned to “help” and “protect” people from their enemy, the first casualty will be the freedom and the democratic rights of the very people who are being helped!

In this regard, the fascistic-minded “Wartime President” did not waste a moment to invoke the cold war “Defense Production Act” which gives him power over production decisions and economic direction under the guise of fighting the Coronavirus “pandemic”.

Now that the fear factor has shaped the American public opinion to accept that they are in a dire situation of an uncontrollable global “PANDEMIC” (which in fact is only an outbreak based on the minute number of people who have lost their lives to COVID-19 virus).

Now that corrupt media instead of reporting the facts and focusing on the real issues are distracting Americans with their sensational “journalism”, The prospect of a total military lockdown is conceivable. 

Today’s crisis, in many ways, resonates with the experience of the tragedy of September 11, 2001. At that time, the American people were shocked by a series of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. In 2001, the majority of people accepted the official narrative about these attacks, the origin and those who committed these heinous crimes. But soon many contradictions became apparent and did not support the official narrative. Honest people did not accept the official story as to why “building seven” in the World Trade Center complex (which was not hit directly), collapsed in a controlled demolition style! They were puzzled about the attack against the Pentagon at that time and still are perplexed regarding what happened to the airplane that supposedly hit and made a small hole on the side of the building, without a trace of any plane wreckage or remains of its passengers?

In this light, it is not farfetched nor unreasonable to speculate about the origin of this virus. Mr. Trump insists that this virus is “Chinese”. Mr. Pompeo repeatedly referring to the new Coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus”. The Trump Administration and commercial media, in full force, are spreading the xenophobia against Chinese people in general and Chinese-American citizens in particular. Just like September 11, once again a group of people have been singled out and terrorized through unsubstantiated and fake news, in this case, Chinese-American communities.

Honest and democratic-minded people are not convinced of the government narrative about the outbreak of COVID-19 virus. There are many credible documents and studies available that suggest this virus did not originate from the market in the city of Wuhan in China.

Among those scientists who are working diligently to find a cure for COVID-19 virus, many are not surprised by the emergence of this virus. Coronaviruses generally have been a major focus of scientific research for the past four decades. Scientists already had experience with the famous human disease known as SARS- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. But SARS was only a warning shot. Susan Weiss, PhD, a professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine who has been researching in this field since 1980 says: “It is gratifying to see how those years of research and mentoring can aid during health crises. One lesson to be learned is that it is crucial to support basic research that may not seem to have an immediate impact on human health.”(1)

Many scientists, investigative journalists are writing and talking reasonably about the factual issues surrounding this outbreak. Professor Michel Chossudovsky in his article “Coronavirus COVID-19: ‘Made in China’ or ‘Made in America’?” explains the economic objective of the U.S. propaganda: “While the ‘Made in China’ Coronavirus label served as a pretext, the unspoken objective was to bring the Chinese economy to its knees. … It was an act of ‘economic warfare’, which has contributed to undermining both China’s economy as well as that of most Western countries (allies of the US), leading to a wave of bankruptcies, not to mention unemployment, collapse of the tourist industry, etc.”(2)

Larry Romanoff in his latest article “Why Is the US Apparently Not Testing for the COVID-19 Coronavirus?” writes:

The “US has done only around 450 tests while … a Chinese firm has put into mass production a highly-accurate test for COVID-19 that has received the highest level of European certification and that is now being marketed worldwide.”(3)

The politicians and “pundits” are busy these days comparing today’s crisis with World War II and how the capitalists in the U.S. at that time succeeded to transfer the entire industry to a wartime industry – an industry for destruction!

However, since the end of the last world war, not one capitalist has invested in building specialized non-profit hospitals equipped with the latest modern medical technology and training a large number of medical specialists free of charge to be ready for operation at the time of outbreak public health crisis like today! It is obvious now that the health system in the U.S. is starving and ill. It is impossible to contain this virus by a nationalistic ideology and closed border policy. This is a global crisis and it needs a global solution. The unproductive trade war measures and insane sanctions against Iran, Venezuela and other countries must end now.

More than ever, working people need to rely on their own organizations to change the current miserable situation that is created by a few wealthy people. With the upcoming election, working people should not put their trust and energy in the 1% candidates of either Democratic or Republican parties. Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden with their far-right agenda represent Wall Street and are in conflict with the interest of hard working people. Mr. Sanders the “Socialist” once again like his Social Democrat ancestors, has shown his loyalty to the 1% capitalists and has successfully delivered the enthusiastic avant-garde youth to the political slaughterhouse of the Democratic Party as he did in 2016 Presidential Election.

Today, besides the COVID-19 crisis, the entire world economy is facing a major meltdown. Capitalists for centuries have exploited humans and nature to the point of extinction. Only the real producers are able to create prosperous democratic societies and flourishing environment that humans and all other species would enjoy the infinite natural sources in harmony. An economic system that puts profit over people actually functions like a deadly virus that gradually would destroy human societies and makes much of the world uninhabitable. It is time to organize 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.

Notes

1- “The Biology of Coronaviruses: From the Lab to the Spotlight” – by Rachel Ewing

2- www.globalresearch.ca/coronavirus-covid-19-made-in-china-or-made-in-america/5706272

3- www.globalresearch.ca/why-us-apparently-not-testing-covid-19-coronavirus/5705721

Featured image is from the author

Earlier global crises were manufactured to enhance the power of US ruling authorities, serve corporate favorites, and transfer wealth from ordinary people to privileged ones.

Since the neoliberal 1990s alone, that’s what the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, 2000 dot.com bust, and 2008-09 financial crisis were all about.

Is that what’s behind COVID-19 fear-mongering, lockdowns, and market turmoil? Are things not what they seem?

If past is prologue, what was manufactured before appears to be happening again — establishment media playing a key roll as before by scaring the public to death.

While great care needs to be taken to prevent a highly infectious disease like COVID-19 from spreading, public angst generated by fear-mongering suggests motives other than protecting public health are in play.

Notably since the neoliberal 90s, US-led Western governments, in cahoots with corporate favorites, consolidated greater power and transferred enormous wealth from ordinary people to privileged interests.

For decades, monied interests never had things better, profiting hugely from market manipulated casino capitalism — at the expense of the public welfare.

Since the 2008-09 Wall Street orchestrated financial crisis, protracted Depression conditions adversely affected ordinary people in the US and elsewhere.

Poverty, unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, food insecurity, hunger, overall deprivation and human suffering are growth industries in the US and West.

While Washington spends unlimited trillions of dollars for militarism, forever wars, and homeland security to protect privileged interests from nonbelievers, vital popular needs to health and welfare increasingly go begging.

The world’s richest country doesn’t give a hoot about the vast majority of its people, just its privileged class.

Class warfare pits private wealth against public health and welfare. For decades in the US, wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. Benefits steadily eroded.

High-paying jobs with good benefits disappeared by offshoring to low-wage countries.

Improved technology forced wage earners to work harder for less. So-called free markets work only for elements that control them. See below.

Powerful interests benefit from class struggle by exploiting ordinary people with bipartisan support from Washington.

Instead of governance of, by, and for everyone equitably, only the privileged few are served.

Until the late 1970s in America, new generations were better off financially than previous ones — no longer by institutionalized inequality.

The notion that markets move randomly is pure fiction. They’re manipulated up and down to serve monied interests.

Schemes include pumping and dumping, naked short-selling, precious metals price suppression, illegally profiting from inside information unavailable to the public, and government/Fed intervention to serve privileged interests at the expense of the public welfare.

Banks and other corporate favorites get bailouts, ordinary people sold out by their ruling authorities.

In cahoots with government, powerful private interests create financial shocks to eliminate competition and consolidate to greater size and power by buying damaged assets cheap.

Financial history in the US and elsewhere has numerous examples of preying on the weak, crushing competition, socializing risks, privatizing profits, and redistributing wealth upward to a financial oligarchy, creating tollbooth economies in debt bondage, getting what Michael Hudson calls a “free lunch” for privileged interests at the public’s expense.

When foxes guard the henhouse, new ways are invented to get a “free lunch” by creating crises for greater consolidation of wealth and power.

Orwell might have put it this way. At times like now, instability is stability, creating systemic risk is containing it, sloping playing fields are level ones, extracting maximum profit is sharing it, and what benefits the few helps everyone.

Market collapses can be hugely profitable for powerful insiders.

Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulators created an environment that serves speculation through futures, options, index funds, derivative securities, and short-selling, etc.

At times like now, greater concentration of wealth and power can be achieved at the expense of savers, seniors,  other ordinary people, and personal freedoms.

The road to tyranny is paved with ill-intentions. It’s happening in the US, West, and elsewhere in plain sight.

A Final Comment

Michael Hudson explained that lockdowns, social distancing, mass layoffs, crashing markets, and corporate bailouts “threat(en) a (global) depression,” adding:

History shows “it doesn’t have to be this way.” Hudson’s solution is “a debt jubilee…(R)estore…balance (by) slate-cleaning…”

“(W)hen debts grow too large to be paid without reducing debtors to poverty, the way to hold society together and restore balance is simply to cancel the bad debts.”

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary actions. Ones taken by America’s oligarchy benefit privileged interests exclusively at the expense of most others.

This time is highly likely to be no different than earlier in the US.

Hard times are likely to get much harder for ordinary Americans while favored interests benefit greatly from what’s going on.

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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 Asia Times

What will change in our lives after Covid? It’s a big question. One answer is – a lot. Another is – whatever happens, it won’t be the same again. Both are true. Another truth is that the government have now backed themselves into a no-win position.

Carelessly, the Boris Johnson administration, led by Dominic Cummings, decided that infecting everyone nice-n-easy would be best. Then it decided to take the crisis nice-n-easy itself and not do much even though the evidence by scientists (in their hundreds), experts in other countries, warnings from the World Health Organisation and from medics in the NHS was that it should take it seriously. When the government did react, it typically tried to instil a wartime spirit with a populist masquerading as a Churchillian leader.

For now, all the evidence suggests that Britain is going to go the same way as Italy. If it does, it will be a disaster on every level and the government will not survive it. But what if those expectations are not met? Another outcome will be an economy on its knees. National debt will hit 100 per cent of GDP within a year, household debt will hit 150 per cent of income within months. Unemployment will soar, businesses will collapse and the dreams of many will vapourise.

If the government was so worried about people when its sacrificed the economy to protect them, why then did it not go further to protect them against the tobacco industry or the manufacturers who have so heavily contributed to diabetes, high blood pressure, respiratory diseases and heart disease. These are the very groups statistically most at risk from this coronavirus. Why did they not encourage everyone to change their behaviour or force manufacturers to reduce all the other poisons in our modern diets or do something about air quality?

Now that the government is about to spend more than the infrastructure budget it proposed just a few weeks ago – is HS2 more important that the desperately needed £106billion it will cost, than say pumping that directly into businesses to get people back to work? The cost of Brexit to the economy, according to the governments own calculations will be a huge 5 per cent decline in GDP if a deal is done with the EU. If not – that hit will be an eye-watering 7 to 9 per cent – more even that the toll taken by 2008 crisis. Could the country even afford it? Is it now worth the risk?

Brexit has exposed something else. Since the referendum, 14,000 medics from the EU have left the service and there has been an 87 per cent fall in applications from the EU. It’s a staffing crisis that has led the government to appeal to those retired or that have left the service to come back and help fight the virus. Many left in the first place because of the way they were treated by the government. When Britain is still burying the victims of this virus will the question be asked if it was worth the increased risk of Brexit to the very people who largely voted for it? Or will there be a sea-change in the way we fund the NHS?

The entire mainstream media, who spent two years claiming Jeremy Corbyn would bankrupt the economy and turn it into Venezuela – are not actually asking where Rishi Sunak is going to get all this money from – and more importantly, ultimately who is going to pay for it. It turned out at the last budget that the Tories were going to spend even more than Corbyn would have, then the CoVid crisis came along. So it turns out there was a money tree after all.

Will the question be asked – why was its low hanging fruit not plucked after the bank-led financial crisis in 2008 – itself classed as an existential crisis by the leadership of the day? The suits in The City of London got a half a trillion in cash and a lot more in loan guarantees to prop up criminal operations that gambled our money at a boys club casino and lost. Everyone else was punished for it and 120,000 people are known to have lost their lives over the policy to recover that money that in the end, never turned up.

Then there’s government assistance being dished out to fight this crisis. But it comes with strings attached. Small company owners are being asked to put the title deeds of their homes up to qualify for loans. Businesses have to lay-off employees to claim wage support. It won’t help them keep going if they had to fire staff to qualify. And there’s nearly 5 million self-employed – about 15 per cent of the entire workforce who qualify for nothing. And those who rent their homes, and there are nearly 5 million households (not individuals) of them who represent 63 per cent of all households today. How are they going to pay?

The CoVid Cads

Some people, once considered the titan’s and captain’s of industry are proving themselves to be who they really are in a crisis. Take Sir Stelios at EasyJet. He has sparked outrage after paying shareholders £174 million in dividends whilst at the same time appealing for taxpayer support because of the coronavirus pandemic. Of that £174million, £60 million goes straight into the pocket of Stelios. Richard Branson is another. The multi-billionaire offshore tax haven tycoon, whose company is mostly owned by foreign investors sticks his ugly rapacious head up asking British taxpayers for a bailout the same week as he dumps thousands of staff without pay. It makes you want to spit! There would be public outrage, probably worse if bailouts to billionaires happened.

Donald Trump is another who is demonstrating what a lunatic he is in times of crisis. Who in this world is looking towards America for leadership in this global crisis? No-one at all is the answer. The foremost super-power is about to get a dose of its own reality. Its healthcare system is demanding an astonishing $35,000 to help if anyone gets a nasty dose of CoVid-19 – a pandemic that Trump has blamed on political opponents, called a hoax, is just a cold, then flu – and in desperation is now blaming the Chinese and even demanding financial reparations from them. There are 27 million Americans with no health care insurance.

China had the advantage of being an authoritarian regime – so it brutally crushed CoVid by ruthlessly stifling the movement of its people, enforced mass testing and isolation. It is back in action after three months and its economy is gearing up again. In the meantime, America has been warned by its own economists that the hit to its economy could be a staggering 24 per cent of GDP. One wonders what that might look like in six months time with is gun-toting, opiate-fuelled populace and armed-to-the-teeth police state.

China is already significantly assisting European and African nations combat this deadly threat with tangible help. America, in contrast, is threatening others by attempting to take potential vaccines for itself and profit from it and is shipping nothing. It continues with its trade wars, financial and trade sanctions to its perceived enemies and savagely stifling desperate efforts to buy in medical supplies and equipment to save people. And when America comes out of the other side of this crisis and sees it has been pushed into the No2 slot of world super-power by GDP by China, what will it do to regain its title? Attack it?

Britain might ask itself, why would anyone in their right minds do a trade deal or any deal with a country like that? Britain is a geographical halfway staging post between America and China – we could be dragged into a battle we’d have no chance of surviving, especially without our European neighbours. We might demand that our politicians not take that risk.

What will these questions be when this crisis is under control? One thing is for sure – Britain has already proved to itself it is no longer the stoic stiff upper lipped nation who will just keep calm and carry on. Just look at the stunned key workers who turned up after gruelling shifts at the supermarkets stripped of essential goods for that. Just look at its response to the Prime Minister’s appeal to stay at home – they didn’t believe him, went out and got drunk instead.

Public opinion rapidly changing.

Brexit was the number one issue facing the country according to voters in October last year. Indeed, 70 per cent thought so. Then the global pandemic hit the news and by the end of January, Brexit had fallen to 52 per cent as the number one issue facing the country and one month later to 43 per cent. By the end of March, you can imagine Brexit will be the very last thing on people’s minds. Health and the environment were the next two most important issues on voters minds at the time. Fighting crime was next and only then did the economy appear on the list – languishing in fifth place.

Today, health will be by far the number one issue on people’s mind. But when this is over, will attention turn to the economy? Will educating our next generation be more important to help our battered economy recover and fixing the environment – a crisis on its own be up there as more important? And Will Brexit be seen as something we should never have contemplated after all this? Will the government itself be challenged for withholding funds to fight this crisis when it was given two years forewarning this was coming?

Right now, as we are finding out, it is the power of people that is moving the government, not the other way around and whatever happens politically and economically, our culture and politics will surely be changed forever. Will we be better for it? Or worse?

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Today, Center for Food Safety (CFS) on behalf of a broad coalition of farmworkers, farmers, and conservationists, filed a federal lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its January 2020 re-approval of the pesticide glyphosate, best known as the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup pesticides. The suing organizations are CFS, Beyond Pesticides, the Rural Coalition, Organización en California de Lideres Campesinas, and the Farmworker Association of Florida.

While EPA defends glyphosate, juries in several cases have found it to cause cancer, ruling in favor of those impacted by exposure. Glyphosate formulations like Roundup are also well-established as having numerous damaging environmental impacts. After a registration review process spanning over a decade, EPA allowed the continued marketing of the pesticide despite the agency’s failure to fully assess glyphosate’s hormone-disrupting potential or its effects on threatened and endangered species. The review began in 2009, has already taken 11 years, without a full assessment of the widespread harmful impacts on people and the environment in that time period.

“EPA’s half-completed, biased, and unlawful approval sacrifices the health of farmworkers and endangered species at the altar of Monsanto profits,” said George Kimbrell, legal director for CFS and counsel for the coalition. “The reckoning for Roundup is coming.”

While EPA has declared that glyphosate does not cause cancer, the world’s foremost cancer authorities with the World Health Organization declared glyphosate to be ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’ in 2015. Over 40,000 lawsuits have been filed against the Monsanto (recently acquired by Bayer) by cancer victims asserting that exposure to Roundup caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including many farmworkers. Plaintiffs have prevailed in the three cases decided thus far, with victims awarded roughly $80 million in each case.

“Contrary to the Trump EPA’s claims, both regulatory and independent scientific studies demonstrate that glyphosate herbicides are carcinogenic and have adverse effects on internal organs,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at CFS. “Far from consulting the ‘best available science,’ as EPA claims, the agency has relied almost entirely on Monsanto studies, cherry-picking the data that suits its purpose and dismissing the rest,” added Freese. “EPA’s glyphosate decision shows the same hostility to science that we’ve come to expect from this administration, whether the issue is climate change or environmental health.”

EPA judged glyphosate far more critically in the 1980s, when the agency designated it a possible carcinogen and identified harmful effects on the liver, kidney, and reproductive systems. Thanks to pressure from Monsanto/Bayer, EPA has since dismissed these harms and illegitimately raised the safety threshold – the daily amount of glyphosate regarded as safe over a lifetime – by 20 times.

“The farmworkers and farmers we serve are the backbone of our food system. Their families are the first – but are not the last – to bear the huge costs of EPA’s irresponsible decision, while corporate shareholders of Monsanto-Bayer benefit,” said Lorette Picciano, executive director of the Rural Coalition.

EPA has also failed to collect basic data on how much glyphosate is taken into human bodies via skin contact or inhalation of spray droplets. These exposure routes are particularly significant for farmworkers and others who work around and/or use Roundup, the very people who are at greatest risk of cancer and other health harms.

“How many more farmworkers have to suffer health impacts to themselves and their families before EPA “sees” them – the “invisible people” – and takes action?” said Jeannie Economos of the Farmworker Association of Florida. “EPA must protect human health before one more person suffers acute or chronic illness from exposure.”

“Farmworkers are on the front lines of the pesticide exposure crisis providing vital food for American families,” said Suguet Lopez of the Organización en California de Lideres Campesinas. “They deserve a duty of care from the government which it has failed to provide.”

Glyphosate herbicides also threaten numerous species, including fish, amphibians, and aquatic as well as terrestrial plants. EPA discounts these risks by low-balling exposure estimates and ignoring critical studies showing glyphosate’s potency, and by relying on ineffective and toothless changes to the language on glyphosate herbicide product labels to “mitigate” risks. Even worse, despite again registering the pesticide, EPA failed to complete any assessment of its impacts on thousands of potentially harmed endangered species, delaying it until a future decision.

“EPA failed to consider if Roundup disrupts the balance of nature and ecosystem health, critical to the survival of a vast number of organisms on which life depends – from beneficial insects, such as parasitoid wasps, lacewings, ladybugs, and endangered bumblebees, monarch butterflies, to fish, small mammals, and amphibians,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides.

To give just one example, the massive use of glyphosate has nearly eradicated milkweed, the monarch butterfly’s host plant, from Midwest farmers’ fields, a major factor in the catastrophic decline in monarchs over the past two decades. Even though monarchs are under consideration for protection under the Endangered Species Act, EPA’s registration decision contains no effective measures to protect milkweed and monarchs from still more glyphosate damage.

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Featured image: Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in history. (Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc)

First published in October 2009. Relevant to the COVID-19 current crisis

When the Lie becomes the Truth, There is Moving Backwards.

When war becomes peace,

When concepts and realities are turned upside down,

When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction.

When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor, 

When the killing of civilians is upheld as “collateral damage”, 

When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homeland are categorized as “insurgents” or “terrorists”.  

When preemptive nuclear war is upheld as self defense.

When advanced torture and “interrogation” techniques are routinely used to “protect peacekeeping operations”,

When tactical nuclear weapons are heralded by the Pentagon as “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”

When three quarters of US personal federal income tax revenues are allocated to financing what is euphemistically referred to as “national defense” 

When the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker,

When the Lie becomes the Truth, There is No Moving Backwards…

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Obama’s “War Without Borders”

We are the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity.

At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon’s “Long War”:  “A War without Borders” in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might.

Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons.

Since the very outset of the Obama presidency, this global military project has become increasingly pervasive, with the reinforcement of US military presence in all major regions of the World  and the development of new advanced weapons systems on an unprecdented scale.

Granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama provides legitimacy to the illegal practices of war, to the military occupation of foreign lands, to the relentless killings of civilians in the name of “democracy”.

Both the Obama administration and NATO are directly threatening Russia, China and Iran. The US under Obama is developing “a First Strike Global Missile Shield System”:

“Along with space-based weapons, the Airborne Laser is the next defense frontier. … Never has Ronald Reagan’s dream of layered missile defenses – Star Wars, for short – been as….close, at least technologically, to becoming realized.”

Reacting to this consolidation, streamlining and upgrading of American global nuclear strike potential, on August 11 the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, the same Alexander Zelin cited earlier on the threat of U.S. strikes from space on all of his nation, said that the “Russian Air Force is preparing to meet the threats resulting from the creation of the Global Strike Command in the U.S. Air Force” and that Russia is developing “appropriate systems to meet the threats that may arise.” (Rick Rozoff, Showdown with Russia and China: U.S. Advances First Strike Global Missile Shield System, Global Research, August 19, 2009)

At no time since the Cuban missile crisis has the World been closer to the unthinkable: a World War III scenario, a global military conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons.

1. The so-called missile defense shield or Star Wars initiative involving the first strike use of nuclear weapons is now to be developed globally in different regions of the World. The missile shield is largely directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

2. New US military bases have been set up with a view to establishing US spheres of influence in every region of the World as well as surrounding and confronting Russia and China.

3. There has been an escalation in the Central Asian Middle East war. The “defense budget” under Obama has spiraled with increased allocations to both Afghanistan and Iraq.

4.  Under orders of president Obama, acting as Commander in Chief, Pakistan is now the object of routine US aerial bombardments in violation of its territorial sovereignty, using the “Global War on Terrorism” as a justification.

5. The construction of new military bases is envisaged in Latin America including Colombia on the immediate border of Venezuela.

6. Military aid to Israel has increased. The Obama presidency has expressed its unbending support for Israel and the Israeli military. Obama has remained mum on the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza. There has not even been a semblance of renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

7. There has been a reinforcement of the new regional commands including AFRICOM and SOUTHCOM

8. A new round of threats has been directed against Iran.

9. The US is intent upon fostering further divisions between Pakistan and India, which could lead to a regional war, as well as using India’s nuclear arsenal as an indirect means to threaten China.

The diabolical nature of this military project was outlined in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The PNAC’s declared objectives are:

defend the American homeland;

fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;

perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;

transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;” (Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding Americas Defenses.pdf, September 2000)

The “Revolution in Military Affairs” refers to the development of new advanced weapons systems. The militarization of space, new advanced chemical and biological weapons, sophisticated laser guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, not to mention the US Air Force’s climatic warfare program (HAARP) based in Gokona, Alaska, are part of Obama’s  “humanitarian arsenal”.

War against the Truth

This is a war against the truth.  When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible.  An inquisitorial social system emerges.

An understanding of fundamental social and political events is replaced by a World of sheer fantasy, where “evil folks” are lurking. The objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” which has been fully endorsed by Obama administration, has been to galvanize public support for a Worldwide campaign against heresy.

In the eyes of public opinion, possessing a “just cause” for waging war is central. A war is said to be Just if it is waged on moral, religious or ethical grounds. The consensus is to wage war. People can longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and  wisdom of the established social order.

The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world “hope for a better future.” The prize is awarded for Obama’s

“extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

…His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population. (Nobel Press Release, October 9, 2009)

The granting of the Nobel “peace prize” to president Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it upholds the demonization of those who oppose US military intervention.

The decision to grant Obama the Nobel  Peace Prize was no doubt carefully negotiated with the Norwegian Committee at the highest levels of the US government. It has far reaching implications.

It unequivocally upholds the US led war as a “Just Cause”. It erases the war crimes committed both by the Bush and Obama administrations.

War Propaganda:  Jus ad Bellum

The “Just war” theory serves to camouflage the nature of US foreign policy, while providing a human face to the invaders.

In both its classical and contemporary versions, the Just war theory upholds war as a “humanitarian operation”. It calls for military intervention on ethical and moral grounds against “insurgents”, “terrorists”, “failed” or “rogue states”.

The Just War has been heralded by the Nobel Committee as an instrument of Peace. Obama personifies the “Just War”.

Taught in US military academies, a modern-day version of the “Just War” theory has been embodied into US military doctrine. The “war on terrorism” and the notion of “preemption” are predicated on the right to “self defense.” They define “when it is permissible to wage war”: jus ad bellum.

Jus ad bellum has served to build a consensus within the Armed Forces command structures. It has also served to convince the troops that they are fighting for a “just cause”. More generally, the Just War theory in its modern day version is an integral part of war propaganda and media disinformation, applied to gain public support for a war agenda. Under Obama as Nobel Peace Laureate, the Just War becomes universally accepted, upheld by the so-called international community.

The ultimate objective is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the US NATO led war.

War becomes peace, a worthwhile “humanitarian undertaking”,  Peaceful dissent becomes heresy.

Military Escalation with a Human Face. Nobel Committee grants the “Green Light” 

More significantly, the Nobel peace prize grants legitimacy to an unprecedented  “escalation”  of US-NATO led military operations under the banner of peacemaking.

It contributes to falsifying the nature of the US-NATO military agenda.

Between 40,000 to 60,000 more US and allied troops are to be sent to Afghanistan under a peacemaking banner. On the 8th of October, a day prior to the Nobel Committee’s decision, the US Congress granted Obama a 680-billion-dollar defense authorization bill, which is slated to finance the process of military escalation:

“Washington and its NATO allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces that have been committed to the war so far this year”.

The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House, range from 10,000 to 45,000.

Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian Science Monitor wrote of “perhaps as many as 45,000.”

The similarity of the estimates indicate that a number has been agreed upon and America’s obedient media is preparing domestic audiences for the possibility of the largest escalation of foreign armed forces in Afghanistan’s history. Only seven years ago the United States had 5,000 troops in the country, but was scheduled to have 68,000 by December even before the reports of new deployments surfaced. (Rick Rozoff, U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War In Afghanistan’s History, Global Research, September 24, 2009)

Within hours of the decision of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Obama met with the War Council, or should we call it the “Peace Council”. This meeting had been carefully scheduled to coincide with that of the Norwegian Nobel committee.

This key meeting behind closed doors in the Situation Room of the White House included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and key political and military advisers. General  Stanley McChrystal participated in the meeting via video link from Kabul.

General Stanley McChrystal is said to have offered the Commander in Chief “several alternative options” “including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops”. The 60,000 figure was quoted following a leak of the Wall Street Journal (AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council, October 9, 2009)

“The president had a robust conversation about the security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a strategic approach going forward,” according to an administration official (quoted in AFP: After Nobel nod, Obama convenes Afghan war council  October 9, 2009)

The Nobel committee had in a sense given Obama a green light.  The October 9 meeting in the Situation Room was to set the groundwork for a further escalation of the conflict under the banner of counterinsurgency and democracy building.

Meanwhile, in the course of the last few months, US forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of village communities in the northern tribal areas of Pakistan, under the banner of combating Al Qaeda.

AMERICA’S “WAR ON TERRORISM”

by Michel Chossudovsky

CLICK TO ORDER

America’s “War on Terrorism”

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.

The last chapter includes an analysis of the London  7/7 Bomb Attacks.

CLICK TO ORDER (mail order or online order)

America’s “War on Terrorism”

Author’s Note: Following is a somewhat fictionalized account based on factual circumstances.

I’m feeling numb. My throat is tight. My breath is short. I look outside. The street is empty. I look inside. Can’t see my lover; she’s on the other side of the door. Double-quarantined am I. Got my wires crossed with Coronavirus.

“In domus”, and out. Am I alone in this?

Local news says “whole city shut down by invisible foe”.

National news screams “whole country in lockdown”.

My heart is racing now.

World news moans “whole world in grips of terror”. Terror? What terror? Who’s terror? A weird terror I can’t see nor smell. My head drops.

This “thing” is too big. I can’t grasp its breadth; I gasp for breath. The whole world has shut down. Like some humongous, cavernous boarded-up Michigan car plant. Bugged by this what – virus – Co o o v v I – can’t even bring myself to say it. Nor conceive of it. My arms are heavy. Caught in the backdraft of the media onslaught of self-contradictory “BREAKING NEWS”. I can’t get my brain to turn over.

I shuffle my lead-laden legs to my man-cave. AH HA! A voice from the TV screen. A young, innocent voice that asks “How you like Lockdown?”

I’m taken aback. I answer “Why ask?” Six-year-old Ayesha asks on, “Has a bad man thrown bombs on your house?

Shot the knees out of your brother? Killed your baby sister?” “No”, I answer. “I am only isolated and disoriented. I’m scared I will get very sick.” Ayesha answers “I am already sick! My chest is burning. I am choking. The big, scowling man in the Knesset is blocking my medicine from coming into Gaza.” Her father Mustafa yells, “No masks, no test kits, no respirators. Full blockade. No food either. Only bombs and IDF snipers. NO HOPE. Why does Canada support Netanyahu?”, I see Mustafa’s eyes pleading, accusing. “I’m hungry” cries out Ayesha. “Why do they want me dead?”

Another voice arises from the TV screen.

A thin, weak voice. Pablito from Valencia, Venezuela. “I feel so hot. Ooooh, huuuh. I can’t see.” “We have to go to hospital! The insulin finished” cries his mother. “We can’t”, says his father. “The car’s transmission is broken”.

“Fix it”, says Mother. “I can’t. Trump is strangling us with sanctions. Can’t import parts.

Wouldn’t help anyway. The bridge was fire-bombed by Colombian paramilitaries. NO PARTS because of Trump and Canada sanctions.”

“Up to now, we were dying of hunger and diabetes because the US steals our insulin and our oil” says Uncle Alejandro.

“Now, this COVID could crush many more of us. Do you see the US ships blocking the medicine and food ships from China?” “We beat them back before.” says neighbor Alfredo. “We’ll do it again”. “Where is my sister?” whimpers Pablito. “She went to look for Abuela in Columbia. Bad men kidnapped her; are hurting her” says Mother, weeping uncontrollably now. Holding her son tightly as he coughs; his small body arching in pain, air hissing achingly from his lungs. He stops breathing. “NO PARTS.” “ONLY SANCTIONS”.

Bahadur, walking heavily, back bent forward, eyes transfixed on the wooden box. In front of him, below the rim of the hill, machines from Teheran at work, digging long, narrow trenches. Behind and in front of him, more boxes, more families, trudging, weeping in single file. In the box, his wife and two young daughters – his whole family. Each in turn suffocated by the new plague. Wracked with sorrow, is Bahadur. Seething with anger. At the orange-haired, woman-grabbing president halfway around the world whose sanctions have prevented his family from receiving life-saving COVID treatment and medicine. “Why? Why would a human being deliberately and knowingly do that to another human being? To my precious Jasmine, and my little Bahar and Farzeen?”

I’m stunned. I can’t take it. I can’t shake it. The whole world brought to its knees by Coronavirus.

Or is it by some faceless band of greedy men wielding their lung-freezing, microbial scythe, culling the herd of the world’s dispensable and riffraff, as they have joked about in their private clubs and yachts? I can’t think in my brain. I’m paralyzed, exhausted. I’m haunted by the ghosts of those killed in my name.

I go to bed. It’s 3 pm. Fall into a kind of deep trance. Not sleep really. Nightmares. Flashes of light. Room shaking from my convulsions. I wake up suddenly, in a dead sweat. Deer’s eyes in the headlights. It’s midnight.

Ayesha’s stare and dare hit me, right in the chest: “How you like Lockdown?”

Blood seeps from my face. I steady myself against the wall. What do I do? Go back to bed? Scream out into the empty night? Keep feeling sorry for myself in my little white-picket-fenced, alcohol-imbued, privileged lockdown? Storm the Bastille? Demand an immediate end to the sanctions? Call for reparations? More, much more! Storm the boardrooms and bedrooms of the dystopia-fantasizing uber-rich and powerful?

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Featured image is from EPA-EFE/SHAWN THEW

The People’s Republic is dedicated to win-win exchanges in order to ultimately build a Community of Common Destiny, and its selfless assistance to the rest of the world proves is sincerity to those noble ideals without any doubt.

Imagine if the congress approved a measure to form a public-private partnership between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Can you imagine that?

Now imagine if a panicky and ill-informed Congress gave the Fed a blank check to bail out all of its crooked crony corporate and Wall Street friends, allowing the Fed to provide more than $4.5 trillion to underwater corporations that ripped off Mom and Pop investors by selling them bonds that were used to goose their stock prices so fatcat CEOs could make off like bandits. Imagine if all that red ink from private actors was piled onto the national debt pushing long-term interest rates into the stratosphere while crushing small businesses, households and ordinary working people.

Now try to imagine the impact this would have on the nation’s future. Imagine if the Central Bank was given the green-light to devour the Treasury, control the country’s “purse strings”, and use nation’s taxing authority to shore up its trillions in ultra-risky leveraged bets, its opaque financially-engineered ponzi-instruments, and its massive speculative debts that have gone pear-shaped leaving a gaping black hole on its balance sheet?

Well, you won’t have to imagine this scenario for much longer, because the reality is nearly at hand. You see, the traitorous, dumbshit nincompoops in Congress are just a hairs-breadth away from abdicating congress’s crucial power of the purse, which is not only their greatest strength, but also allows the congress to reign in abuses of executive power by controlling the flow of funding. The power of the purse is the supreme power of government which is why the founders entrusted it to the people’s elected representatives in congress. Now these imbeciles are deciding whether to hand over that authority to a privately-owned banking cartel that has greatly expanded the chasm between rich and poor, incentivized destructive speculation on an industrial scale, and repeatedly inflated behemoth asset-price bubbles that have inevitably blown up sending stocks and the real economy into freefall. The idea of merging the Fed and the Treasury first appeared in its raw form in an article by former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen in the Financial Times. Here’s a short excerpt from the piece:

“The Fed could ask Congress for the authority to buy limited amounts of investment-grade corporate debt… The Fed’s intervention could help restart that part of the corporate debt market, which is under significant stress. Such a programme would have to be carefully calibrated to minimize the credit risk taken by the Fed while still providing needed liquidity to an essential market.” (Financial Times)

The Fed is not allowed to buy corporate debt, because it is not within its mandate of “price stability and full employment”. It’s also not allowed to arbitrarily intervene in the markets to pick winners and losers, nor is it allowed to bailout poorly-managed crybaby corporations who were gaming the system to their own advantage when the whole deal blew up in their faces. That’s their problem, not the Fed’s and not the American taxpayer’s.

But notice how Bernanke emphasizes how “Such a programme would have to be carefully calibrated to minimize the credit risk taken by the Fed”. Why do you think he said that?

He said it because he anticipates an arrangement where the new Treasury-Fed combo could buy up to “$4.5 trillion of corporate debt” (according to Marketwatch and BofA). And the way this will work, is the Fed will select the bonds that will be purchased and the credit risk will be heaped onto the US Treasury. Apparently Bernanke and Yellen think this is a “fair” arrangement, but others might differ on that point.

Keep in mind, that in the last week alone, investors pulled a record $107 billion out of corporate bonds which is a market which has been in a deep-freeze for nearly a month. The only activity is the steady surge of redemptions by frantic investors who want to get their money back before the listing ship heads for Davey Jones locker. This is the market that Bernanke wants the American people to bail out mainly because he doesn’t want to submerge the Fed’s balance sheet in red ink. He wants to find a sucker who will take the loss instead. That’s where Uncle Sam comes in, he’s the target of this subterfuge. This same theme pops up in a piece in the Wall Street Journal. Check it out:

“At least Treasury has come around to realizing it needs a facility to provide liquidity for companies. But as we write this, Mr. Mnuchin was still insisting that Treasury have control of most of the money to be able to ladle out directly to companies it wants to help. This is a recipe for picking winners and losers, and thus for bitter political fights and months of ugly headlines charging favoritism. The far better answer is for Treasury to use money from Congress to replenish the Exchange Stabilization Fund to back the Fed in creating a facility or special-purpose vehicles under Section 13(3) to lend the money to all comers. “(“Leaderless on the Econom”, Wall Street Journal)

I can hardly believe the author is bold enough to say this right to our faces. Read it carefully: They are saying “We want your money, but not your advice. The Fed will choose who gets the cash and who doesn’t. Just put your trillions on the counter and get the hell out.”

Isn’t that what they’re saying? Of course it is. And the rest of the article is even more arrogant:

“The Fed can charge a non-concessionary rate, but the vehicles should be open to those who think they need the money, not merely to those Treasury decides are worthy.” (Huh? So the Treasury should have no say so in who gets taxpayer money??) The looming liquidity crisis is simply too great for that kind of bureaucratic, politicized decision-making. (Wall Street Journal)

Get it? In other words, the folks at Treasury are just too stupid or too prejudiced to understand the subtleties of a bigass bailout like this. Is that arrogance or what?

This is the contempt these people have for you and me and everyone else who isn’t a part of their elitist gaggle of reprobates. Here’s a clip from another article at the WSJ that helps to show how the financial media is pushing this gigantic handout to corporate America:.

“The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and banking regulators deserve congratulations for their bold, necessary actions to provide liquidity to the U.S. financial system amid the coronavirus crisis. But more remains to be done. We thus recommend: (1) immediate congressional action …. to authorize the Treasury to use the Exchange Stabilization Fund to guarantee prime money-market funds, (2) regulatory action to effect temporary reductions in bank capital and liquidity requirements… (NOTE–So now the banks don’t need to hold capital against their loans?) .. additional Fed lending to banks and nonbanks….(Note -by “nonbanks”, does the author mean underwater hedge funds?)…

We recommend that the Fed take further actions as lender of last resort. First, it should re-establish the Term Auction Facility, used in the 2008 crisis, allowing depository institutions to borrow against a broad range of collateral at an auction price (Note–They want to drop the requirement for good Triple A collateral.) … Second, it should consider further exercising its Section 13(3) authority to provide additional liquidity to nonbanks, potentially including purchases of corporate debt through a special-purpose vehicle” (“Do More to Avert a Liquidity Crisis”, Wall Street Journal )

This isn’t a bailout, it’s a joke, and there’s no way Congress should approve these measures, particularly the merging of the US Treasury with the cutthroat Fed. That’s a prescription for disaster! The Fed needs to be abolished not embraced as a state institution. It’s madness!

And look how the author wants to set up an special-purpose vehicle (SPV) so the accounting chicanery can be kept off the books which means the public won’t know how much money is being flushed down the toilet trying to resuscitate these insolvent corporations whose executives are still living high on the hog on the money they stole from credulous investors. This whole scam stinks to high heaven!

Meanwhile America’s working people will get a whopping $1,000 bucks to tide them over until the debts pile up to the rafters and they’re forced to rob the neighborhood 7-11 to feed the kids. How fair is that?

And don’t kid yourself: This isn’t a bailout, it’s the elitist’s political agenda aimed at creating a permanent underclass who’ll work for peanuts just to eek out a living.

Welcome to Sweatshop Amerika!

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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

The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.

At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.

Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?

Vaccines or affordable treatments take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. Given such timelines, the consequences of long-term lockdowns are entirely unknown.

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

Image on the right: Cases from Diamond Princess (Source: WHO)

Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.

That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.

Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.

These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing. Instead, they are lost as noise among 60 million deaths from various causes every year.

Although successful surveillance systems have long existed for influenza, the disease is confirmed by a laboratory in a tiny minority of cases. In the U.S., for example, so far this season 1,073,976 specimens have been tested and 222,552 (20.7%) have tested positive for influenza. In the same period, the estimated number of influenza-like illnesses is between 36,000,000 and 51,000,000, with an estimated 22,000 to 55,000 flu deaths.

Note the uncertainty about influenza-like illness deaths: a 2.5-fold range, corresponding to tens of thousands of deaths. Every year, some of these deaths are due to influenza and some to other viruses, like common-cold coronaviruses.

In an autopsy series that tested for respiratory viruses in specimens from 57 elderly persons who died during the 2016 to 2017 influenza season, influenza viruses were detected in 18% of the specimens, while any kind of respiratory virus was found in 47%. In some people who die from viral respiratory pathogens, more than one virus is found upon autopsy and bacteria are often superimposed. A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.

Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop?

The most valuable piece of information for answering those questions would be to know the current prevalence of the infection in a random sample of a population and to repeat this exercise at regular time intervals to estimate the incidence of new infections. Sadly, that’s information we don’t have.

In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work. School closures, for example, may reduce transmission rates. But they may also backfire if children socialize anyhow, if school closure leads children to spend more time with susceptible elderly family members, if children at home disrupt their parents ability to work, and more. School closures may also diminish the chances of developing herd immunity in an age group that is spared serious disease.

This has been the perspective behind the different stance of the United Kingdom keeping schools open, at least until as I write this. In the absence of data on the real course of the epidemic, we don’t know whether this perspective was brilliant or catastrophic.

Flattening the curve to avoid overwhelming the health system is conceptually sound — in theory. A visual that has become viral in media and social media shows how flattening the curve reduces the volume of the epidemic that is above the threshold of what the health system can handle at any moment.

Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.

One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people died.

One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue. Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.

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

In recent days a couple videos have begun circulating on social media with evidence of apparent installations of 5G and/or biometric systems while children are home due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

We now have the opportunity to confirm (or debunk) reports of these covert installations at schools everywhere. We need your help with this – see the bottom of this post for what to do.

First, on March 16, the YouTube channel Logic Before Authority posted a video detailing a message he received from an apparent member of a local school board. This whistleblower detailed how school districts were intending to covertly install 5G equipment in schools during the lockdown, under the direction of the U.S. Department of Education. The companies being sent in were instructed to act as if they are there to disinfect the schools to stop the spread of the virus.

Watch that video here:

Following the Logic Before Authority video, On March 18 another video began circulating showing a fleet of white work vans behind an unknown school. Although we do not see the name or location of the school, the video clearly shows vans for two companies – Systems Plus Wisconsin and North American Mechanical, Inc. Both companies appear to be headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.

While American Mechanical, Inc focuses on plumbing and mechanical services, Systems Plus Wisconsin clearly states they install biometric systems. The person filming the video called the school to ask whether the vans were involved with anything related to 5G. The person on the other end of the line then immediately hung up the phone.

Watch the second video here:

These videos, and others, have since sparked a growing number of social media comments from folks claiming to have seen work vans and/or towers and antennas being installed on school grounds during the quarantines. In fact, TBYP writer Derrick Broze was able to confirm that systems were being installed at Houston area schools during shutdown.

What’s happening in your neighborhood?

Now we need your help gathering more evidence! Most of us have been asked to stay home from work and our children have been indefinitely sent home from school. This absence from the daily grind has provided us with the opportunity to question the narratives that are unfolding around us.

Take a walk or drive to your local school to see if you notice anything unusual, such as work vans or telecom companies on site. If so, call the school and politely ask for more details. Please be courteous, but firm. If it’s the case that the U.S. Department of Education (or other state, federal or local agencies) are indeed working with the telecoms to covertly install 5G and/or biometric systems in schools, parents deserve to know!

Scroll down, and post your details and links to pictures in the comments section below! Once we gather enough credible evidence we be able to accordingly move forward with an organized action.

Then, please write your school board superintendent, school principal, or elected reps! Here’s an example script which is courteous and firm.

Here are some of the initial comments from YouTube and Facebook:

“I went to check my local school after I saw the video you posted on this today — sure enough, 3 telecom vehicles were the only vehicles in sight. Sneaky and evil. “
-Deirde R, March 19 (Texas)

“My sister is a teacher in TN and they have been told to stay out while maintenance cleans.”
-Break the Chains, March 20

“The installation of 5G towers while everyone is being ‘quarantined’.”
-Phoenix M, March 20 (BC)

“At least 40+ vans. Not including the ones parked in corner of buildings or in front of schools.”
-Ivonne J, March 20 (North Texas)

“They are installing 5g around schools here in Richmond, Virginia today–the first day schools are closed due to this fake coronavirus. Trucks are out digging up roads for the fiber installation of 5g.”
-Commenter, March 17

“This is a Federal Company, a simple google search leads you to their licensing. They are sub licensed as “Business Radio Licensing”, pretty generic name huh? which is a front company for the feds and 5g.”
-WTF198, March 19

“Im actually watching these Persons in their altech trucks placing 5G boxes on poles right outside of my apartment building right.now. They started down the whole block actually.”
-Wanda F, March 17

“I live across the street from two schools… This morning I saw 2 white trucks and men wearing yellow vest. They seemed to be with the electric company but nothing on their truck or person said so.”
-Barbara L, March 18

” One of the shopping malls in downtown Seattle is closed till April 2nd “because of the Virus” – A worker there told my Mom they are installing Five Jee during the closure. All dining establishments and our library are also closed and one of the downtown Starbucks is doing “renovations” – I think they are using the Virus as a cover for the nationwide roll-out. “
-Rusty S, March 19

Apparently happening in Denmark too
-March 19

Where could this all be leading?

Our concern is that 5G could be installed without our knowledge while we are grappling with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the installation of biometric systems could be a part of a more sinister agenda.

Namely, we are concerned that after the COVID-19 pandemic passes we will still be dealing with the repercussions of newly installed 5G, biometric systems, thermal imaging cameras or even temperature guns to detect who MAY have COVID-19.

Even more worrisome is the idea of government-mandated vaccinations; and, for example, that only those who can prove they have received the COVID-19 vaccine (once it’s developed) will be allowed back to work, school, public parks, public transportation, etc.

This is even more worrisome when you consider that Bill Gates – a long time proponent of vaccinations and population control – recently stated:

“Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”

What does Gates mean by a “digital certificate”? Could it be tied in to the Global ID2020 or the discussion of a “tattoo” that tells the medical authorities whether you have been vaccinated, for example?

It certainly seems so, by admissions on this Reddit thread:

At the moment we simply don’t know where the COVID-19 pandemic will lead, but it is certainly being exploited to push several agendas which do not bode well for human health and freedom.

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Borrowing from the moniker of horseracing as the ‘Sport of Kings’ this writer is going further into the sewer of media hype. I love sports and acknowledge that I am a fan of many sports, with even some teams as my favorites. Methinks that in the past few years I have been more and more violated by what comes across as the ‘Sports Talk  Media’.

In a word they have ALL become the whores they probably always were at heart. You turn on any channel on ESPN or Fox Sports Network or CBS Sports, or any other I have missed mentioning, and you get this: “How much so and so is going to be paid in mega millions for how long a contract.” Or “How much so and so wants to be paid as a free agent etc.” They don’t even talk about strategy or things of that nature.

Instead it is how much these Fat Cat team owners are going to be paying out from the mega millions, even billions they are earning. Of course, the other culprits here are the media outlets who subsidize this insanity, by the billions they are making from all we suckers! After all, have you looked at your cable bills lately? From $ 30- $ 50 a month for a slew of channels, we now fork out well over $ 150 a month for the same coverage. Then you have the ancillary costs that the ‘fans’ pay out for tickets or licensed products. All those of us who wear the team hats, jerseys, sweatshirts etc pay through the nose for this shit! I for one, with all my faults as a ‘Fan’, made a decision years ago to only buy such things when they were outdated and reduced drastically in price… very drastically.

Here’s the skinny on this: Tens of millions of diehard fans, who are now suffering as this writer by this blackout on almost all sports, should be outraged as I am by this shill sports media.

You have most of those (so called) sports journalists earning mega millions while the overwhelming majority of their audience are now worried about staying financially afloat during this pandemic. Much more importantly, even if there was NO pandemic, it is outrageous that our economic system is such that too many of we ‘Sports fans’ still are lucky to even afford our cable bills, let alone paying the shyster prices for tickets to games or sports paraphernalia.

Many working stiff dads and moms do that as much for their kids as they do for themselves. Yet, there needs to be some Righteous Anger at the piggery and arrogance of the whole professional sports world.. and that of the college coaching profession. By the way, I am sick and tired of hearing coaches, many of whom are NOT even coaching anymore, being interviewed by those sports hype artist media whores and called ‘Coach’. Come on, are these men and women wearing a divinity label or Ph D. moniker? No, they are just coaches and nothing more. But, the whole agenda here is to make them into too much more essential and vital than anyone else.

I remember watching a scene from Chazz Palminteri’s great film ‘A Bronx Tale’ when Sonny, the gangster is speaking with the young boy he likes and counsels on life. The kid mentions how Mickey Mantle is his hero etc. Sonny, played by Palminteri, says to the kid “Does Mickey Mantle pay your rent?” As my old street corner compatriot Walt DeYoung always ended his writings “Nuff Said.”

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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].

Crises are opportunities for ruling authorities to institute policies not easily introduced during normal times.

Post-9/11 and at other extraordinary times, the public is willfully deceived to believe that by sacrificing personal freedoms, greater security is possible — not realizing that both will be lost.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The cost of its loss is tyranny — the US and West far advanced toward it’s becoming full-blown.

Protecting public health to prevent COVID-19 from spreading by stay-at-home orders, state and community lockdowns, and social distancing reflect common sense policymaking.

Overstepping occurs if martial law is declared and constitutional rights are suspended — what tyrannical police state rule is all about.

Post-9/11, US hardline rule became reality by presidential executive orders, national and homeland security presidential directives, and enactment of police state laws — along with actions against designated domestic and foreign adversaries, dissent, civil liberties, human rights, and other democratic freedoms.

State-sponsored indefinite detentions, assassinations, extraordinary renditions, military commission trials, torture, mass surveillance, and other extrajudicial actions were instituted and remain in place on the phony pretext of protecting national security at a time when America’s only enemies are invented.

For nearly two decades, the US has been waging war OF terrorism, not on it, at home and abroad — a bipartisan coup d’etat on world peace, equity, justice and the rule of law.

Police state measures were prepared in advance and on the shelf for rolling out in the aftermath of the 9/11 mother of all state-sponsored false flags.

The mother of all establishment media promoted Big Lies left most people unaware that what happened on that fateful day was all about advancing Washington’s imperium, along with cracking down on homeland freedoms.

Will spreading COVID-19 outbreaks in the US be used as a pretext for further hardening of hardline police state rule, including suspension of vital habeas rights?

According to Politico on Saturday,  the Trump regime’s Justice Department “quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies,” adding:

Documents seen by Politico “detail the (DOJ’s) requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted.”

The Trump regime already closed the nation’s borders (except for commerce), imposed restrictions on international and domestic air travel, barred foreign nationals from entering the US who’ve been in China, Iran, and European countries recently, and suspended visa services at US embassies and consulates worldwide.

About a fourth of the US population is locked down following orders by individual state governors, others highly likely to follow, perhaps the entire nation in the days and weeks ahead as COVID-19 outbreaks will likely continue to increase before abating.

Some measures are justified to enhance public safety, others not.

Clearly no justification exists to order indefinite detentions arbitrarily under any circumstances.

If permitted or not, will martial law and suspension of the constitution follow?

According to Politico, one of the documents it saw calls for Congress to empower the attorney general to circumvent judicial proceedings “whenever (a) district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”

The authority would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings.”

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers executive director Norman Reimer said if indefinite detentions without trial become the law of the land, habeas rights no longer will exist as long as the practice continues.

Anyone for any reason, real or invented, “could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over.”

“I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”

“This is something that should never happen” anywhere!

The DOJ document also asked Congress to suspend “statute of limitations or criminal investigations and civil proceedings during national emergencies,” said Politico, adding:

The DOJ wants Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure “change(d) to expand the use of videoconference hearings, and to let some of those hearings happen without defendants’ consent, according to the draft legislative text.”

According to Reimer, forced video hearing (without consent of the accused) would violate their civil liberties — “a terrible road to go down.”

“We have a right to public trials. People have a right to be present in court” represented by counsel.

Tahirih Justice Center head Layli Miller-Munro said the DOJ request, if implemented, would block refugees and asylum seekers from entering the US — a way to keep unwanted people of the wrong race, creed, color, or nationality out of the country.

Make no mistake. The DOJ document was likely prepared before or straightaway after the onset of COVID-19 outbreaks.

The 300-plus page USA Patriot Act was written before 9/11, readied to be considered by Congress, passed, and signed into law six weeks after the state-sponsored false flag.

The Trump regime will likely take full advantage of spreading COVID-19 outbreaks for hardened police state rule — instead of prioritizing public health and economic justice actions for ordinary Americans.

The greatest risk to remaining personal freedoms for ordinary Americans will be if martial law and suspension of the Constitution become the law of the land by executive order.

Perhaps it’s coming if Congress and/or the courts don’t intervene to block it.

While extraordinary times call for extraordinary actions, it’s vital to institute them lawfully to protect public health and welfare as top priority.

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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.

“You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own,” President Barack Obama told hundreds of cheering U.S. troops in Baghdad on April 7, 2009, his first visit to the country after being elected. He added that now, “Iraqis need to take responsibility for their country.”

For brazen hypocrisy and condescension, these words—repeated in essence by virtually all the top civilian and military officials of the Bush and Obama administrations over the past eight years—are hard to beat.

The implication is that before the U.S. invasion and occupation in 2003, Iraq was not able to “stand on its own,” and now the Iraqi people must be prodded to “take responsibility for their country.” This theme is really no different than the racist propaganda used by the colonial powers to justify their murderous exploitation in Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East over hundreds of years.

The real history of modern Iraq is deliberately distorted or completely ignored by the corporate media and officials here for the simple reason that it utterly demolishes this colonialist narrative, while at the same time exposing  the actual driving forces behind U.S. intervention in a country half a world away..

July 14, 2011, marks the 53rd anniversary of the Iraqi Revolution. The 1958 revolution ended four decades of British domination and marked the beginning of Iraqi independence. The fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, reduced Iraq once more to colonial status, now under U.S. rather than British rule.

Iraq before the 1958 revolution

Iraq is one of the oldest continually inhabited centers of human civilization, long known as Mesopotamia or the “land between the [Tigris and Euphrates] rivers.” Modern Iraq came into being in the aftermath of World War I (1914-18), a war of empires vs. empires. At the end of the war, the winners took over the colonies of the losers. Britain and France took over much of the Middle East from the defeated Turkey-based Ottoman Empire, and divided it up between them.

The former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul became the new British “mandate” of Iraq. The British were also awarded Palestine by the just-established “League of Nations.” France was given “mandates” over present-day Lebanon and Syria. All were in reality colonies. The mandate system was justified on the supposed basis that the Arab people needed the tutelage of the British and French to prepare for “self-rule.”

The Arab people did not see it that way. In 1919 and 1920, revolts swept the region, from Egypt (also under British control) to Iraq, where the heaviest fighting took place, leaving thousands dead including the British commanding general. In 1925, another uprising, centered in the predominantly Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was answered by the British dropping poison gas from planes on the population.

Because of the fierce resistance to colonial domination by Arabs and Kurds alike, Britain granted Iraq its nominal independence in 1932. But it was independence in name only. The country was ruled by a British-installed monarchy, and continued to be occupied by British military bases.

Intifadas (uprisings) against the rule of British and their Iraqi collaborators, like Nuri as-Said, continued and intensified after the end of World War II.

To fortify their domination, the British promoted the development of a class of big landowners in Iraq, who exported grain, dates and other products. The peasants, who constituted the majority of the population, were treated as serfs–bound to the land and living in utter poverty.

In the 1950s, life expectancy in Iraq was 28-30 years. Infant mortality was estimated at 300-350 per 1,000 live births. By comparison, infant mortality in England at the time was around 25 per 1,000 births.

Illiteracy was more than 80 percent for men and 90 percent for women. Diseases related to malnutrition and unsanitary water were rampant.

A statistical survey at the time showed income of less than 13 Fils—4 cents—per day for individual peasants in Diwaniya, one of the more prosperous agricultural regions.

According to a 1952 World Bank report, the average yearly income for all Iraqis was $82. For peasants it was $21. (“Revolution in Iraq,” Society of Graduates of American Universities in Iraq, 1959)

Neocolonial and landlord rule was maintained by a ruthless secret police/military regime that tortured, murdered and imprisoned countless thousands of Iraqis. Still, the resistance was strong, as evidenced by the fact that Iraq was placed under martial law 11 times between 1935 and 1954, for a total of nine years and four months.

Underlying Iraq’s extreme poverty was this simple fact: oil-rich Iraq owned none of its own oil.

The United States and Iraq

U.S. involvement in Iraq began after World War I. U.S. corporations were granted 23.75 percent of Iraq’s oil as a reward for having entered World War I on the side of the victorious British and French empires. British, French and Dutch oil companies also each received 23.75 percent shares of Iraq’s petroleum resources. The broker of the deal, an Armenian oil baron named Calouste Gulbenkian, got the remaining five percent.

In the latter stages of World War II (1939-1945), the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, dominated by big banking, oil and other corporate interests, were determined to restructure the post-war world to ensure the dominant position of the United States.

The key elements in their strategy were: 1) U.S. military superiority in nuclear and conventional weaponry; 2) U.S. domination of newly created international institutions like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and establishment of the dollar as the world currency; 3) control of global resources, particularly oil.

In pursuit of the latter, the U.S. government was intent on taking control of certain strategic assets of the British Empire, the war-time alliance between the two countries notwithstanding. Among those assets was Iraq.

A February 1944 exchange between U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes clear that the British were well aware of U.S. intentions. Churchill wrote Roosevelt: “Thank you very much for your assurances about no sheep’s eyes [looking enviously] on our oilfields in Iran and Iraq. Let me reciprocate by giving you the fullest assurance that we have no thought of trying to horn in upon your interests or property in Saudi Arabia.” (quoted in Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War, 1968)

What this note clearly shows is that the U.S. leaders were so intent on taking over Iran and Iraq, both important neo-colonies of Britain, that alarm bells had been set off in British ruling circles.

Despite Churchill’s bluster, there was nothing the British could do to restrain rising U.S. power. Within a few years, the British ruling class would adapt to the new reality and accept its new role as Washington’s junior partner, a position it continues to occupy today.

In 1953, after the CIA coup that overthrew a nationalist government and put the Shah (king) back in power in Iran, the United States took control of that country. And by the mid-1950s, Iraq was jointly controlled by the United States and Britain.

In 1955, Washington set up the Baghdad Pact, which included its client regimes at the time in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Iraq, along with Britain.

The Baghdad Pact, also called CENTO—Central Treaty Organization, had two purposes. First, to oppose the rise of Arab and other liberation movements in the Middle East and south Asia. And second, to be another in a series of military alliances—NATO, SEATO and ANZUS were the others—encircling the socialist camp of the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea and North Vietnam.

The Iraqi Revolution

But on July 14, 1958, a military rebellion led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Free Officers movement turned into a country-wide revolution. The king and his administration were suddenly gone, the recipients of people’s justice.

The 1958 revolution put an end to colonial domination and marked the beginning of Iraq’s real independence. Although the Iraqi Communist Party was the biggest organized force among the revolutionary forces, the revolution did not lead to a socialist transformation of the country. The ICP strategy was an alliance with the anti-colonial nationalist bourgeoisie.

Though not a socialist revolution, the Iraqi Revolution created panic in Washington and on Wall Street. President Dwight Eisenhower called it “the gravest crisis since the Korean War.

The day after the Iraqi Revolution, 20,000 U.S. Marines began landing in Lebanon. The day after that, 6,600 British paratroopers were dropped into Jordan.

The U.S. and British expeditionary forces went in to save the neo-colonial governments in Lebanon and Jordan. Had they not, the popular impulse from Iraq would have surely brought down the Western-dependent regimes in Beirut and Amman.

But Eisenhower and his generals had something else in mind as well: invading Iraq, overturning the revolution and re-installing a puppet government in Baghdad.

Three factors forced Washington to abandon that plan in 1958: 1) the sweeping character of the Iraqi Revolution; 2) the announcement by the United Arab Republic—Syria and Egypt were then one state that bordered Iraq—that its forces would fight the imperialists if they sought to invade; and 3) strong support for the revolution from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The USSR began to mobilize troops in the southern Soviet republics close to Iraq.

Over the next three decades, the United States applied many tactics designed to weaken and undermine Iraq as an independent country. At various times—for instance after Iraq completed nationalizing the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972 and signed a defense treaty with the USSR—the United States gave massive military support to Kurdish elements fighting Baghdad and added Iraq to its list of “terrorist states.”

Washington supported the more rightist elements within the post-revolution political structure against the communist and left-nationalist forces. For example, the United States backed the overthrow and assassination of President Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1963 by a right-wing military grouping. And Washington applauded the suppression of the left and unions by the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party governments in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, the United States encouraged and helped to fund and arm Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, in its war against Iran. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger revealed the real U.S. attitude about the war: “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose.”

Bourgeois governments in both Iran and Iraq pursued the war for expansionist aims. The war was a disaster for both Iran and Iraq, killing a million people and weakening both countries.

Social advances

Despite the numerous internal and external conflicts, Iraq made rapid strides forward in development after the 1958 revolution and particularly following the complete nationalization of oil operations in 1972.

Billions of dollars of oil revenue paid for development of water and sewage treatment facilities, modern roads, ports, railways and airports, and electrification even for many remote areas of the country.

Iraq created the best health care system in the region, and health care was free. So, too, was education through university. Food was subsidized and food imports greatly increased in order to meet the needs of the population.

By virtually all indices that measure social progress—literacy, infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy, etc.—Iraq’s progress was extraordinarily dramatic.

Many students from Africa and poorer Arab countries received scholarships that covered all expenses to attend Iraqi universities. Iraq educated and trained hundreds of thousands of doctors, engineers, nurses, scientists and other personnel needed to lead and operate a rapidly modernizing society. Women, particularly in the urban areas, made major gains.

At the same time, Iraq was still a developing country and highly dependent on one commodity: oil. When the sanctions blockade was imposed on Iraq in 1990, it was importing 65 percent of its medicine, 70 percent of its food and up to 100 percent of infrastructure and other goods, paying for them with oil revenues.

The collapse of the USSR and the Gulf War

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, developments in the Soviet Union posed a new threat to Iraq. In pursuit of an illusory “permanent détente” with the United States, the Gorbachev leadership in Moscow was eliminating or sharply cutting back its support for allies in the developing world.

In 1989, Gorbachev withdrew support for the socialist governments in Eastern Europe, most of which then collapsed. This sharp shift in the world relationship of forces, culminating with the fall of the Soviet Union itself two years later, opened the door for the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991—and for more than a decade of sanctions/blockade and bombing that severely weakened Iraq and its people.

It would have been inconceivable even a few years earlier that Soviet leaders would have stood by while the United States sent more than half a million troops to attack a nearby country with which the USSR had a mutual defense agreement.

Rather than ushering in a new era of peace, the counter-revolutionary overturn of the governments of the USSR and the socialist camp was seen in Washington as the green light for a new round of wars and interventions.

In the 1991 war, more than 88,500 tons of bombs were dropped on Iraq. While U.S. leaders justified the war on the basis of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait after a long and bitter dispute, U.S. military tactics showed that the main aim was to destroy Iraq. The civilian infrastructure throughout the country—water, power, phone and sewage systems, food and medicine production, storage facilities, schools and hospitals, roads and bridges, and more—were targeted, often many times over. Military targets and troops were also hit, with an estimated 125,000 Iraqi soldiers killed.

Blockaded and bombed for 13 years

The sanctions passed by the UN Security Council at the behest of the United States on August 6, 1990, were killing people even before the bombing began five months later. The sanctions on Iraq were the most comprehensive in history; in reality, it was a blockade of the country, enforced by military means that was to last for 13 years, killing more than 1 million people, half of them children under the age of five.

Through the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush up to the 2003 invasion, Iraq was bombed several times per week, with several periods of intense assault. There were numerous coup attempts organized by the CIA. And the death toll from the blockade was relentless, as U.S. officials were well aware.

On May 12, 1996, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, appeared on the TV program “60 Minutes.” Albright was asked by reporter Leslie Stahl, who had just returned from Iraq, about the impact of the sanctions: “We have heard that a half million children have died, I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s response was a rare exposure of the real and monstrous thinking of the imperialist policymakers: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”

Still, the desired goal of regime change, which became official U.S. policy when Clinton signed the “Iraq Liberation Act” in 1998, was not achieved. It became clear that regime change could only be achieved by a military invasion.

After a protracted public relations campaign—demonizing Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders, attempting to link Iraq to the Sept. 11 attack, fabricating claims that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” including nuclear weapons—U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003.

In April 2003, the U.S. and British rulers finally achieved what they had wanted to do since July 1958: counter-revolution in Iraq. While U.S. leaders and their corporate media had relentlessly promoted the idea that their goal of “regime change” simply involved removing the ultra-demonized Hussein and his immediate circle, in reality, Washington’s aim was to destroy everything that made Iraq an independent state.

The entire government and state apparatus was disbanded, from the military to the government ministries to the state-run food-distribution and health-care systems.

Early in the war, U.S. military forces seized the great prize in Iraq, the rich oil fields in the north and south. Iraq holds an estimated 12 percent of the world’s proven petroleum reserves.

In the eight-plus years since, it is estimated that more than 1 million Iraqi “excess deaths”—deaths due to the occupation—have occurred. There have been 4.5 million Iraqis displaced internally or out of the country. The number of wounded remains uncounted, but must also be in the millions. All of this in a country of about 27 million people.

The social fabric of the country has been ripped apart due to the occupation. The occupiers have favored some ethnic and religious groups against others.

In a country where the long summers frequently see temperatures over 120 degrees, electricity is less available than even in the time of the sanctions.

Millions of tons of toxic waste, including depleted uranium used in bullets and shells, have been dumped in Iraq by the occupation forces.

Iraq has suffered extreme looting by the occupiers. Just one example is that, on July 27, 2010, the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction released a report stating that the Pentagon cannot account for 95 percent of the Development Fund for Iraq.

The DFI was set up by L. Paul Bremer, who ruled Iraq as virtual dictator for the first 15 months of the occupation. The $9.1 billion in the account came from Iraq’s frozen assets in the United States and other countries, and the sale of Iraqi oil. Of that amount, $8.7 billion is “missing.” No one has been charged with any crime nor is any crime even alleged by the U.S. authorities.

Countering the ludicrous claim that the U.S. occupation has “given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own,” a Mercer Quality of Living survey released on May 26, 2010, ranked Baghdad—one of the truly great and historic cities of the world—dead last in a list of “most livable cities.”

What Iraq needs and deserves from the United States is not more dishonest and insulting speeches, but instead a complete end to the occupation and reparations for the terrible damage done.

Despite all the indescribable horrors they have suffered, the Iraqi people have not given up and will continue their struggle until they regain what they first won 53 years ago—real independence and sovereignty.

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For those who follow the global immunization agenda and its implementation on different continents, the announcement of a new pandemic didn’t come as a surprise.  “Pandemic preparedness” has been well-funded and a buzz word for a long time before becoming a priority at the last G7 summits, the Davos World Economic Forum and other meetings of global governance. The latest simulation for preparedness was Event 201,^[1] a rehearsal of a coronavirus pandemic organized on October 18, 2019 in New York by Johns Hopkins University, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum.

The Presidential election campaign in the United States and the controversial mandatory measles vaccination law in Germany provided perfect timing. What better than viral terror to influence public opinion and health policies on vaccine battles raging on both sides of the Atlantic?

Soon after that meeting, the big “measles scare” campaign started in Disneyland in December 2014, leading to the removal of vaccine exemption rights in California. Meanwhile, Italy, which had been designated to be the forerunner of this agenda in Europe, set things in motion to mandate eight additional childhood vaccines.

The movie Vaxxed then came out in April 2016, during the Presidential campaign.  Many American families voted for Donald Trump, hoping that he would create a commission to investigate vaccine safety, as he seemed to have a particular interest. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, repeated that “the science is clear, the earth is round, the sky is blue and vaccines work” throughout her campaign. A few days before the November 2016 vote,^[3] President Obama signed major US funding for the GHSA, together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Unfortunately, after the election, the vaccine safety commission that was supposed to be led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. never came to pass. On the contrary, draconian vaccine legislation made its way to several states. California, for example, which had already abolished personal belief exemptions, stripped away almost all medical exemptions in 2019, commencing a medical inquisition against doctors who put their patients first.^[4]  Many Californians, realizing that their Eldorado had become a gilded cage, moved to freer states for vaccine choice, like Texas or Idaho.^[5]

A vaccine war

In 2020, vaccines could weigh even more heavily in US elections. In fact, one could almost say that a vaccine war is going on across the US.  After California, states like New Jersey, Maine, Connecticut, Virginia, Hawaii, Colorado and many others are trying to adopt harsher vaccine laws.  But vaccine freedom advocates are getting more organized, too, putting pressure on elected officials and candidates and even introducing their own legislation. For example, after the New Jersey legislature twice failed to pass a repeal of the religious exemption, even though Speaker Steven Sweeney vowed to “go to war” to get it passed, legislators proposed several vaccine safety bills.^[6] The Maryland legislature refused to allow pharmacists to administer vaccines, and in South Dakota, the legislature considered, although rejected, a bill that would have completely prohibited all medical mandates of any kind.^[7]

Europe too is undergoing a similar wave of coercive legislation and pushback.  In Germany, compulsory measles vaccination has just come into force in early March, even though the country has one of the highest coverage rates — 97% one dose, 93% two doses — and very few cases of illness or death.  This vote comes two years after Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that there would be no mandatory vaccinations in Germany,^[8] as informed consent had “solid historical reasons.”

Sadly, informed consent and the Nuremberg Code may now exist only in the museum of democratic values.  The new German law is particularly restrictive.  There is no option for home schooling, and the measles vaccine obligation applies to adults working in the health and education sectors as well. But German citizens may be ready to fight back.  Families and doctors are fighting the mandates in courts,^[9] and protests were planned all over the country for March 21, including a major event in Munich with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and activists from all over Europe – until the coronavirus pandemic intervened.^[10] Everywhere in Europe — in Great Britain, Austria, Belgium, Romania, Slovenia, from Ukraine to Spain — mandatory vaccination bills are being introduced. Faced with the violation of human rights that their Constitutions guarantee, people have filed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights.  The Court, whose jurisdiction covers 49 countries throughout Europe and Eurasia, will hear cases on mandatory vaccination on April 30, 2020 arising from the Czech Republic.

It is undeniable that the coronavirus epidemic has come on the scene at a crucial moment, when people everywhere are in revolt against the power of international financial institutions and multinational pharmaceutical corporations, whose stranglehold on governments is no longer hidden. Many scandals have shaken confidence. The bankruptcy of an aberrant economic system is accelerating, and attempts to start a third world war are multiplying. While it is impossible to know how the “coronavirus pandemic” will influence the redistribution of power, it is certain that many are seeking to have Covid-19 serve the political interests of a global governance project.

Iran

Interestingly, the second largest outbreak started in Iran, a country which, like China, does not bend to the West’s dictates. It is also currently involved with Syria and Russia in a tug-of-war with Turkey, NATO, and its traditional allies.  After having refused all outside help in the management of the pandemic, Iran made a complete about-face by inviting the WHO to its rescue. It seems that the virus had contaminated a number of high-ranking government officials, including those close to Ayatollah Khamenei, and the former Iranian ambassador to Syria, who died in the early days of the epidemic.  Taking an unusual sanitary measure, the Iranian government released  85,000 “uncontaminated” prisoners to avoid contagion in prisons.  At the same time, officials blamed US sanctions, which were reimposed on Tehran after Washington abandoned the Iran 2015 nuclear deal, for “hampering their efforts to fight the coronavirus.”  Iran called again for lifting the ban and asked the International Monetary Fund for a $5 billion loan to fight the outbreak.^[11]

In Europe, as luck would have it, the pandemic first affected northern Italy, namely Lombardy and Veneto, which have by far the largest number of vaccine hesitant people in Europe and probably the world.  Veneto strongly opposed the expansion of vaccine mandates.  Activists demonstrated for months, with rallies of more than 50,000 people. As a result, the regional government appealed to the Council of State, arguing that the law violated constitutional freedoms and demanded autonomy in health matters. Of note, the WHO then decided to move its European headquarters to Venice, the capital of Veneto.

At the beginning of the disease outbreak, the Italian authorities considered it unnecessary to impose a two-week school quarantine on children returning from a trip to China, in order not to “stigmatize” them. (By contrast, unvaccinated children are stigmatized and prohibited from attending school year round.) Officials disagreed on Covid-19 diagnosis and “crisis measures,” reflecting conflicts between regional parties and medical experts. But the WHO soon managed to take control of the situation^[12] and appointed a special advisor, Dr. Gualtiero Ricciardi, who had been forced to resign earlier from the Italian HHS due to a long list of undeclared conflicts of interest, to steer the coronavirus crisis.

Since then, panic and alarm have escalated continuously, as have the Veneto region’s accusations of “anti-scientific”^[13] management. Although the country has been in a complete lockdown for weeks, cases keep increasing and the estimated number of deaths is now nearing 3,000. This sends a frightening signal, but these numbers need to be seen with caution. First, one of the major reasons why Italy is “overwhelmed,”  is because of the crisis its public hospitals were already facing before the epidemic. The number of intensive care units has dropped by half over the last 20 years, dropping from the highest to the lowest number of beds per capita in Europe to around 230 per 100,000 inhabitants. In other words, the situation was already disastrous.

Second, there is a lot of controversy about the number of deaths that can really be ascribed to the epidemic. Testing is not very reliable and suffers many biases. According to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, who had chaired the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Health Committee that called an emergency debate on the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in the declaration of the H1N1 flu pandemic by WHO in 2009,  “the tests are currently not measuring the incidence of coronavirus diseases, but the activity of the specialists searching for them.”^[14] Many experts also disagree on the mortality rate of Covid-19. While the WHO gives estimates as high as 3.4%, renowned epidemiologists such as John Ioannidis^[15] consider the risk is probably much lower, perhaps 0.125%, for which there are no reasons to take such draconian measures.

France

In France, too, declarations of the Covid-19 pandemic seemed to have a flair for strategic time and place. When Minister of Health Agnes Buzyn suddenly left office to replace a candidate who was running for mayor of Paris (he had to step down after a sex scandal), the coronavirus crisis seemed to be reasonably manageable. But the Covid-19 threat arose again at an opportune time — to ban large protests against a highly unpopular law that slashed pensions and on the eve of local March elections. After the first round of voting, a complete lockdown was announced. The former health minister, who wasn’t elected mayor, expressed her regret for leaving office during the coronavirus crisis, saying that she knew from the start that the epidemic would escalate and soon turn into a major catastrophe…

But a disaster in France is easy to predict, as the situation is very similar to Italy. 1,300 public hospital doctors have been on administrative strike for almost a year. They refused to share the responsibility and decisions of a state that no longer provides minimal funds to run public health services. In the last two decades, the available number of beds has been reduced by 100,000 and the remaining facilities are largely understaffed. Patients who died after waiting endless hours in the emergency room were already frequently reported by the media long before the coronavirus epidemic.

So the former health minister, who had received fierce criticism for her inability to solve this lingering hospital crisis, knew perfectly well that the coronavirus situation would further exacerbate the problem. Recently, when President Macron visited doctors fighting the epidemic to show his support, medical staff took the opportunity to express their anger towards his disastrous health policies in front of the camera.

The silent war in the treatment against Covid-19 

Finally, the Coronavirus epidemic reveals the huge discrepancy between the WHO health strategies and the reality for scientists and doctors who put patients’ lives first.

The current power struggle in France about coronavirus strategies between health officials and the country’s leading expert is truly eye opening.  Professor Didier Raoult, who is one of the world’s top 5 scientists on communicable diseases and leads the high tech research center on infectious diseases,  IHU – mediterranée Marseilles, argued that the approach of mass quarantine is both inefficient and outdated and that large scale testing and treatment of suspected cases achieves far better results.

Early on, Dr. Raoult suggested the use of hydroxychloroquine (Chloroquine or Plaquenil), a well-known, simple, and inexpensive drug that has shown efficacy with previous coronaviruses such as SARS.  By mid-February, clinical trials at his institute and in China already confirmed that the drug could reduce the viral load and bring spectacular improvement. The Chinese scientists published their first trials on more than 100 patients and announced that the Chinese National Health Commission would recommend Chloroquine in their new guidelines to treat Covid-19.^[16]

As a member of a similar French committee, Dr. Raoult immediately shared the great news with health authorities.  But they replied that there was not enough scientific evidence to prove efficacy and warned against potential side effects of the drug, preferring to focus their efforts to find new molecules and develop a new vaccine, with France’s Sanofi Pasteur included in the coronavirus vaccine competition.

But Dr. Raoult and 600 members of his institute continued their work and confirmed similar results in a trial of 24 patients that was published March 3, 2020.^[17] Dr. Raoult has recorded daily videos^[18] to share his research and knowledge, sometimes reaching half a million views in a couple of days. Hospitals and general practitioners started to treat their patients with the drug until it quickly went out of stock.

In fact, for an unknown reason, last October, the French minister of health suddenly decided to put this long used over-the-counter drug on the list of  “controlled substances” and make it a prescription drug.

Now, a month later, under the growing pressure of doctors and the media, the government has finally decided to “consider more trials” of this protocol, and Sanofi Pasteur has announced that it will offer enough doses to potentially treat 300,000 patients.^[19]

Although Chloroquine was cited second on the WHO’s original list of drugs to be evaluated for coronavirus treatment as a drug on its list of “essential medicines,” the WHO has not yet released any information about it and has not even mentioned the four clinical trials that received official European Union approval.  While the WHO has repeatedly praised China and South Korea, for their “efficient response” using draconian quarantine measures, there has been no mention of the fact that those countries are using Chloroquine as an efficient Covid-19 treatment. But having used Chloroquine together with quarantine, China is nearing the end of its epidemic.

Interestingly, on February 26, the United Kingdom put Chloroquine on its list^[120] of drugs that can no longer be exported outside the country. In the United States, a white paper,^[21] published on March 13 by researchers from the National Academy of Science and Stanford Medical School, proposes that “the United States of America and other countries should immediately authorize and indemnify medical doctors for prescribing chloroquine to treat COVID-19.”

But so far, the only words we hear from the WHO and Western health officials are “quarantine,” “fast tracking vaccines,” and “the search for new drugs.”  Obviously, there is no real interest in using a generic drug that can provide immediate treatment and prevention for a price around $5. As a financial consultant recently asked in an article, “If a Covid-19 Therapy Doesn’t Benefit A Stock, Does It Event Exist?”^[22] The answer, sadly, is obviously not.

It looks as if the WHO and our Western governments have decided to keep fueling the panic and raising the alert level, pushing the “Global Health Security Threat” narrative to the hilt.  How much longer will we have to wait for effective treatment? How much longer with this global lockdown last? Officials say “until a new vaccine has been developed,” which will probably be in fast track mode by a well-known philanthropist after most courts in the world have ruled that mandatory vaccination does not violate human rights.

Or perhaps until the economy has completely crashed and can be rebuilt on a “healthy basis”? Here is a clue: the European Central Bank has launched a “Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program”^[23] that will last until “the coronavirus Covid-19 crisis phase is over, but in any case not before the end of the year”!

Anything can happen now. No one can know for sure if we will emerge out of the coronavirus crisis as subjects of a techno-communist global government or if a new freedom virus will derail such a program. Certainly the world will not be the same.

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Senta Depuydt is a Belgian freelance journalist with a degree in communications. In 2016, she organized the first European Congress on biomedical treatments in Paris and has hosted debates on the biology of autism and vaccine safety in many French-speaking countries. She arranged for premieres of “Vaxxed” in Brussels, Paris and Cannes and an event at UNESCO. She is a board member of the French League for Free Choice in Vaccination and in the European Forum for Vaccine Vigilance. She works with health freedom organizations across Europe.

Notes

1. Event 201.
2. Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) meeting.
3. Executive Order — Advancing the Global Health Security Agenda to Achieve a World Safe and Secure from Infectious Disease Threats.
4. California vaccine bill exemption rules agreed to by Newsom and lawmakers.
5. ‘California refugees’ move to Idaho for lax vaccine laws. They want lawmakers to know why.
6. ‘We’re ready to go to war on this’: N.J. lawmakers pledge to reintroduce failed vaccine bill.
7. South Dakota Considers First State Bill To Outlaw All Vaccine AND Medical Mandates.
8. Genèse de l’obligation vaccinale contre la
   rougeole en Allemagne.
9. Erste Verfassungsbeschwerden in Karlsruhe übergeben.
10. Invitation to european protest for medical freedom.
11. Coronavirus: Iran frees 85,000 prisoners to combat spread of infection.
12. Joint WHO and ECDC mission in Italy to support COVID-19 control and prevention efforts.
13. Coronavirus, Ricciardi (OMS): “Il Veneto si è comportato in maniera antiscientifica”.
14. W.Wodarg “Without PCR-Tests There Would Be No Reasons For Special Alarms”, 1.3.20, wodarg.com.
15. A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.
16. Expert consensus on comprehensive treatment of coronavirus disease in Shanghai 2019.
17. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as available weapons to fight COVID-19.
18. mediterranee-infection.com.
19. https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-lab-Sanofi-hypothetically-offers-millions-of-doses-of-potential-Covid-19-Plaquenil-anti-malaria-drug.
20. Medicines that cannot be parallel exported from the UK.
21. March 13 White Paper
22. If a COVID-19 Therapy Doesn’t Benefit a Stock, Does it Even Exist?.
23. The Governing Council will terminate net asset purchases under PEPP once it judges that the coronavirus Covid-19 crisis phase is over, but in any case not before the end of the year.

“The test of our [moral] progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd American President (1933-1945); (in his ‘Second Inaugural Address’, Wed., Jan. 20, 1937).

“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. … By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.” —John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist, 1936.

“Our economic leadership does not seem to be aware that the normal functioning of our economy leads to financial trauma and crises, inflation, currency depreciations, unemployment and poverty in the middle of what could be virtually universal affluence —in short that financially complex capitalism is inherently flawed.” —Hyman Minsky (1919-1996), American economist, 1986.

Here we go again: Another financial bubble burst and another financial crisis threatening to disrupt the real economy! This time the trigger is the health pandemic of the coronavirus crisis, the most serious in a generation, which is paralyzing the real economy and triggering crashes in the financial sector.

The crisis and public measures to fight it (drastic travel restrictions, social distancing, worker quarantines, etc.) have provoked a major global economic meltdown and perturbed supply chains domestically and around the world. Moreover, they have profoundly shaken financial markets already vulnerable, after years of easy money policies and round after round of so-called ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE) by central banks, which have encouraged unsustainable debt levels by pushing interest rates down at historically low levels, irresponsible large fiscal deficits by governments during prosperous times, which have enriched the very rich, and runaway unregulated financial speculation that have had the same result.

An oil supply glut worldwide has now produced an additional deflationary bias in the world economy, which will be difficult to reverse. To top it all, there are countries that are presently run by inexperienced and/or incompetent leaders.

As a result, the world is presently going through a convergence of health and economic crises that creates a perfect economic storm, for which many countries are not prepared at all to handle.

In the United States, for example, only two years ago, in 2018, President Donald Trump fired his top health official (Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer) who was responsible for the response to pandemics, and he was not replaced. He then shut down the White House National Security Council’s entire global health security unit in charge of preparing for a global pandemic. In so doing, Mr. Trump forgot the precautionary principle in government, which requires preparations to face unforeseen events.

During such a severe health and economic crisis, which touches some people more than others, governments that sometimes create problems are the only collective instruments to fight it in the most ethical way possible.

Of course, besides taking the required measures to prevent the virus crisis from spreading and preventing panics, governments must take, on the economic and financial fronts, some fiscal, regulatory and monetary steps to prevent a deflationary downward spiral of economic activity and to stabilize the financial system. They must, above all, prevent human suffering and help workers, families and communities under financial strain.

What should governments do and not do to minimize the impact of the supply shock and of the demand shock presently hurting their economies?

1- First of all, government priority has to be to get out of the virus health crisis as soon as possible, and to provide medical care and assistance, while preventing shortages. Measures have to be taken to fight the infectious disease and alleviate human suffering, but also to prevent price gouging and other instances of corruption.

Lessons from previous virus outbreaks (Ebola, SARS, H1N1, etc.) can be a guide to action.

The coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis is presently the main cause of economic disruptions and hardships, and traditional monetary and fiscal macroeconomic policies are not geared to solving that type of problem.

2- The second priority is to save the economy from collapsing, and from entering into a deep recession or even into an economic depression. The first step, which is already taken to some extent, is for central banks to make sure that there is enough liquidity in the financial system to keep the latter functioning. This means that they must inject as much liquidity, i.e. cash, as needed to prevent bankruptcies in cascades of otherwise creditworthy and solvent companies, and to allow credit to flow freely.

But it is not acceptable for the government to tap public money to alleviate private banks and private companies’ cash-flow problems. This must not be done at the public expense and to enrich owners of capital, but according to sound business practice. Advances must be guaranteed loans, secured by a bank’s or a company’s assets, physical assets or shares, —and to be repaid at a future date. That is the only way to avoid taxpayers being fleeced by private improvident and risk-taking operators whose motto is “let’s privatize profits, but socialize losses.”

3- However, it must be recognized that monetary policy as such is largely ineffective in correcting a supply shock. It cannot restore perturbed supply chains or prevent companies from stopping production and employment when there is no demand for their products or services. And, it cannot solve a demand shock by simply cutting interest rates, which are already low, when people’s incomes are falling and consumer confidence is absent, or when consumers are unable to get out and spend because they are quarantined.

Moreover, negative real interest rates, the result of attempting to boost economic growth through financial means, as has been tried in Japan and in Europe, are bound to create important economic problems down the road. They are fundamentally deflationary.

They hurt savers and retirees and they contract effective demand from this important group of consumers, and they exert a negative pressure on prices. They also pose a threat to the financial viability of pension funds and insurance companies by forcing them to invest in riskier financial assets. They also encourage companies to invest in projects that would not been profitable otherwise.

4- As a preliminary conclusion, therefore, let us say that from an economic, political and social perspective, injecting liquidity in the economy is not ‘a whether or not question’ during a crisis, but it is how it should be done.

More than a century and a half ago, British economist and banker Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) spelled that out clearly when he wrote that in a time of economic and financial crisis, a central bank must discount heavily, i.e. lend as much money to institutions in need as necessary against collateral, toavoid cascading defaults and bankruptcies.

But this must be done at “punitive rates of lending” in order to avoid enriching distressed banks and their owners with public money, and to create a moral hazard by encouraging foolish risk-taking, with the knowledge of being bailed out in case of trouble.

What does it mean in practice? It means that in a time of crisis, the central bank or the Treasury must lend as much money as necessary, but the weaker and the more risky the collateral is, the higher the lending rates must be.

That is a lesson that was not totally followed in the U.S. during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis when the Fed increased its balance sheet from $870 billion in 2007 to $4.5 trillion by 2015, (a more than a five-fold increase), in order to save some mega banks from bankruptcy by relieving them of their bad debts. The purpose, of course, was to prevent the financial system from collapsing under the weight of a mountain of mortgage-backed securities that had turned sour. But it ended up enriching the already very rich at the expense of the rest of the population.

There is unanimity among economists about the need for fiscal policy responses to the crisis

The need of strong fiscal responses, to help people and companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, is obvious. But, by what means, at a time when fiscal deficits are already high?

Hundreds of thousands of workers are being temporarily laid off, many with no severance. They find themselves suddenly without paycheques, because their employers cannot produce and sell their goods or services. The criteria and requirements to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits could be relaxed in order to make more unemployed workers temporarily eligible.

But all individuals and families, to different degrees, may see their financial situations deteriorate during the crisis. This is both an economic and social problem. Helping those individuals and families who are the most in need of urgent assistance poses a logistic problem for governments.

For one, some laws or directives by the relevant level of government could be adopted to protect the most vulnerable people from being evicted from their lodgings during the crisis. Small landlords are also facing mortgage payments and would have to be compensated for lost rents.

The simplest fiscal way to quickly deliver cash payments to people in need would be to mail monthly checks of a few thousands dollars to taxpayers whose income in 2018 was below a certain amount, say $50,000, in order to provide them temporarily with a basic guaranteed income to bail them out during the coming months.

The proposal made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to provide emergency government funding (two-thirds of wages while away from work) to reimburse lost paychecks for those workers who are self-quarantining and are missing work or losing jobs amid the outbreak, goes in the same direction. This could be done through the channel of employers or through the Social Security Administration.

There are, however, logistical problems with any simple solution. Indeed, it is not everybody who has a full-time job, a tax record and a mailing address. Some people are self-employed, some are retired, some are seasonal or part-time workers, and some have income too low to file an income tax return. Some are homeless. They could be left out of direct financial assistance if direct assistance is used, even though they are probably among those who need help the most.

For example, there were more than half a million homeless Americans in 2019. These people would have to be reached and helped through different approaches. The number of children in needy households must also be taken into consideration. Possibly, municipalities or other community organizations could serve as aid distributors.

Proposals to resort to payroll tax cuts would not address the problem properly since such taxes are only paid when employees are still working! Similarly, providing direct financial assistance to people with incomes as high as $198,000 a year, as Republican Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate Mitch McConnell has proposed, would be both very costly and unethical.

Whatever the channels used, some direct fiscal assistance from the government has become a necessity, considering the declining incomes of many workers laid off during this crisis.

For example, if federal and state governments in the U.S. were to inject in the economy, this year, an amount equal to about 30% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), this would mean a combined effort of $US 6 trillion.

In Canada, if federal and provincial governments were to do the same, their combined efforts to sustain the economy would amount to some $CAD 550 billion. This is much more than what is under consideration in either country.

We must add that the Covid-19 pandemic is worldwide and that countries should cooperate to stabilize international trade, in order to facilitate an orderly return to prosperity once the health issue has been resolved.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that all efforts should be devoted to stopping the coronavirus pandemic in its tracks. This is an absolute public health priority.

However, in so doing, all must also be done to repair the heavy damage inflicting on the economy by distortions in the supply chains, by workers being laid off in droves, and by deflationary financial crashes, so that the economy can rebound quickly when things get back to normal. And since this is a worldwide crisis, the more international coordination to lay the ground for a quick return to prosperity, the better it will be.

For one, governments should not refrain from relying on monetary, regulatory and especially fiscal policies to inject liquidity and financial assistance where it is needed. However, this should not be done in a way that ends up “privatizing profits, while socializing losses.”

Secondly, it must be said that over the last forty years or so, there has been a curious politico-economic system, which has been imposed upon the people in some countries.

It has translated into being a harsh capitalist system for most of the people and an accommodating socialist system for the owners of capital and the super rich. After the current catastrophe, I do not think that people are going to tolerate such a system much longer.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, of the book “The New American Empire”, and the recent book, in French « La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018 ».  Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

In 1948 the poet, W.H. Auden, published a long poem he titled, The Age of Anxiety, in which four characters express their anxiety about their place in a world that has been destroyed by two world wars and was threatened by a third, and nuclear, world war.

He described the faces in the bars, the people trying to cling to average days that no longer existed, all hoping that the lights wouldn’t go out, that the music would always play, that they could avoid looking at where they were, lost in the dark, “children afraid of the night, who have never been happy or good.”

The entire period, from 1914 until today, has been an age of anxiety created by our common experience of life in the dominant economic, social, and political system that atomises the individual, reduces them to fragment of themselves and constantly threatens them with annihilation.

A tortured humanity cried out for something better and, for a time, during the rise of socialism, during and after the First World War and through to the counter-revolution in what was the Soviet Union, a new human spirit appeared and created conditions that made people aware of their own possibilities and taught them that the other was not an enemy or a competitor, but a friend, a brother, a sister, who, together, could do anything, for when you can do things and know it, anxiety transforms into confidence and calm, into resoluteness and courage. Liberation movements arose against all the imperialist countries, supported by the socialist nations. The possibility of a better world arose, and as Che Guevara wrote, the possibility of a new human being governed by the spirit of cooperation and regard for fellow beings, by love instead of war.

But, though the struggle goes on, the present reality is a return to universal anxiety. Nuclear war is a possibility at any time. The Americans threaten it, the Russians, Iranians, Koreans, Chinese prepare for it, and the rest of us can only bite our nails and hope they will not see that bright flash on the horizon just before they are swept into oblivion.

Human caused climate change alone threatens us with an immediate existential threat. Temperatures are rising faster than expected by the official journals, though as expected by the more astute scientists, climate systems are disrupted, crops are threatened, the oceans acidified, the ice melting, the seas rising. Our industrial civilisation has destroyed the world ecological systems so that the scientific consensus is that we are in the midst of the 6th Mass Extinction event and its ultimate conclusion is not far off; decades at most, much shorter by some estimations, certainly within my life time.

And the daily grind in the capitalist system generates the daily anxiety we all face, worrying about getting the money you need to live in this system, about paying the bills, about losing the job that you probably hate in any event and only do out of necessity, for most of us do work that creates no satisfaction and from which we can see no escape. The alternative is the street, the hunger, the cold, the heat, the loneliness of being poor. Charlie Chaplin expressed it in Modern Times, the human being as human machine, used up and then discarded by the machine system, worse than slaves, now reduced to subhuman slaves.

On top of all this background anxiety we now have the warnings of imminent death from the corona virus and the unprecedented disruption of every aspect of our lives its appearance has created. Now many face the cruel reality of losing their place in the capitalist lottery as the capitalist economic system breaks down, the system ceases to function, and uncertainty and fear are ever-present.

And, as with all states of anxiety, we see the rise of irrationality and superstition, as people try to convince themselves, “like children afraid of the night” that it is not really happening, or that man created it instead of nature, feeling more secure that it was designed than is a random product of nature, which seems to frighten them the more, and that however it came to be, it is much ado about nothing, just another flu.

We have seen several articles lately making these claims. It has been claimed it was a result of a Chinese bio-warfare lab making a mistake and leaking a virus. It has been claimed it was an American Army laboratory that leaked it; that China was attacked by the US Army sports team that went to a competition in China. For none of these claims is any evidence presented, Instead, they use speculation and conjecture based on false facts or coincidence. Some of them contradict themselves in different articles, One wrote an alarming essay the US Army was behind it. Later he wrote another suggesting it was all a plot by Bill Gates and friends. Well, which it it? They don’t know because they don’t know and don’t care about being consistent so long as it is alarming.

But these articles are passed around and soon Trump begins blaming China and China blaming the US exacerbating the already tense situation between the two countries that could lead to nuclear war. These articles fan those flames. While those that claim it is a plot for “world domination” and that it is either not really happening, or, if happening, is nothing to be concerned about, cause people to put themselves and others at risk by ignoring any measures put in place to protect them and the rest of us.

That superstition involved is plain to see. Those making these claims state that world governments are lying to us. Yet they cannot then explain why the Chinese, Russian, Iranians, Cuban, North Koreans and other anti-imperialist nations take it very seriously and have acted to contain it. But they don’t think about that. They are whistling in the dark because their own anxiety levels are so high, so, to comfort themselves, they invent comforting stories so that they can feel in control. But we are not in control. Nature is. For it is probable, as the Chinese have shown with their genetic studies of the virus that it likely came out of nature not out of a lab.

Of course there is no denying the evil intentions and potential of the western war machine, and of course anything is possible, but until someone comes up with some concrete and reliable evidence that, for example, the virus was an attack on China by the USA, a claim which could add the spark to the powder keg of war, I will assume it is something Nature has thrown at us, at the world, and that instead of creating more division between the nations and peoples of the world we must all act together to help each other as humanity unites to overcome this new threat.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

Though it narrowly averted war with Iran this January, the Trump administration is still pushing for all-out military conflict. The architects of the drive to war, Mike Pompeo and Benjamin Netanyahu, have relied on a series of cynical provocations to force Trump’s hand.

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The administration of President Donald Trump may escape the most recent conflict with Iran without war, however, a dangerous escalation is just over the horizon.  And as before, the key factors driving the belligerence are not outraged Iraqi militia leaders or their allies in Iran, but Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long sought to draw the US into a military confrontation with Iran.

Throughout the fall of 2019, Netanyahu ordered a series of Israeli strikes against Iranian allies in Iraq and against Lebanese Hezbollah units. He and Pompeo hoped the attacks would provoke a reaction from their targets that could provide a tripwire outright war with Iran. As could have been expected, corporate US media missed the story, perhaps because it failed to reinforce the universally accepted narrative of a hyper-aggressive Iran emboldened by Trump’s failure to “deter” it following Iran’s shoot-down of a U.S. drone in June, and an alleged Iranian attack on Saudi oil facility in September.

Pompeo and John Bolton set the stage for the tripwire strategy in May 2019 with a statement by national security adviser John Bolton citing “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings,” implying an Iranian threat without providing concrete details. That vague language echoed a previous vow by Bolton that “any attack” by Iran or “proxy” forces “on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

Then came a campaign of leaks to major news outlet suggesting that Iran was planning attacks on U.S. military personnel. The day after Bolton’s statement, the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed U.S. officials cited “U.S. intelligence” showing that Iran “drew up plans to target U.S. forces in Iraq and possibly Syria, to orchestrate attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb strait near Yemen through proxies and in the Persian Gulf with its own armed drones….”

The immediate aim of this campaign was to gain Trump’s approval for contingency plans for a possible war with Iran that included the option of sending as many 120,000 U.S. troops in the region.  Trump balked at such war-planning, however, complaining privately that Bolton and Pompeo were pushing him into a war with Iran. Following Iran’s shoot-down of the U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz on June 20, Pompeo and Bolton suggested the option of killing Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in retaliation. But Trump refused to sign off on the assassination of Iran’s top general unless Iran killed an American first, according to current and former officials.

Screenshot from The NYT

From that point on, the provocation strategy was focused on trying to trigger an Iranian reaction that would involve a U.S. casualty.  That’s when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu interjected himself and his military as a central player in the drama. From July 19 through August 20, the Israeli army carried out five strikes against Iraqi militias allied with Iran, blowing up four weapons depots and killing as many Shiite militiamen and Iranian offcers, according to press accounts.

The Israeli bombing escalated on August 25, when two strikes on the brigade headquarters of a pro-Iranian militia and on a militia convoy killed the brigade commander and six other militiamen, and a drone strike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in south Beirut blew the windows out of one of Hezbollah’s media offices.

Netanyahu and Pompeo sabotage Trump and Macron’s attempt at diplomacy

Behind those strikes was Netanyahu’s sense of alarm over Trump toying with the idea of seeking negotiations with Iran. Netanyahu had likely learned about Trump’s moves toward detente from Pompeo, who had long been his primary contact in the administration. On August 26, French President Emanuel Macron revealed that he was working to broker a Trump-Rouhani meeting.  Netanyahu grumbled about the prospect of U.S.-Iranian talks “several times” with his security cabinet the day before launching the strikes.

Two retired senior Israeli generals, Gen. Amos Yadlin and Gen. Assaf Oron, criticized those strikes for increasing the likelihood of harsh retaliation by Iran or one of its regional partners.The generals complained that Netanyahu’s attacks were “designed to prod [Iran] into a hasty response” and thus end Trump’s flirtation with talking to Iran. That much was obviously true, but Pompeo and Netanyahu also knew that provoking an attack by Iran or one of its allies might cause one or more of the American casualties they sought. And once American blood was spilled, Trump would have no means to resist authorizing a major escalation.

Kataib Hezbollah and other pro-Iran Iraqi militias blamed the United States for the wave of lethal Israeli attacks on their fighters. These militias responded in September by launching a series of rocket attacks on Iraqi government bases where U.S. troops were present. They also struck targets in the vicinity of the U.S. Embassy.

The problem for Netanyahu and Pompeo, however, was that none of those strikes killed an American. What’s more, U.S. intelligence officials knew from NSA monitoring of communications between the IRGC and the militias that Iran had explicitly forbidden direct attacks on US personnel.

Netanyahu was growing impatient.  For several days in late October and early November, he met with his national security cabinet to discuss a new Israeli attack to precipitate a possible war with Iran, according to reports by former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Oren hinted at how a war with Iran might start.  ‘[P]erhaps Israel miscalculates,” he suggested, “hitting a particularly sensitive target,” which, in his view, could spark “a big war between Israel and Iran.”

But on December 27, before Netanyahu could put such a strategy into action, the situation changed dramatically. A barrage of rockets slammed into an Iraqi base near Kirkuk where U.S. military personnel were stationed, killing a U.S military contractor. Suddenly, Pompeo had the opening he needed.  At a meeting the following day, Pompeo led Trump to believe that Iranian “proxies” had attacked the base, and pressed him to “reestablish deterrence” with Iran by carrying out a military response.

In fact, U.S. and Iraqi officials on the spot had reached no such conclusion, and the investigation led by the head of intelligence for the Iraqi federal police at the base was just beginning that same day. But Pompeo and his allies, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A Milley, were not interested in waiting for its conclusion.

A deception brings the US and Iran to the brink of war

The results of a subsequent Iraqi investigation revealed that the rocket barrage had been launched from a Sunni area of Kirkuk with a strong Islamic State presence, and that IS fighters had carried out three attacks not far from the base on Iraqi forces stationed there in the previous ten days. US signals intercepts found no evidence that Iraqi militias had shifted from their policy of avoiding American casualties at all cost.

Kept in the dark by Pompeo about these crucial facts, Trump agreed to launch five airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah and another pro-Iran militia at five locations in Iraq and Syria that killed 25 militiamen and wounded 51.  He may have also agreed in principle to the killing of Soleimani when the opportunity presented itself.

Iran responded to the attacks on its Iraqi militia allies by approving a violent protest at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad January 31.  The demonstrators did not penetrate the embassy building itself and were abruptly halted the same day. But Pompeo managed to persuade Trump to authorize the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s second most powerful figure, presumably by hammering on the theme of “reestablishing deterrence” with Iran.

Soleimani was not only the second most powerful man in Iran and the main figure in its foreign policy; he was idolized by millions of the most strongly nationalist citizens of the country.  Killing him in a drone strike was an open invitation to the military confrontation Netanyahu and Pompeo so desperately sought.

During the crucial week from December 28 through January 4, while Pompeo was pressing Trump to retaliate against Iran not just once but twice, it was clear that he was coordinating closely with Netanyahu.  During that single week, he spoke by phone with Netanyahu on three separate occasions.

What Pompeo and Netanyahu could not have anticipated was that Iran’s missile attack on the U.S. sector of Iraq’s sprawling al-Asad airbase in retaliation would be so precise that it scored direct hits on six U.S. targets without killing a single American. (The US service members were saved in part because the rockets were fired after the Iraqi government had passed on a warning from Iran to prepare for it). Because no American was killed in the strike, Trump again decided against further retaliation.

Towards another provocation

Although Pompeo and Netanyahu failed to ignite a military conflict with Iran, there is good reason to believe that they will try again before both are forced to leave their positions or power.

In an article for the Atlantic last November, former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, channeled Netanyahu when he declared it would be “better for conflict [with Iran] to occur during the current [Trump] administration, which can be counted on to provide Israel with the three sources of American assistance it traditionally receives in wartime,” than to “wait until later.”

Oren was not the only Israeli official to suggest that Israeli is likely to go even further in strikes against Iranian and Iranian allies targets in 2020.  After listening to Israeli army Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi speak in late December, Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel reported that the Israeli army chief conveyed the clear impression that a “more serious confrontation with Iran in the coming year as an almost unquestionable necessity.” His interviews with Israeli military and political figures further indicated that Israel would “intensity its efforts to hit Iran in the northern area.”

Shockingly, Pompeo has exploited the Coronavirus pandemic to impose even harsher sanctions on Iran while intimidating foreign businesses to prevent urgently needed medical supplies from entering the country. The approaching presidential election gives both Pompeo and Netanyahu a powerful reason to plot another strike, or a series of strikes aimed at drawing the US into a potential Israeli confrontation with Iran.

Activists and members of Congress concerned about keeping the US out of war with Iran must be acutely aware of the danger and ready to respond decisively when the provocation occurs.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012.  His most recent book is The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.

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 recent re-labeling of the novel coronavirus with xenophobic undertones by some U.S. politicians to stigmatize China has drawn widespread criticism.

As the international community works together to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, a few American politicians are shifting blame to China for the virus’ spread by recasting it as a “Chinese virus” or “foreign virus.”

Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, warned on Wednesday against using the phrase “Chinese virus,” saying that

“Viruses know no borders, and they don’t care about your ethnicity, the color of your skin or how much money you have in the bank.”

“So it’s really important we be careful in the language we use,” Ryan said at a news conference in Geneva, giving an example of the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009.

The pandemic “originated in North America and we didn’t call it the North American flu,” he said, calling for solidarity and joint efforts of all countries.

Dr. Michael Ryan (L), executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, addresses a press conference, in Geneva, Switzerland, Feb. 18, 2020. (Photo by Chen Junxia/Xinhua)

Ryan was echoed by co-founder of Microsoft Corporation Bill Gates, who wrote on Wednesday in an Ask Me Anything session on the American social news platform Reddit that “we should not call this the Chinese virus.”

The tally of confirmed cases of the COVID-19 pandemic has reached over 220,000 and spans at least 160 countries and regions, according to the latest statistics from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

With the world facing an escalating challenge from the disease, “it’s also an unprecedented opportunity to come together as one against a common enemy,” the WHO wrote on its Twitter feed on Wednesday.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday refuted the White House’s racist remarks on Twitter, saying that “coronavirus does not discriminate.”

“Bigotry against people of Asian descent is unacceptable, un-American, & harmful to our COVID-19 response efforts,” the Massachusetts lawmaker wrote.

U.S. Representative Lois Frankel said on Twitter Wednesday that she was “disappointed, but unsurprised” at the White House’s decision to use xenophobic language during this global pandemic.

She urged the government to promote international cooperation instead of racism to combat the disease.

Public Policy Committee Chairman of the Committee of 100 Charlie Woo said in a statement that any attempt to ascribe the virus to one culture, ethnicity or country can only hinder the global effort to combat the epidemic.

“This crisis requires science, facts and clear language, not fear-mongering, finger-pointing and xenophobia by our public servants,” the statement said, quoted by the New York Times.

John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a non-profit legal aid organization, told NBC Asian America that the U.S. administration’s words could have negative repercussions.

The usage of such racist terms has “led to a noticeable incline in hate incidents that we are seeing,” Yang was quoted by the NBC report. “I do think that there is a correlation,” he added.

The monitor shows the scene of the video conference attended by Chinese and Italian experts in Shanghai, east China, on March 16, 2020. Shanghai medical experts on Monday held a video conference with their Italian peers, sharing their experience on prevention and control measures, medical treatment and scientific research related to the coronavirus epidemic. (Photo by Wang Xiang/Xinhua)

“Rather than making mockery of the Chinese nation or calling the virus ‘made in China’, the world must learn from the miraculous measures China has adopted to defeat this invisible enemy,” said Yasir Masood, former director of media and publications at the Center of Excellence of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The Pakistani political and international relations analyst believed that such smearing tactics against China or any other country in these depressing times are not conducive to global harmony.

Epidemics have taken millions of lives throughout history and can wreak havoc at a moment’s notice, Masoon said, adding “epidemics and natural disasters have no boundaries and they do not announce their arrival.”

China has achieved great success in its fight against COVID-19, and now it is extending help to other countries to defeat this pandemic, he said.

“In this difficult time of confusion and dismay, the world must work collaboratively to end this pandemic rather than tossing political rhetoric,” he added.

Experts adjust the lab equipment for the COVID-19 nucleic acid test in Baghdad, Iraq, on March 15, 2020. A Chinese team of seven health experts is providing guidance and medical assistance to contain the COVID-19 outbreak in Iraq. (Xinhua)

Regarding the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Pakistan, the analyst said the country has a lot to learn from the exemplary steps taken by China to defeat the virus.

Masood, who was in China when the disease broke out in Wuhan, said the government’s efforts to raise awareness by calling on the public to be socially responsible to stem the virus’ spread is commendable.

“The sterilization of public places and collective quarantine were strictly adopted in the country and the suspected cases were taken care of,” he said.

Praising the Chinese government and its people for their resilience, discipline, and unity during the outbreak, he said China’s measures could be followed.

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Featured image: Photo taken on March 1, 2020 shows medical supplies, including masks, gloves and protective suits, donated to Italy by Lishui City, east China’s Zhejiang Province. (Xinhua)

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy already seems to be affecting the companies and businesses of U.S. President Donald Trump and, along with with it, the employment of hundreds of people.

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President Trump’s company — significantly reliant on tourism, conventions, and restaurant income — has been sharply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with at least two properties closing and three hotels laying off staff, according to the Washington Post.

In the wake of the crisis caused by the new coronavirus pandemic in the world, many countries have adopted some strict policies to prevent mass contagion. In the United States, some states ordered the closure of bars and restaurants and imposed special restrictions in some places, which has affected Trump’s businesses and companies in Florida, Las Vegas, New York, Washington, among others.

Places like the famous Mar-a-Lago Club and hotels announced its closure due to the policies that the states imposed to combat the COVID-19. However, the strong impact of all this lies in the dismissal of hundreds of employees, more than 200, according to the Washington Post.

Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas was shuttered in response to a statewide order from Nevada’s governor. It will not reopen until April 17; the hotel told customers. However, some employees at the hotel have already been laid off, the news outlet reported.

One nonsalaried employee in the hotel’s food and beverage department said his manager told him he would receive nothing. “Zero, nothing,” said the employee, who said he had been at the hotel for more than a decade. “We live paycheck to paycheck,”  “We are screwed,” he said to the Washington Post.

In New York, Trump’s hotel on Central Park remained open Friday. However, 51 of the more than 300 employees were fired on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the Trump hotel’s operations.

“Various facilities are temporarily closed given local, state and federal mandates,” Trump Organization spokeswoman Kimberly Benza said in a statement. “We anxiously await the day when this pandemic is over, and our world-class facilities can reopen.”

At the Trump Hotel in Washington, the layoffs were even more drastic. In essence, 160 workers were let go, as the hotel’s occupancy rate plunged to about 5 percent, according to the union that represents the hotel’s employees.

Trump’s D.C. hotel remains open, despite the bar and restaurant being closed by a directive from the D.C. government and almost no guests staying there.

John Boardman, executive secretary-treasurer of the D.C. affiliate of Unite Here, said occupancy is about 5 percent and about 160 of his 174 workers he represents — including housekeepers, dishwashers and bellmen — have been laid off. He said the Trump Organization is “no different than anybody else except that they are staying open, which amazes me.”

And at all of the company’s other large U.S. hotels — in Miami, Honolulu, and Chicago — restaurants were either partially or entirely shut, cutting off a vital stream of revenue, the Washington Post said.

The company does not release profit and loss information, so it is unclear what the downturn has meant to its bottom line.

Also, the company has other lucrative investments in commercial buildings that will not be hurt immediately by the new coronavirus. But many of the company’s largest — and most heavily indebted — businesses are dependent on a travel industry that is now primarily shuttered, with no end in sight. Trump still owns his business empire, so its struggles could affect his wealth.

Trump owns seven U.S. hotels, including three — in Washington, Miami, and Chicago — with outstanding loans from Deutsche Bank. The original value of these loans was more than $300 million. Deutsche Bank declined to comment about the loans, according to the Washington Post.

Many analysts have criticized the lack of preventive policies by the Trump government, who had initially downplayed the COVID-19 threats in March early. Now the impact of this new virus seems to become more real for the world economy as well as the International Labour Organization (ILO) said that the effects of the new pandemic could destroy up to 25 million jobs around the world.

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Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad, joined the country’s battle against the global coronavirus pandemic and has acquired 100,000 test kits for the disease from two countries with which it does not share diplomatic ties, Israeli media reported, adding that the kits were “unusable”.  

The Mossad is expected to get millions of coronavirus test kits, the reports said.

Israel’s health ministry said the kits that the Mossad obtained overnight on Wednesday were “unusable”, and they were missing the swabs needed to conduct the tests.

“Unfortunately, what Mossad has delivered is not what we are in need of,” Itamar Grotto, the deputy director-general of the health ministry, told Ynet.

The sources of the test kits remain unidentified.

Yossi Melman, a security analyst and Middle East Eye contributor, estimates that the Mossad obtained the test kits “probably from the United Arab Emirates”.

“Since Israel refuses to reveal the name of the country that supplied the equipment that is in demand worldwide, it is likely the UAE. Certainly, not another friend of Israel, such as Egypt or Jordan, both of which need it for their own populations,” Melman said.

The equipment includes test tubes for throat checks and must be approved by the Israeli Ministry of Health to ensure they meet the required standards.

Melman added that both the Mossad and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are trying to take visible action against the pandemic.

He added that hundreds of Israeli businessmen and firms are also trying to purchase the needed test kits to meet the shortage in the country.

The Mossad often coordinates with countries with which Israel has no official diplomatic ties, such as Oman, the UAE, Sudan, Bahrain and Qatar.

Israel has recorded 529 coronavirus cases as of Thursday, with six people in serious condition, and no fatalities.

Last week, Netanyahu issued an order requiring that all citizens returning from abroad go into self-quarantine.

Last week, Israel mobilised a cyber spy unit in the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet to monitor and identify people infected with the coronavirus.

There are currently 20 labs in Israel dedicated to testing for the coronavirus infection.

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The actions of prominent US lawmakers, Democrats as well as Republicans, in seeking to secure their personal wealth while concealing from the public the catastrophic implications of the coronavirus pandemic and the measures needed to combat it, sum up the response of the American ruling elite to the unfolding crisis.

According to reports published by the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, National Public Radio (NPR) and ProPublica, and confirmed on the US Senate database for financial disclosures, at least four sitting senators, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Richard Burr, and the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, in a textbook example of “insider trading” dumped millions of dollars worth of stock after a receiving a classified briefing on January 24. During the briefing, all members of the US Senate were informed of the “emerging public threat” regarding the novel coronavirus.

In addition to Feinstein and Burr, Republican senators James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia sold off large amounts of stock while at the same time misleading the public about the danger of the virus and the lack of preparation on the part of the government. In all cases, the senators completed the sale of their stock well before the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 10,000 points beginning February 21.

The most blatant and criminal example of insider trading comes from the Senate’s newest and wealthiest member Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to fill a vacancy this year. Loeffler is worth an estimated $500 million, in large part due to her role as former executive and stockholder at the Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE. According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, “ICE operates 12 exchanges and other subsidiaries,” including the New York Stock Exchange. ICE’s primary government regulator is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which reports to the Senate Agriculture committee.

ICE was founded in 2000 by Jeffrey Sprecher, whom Loeffler married two years after arriving at the company in 2002. Sprecher is still the company’s chief executive and the largest individual shareholder. After being appointed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to replace retiring Senator Jonny Isakson without a single vote cast, Loeffler became a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee on January 6, 2020 and was now in charge of regulating her and her husband’s businesses.

After the classified briefings on January 24, which included reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Loeffler tweeted her appreciation for “today’s briefing from the President’s top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak.” Loeffler and her husband expressed their appreciation by acting on the classified intelligence they received and hurriedly completing 27 separate sales of stock within 22 days. Between January 24 and February 15, Loeffler reported selling stock jointly owned between her and her husband worth between $1.275 and $3.1 million. Loeffler proceeded to purchase stock in only two companies: Oracle, a major technology company, and Citrix, which specializes in teleconferencing software, both on February 14 in the amount of $100,000 to $250,000, respectively.

When Loeffler wasn’t busy dumping soon to be worthless stock she took to Twitter to defend President Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over 11,300 worldwide, including nearly 300 in the US as of this writing. In a February 28 tweet, Loeffler lied to her followers and the world, stating, “The truth: @realDonaldTrump & his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy & safe.”

In a video appearance on Fox News Friday morning, Loeffler failed to convince viewers that she was unaware of the transactions and that she played no part in the sale of potentially $3 million worth of stock, stating that “there’s a range of decisions made that I’m not involved in.”

Joining Loeffler in seeking to profit off of the preventable pandemic were high-ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr and James Inhofe, and the former chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein. Members of the committee receive regular classified briefings to which other members of Congress are not privy, including CIA and military reports. The Washington Post reported Friday that the CIA was warning in such briefings as early as January of the outbreak in China mushrooming into a global pandemic. There is no doubt that these senators were well aware of the immense peril COVID-19 posed to the public.

Burr’s disclosures reveal that he and his wife sold 33 different stocks on February 13, worth between $628,000 and $1.72 million, the most stock he’s sold in a single day in the last 14 months. Burr’s largest sales were among companies most affected by recent lockdowns and travel restrictions, including $150,000 worth of shares in Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, which has lost two-thirds of its value so far this year, and $100,000 worth of shares in Extended Stay America, whose share value has decreased by 50 percent since Burr sold his stock.

Burr also sold up to $65,000 worth of stock in Park Hotels and resorts, whose stock is now a fifth of what it was before the sale. A week after the sale, the Dow Jones began its rapid descent.

Burr, like Loeffler, did not warn the public after having received the intelligence briefing. Instead, he downplayed the virus and sought to bolster the government’s credibility. In a February 7 opinion piece for Fox News, coauthored with Senator Lamar Alexander, the pair stated that “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress and the Trump administration.”

It was reported this past week that the federal government’s Strategic National Stockpile has approximately 12 million of the vitally important medical-grade N95 masks. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the US will go through approximately 3.5 billion masks if the outbreak lasts the duration of the year. That is, the US government has less than one percent of the masks on hand needed to meet the urgent demand and ensure the safety of health care workers risking their lives to fight the disease. Health care workers in the US have already resorted to reusing equipment and even relying on bandanas to protect themselves.

Burr, however, changed his tune when talking to prominent campaign contributors in his home state of North Carolina. Members of the Tar Heel Circle pay between $500 and $10,000 in dues to “Enjoy interaction with top leaders and staff from Congress, the administration and the private sector,” according to the group’s website.

In recordings obtained by NPR, two weeks before the Trump administration banned travel to Europe, Barr warned the Tar Heel Circle, “…you may have to alter your travel. You may have to look at your employees and judge whether the trip they’re making to Europe is essential or whether it can be done on the video conference. Why risk it?”

In contrast to his op-ed piece, Burr was more forthcoming to his elite audience in regards to the severity of the virus. “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said, according to the recording of his remarks cited by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic,” he warned.

Upon news of Burr’s corruption, the senator claimed that his decision to sell a majority of assets was made after watching “CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time.” In an attempt to save his seat and blunt social anger, Burr has requested a Senate Ethics Committee review of his transactions.

Demonstrating that capitalist corruption is a bipartisan affair, multimillionaire Dianne Feinstein and her husband, billionaire investment banker Richard Blum, reported in Feinstein’s senate disclosures the sale of between $1.5 and $6 million worth of California biotech company Allogen Therapeutics stock between January 31 and February 18. A share of Allogen stock sold for $24.25 the day Feinstein dumped the stock. As of today, shares of the stock were trading at $19.25.

Feinstein, like Loeffler, pleaded ignorance of the seven-figure sales, stating on Twitter that she “held all assets in a blind trust of which I have no control.” Echoing Loeffler, she further declared that she “had no input” into any decisions her husband made.

Finally, Senator Inhofe sold as much as $400,000 worth of stock, including in companies such as PayPal, Apple and Intuit on January 31. Inhofe had previously been criticized for buying stock in defense contractor Raytheon while advocating for more defense spending. He is the current chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Inhofe joined his fellow grifters in pleading ignorance, telling the Tulsa World that he did not know about the stock sales and had “no control” of his investments.

There is little doubt that there are more members of Congress who have done the same, exemplifying once again that in capitalist society the first and foremost concern is the wealth of the aristocracy, not the health and safety of the population, even in the face of a global pandemic.

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The International Monetary Fund has rejected a Venezuelan appeal for an emergency US $5 billion loan to face the coronavirus health crisis.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza revealed on Tuesday afternoon that President Nicolas Maduro had sent a letter to IMF President Kristalina Georgieva requesting funds from the body’s Rapid Financing Instrument to “strengthen [Venezuelan] detection and response systems.”

The Associated Press reported on Monday evening that the Fund was not “in a position to consider” Venezuela’s request. According to a statement, the IMF does not have “clarity on recognition” of the Maduro government.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido proclaimed himself “interim president” in January 2019 and was immediately recognized by the US and its allies. With its member states split on recognizing Guaido as the country’s legitimate president, the IMF has not taken a position on the matter.

Venezuela’s healthcare system has been hard hit by years of economic crisis and US sanctions. Officials have repeatedly denounced obstacles in importing medicines and other equipment. Cooperation with the Red Cross and United Nations agencies has increased in recent months in attempts to tend to the most vulnerable sectors.

The Washington-based lending body has allocated $50 billion in loans to countries struggling to deal with the pandemic. Iran reportedly applied for a $5 billion loan as well.

The Maduro government’s request generated intense debate on social media, with critics pointing towards former President Hugo Chavez’s fierce opposition to the IMF over the body’s promotion of neoliberal structural adjustment policies across the continent.

The Venezuelan government has acted swiftly following the confirmation of the first COVID-19 cases in the country last week, declaring a state of emergency followed by national quarantine measures. Authorities have imposed restrictions on movement and commercial activity, with public transport reserved for workers in the health, food retail, and other priority sectors has been halted while public transport is only available for public workers, health officials and other prioritized sectors.

While health officials have warned that the number of confirmed cases is due to grow in the coming days, no new confirmed cases have been registered in the past 24 hours.

Vice President Delcy Rodriguez announced on Wednesday evening that the number of confirmed cases remains at 36. She stated that the quarantine is being 90 percent enforced, and lauded the “collective discipline” of the Venezuelan people.

Rodriguez likewise revealed that President Maduro had held a telephone conversation with World Health Organization (WHO) President Tedros Adhanom, who reportedly pledged to support the country with coronavirus test kits, supplies and technical assistance.

On Wednesday evening, Venezuelan authorities announced that a massive testing campaign would be deployed during the weekend, asking Venezuelans to fill out an online survey should they have coronavirus symptoms.

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Cuban health authorities announced on Thursday that the country will send 53 health professionals to Lombardy, Italy, to help contain the new coronavirus pandemic.

The 53 doctors and nurses have experience in caring for these types of diseases. In 2014, they traveled to Sierra Leone in West Africa to fight the Ebola virus.

According to Cuban authorities, the arrival in Lombardy will take place next Saturday, March 21.

The regional health counselor Giulio Gallera announced that the European country “requested medical support from Cuba given the shortage of health personnel in Italian hospitals.”

Giulio Gallera, Consejero de Bienestar de la Región de Lombardía (foco de coronavirus en Italia): "Tendremos personal de Venezuela, China, Cuba, son médicos a los que obviamente les daremos un lugar para vivir, pero necesitamos las habilidades de todos". pic.twitter.com/PGcQ5oLSCD

— Misión Verdad (@Mision_Verdad) March 14, 2020

“Welfare Councillor for the Lombardy Region Giulio Gallera said, ‘We will have staff from Venezuela, China, Cuba, they are doctors who will be given a place to live, but we need everyone’s skills.'”

Gallera’s request reached the competent authorities of the Caribbean island through the Cuban ambassador in Italy, Jose Carlos Rodriguez.

The Cuban doctors and nurses will join the ten professionals from China who arrived this Thursday in Milan, Italy.

“Cuban and Chinese medical personnel will be sent to a field hospital in Bergamo, the region of Lombardy most affected by the pandemic.

Italy has recorded more than 3,000 deaths from the spread of the disease, surpassing China as the country with the most deaths.

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Featured image: At the entrance to the hospital, a sign reads: “You are the real heroes”, Bergamo, Italy, March, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @orlandoQva

Syria entered the second half of the week with a new spike of tensions in Greater Idlib. This escalation has been widely expected because militant groups are sabotaging key parts of the Russian-Turkish agreement on de-escalation in the area.

Radicals kept their positions along the M4 highway, where a security zone was set to be created, and blocked the planned joint Russian-Turkish patrols there. On March 19, they expanded their strategy with direct actions against Turkish and Russian forces. At least two improvised explosive devices exploded along the route of a Turkish military column near the village of Muhamabal. 2 Turkish soldiers were killed and several others were injured. Opposition sources initially reported that Horas al-Din, one of multiple al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations in Idlib, was behind the attack. Nonetheless, Horas al-Din itself denied responsibility for the incident. There is no surprise that the group indirectly receiving support from Turkey denied such a move. Later, pro-militant media adapted their version of events blaming ISIS cells and even Assad agents. The March 19 developments demonstrated that Ankara does not fully control the terrorist organizations that it is protecting from the Syrian Army in an attempt to solidify its own influence in the region. Therefore, in some conditions, Turkish-backed terrorists become a threat to Turkey and its forces themselves.

The Turkish leadership fully understands that the ceasefire will not survive too long without the neutralization of terrorists. So, the Turkish Army continues its military buildup in the area. Turkish forces set up new positions near Ram Hamadan and al-Jinah. Additionally, three Turkish convoys, consisting of dozens of battle tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers and howitzers crossed the Turkish border with the Syrian province of Idlib.

Turkish units also conducted a modest attempt to de-block the M4 highway by removing earthen mounds left by militants. The situation on the frontline is also escalating. Late on March 19, the Syrian Army repelled an attack on its positions near Hizareen. Syrian state media claimed that militants suffered heavy casualties in the clashes. Wa Harid al-Muminin, a coalition of small al-Qaeda-linked groups, claimed responsibility for the attack. It released its own statement saying that 15 “regime troops” had been killed.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces started reinforcing their positions in southern Idlib and northern Lattakia with fresh troops and military equipment. Pro-government sources claim that Jisr al-Shughur, the town controlled by the Turkistan Islamic Party, will become the target of the army offensive, if the ceasefire collapses.

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Hoarding as moral aberration and ethical breach: the term has recently become the subject of scorn in coronavirus chatter.  In terms of mental disorders, it is “characterized by persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions”, though the Coronavirus Hoarder is a breed that adds urgent bulk acquisition to the shopping equation. If you part with it, take advantage of making a buck along the way.  

Hoarding products in times of crisis is condemned by those in power as unpatriotic, against the community and just plain rude.  The empty supermarket shelf is considered the devilish outcome of this.  Yet, shelves still remain empty, at least for periods of time.  Despite limits imposed on purchases, the hoarder remains active, fearing the pandemic apocalypse, the lockdown, self-isolation and total quarantine.

The central motivation is fear, but it has worthy fuel.  Do not trust the government; question the authorities.  They, after all, were late to the party.  With COVID-19 being enshrouded in garments of misinformation, or at the very least elements of incomplete information, the tendency is further accentuated.

The pieties against bulk buying are accumulating, inversely proportionate to diminishing opportunities to purchase.  Writing for the Danbury, Connecticut-based News-Times, Chris Powell acknowledges that households should stock up on the necessaries, but only for a few days.  To hoard “for worse than that is antisocial and generates fear.  If serious shortages develop, will people consider themselves Americans, all in it together, sharing as necessary and helping their government as it tries its best, or will patriotism and civic duty dissolve into every man for himself?”

The reaction from authorities has ranged from the imposition of regulations to hectoring unprincipled shopping.  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has gone so far as to regard panic buying as unpatriotic, a slight against his understanding of the Australian character.  “On bulk purchasing of supplies: Stop hoarding.  I can’t be more blunt about it.  Stop it.”  Such behaviour was nether “sensible” nor “helpful and it has been one of the most disappointing things I have seen in Australian behaviour in response to this crisis.”

Interestingly enough, such scolding attitudes have done little to stem the craze.  As Morrison should himself be most familiar with, any snark directed against voters tends to bite back.  He, after all, was the beneficiary of an election victory in which his opponents were termed smug types prone to woke obsessions, preachy about the environment and condescending to those pro-mining “Quiet Australians”.  Now, Morrison demands “Australia’s common sense cooperation with … very clear advisory positions.  Stop doing it.  It’s un-Australian and must stop.”  Australians, quiet or otherwise, are panicked and not taking much notice.

Australia’s agriculture minister David Littleproud has also taken to the stage of publicity to condemn bulk shopping practices, calling such shoppers parasites.  “I appreciate people are worried about Covid-19,” he wrote in Guardian Australia, “but those fighting in the aisles are more in danger of catching the disease by their actions than we ever are of running out of food.”  Farmers were the noble ones, going about their business of supplying food, in contrast to those “frantic shoppers”.  The decision by supermarkets to restrict purchases on certain products, change shopping hours and suspend online grocery orders, had been sensible.

In Canada, the panic has been sufficiently gripping to cause concern.  The pattern is familiar: a spate of rushed purchases, the emptying of shelves, and the constant warning by those supposedly in the know that all is well in the supply chain.  A survey conducted by Dalhousie University and Angus Reid between March 13 and 15 found that 71 percent of Canadians were concerned about COVID-19, with 41 percent purchasing additional groceries and supplies as a direct response.  Then come the voices of authority, attempting to appease and reassure.  Marc Fontin, president of the Retail Council of Canada in Quebec, claimed that “Canadians do not need to panic”.  Over the weekend, stores would be “back to almost normal.”

This has not been enough.  The panic-driven purchaser and diligent hoarder loom like troubling spectres.  Policies have been introduced by specific drug wholesalers such as McKesson.  Andrew Forgione, a spokesperson for the company, spoke about the taking of “proactive steps to support responsible ordering, including temporarily adjusting daily customer ordering for some medications and certain daily essentials.”  Canadian consumer or retailers, he explained, had little reason to “mass order products.” But order, they do.

Some hoarders have even become accidental, and reviled celebrities.  A Tennessee man, Amazon seller Matt Colvin, went so far as to acquire 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer.  The intention was not so much to hoard as make a killing online, selling the items at marked up prices.  The intention might have been seen as distinctly American, even patriotic: take advantage of adverse conditions, plan ahead and make money from it.  “I’ve been buying and selling things for 10 years now,” he told the New York Times.  “There’s been hot product after hot product.  But the thing is, there’s always another one on the shelf.” 

The interest of the Tennessee attorney general’s office was piqued.  An investigation was commenced into possible price gouging.  As this took place, Colvin had a change of heart, wishing to donate the supplies.  Prosecutors, however, are intent on proceeding with the action.

More militant operations have been recorded in other countries in an effort to rein back the dedicated hoarder.  In Maharashtra’s Jalna city, police and officials of the Food and Drug Administration conducted a joint operation against a shop owner Hastimal Bamb for allegedly hoarding 18,900 masks and possessing 730 bottles of fake hand sanitisers. 

Across the border, similar stories have surfaced.  In Karachi’s Baloch Colony a certain shopkeeper by the name of Zaheer was arrested during the week for hoarding sanitisers then, according to a police statement, selling “them for more than triple the actual price.”

Talk about community, toughing matters out, enduring together, provide salve for the bruised soul.  It does not stop greed, nor does it stem opportunity.  Responding to pandemics, as to conflict, brings its chances for profiteers and the desperate.  No political potentate, whatever the measure, can stem it entirely.  The coronavirus hoarder is here to stay – at least for the near future.

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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]

In what is being called the worst financial crisis since 1929, the US stock market has lost a third of its value in the space of a month, wiping out all of its gains of the last three years. When the Federal Reserve tried to ride to the rescue, it only succeeded in making matters worse. The government then pulled out all the stops. To our staunchly capitalist leaders, socialism is suddenly looking good.  

The financial crisis began in late February, when the World Health Organization announced that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic. The Russia-Saudi oil price war added fuel to the flames, causing all three Wall Street indices to fall more than 7 percent on March 9. It was called Black Monday, the worst drop since the Great Recession in 2008; but it would get worse. 

On March 12, the Fed announced new capital injections totaling an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in the repo market, where banks now borrow to stay afloat. The market responded by driving stocks 8% lower.

On Sunday, March 15, the Fed emptied its bazooka by lowering the fed funds rate nearly to zero and announcing that it would be purchasing $700 billion in assets, including federal securities of all maturities, restarting its quantitative easing program. It also eliminated bank reserve requirements and slashed Interest on Excess Reserves (the interest it pays to banks for parking their cash at the Fed) to 0.10%. The result was to cause the stock market to open on Monday nearly 10% lower. Rather than projecting confidence, the Fed’s measures were generating panic.

As financial analyst George Gammon observes, the Fed’s massive $1.5 trillion in expanded repo operations had few takers. Why? He says the shortage in the repo market was not in “liquidity” (money available to lend) but in “pristine collateral” (the securities that must be put up for the loans). Pristine collateral consists mainly of short-term Treasury bills. The Fed can inject as much liquidity as it likes, but it cannot create T-bills, something only the Treasury can do. That means the government (which is already $23 trillion in debt) must add yet more debt to its balance sheet in order to rescue the repo market that now funds the banks.

The Fed’s tools alone are obviously incapable of stemming the bloodletting from the forced shutdown of businesses across the country. Fed chair Jerome Powell admitted as much at his March 15 press conference, stating, “[W]e don’t have the tools to reach individuals and particularly small businesses and other businesses and people who may be out of work …. We do think fiscal response is critical.” “Fiscal policy” means the administration and Congress must step up to the plate.

What about using the Fed’s “nuclear option” – a “helicopter drop” of money to support people directly? A March 16 article in Axios quoted former Fed senior economist Claudia Sahm:

The political ramifications of the Fed essentially printing money and giving it to people – there are ways to do it, but the problem is if the Fed does this and Congress still has not passed anything … that would mean the Fed has stepped in and done something that Congress didn’t want to do. If they did helicopter money without congressional approval, Congress could, and rightly so, end the Fed.

The government must act first, before the Fed can use its money-printing machine to benefit the people and the economy directly.

The Fed, Congress and the Administration Need to Work as a Team 

On March 13, President Trump did act, declaring a national emergency that opened access to as much as $50 billion “for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average responded by ending the day up nearly 2,000 points, or 9.4 percent.

The same day, Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard proposed a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for every American for the duration of the crisis. She said,

“Too much attention has been focused here in Washington on bailing out Wall Street banks and corporate industries as people are making the same old tired argument of how trickle-down economics will eventually help the American people.”

Meanwhile the American taxpayer “gets left holding the bag, struggling and getting no help during a time of crisis.” H.R. 897, her bill for an emergency UBI, she said was the most simple, direct form of assistance to help weather the storm.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who made a universal basic income the basis of his platform, would go further and continue the monthly payments after the coronavirus threat was over.

CNBC financial analyst Jim Cramer also had expansive ideas. He said on March 12:

How about a $500 billion Treasury issue … [at] almost no interest cost, to make sure that when people are sick they don’t have to go to work, and companies that are in trouble because of that can still make their payroll. How about a credit line backstopped by … the Federal Reserve. I know the Federal Reserve is going to say they can’t do that, Congress is going to say they can’t do that, everyone is going to say what they said in 2007, they can’t do that, they can’t do that — until they did it. … [W]e heard all that in 2007 and they ended up doing everything.

And that looks like what will happen this time around. On March 18, as the stock market continued to plummet, the administration released an outline for a $1 trillion stimulus bill, including $500 billion in direct payments to Americans, along with bailouts and loans for the airline industry, small businesses, and other “critical” sectors of the U.S. economy.

But the details needed to be hammered out, and even that whopping package buoyed the markets only briefly. In the bond market, yields shot up and values went down, on fears that the flood of government bonds needed to finance this giant stimulus would cause bond values to plummet and the government’s funding costs to shoot up.

Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Times

There is a way around that problem. To avoid driving the federal debt into the stratosphere, the Treasury could borrow directly from the central bank interest-free, with an agreement that the debt would remain on the Fed’s books indefinitely. That approach has been tested in Japan, where it has not generated price inflation as austerity hawks have insisted it would. The Bank of Japan has purchased nearly 50 percent of the government’s debt, yet consumer price inflation remains below the BOJ’s 2 percent target.

Virtually all money today is simply “monetized” debt – debt turned by banks into something that can be spent in the marketplace – and the ultimate backstop for this sleight of hand is the central bank and the government, which means the taxpayers. To equalize our very unequal system, the central bank and the government need to work together. The Fed needs to be “de-privatized” – turned into a public utility that serves the taxpayers and the economy. As Eric Striker observed in The Unz Review on March 13:

The US government’s lack of direct control over the nation’s central bank and the plutocratic nature of our weak state means that common sense solutions are off the table. Why doesn’t the state buy up majority shares in large corporations (or outright nationalize them, as happened with the short successful experiment with General Motors in 2009) and use the $1.5 trillion at low interest to develop American industrial independence?

Interestingly, that too could be on the table in these extraordinary times. Bloomberg reported on March 19 that Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic adviser, says the administration may ask for an equity stake (an ownership interest) in corporations that want coronavirus aid from taxpayers. Kudlow noted that when this was done with General Motors in 2008, it turned out to be a good deal for the federal government.

While traditionally considered “anti-capitalist,” the government taking an ownership interest in bailed out companies may be the only way the proposed bailouts will get approval. There is little sentiment today for the sort of no-strings-attached “socialism for the rich” that the taxpayers shouldered in 2008 without reaping the benefits. Bloomberg quotes Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer at DoubleLine Capital:

I don’t think government bailouts of over-leveraged companies that got over-leveraged by share buybacks at all-time highs, enriching executives and hedge fund investors, will sit well with the American people.

The Bloomberg article concludes with a quote from another chief investment officer, Chris Zaccarelli of Independent Advisor Alliance:

I like how [the administration is] thinking a little bit outside of the box. Something big and bold like that could potentially be what turns the market around ….

Long-term Solutions

Rather than just a stake in the profits, the government could think a bit further outside the box and turn insolvent airlines, oil companies, and banks into public utilities. It could require them to serve the people and the economy rather than just maximizing the short-term profits of their shareholders.

Concerning the banks, the Fed could do as the People’s Bank of China is doing in this crisis. The state-run PBoC is giving regional banks $79 billion in stimulus money, but it is on condition that they lend it to small and medium enterprises and forgive late payments, so that economic damage is reversed and production can recover quickly.

Another model worth studying is that of Germany, which also has a strong public banking system. As part of a package for coronavirus aid that the German finance minister calls its “big bazooka,” the government is offering immediate access to loans up to €500,000 for small businesses through its public bank, the KfW (Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau), administered through the publicly-owned Sparkassen and other local banks. The loans are being made available at an interest rate as low as 1%, with interest only for the first two years.

Contrast that to the aid package President Trump announced last week, which will authorize the Small Business Administration to offer business loans. After a lengthy process of approval by state authorities, the loans can be obtained at an interest rate of 3.75% – nearly 4 times the KfW rate. German and Chinese public banks are able to offer rock-bottom interest rates because they have cut out private middlemen and are not driven by the insatiable demand for shareholder profits. They can lend countercyclically to avoid booms and busts while supporting the economy as a whole.

The U.S., too, could create a network of publicly-owned banks backed by the central bank, which could lend into their communities at below-market rates. And this is the time to do it. Times of crisis are when change happens. When the Covid-19 scare has passed, we will have a different government, a different economy and a different financial system. We need to make sure that what we get is an upgrade that works for everyone.

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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 COVID-19 “pandemic” is primarily designed to empower the ruling elite and further its authoritarian reach. The primary tool is the innate human fear of death and this fear has been greatly magnified by the corporate propaganda media.

For those able to sidestep the trap of fear-mongering, it is obvious this disease is less of a threat to mortality than the seasonal flu and tuberculosis. COVID-19’s death rate thus far is minuscule by way of comparison, although the state and its media promise the number will rise precipitously and the only option is to “flatten the curve” by imposing authoritarian mandates, including the imposition of martial law, as is now the case in Italy. 

The state has a monopoly on coercion and violence. It has demonstrated repeatedly throughout history that its first reflex during any crisis, real or invented, is to demand the obedience of the masses or they will suffer the consequences—arrest, fines, incarceration, possibly even death. We are witnessing this now in California, the liberal haven now on lockdown, soon to be transformed into martial law as many people refuse to believe COVID-19 is the boogieman the state claims. For the state, it is impermissible to go about our lives as normal. The same is now unfolding on the opposite coast in New York, another bastion of the liberal mindset. 

In addition to furthering authoritarian rule, the state and its owners, banksters and transnational corporations are determined to take down an already sick economy, made so by decades of post-Keynesian economics and the neoliberal creed. In this way, they can reconfigure economies and finally establish a globalist plan for centralized world government, long sought after and admitted to the public at large (search “global governance”). This fascistic, top-down plan is sold as an effort to realize peace, security, justice, and global mediation systems. It is nothing of the sort. 

Recall Henry Kissinger’s remarks following the LA riots. This war criminal and Rockefeller operative said under the circumstances of an appropriate crisis, the people will run to the state and beg to be protected. Increasingly, the people, like helpless children, expect and demand the state to not only protect them but also gift them with all manner of free goodies at the expense of others.

Comedian and actor Chris Rock, during the reign of Barack Obama, said the president is akin to a father demanding obedience from his children. This is how millions of people look at the government—as a beneficent daddy who will take care of all their needs and protect them during crises, either real or invented. 

The COVID-19 “pandemic” will undoubtedly destroy an already debilitated economy and clear the way for a centralized, fascist, and authoritarian world government and an economic reconfiguration that will further enrich the ruling elite.

The philosophy of the neocon guru, Leo Strauss, is certainly applicable. Strauss believed the world needs an enlightened class of rulers modeled after Plato’s Republic. Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, wrote during the reign of the Bush neocons: 

This is the endgame of the COVID-19 “crisis”—subordination to the state and following authoritarian diktats handed down without question, complaint, or resistance. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published.

Ask Americans who’s commander-in-chief, most will respond: our president. Citizens only think about this just before a presidential election every four years when their final, ‘supreme criteria’ of U.S. leadership is raised: “Does she or he have it:– namely the wisdom (or courage, or resolve) to control the nuclear (war) button?”

It’s a vague term whose specifics are not publicly explored; but I think we can agree it’s singularly associated with military conflict.

I haven’t heard the term commander-in-chief applied to other heads of state, but some variety of it doubtless exists, where a military officer heads a government as Egypt and formerly Pakistan today. Notwithstanding Americans’ first president was a general– one among 12 who became president (of 26 American presidents who’d served in the military).

(Joe Biden, although never a military officer, is clearly projecting this ‘commander-in-chief image’ in debates, invoking his presence in ‘the situation room’, etc. He understands war, he assures the public.)

Leadership was an underlying issue during recent primary debates. They’re essentially over now, eclipsed by the growing pandemic where the focus of leadership has rightly turned to management and moral vision.

Surely our current unprecedented crisis reveals it is time to reconsider the concept. My point here is not Trump’s capacity, but the general underlying American criteria for the nation’s person-in-charge.

Crisis strategists admit this pandemic is a ‘war’, even invoking 911 when Americans perceived they were under siege. (Although– with the exception of immigrants who’ve fled conflicts, by-and-large generated by American bombardments and sanctions on their homelands—most really don’t grasp the realities of siege: economic, diplomatic, medical, cultural or military.)

Now a major health, social and economic crisis—a catastrophe, not to be too alarmist—has arrived in the name of COVID-19.

Whether or not we had doubts about the moral character and management ability of Trump, today we can testify to the gravity of his silliness, racism, ignorance, ugliness, meanness and misplaced priorities. It is far, far more serious that we could possibly have imagined. It forces us to scan the horizon for leadership.

A resident of New York State I’m most closely following the response to this crisis by our governor. (I fervently hope other governors are acting similarly to Andrew Cuomo.) See this. Because, the more I hear from Cuomo day-after-day, the more I feel (along with neighbors, family and friends overseas as well as in the U.S.), we have a profound example of the kind of leadership needed at this moment.

In his presentations Governor Cuomo exhibits no commander-in-chief attitude, but rather that of a capable manager, also someone with –dare I say?—emotion and compassion, approaching that of a ‘father figure’. Perhaps his presence reminds us of President Roosevelt’s legendary fireside chats.

Post-pandemic changes are inevitable. Friends talk about their offices and companies, their universities and hospitals rethinking long-term goals to offer different and better service; one talks about perceiving her neighborhood differently, seeking a new family dynamic, rethinking how we educate our children.

Likewise we need to seriously rethink the concept of commander-in-chief. America’s criterion for presidency is redundant. It is neither a humane concept, nor a relevant one in times of nationwide social crisis. Also absent from this concept is emotion, compassion and morality.

Although not hitherto a particular admirer of Andrew Cuomo, I now perceive him not only as a brilliant manager but also a person with the apparent morality required at this moment. Maybe other governors whose work I am not following are acting likewise. (And please don’t cynically rejoin that Cuomo is working with his eye on the White House in 2024. We’ll talk about that later.)

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. In addition to books on Tibet and Nepal, she is author of “Swimming Up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq” based on her work in Iraq and the Arab Homelands. For many years a producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY, her productions and current articles can be found at www.RadioTahrir.org  

Given that some major U.S. media and politicians made groundless claims that the novel coronavirus originates in China, blamed and slandered China, even asked for an apology from China, I  am presenting below 10 questions I have every reason to ask: 10 questions for the United States about its origin too. Better still, unlike the U.S., I did a lot homework and will base my questions on international media coverage of COVID-19.

Question 1

Since the director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control, Robert Redfield admitted that some Americans seemingly dying from flu were tested positive for the novel coronavirus, can I conclude that those people actually died from the novel coronavirus? Among the 34 million influenza patients, with a death toll of 20,000, how many were misdiagnosed?

When did the misdiagnoses start? And did it actually start from August 2019? These questions are so vital that the world is waiting for an explanation from the United States.

Question 2

When there were some misdiagnoses admitted by U.S. CDC, I’m scratching my head – isn’t the U.S. that owns the best medical technologies in the world? Why did that happen?

As the ground glass opacity (white patches) can be easily seen in CT scans of the lungs of patients with the novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia, it should have been an easy thing to separate the cases of COVID-19 and H1N1 flu. But why were there so many misdiagnoses?

Well, that reminds me of the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s request of controlling all messaging regard to the coronavirus. Why does the White House call for messaging control? Does the U.S. need to hide something? Are they plotting some conspiracy?

Director of the U.S. CDC Robert Redfield (front) speaks during a press conference on the coronavirus at the White House in Washington D.C., U.S., March 4, 2020. /Xinhua

Question 3

Why did the U.S. withdraw from the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) in 2001? Why did it try to prevent a monitoring mechanism for the execution of the Convention? Is it standing in the way of developing biological weapon for the U.S.?

If not, why are there new biological laboratories in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan? Are those labs for biochemical warfare? It’s impossible that they are keeping viruses as pets. If the U.S. is aiming at provoking a biochemical war, who would be the first target then?

Also, how about the swine flu outbreak in China last year? The odd thing is that it broke out in different places simultaneously instead of breaking out separately. Why were drones used to poison the pigs? Was the U.S. behind all that? I heard that it was the pork speculators. But that theory makes no sense – since the swine flu killed millions of pigs in China during the same period of time, pork speculators would suffer great loss instead of profits.

The best possible answer to that was foreign meddling. I was among those who wondered if the U.S. had anything to do with that and hoped for an explanation.

Question 4

The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, located on Fort Detrick, Maryland, was shut down in July 2019. Was it because there was a virus leakage incident?

Just one month later, there was an influenza outbreak across the country. Were those two things related in any way?

Were the misdiagnoses simply cooked up to cover up such secrets? Did that also become a motive for the U.S. to shift the blame to other countries by labeling them as the origin of the novel coronavirus?

Was that an epic coincidence or a dirty secret in disguise? Why did the U.S. erase huge number of English news reports on the internet covering the shutdown in March 2020? Is there anything to hide, or is there anything to worry about?

Question 5

At the 7th Military World Games (October 18-27, 2019) held in Wuhan, why did the U.S. team (369 members) win ZERO gold medal? Did that even look like a reasonable record for the world’s leading military power? Did your government do it on purpose?

Was anyone among the 369 participants ever (mis)diagnosed with influenza? Was it possible they were carriers of the novel coronavirus?

The best thing for the U.S. now is to stop burying its head in the sand and give the 369 people PCT tests to see if they are infected.

Question 6

Why did the U.S. hold Event 201, a global pandemic exercise in October 2019? Why was the CIA deputy director participating it? Is it because the U.S. has foreseen a highly-infectious virus is about to cause a pandemic? One month later, cases of pneumonia of unknown cause were detected in China and there was a pandemic three months later. Probably, it’s not just a coincidence.

Question 7

Japan, South Korea, Italy and Iran all reported that many of their first COVID-19 confirmed cases had no exposure history with China but showed connection with the United States. How come?

Genetic research shows that the type of novel coronavirus found in China belongs to Group C, but Group A and Group B viruses – Group C’s parental and grand parental viruses – are both found in the United States. Why? A Japanese patient was diagnosed with influenza in Hawaii but was tested positive for COVID-19 when he returned to Japan. How to explain that?

Some COVID-19 cases in the U.S. had no connection with China whatsoever. So where does it come from?

Question 8

You’ve got no reason to deny that the 1918 Pandemic originated within your territory. But you let Spain bear the blame for as long as a century. Don’t you feel shame on that?

History seems to repeat itself. So, is the U.S. playing the trick again and attempting to label the novel coronavirus as the “Chinese Virus”?

Question 9

The 1918 Pandemic, causing 1 billion infections, with a death toll “estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million… one of the deadliest epidemics in human history,” according to wikipedia, was proven originating in the U.S., but the U.S. has never apologized to the world.

So far, the origin of the novel coronavirus is still unknown, but the United States is requiring China for an apology, how ridiculous is that! Just to remind the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic killing 300,000 people also originated in the U.S., and also the same for HIV AIDS. So why not confess to the world?

Question 10

In movies, the U.S. is fond of playing the role of the world savior. The image of Captain America is one of its most popular symbols. However, in reality, in the face of a disaster like COVID-19, where is Captain America?

The U.S. is not doing enough to protect its citizens at home or on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It even attempted to make Japan responsible for Americans on Diamond Princess. How does the U.S. have the brass to do all these and accuse China of being irresponsible?

While China bought the world valuable time to battle COVID-19, the U.S. accused China of being passive and lacking transparency. Well, when the White House instructed the CDC to stop tallying the people tested for novel coronavirus, did that count as transparency?

When the U.S. government advised its people not to wear masks, was it not being passive? Just too many questions call for the U.S.’s explanations.

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Featured image is from Xinhua

Netanyahu’s main aims are staying in power and out of prison — no matter how grievously he breaches the rule of law or harms ordinary Israelis and Palestinians by his increasingly dictatorial policies.

On the phony pretext of tracking COVID-19 carriers, he extrajudicially ordered mass surveillance without Knesset or judicial approval.

On Thursday carrying banners with his image saying “CRIME MINISTER” and “No to dictatorship,” hundreds of Israelis protested outside the Knesset, defying his ban on large gatherings.

He virtually shut down judicial proceedings to delay his scheduled March trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust to May, perhaps another delay to follow — a power grab stunt to avoid trial altogether.

New emergency orders were issued by his regime, mandating a near-national lockdown other than for essential services and activities, effective Thursday, a statement saying:

“(C)itizens of Israel are required to stay home. It is no longer a request. It is no longer a recommendation. It is a binding directive that will be enforced by the enforcement authorities.”

On Thursday evening, Israel’s Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction that limits electronic surveillance by Shin Bet, Israel’s security service.

While COVID-19 patients can still be monitored, if a parliamentary oversight committee is not established to monitor the practice by March 24, tracking will be banned, according to the Supreme Court ruling.

It came in response to petitions against police state mass surveillance by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the Joint (Arab) List party, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Adalah responded as follows to the ruling, saying:

“We applaud the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision, which stresses that the government is not allowed to act without oversight.”

“Nevertheless, even parliamentary oversight cannot legitimize such a serious violation of human rights.”

“Public health emergencies must not be exploited to grant additional powers to the Shin Bet security service and the Israeli police.”

Likudnik/Netanyahu loyalist speaker Yuli Edelstein dismissed the Knesset on the phony pretext of obeying a Netanyahu diktat that limits public gatherings to no more than 10 people — a fear-mongering/survival as prime minister tactic when Israel only had a few hundred COVID-19 infected people and no deaths.

The real reason for suspending proceedings is to prevent adoption of legislation that could end his tenure as prime minister.

By recorded message, main opposition Blue and White party member Yair Lapid slammed the Netanyahu regime, saying:

“There is no judicial branch in Israel. There is no legislative branch in Israel. There is only an unelected government that is headed by a person who lost the election.”

You can call that by a lot of names” — dictatorship most appropriate.

On Thursday, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz said he won’t out unity government with Netanyahu, reversing a campaign promise otherwise, adding:

“At the moment, all options need to be on the table. It wouldn’t be responsible on my part not to consider any alternative.”

“Citizens (want) a solution to the political crisis.” Slamming Edelstein, he said:

“It can’t be that we need to turn to the High Court of Justice to jumpstart the Knesset. The…speaker is acting in service of Netanyahu and hindering developments.”

Shortly after the above remarks, he said talks with Likud “were stopped…(T)here are no agreements.”

“What we have seen throughout the day is cynical spin during a great and difficult crisis for Israeli citizens.”

According to Channel 12 news, Gantz supported unity government with Likud. Because key Blue and White party members expressed opposition, it’s off the table, at least for now.

Haartz editors slammed the idea, calling it “capitulation” by Gantz if agreed on with Netanyahu to let him remain prime minister for up to another two years, adding:

“(U)nity government led by a criminal defendant” could hand Netanyahu a stay-out-of-prison pass.

Gantz’s main campaign promise was “Anyone but Bibi.”

Strongly opposing him, Haaretz editors called for “(l)iberating Israel from the clutches of the defendant in the prime minister’s office, and putting an end to his corrupt and corrupting reign.”

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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.

Following a closed-door briefing on the threat of spreading COVID-19 infections — before markets began crashing — at least five US senators cashed in based on inside information unavailable to the public.

The quintet includes Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Byrd, James Inhofe, Kelly Loeffler, Ron Johnson, and Diane Feinstein.

Most likely, other insiders in Washington and elsewhere sold equity holdings before public information about spreading COVID-19 infections caused financial, commodity, and other market turmoil.

Loeffler’s husband is chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange — both co-owners of stocks they dumped, reportedly up to $3.1 million in late January and early February.

Reportedly with a net worth of around $500 million, Loeffler is the wealthiest US senator, a body known as a millionaires club.

In early March, she publicly lied claiming “the consumer is strong. The economy is strong, (and) jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle” COVID-19.

A February 27 audiotape of Burr’s address at a Capitol Hill Club luncheon included the following remark:

“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history. It’s probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

A week before his large-scale stock dump (reportedly between $628,000 and $1.72 million), two weeks after his above private remarks, he said the following in a Fox News op-ed:

“(T)he United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus” — a Big Lie.

On March 20, he falsely said the following:

“I relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks on February 13.”

“I followed CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time.”

“Understanding the assumption many could make in hindsight…I spoke this morning with the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and asked hi to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency.”

On February 12, one day before Burr’s stock dump, US financial markets reached an all-time high.

He had inside information about what likely lay ahead and took full advantage, likely selling all or most of his equity holdings to avoid large financial losses.

The same is true for at least four other US senators.

Market transactions based on inside information unknown to the public are illegal.

If five US senators profited from inside information, did others in both houses benefit the same way?

Will action be taken to hold them accountable? Calls for Burr and perhaps other outed senators to resign aren’t good enough.

Lawbreakers should be prosecuted for their offenses. In America and most other countries, ordinary people alone are punished for wrongdoing.

Privileged ones most often get off scot-free no matter their offenses. Rare exceptions prove the rule.

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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.

No government that had to bow to the power of a financial institution like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) knows the harsh consequences to which it will have to submit. That includes the Venezuelan government. And yet last March 15 president Nicolas Maduro filed a formal request to the IMF for a financing facility of US$5 billion from the emergency fund of the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) with the following words in a letter sent to the IMF director Kristalina Georgieva and that Arreaza published on his Twitter account:

“Only under the spirit of solidarity, brotherhood, and social discipline, we will be able to overcome the situation that comes our way, and we will know how to protect the life and wellbeing of our peoples.”

To no avail. The IMF took the decision to reject the requested loan to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela. Although predictable, it is shocking. (We make the side note that while we trust the source of the information, we have not been able to confirm it officially from Venezuela nor have we been able to find the information on the IMF website.)

What makes the IMF decision particularly disgraceful is the fact that the special RFI fund was set up precisely to respond to the current pandemic. Instead the IMF made a politicised decision totally contrary to its purported intentions and Venezuela’s legitimate request.

The Washington-based institution rejected the request with the unprincipled excuse:

“Unfortunately, the Fund is not in a position to consider this request,” claiming that there is “no clarity” on international recognition of the country’s government. “As we have mentioned before, IMF engagement with member countries is predicated on official government recognition by the international community, as reflected in the IMF’s membership. There is no clarity on recognition at this time”.

The IMF has a membership of 189 countries. Venezuela has been a member since 1946 despite its intentions to withdraw in 2007. Only about 50 countries are reported to recognise self-appointed unelected “interim president” Juan Guaidó. The majority of IMF countries have recognised elected president Maduro. This leaves no doubt that the IMF decision responds to political pressure from dominant powers like the US, Canada, and several EU countries.

Iran had recently made a similar  request to the IMF for the same amount. At the time of writing we do not know the decision. A recent  analysis suggests that it will be very unlikely that the IMF will grant a loan to Iran as the IMF is seen as a “soft power tool” of the US. However, the analysis continues,

“This is great PR for the Iranian government, specifically the hardliners. It allows the government to tell the general population that they tried to reach out for help, but that the international community turned their back on them.”

What makes the request for IMF special funding particularly crucial at this time is that these two countries have been forced into an economic situation similar to war time or a siege – despite their wealth in resources – is the fact that they are under severe US unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) that prevent them from purchasing medication and medical supplies ever more necessary in a situation of pandemic. Following the just announced drop of oil price below $25 a barrel, both countries can only expect the situation to get worse even if they were able to freely export oil without US intervention.

Venezuela, has been the object of escalating threats as well as financial and economic blockade by the US since 2017. Despite that, it has been able to confront the crisis with a series of internal policies and the solidarity of countries such as Cuba, China and Russia. Venezuela does not have a critical health situation due to CODIV-19 virus with only 42 confirmed cases to date. All standard prevention programs and recommendation are in place but things can quickly change for the worst.

Venezuela’s heavy reliance on loans would be unnecessary if the government could have access to the financial resources it owns but have been blocked. US has imposed an oil blockade that has blocked the purchase of oil from Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA. It has also confiscated Venezuela’s US subsidiary CITGO, worth $8 billion. This is a huge blow for Venezuela, which receives around 90% of government revenue from the oil industry. The US government has also frozen $5.5 billion of Venezuelan funds in international accounts in at least 50 banks and financial institutions.

We must conclude that the IMF shamefully abandons Venezuelans to the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic on a political decision. However, we also must recognise that the US has typically either created national crises or taken advantage of natural crises for its unrelenting regime change goal. There is no other explanation for the additional “sanctions” imposed on Iran at this time.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The response by the government to COVID-19 will turn America into a third world country in short order. Destroying the economy, throwing millions of people out of work, creating air money and thus inflation, and draconian measures to head off a virus that kills far less than the ordinary flu will have serious and unprecedented ramifications. 

The veneer of civilization will dissolve in short order. If practically everyone is ordered by the state to “shelter in place,” there will be few people left to deliver—let alone produce—food and other necessities. Within the first few days of this exaggerated “new plague,” frantic citizens besieged the stores, striping the shelves of toilet paper, canned goods, and bread. This is happening as a result of the corporate media hammering out an apocalyptic message nonstop. 

Fast-forward to next month, or the one after. Millions of people, thrown out of work and confronting poverty, will react in the way humanity always reacts when faced with scarcity and hunger—with food riots, looting, and violence. 

New York City and Baltimore now have troops on the street. We’re told they are being deployed to establish field hospitals and turn commandeered hotels into ICUs to care for the infected.

Behind this noble effort, however, is a plan to enforce an unnecessary lockdown and confront with deadly force rioters, looters, as well as folks outraged over the systematic dismantling of civilization, many whom see this viral outbreak (natural or manmade) for what it is—a cover for an economic reset and the establishment of an elitist-driven totalitarian global authority. 

Posting analysis such as this will likely become a dangerous practice in the months ahead. It is already vividly apparent that the state—and indeed, much of a propagandized population—will not tolerate deviation from the absurd exaggerations and outright lies now foisted upon us. 

The state has long planned for this scenario. It realizes the asset bubble and Ponzi scheme economy cannot be sustained and the crash will be catastrophic. The plan is to blame COVID-19 for the crash. This will not only allow the real culprits—central banks, the Federal Reserve, investment firms, and other scam artists and economic criminals—off the hook but flood them with trillions of bailout dollars.

Trump’s impending bailout of the airline industry, for instance, does not take into consideration the industry squandering billions on stock buybacks instead of protecting themselves from predictable economic headwinds. 

“The Big Four airlines—Delta Airlines Inc, Southwest Airlines Co., American Airlines Group Inc., and United Airlines Holdings Inc.—together repurchased $39 billion worth of stock over the past five years, according to Seeking Alpha, much of it since passage of massive corporate tax cuts in 2017 pushed through by President Donald Trump and Republicans,” reports Benzinga. 

Trump the crony capitalist will spend billions in nonexistent money to prop up transnational corporations and banks while sending small checks of a few hundred dollars to citizens as a token gesture. This will only temporarily mollify Americans and will not buy their loyalty in the long run. Two checks for a thousand dollars or less spread over a couple months will not keep the wolves from the door. 

The plan to exploit what appears to be an average virus in order to re-engineer economies and impose a global totalitarian super-state will usher in a New Dark Age of subservience and privation. The ruling elite considers us little more than serfs and useless eaters, especially the elderly and the underclass. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published.

Zhao Lijian, the spokesman of the ministry of foreign affairs in China quite knowledgeably alleged that the US was behind the spread of Corona virus through its military personnel in Wuhan during Wuhan military games late last autumn, 2019. If that be true, then China has just begun the war of challenging the false US narratives on global affairs.

It seems that 2020 will be a year of two phenomena; uncovering conspiracies, less theory and more facts. If so, then it is understandable that Italy may be punished because of defying American orders against joining Belt & Road (BRI). Iran is ever guilty of wrong doing, hence more Corona density, so on and so forth. The purpose of this argument is not to discover the origins of Corona virus but to argue that the US is dead set on subverting the BRI, no matter what means need to be adopted to blackmail and bludgeon China into submission for the sake of its own world domination. With Zhao Lijian’s statement, it seems obvious that China is not likely to capitulate on BRI, rather China is likely to confront the US in conventional and non-conventional ways and to follow through ever more assertively its BRI plans.

Now we turn to Afghanistan. Afghanistan is key to world peace. If the US is beaten out of Afghanistan successfully, it will leave India, Daesh/ISIS, Afghan National Army (ANA) which the Taliban with regional help can easily eliminate. Main regional actors that are likely to do that are Pakistan, China and Russia. But even Iran and Turkey are interested in doing the same.

Pakistanis know very well that after the signing of the so-called peace deal between the US and the Taliban, Afghanistan is entering a very dangerous period of war in which its neighbors must not sit quietly. Islamabad knows too well that the Taliban are about to form a government in Kabul as the Americans leave, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah fight over power and India seeks Daesh/ISIS support to keep Pakistan away from helping the Kashmiri people. Hence, Islamabad only has ONE choice: Support the Taliban’s return to power once again.

Pakistani PM should not have congratulated Ashraf Ghani government under the American pressure because it would mean ill will towards the Taliban. The Taliban on the other hand seek the recognition of their government not Ghani’s puppet government. In all likelihood, the Pakistanis did what they have done before. Most likely, they placated the Americans on the surface but alerted the Taliban that this is only surface level diplomacy. Taliban have given a clear message to Americans. The US was supposed to release 5,000 prisoners. India forbade Ghani government to release prisoners to which Mike Pompeo asserted that Ghani must release prisoners otherwise the Taliban will begin to shoot the retreating American forces. Just in the last two days, the Taliban staged over a hundred attacks on the ANA in ten different provinces. Their deal is only with the US for safe withdrawal of American troops, but the Taliban will show no clemency to Ghani-Abdullah government(s).

The old remnants of so-called al-qaeda’s salafi groups have done a baiyah (oath of allegiance) at the hands of Mullah Haibatullah, the head of the Taliban’s main group, the Mullah Omar group. The salafi group has also promised that they will fight against US and India supported Daesh/ISIS fighters by submitting to the Taliban. The Taliban have declared that their next step is conquest of Kabul. Pakistanis are in full support of that underneath the surface because they still fear America. But at the sub-diplomatic level, Pakistan is in full support for the Afghan Taliban, because without securing the Western borders, it cannot give adequate response to Indian aggression in Kashmir and butchery of Muslims inside India. If America doesn’t keep its promise and fights the Taliban then they will begin a strong offensive against the Americans. While the latter is not likely to happen, but American support for unleashing Daesh/ISIS has happened before and will certainly happen again.

China should consider doing the following to ensure its best interest in the long run:

1. Recognize the Taliban government at its earliest so that the post-Civil war dealings with the Post Ghani-Abdullah Afghan government take place between China and the Taliban government in a medium of support and trust.

2. Consider giving the US a bloody nose for its misdeed in Wuhan and avenge the life of its citizens by supporting anti-American forces in Afghanistan.

3. Consider giving Taliban heavier weapons for their last offensive against Kabul

4. China and Russia should help Taliban weed out the Indians and Daesh/ISIS from the region entirely. This cannot be done without Pakistan.

5. After Taliban’s consolidation of power in Kabul, provide the SCO platform to achieve Intra-Afghan understanding, rebuilt trust so that civil war doesn’t erupt again and propose “one country-multiple system” notion of development for Afghanistan to prevent future polarity within the country while keeping the Afghanistan sovereignty intact.

6. China must continue to cultivate and deepen relations with all its immediate Western neighborhood, i.e., countries of the Muslim world.

Pakistan is still dedicated to BRI and it is committed to continue to do so in the decades to come. However, BRI requires a secure environment for Chinese workers, which requires stampeding the forces that are against BRI (i.e., India, US and its lackeys). Afghan situation is not complex and very easy to understand if one’s narrative is based on truth. The battle is between builders (China) and destroyers (the US), those who promote connectivity (China) and those who disconnect people, families, countries and regions (the US). If Zhao Lijian is right (which all of the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan believe to be so), then the Corona virus deadly mischief by America has really disconnected the world from each other. No connectivity even within families, friends, workers, factories, sports, universities, and more. This move by the US has really isolated, disconnected and atomized the world. Not only that the economic loss to China and all economies of the world has been tremendous, it has led to a mutually divorced humanity instilled with fear of future rather than hope.

For Pakistan, peace in Afghanistan is existential. For China success of CPEC in Pakistan existential. In sum, for both China and Pakistan there are no other viable options of peace except for helping the Taliban into power through any means possible. India is the spoiler of peace in Afghanistan and igniter of violence inside its own borders. If China increases its involvement in Afghanistan, the Indians may be misguided to monkey around with China along its border areas. If Indians do make such a mistake, China should be prepared to take an assertive stand against India.

What seems clear in the days to come is that there will be lesser room for diplomacy and an increase in kinetic and non-kinetic warfare. The world is becoming black and white with less grey area, which means that the domain of diplomacy may gradually be shrinking.

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And so we have it. The much-awaited announcement regarding school closures in Scotland has taken place, and once again Nicola Sturgeon has beaten her Westminster counterpart by addressing the nation in relation to Covid-19. Schools are to be shut from Friday onwards, with no guarantee they will re-open prior to the summer break at the beginning of July. Exams will be postponed as young people’s lives are put on hold.

There was huge outcry last week when Sturgeon briefed the nation ahead of Boris Johnson on the next steps to be taken after Thursday’s Cobra meeting. Journalists and commentators were aghast – how could she have abandoned protocol by ‘announcing Johnson’s plan for him’ – it was said. The reality was however that Sturgeon was addressing the Scottish nation, and outlining Scotland’s individual approach to the coronavirus pandemic.  She announced a ban on mass gatherings of more than 500 people – something which Johnson did not – much to the concern of some experts. The government later succumbed to pressure and buckled on this issue over the weekend, stating that mass gatherings would be banned.

There is political significance in Sturgeon not wanting to hang around waiting for Boris Johnson. By being pro-active and making announcements first, it shows that she takes the public health crisis seriously, and wants to inform the public as soon as possible.  It sends a signal that the Scottish government is managing the crisis. But more importantly, by Sturgeon announcing key measures ahead of Johnston, such as closing schools, she implies that Scotland is one step ahead of Westminster.  It’s a clever strategy; if you want to become an independent country then the first stage is to start acting like one.  Sturgeon is sending a subtle message to the nation that her government is ahead of the game.

For Covid-19 has the potential to unite Britain in a way that we haven’t seen since the Second World War. Independence for Scotland now will surely be put on the back burner. With the death toll now standing at over 100, and predictions that we could see at least 20,000 deaths from the outbreak in the UK alone, the gravity of the situation is really starting to be felt here. Life is already changing dramatically.  Streets are deserted in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, with only a handful of people travelling on public transport. Many people are now working for home and keeping children off school. The busiest places at the moment are supermarkets, as the panic buying continues and shelves lie empty. Tesco has already announced it will have to close 24-hour stores for a few hours each day to try to replenish stock and keep up with demand.

People will have to adapt to a totally new way of life. It’s like someone has pressed the ‘pause’ button on the remote. Social distancing means that normal routines and ways of life for the young and old alike will be completely interrupted. Children will have to be amused and entertained at home, while the many elderly people who live on their own could feel increasingly isolated. Thankfully, I’ve heard that local businesses are taking the initiative to offer home deliveries of groceries to the elderly or infirm forced to stay indoors. Neighbours are also playing an important role, offering assistance to those less able. On a positive note, we could see our communities pulling together over this crisis and people helping each other in a way not seen since the war.

And when it’s all over, when we can finally breathe again, we’re sure to start asking if anything could have been done differently. Boris Johnson has assured us that the ‘timing is crucial’ as he has tentatively rolled out his plan. However, criticism has already begun of his approach, with some medical professionals saying his strategy of aiming to generate ‘herd immunity’ is flawed, and will swamp the NHS. Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet journal, has written a scathing review of it, saying Johnson has taken far too long to react to the Covid-19 outbreak, given the warnings that came thick and fast from China and Italy earlier in the year.  Ominously he believes it is now ‘too little, too late.’

Indeed, with nothing short of a catastrophe unfolding in Italy, the prospects for the UK don’t look good. NHS staff are already complaining that there is a lack of testing for coronavirus amongst health workers, leading to unnecessary staff shortages as some self-isolate at home if they display symptoms. Current efforts to test around 4000 people a day are dwarfed by those in, for example, South Korea, where they manage around 10,000 tests daily. And although the Prime Minister has said he is aiming for 25,000 tests carried out per day, it’s still not clear how soon Britain would be able to achieve this.

We are indeed in unprecedented territory, with each day bringing more questions and fewer answers as to how we can fight the coronavirus…

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Iran’s Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif urged member states of the UN to end the United States’ unconscionable and lethal economic warfare.  

Addressing UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Zarif detailed how U.S. economic sanctions prevent Iranians from importing necessary medicine and medical equipment.

For over two years, while the U.S. bullied other countries to refrain from purchasing Iranian oil, Iranians have coped with crippling economic decline.

The devastated economy and worsening coronavirus outbreak now drive migrants and refugees, who number in the millions, back to Afghanistan at dramatically increased rates.

In the past two weeks alone, more than 50,000 Afghans returned from Iran, increasing the likelihood that cases of coronavirus will surge in Afghanistan. Decades of war, including U.S. invasion and occupation, have decimated Afghanistan’s health care and food distribution systems.

Jawad Zarif asks the UN to prevent the use of hunger and disease as a weapon of war. His letter demonstrates the  wreckage caused by many decades of United States imperialism and suggests revolutionary steps toward dismantling the United States war machine.

During the United States’ 1991 “Desert Storm” war against Iraq, I was part of the Gulf Peace Team, – at first, living at in a “peace camp” set up near the Iraq-Saudi border and later, following our removal by Iraqi troops, in a Baghdad hotel which formerly housed many journalists.

Finding an abandoned typewriter, we melted a candle onto its rim, (the U.S. had destroyed Iraq’s electrical stations, and most of the hotel rooms were pitch black). We compensated for an absent typewriter ribbon by placing a sheet of red carbon paper over our stationery. When Iraqi authorities realized we managed to type our document, they asked if we would type their letter to the Secretary General of the UN. (Iraq was so beleaguered even cabinet level officials lacked typewriter ribbons.) The letter to Javier Perez de Cuellar implored the UN to prevent the U.S. from bombing a road between Iraq and Jordan, the only way out for refugees and the only way in for humanitarian relief. Devastated by bombing and already bereft of supplies, Iraq was, in 1991, only one year into a deadly sanctions regime that lasted for thirteen years before the U.S. began its full-scale invasion and occupation in 2003. Now, in 2020, Iraqis still suffering from impoverishment, displacement and war earnestly want the U.S. to practice self-distancing and leave their country.

Are we now living in a watershed time? An unstoppable, deadly virus ignores any borders the U.S. tries to reinforce or redraw.

The United States military-industrial complex, with its massive arsenals and cruel capacity for siege, isn’t relevant to “security” needs. Why should the U.S., at this crucial juncture, approach other countries with threat and force and presume a right to preserve global inequities? Such arrogance doesn’t even ensure security for the United States military. If the U.S. further isolates and batters Iran, conditions will worsen in Afghanistan and United States troops stationed there will ultimately be at risk. The simple observation, “We are all part of one another,” becomes acutely evident.

It’s helpful to think of guidance from past leaders who faced wars and pandemics. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-19, coupled with the atrocities of World War I,  killed 50 million worldwide, 675,000 in the U.S. Thousands of female nurses were on the “front lines,” delivering health care. Among them were black nurses who not only risked their lives to practice the works of mercy but also fought discrimination and racism in their determination to serve. These brave women arduously paved a way for the first 18 black nurses to serve in the Army Nurse Corps and they provided “a small turning point in the continuing movement for health equity.”

In the spring of 1919, Jane Addams and Alice Hamilton witnessed the effects of sanctions against Germany imposed by Allied forces after World War I. They observed “critical shortages of food, soap and medical supplies” and wrote indignantly about how children were being punished with starvation for “the sins of statesmen.”

Starvation continued even after the blockade was finally lifted, that summer, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Hamilton and Addams reported how the flu epidemic, exacerbated in its spread by starvation and post-war devastation, in turn disrupted the food supply. The two women argued a policy of sensible food distribution was necessary for both  humanitarian and strategic reasons. “What was to be gained by starving more children?” bewildered German parents asked them.

Jonathan Whitall directs Humanitarian Analysis for Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors without Borders. His most recent analysis poses agonizing questions:

How are you supposed to wash your hands regularly if you have no running water or soap? How are you supposed to implement ‘social distancing’ if you live in a slum or a refugee or containment camp? How are you supposed to stay at home if your work pays by the hour and requires you to show up? How are you supposed to stop crossing borders if you are fleeing from war? How are you supposed to get tested for #COVID19 if the health system is privatized and you can’t afford it? How are those with pre-existing health conditions supposed to take extra precautions when they already can’t even access the treatment they need?

I expect many people worldwide, during the spread of COVID – 19,  are thinking hard about the glaring, deadly inequalities in our societies, wonder how best to extend proverbial hands of friendship to people in need while urged to accept isolation and social distancing. One way to help others survive is to insist the United States lift sanctions against Iran and instead support acts of practical care. Jointly confront the coronavirus while constructing a humane future for the world without wasting  time or resources on the continuation of brutal wars.

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Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. (www.vcnv.org)

Featured image: Protester’s sign decries sanctions, “a silent war”. Photo: Campaign for Peace and Democracy, 2013

For the past three years the new narrative of Russian interference in U.S. elections has bound corporate news media more tightly than ever to the interests of the national security state. And no outlet has pushed that narrative more aggressively – and with more violence to the relevant facts — than The New York Times.

Times reporters have produced a series of stories that loudly proclaim the Russian election meddling narrative but offer no real facts in the body of the story supporting its most sensational claims.

The Times service to the narrative was introduced by its February 2017 story  headlined, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence.” We now know from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign that the only campaign aide who had contacts with Russian intelligence officials was Carter Page, and those had taken place years before in the context of Page’s reporting them to the CIA. The Horowitz report revealed that FBI officials had hidden that fact from the FISA Court to justify its request for surveillance of Page.

But the Times coverage of the Horowitz report in December 2019 failed to acknowledge that the calumny about Page’s Russian intelligence contacts, which it had published without question in 2017, had been an FBI deception.

Two more Times Russiagate stories in 2018 and 2019 featured spectacular claims that proved on closer examination to be grotesque distortions of fact.  In September 2018 a 10,000-word story by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti sought to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.

But that turned to be an outrageously deceptive claim, because Shane and Mazzetti failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people’s news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts.

In December 2019, senior national security correspondent David Sanger wrote a story headlined, “Russia Targeted Election Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds,”and Sanger’s lede said the Senate Intelligence Committee had “concluded” that all 50 states had been targeted.  But the Committee report actually reaches no such conclusion.  It quoted President Barack Obama’s cyber-security adviser Michael Daniel as recalling that he had “personally” reached that conclusion, but shows the only basis for his conclusion was remarkably lame: the “randomness of the attempts” and his conviction that Russian intelligence was “thorough.”

The Committee reported that some intelligence “developed” in 2018 had “bolstered” the subjective judgment by Daniel.  But all but one of the eight paragraphs in the report describing that intelligence were redacted, and the one unredacted paragraph suggests that the redacted paragraphs provided no conclusive evidence that Russian intelligence had scanned any state election websites, much less those of all 50 states.  The paragraph said, “However, IP addresses associated with the August 16, 2016 FLASH provided some indicators the activity might be attributable to the Russian government….[emphasis added].”

The Committee report also contained summary statements from six states that the Department of Homeland Security has continued to include among the 21 states it insists were hacked by the Russians in 2016, denying any cyber threat to their systems.  Another 13 states reported only that there was “scanning and probing” by inconclusive IP addresses the FBI and DHS had sent them.  Sanger did not report any of those troublesome details.

In January 2020 the Times began its coverage of the theme of Russian interference in the 2020 election with a story headlined, “Chaos is the Point: Russian Hackers and Trolls Grow Stealthier in 2020.”  The story, written by Sanger, Matthew Rosenberg and Nicole Perlroth, sought to heighten the existing U.S. climate of paranoia about a Russian attack in regard to the 2020 elections.  Once again, however, nothing in the story supports the sinister tone of the headline.

It reported Department of Homeland Security officials’ anxiety about the ransom-ware attacks on 100 American towns, cities and federal offices during 2019, which are clearly criminal operations aimed at large-scale payoffs by cities.  The story informed readers that DHS was investigating “whether Russian intelligence was involved in any of the attacks,” on the apparent theory that the criminals were being used by the Russians.

Since those ransom-ware attacks had been going on for years, the obvious question would have been why DHS would have waited until 2020 to reveal that it was investigating Russian involvement.  Thus, the only fact underlying the story was the DHS desire to find evidence to support its accusations of Russian election hacking.

Still at it in 2020

The Times continued its advocacy journalism in a Feb. 26 report that U.S. intelligence officials had “warned” in a briefing for the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 13 that “Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to get President Trump elected,” citing five people “familiar with the matter.”

The Times’ team of four writers proceeded to declare, “The Russians have been preparing – and experimenting – for the 2020 election…aware that they needed a new playbook of as-yet undetectable methods, United States officials said.”  But instead of reporting actual evidence of any Russian action or decision for action, the Times writers again cited what their sources suspected could be done.

“Some officials,” they wrote, “believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could use ransom-ware attacks…to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration databases.”  The Times’ sources thus had no actual intelligence on the question and were merely speculating on what any foreign government might do to disrupt the election.

Three days after that report, moreover, the Times backed away from its previous lede after intelligence sources disputed its claim that Russia was intervening to reelect Trump, suggesting that the briefing officer, Shelby Pierson, had overstated the assessment. Sanger sought to limit the damage with a story labeling the problem one of “dueling narratives” in the intelligence community.

Then Sanger admitted, “It is probably too early for the Russians to begin any significant moves to bolster a specific candidate,” which obviously invalidated the Times’ previous speculation on the subject.  But after The Washington Post published a story that the FBI had informed Senator Bernie Sanders that Russia had sought to help his campaign, Sanger quickly returned to the same narrative of Russian interference to advance its favorite candidates.

On the Times’ podcast “The Daily,” Sanger opined that the Russians were now supporting both Trump and Sanders – because Sanders, “like Donald Trump,” has “got a real aversion to interventions around the world.”

The most recent entry in the Times’ campaign to create anxiety about Russian interference in the election focused on race relations.  On March 10, the Times headlined its story, “Russia Trying to Stoke U.S. Racial Tension before Elections, Officials Say.”  In their lede Julian Barnes and Adam Goldman announced, “The Russian government has stepped up efforts to influence racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence November’s presidential election, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and stoke anger among Afro-Americans, according to seven American officials briefed on recent intelligence.”

But true to the modus operandi used routinely to push the Russian election threat narrative, the writers did not offer a single fact supporting such a story line. They even admitted that the officials who were making the claims provided “few details” about white supremacists and “did not detail how” blacks were being encouraged to use violence.

It turns out, in fact, that U.S. officials have found nothing indicating Russian support for violent white supremacists in America. The only fact that they could cite — based on a single source — was that the FBI is “scrutinizing any ties” between Russian intelligence and Rinaldo Nazzaro, the American founder of a “neo-Nazi group,” who lives with his Russian wife in St. Petersburg, Russia, but owns property in the United States. So, the Times’ single source had nothing but a suspicion for which the FBI was trying to find evidence.

The final touch in the piece was the accusation that RT had “fanned divisions” on race by running a story about a video of New York policemen attacking and detaining a young black man that Barnes and Goldman write “sparked outrage” and had also “posted tweets aimed at stirring white animosity.” But the RT article on the video merely reported accurately that the video depicted unprovoked police brutality and that it had already gone viral.  The Times itself had published a much more detailed Associated Press story on the same incident that went into a discussion of the history of police brutality in New York City.  By the Times’ own criterion, the AP was doing far more to stoke racial animosity than RT.

The opinion pieces that RT published attacking The New York Times for its coverage of a video at the University of Wisconsin that offended non-whites and for a Times opinion piece critical of the Apu character on “The Simpsons” echoed views on race and culture that most Americans find offensive. The idea that they were part of a Russian plot to generate racial animosity, however, is a very long stretch.

The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of propagandizing for the narrative of Russia’s threat to U.S. democracy is dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media of their socio-political power. Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the heart of the Times‘ coverage of that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change.

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Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. His latest book, with John Kiriakou, is “The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis: From CIA Coup to the Brink of War.”

Featured image is from Pixabay

In 2017, RAND Corporation published in its associated media Small Wars Journal an article by the researchers Marta Kepe and Jan Osburg, outlining a strategic defense plan for the Baltic countries in the event of a Russian invasion. The authors claim that Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia will manage their weaknesses to face the Russians, overcoming their population and military deficit through the participation of civilians in the conflicts, working with the armed forces to create a “total defense” plan that would make the invasion too costly and laborious for Russia.

Subsequently, the RAND Corporation article was mentioned in a paper by the National Interest magazine, authored by Michael Peck, in which the author studies the Baltic defense strategy, speculating about “total defense” and its efficiency in a possible case of Russian invasion. The researcher, finally, takes a pessimistic conclusion, stating that, despite all efforts, nothing will change the fact that Russia is a large country and the Baltic States are small and weak.

In March last year, the renowned American magazine Foreign Policy published an article by Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, claiming that Russia’s next “targets” would be European nations. In the text, Saakashvili considers the possibility of a Russian attack on the Baltic countries, saying that President Vladimir Putin sees them as real threats because they are “functional democracies on the Russian border”. After developing his reasoning, the author comes to the conclusion that this invasion will not occur, pointing other countries as future “targets” of Russia. However, even though Saakashvili does not believe in the possibility of a Russian invasion, rumors about a Russian plan to invade and annex the Baltic nations have generated unfounded tensions in the region.

The height of media alarmism regarding relations between Russia and the Baltic countries was, however, an article published by the American expert Hall Brands on Japan Times website, whose title is “How Russia could force a nuclear war in the Baltics”. Referring again to the studies of the RAND Corporation, the author considers the possibility of a nuclear escalation on the frictions between Moscow and NATO in the Baltics, concluding that the geographic condition of these states would hinder rapid action by the West in the event of Russian action, raising the risks of forced annexation.

Apparently, media agencies aligned with the liberal establishment are working together to spread the idea that there is a Russian interest in invading and annexing the Baltics. For these agencies, the interest is so great that it would even justify a nuclear action. However, when we investigate the reasons for such despair, we found no concrete argument to justify such speculations. The great Western think tanks, such as the RAND Corporation, are spreading this myth with the specific purpose of instilling fear and tension in the Baltic States, so that, in the face of “Russian terror”, they will increasingly align themselves with Washington and NATO.

The concrete data indicate exactly the opposite of the rumors spread by RAND analysts. In January last year, Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas publicly expressed an interest in improving relations between his country and Russia, with a view to pacifying bilateral tensions and envisioning a future of peace and cooperation, despite divergent interests. Also, Latvia remains the only member country of the European Union that is totally dependent on Russian gas – a situation Lithuania has only recently withdrawn from. So why Moscow would be interested in invading and annexing such countries, when the threat they pose to the Russian political structure is absolutely null? In a way, it is much more logical to think that for the Baltic countries it is more profitable and interesting to maintain good relations with Russia than to embark on unfounded conspiracies by Western experts who are extremely ideologically involved. However, there is a second hypothesis.

It is still likely that the Baltic States are simply acting in the interest of increasing their role on the international scene. Unable to form a solid political, military and economic force, even if united, capable of facing the great world powers, these States may be anchoring themselves in NATO’s military apparatus to seek the affirmation of their own interests in Europe and in the world. By this logic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would be voluntarily adopting the alarmist discourse of the West and reaffirming it in order to, increasing the western military presence on its borders, try to increase its regional and global influence, moving from being small European States to becoming potencies in the global geopolitical game.

Indeed, the Baltic countries are making a big mistake in adopting either of these two stances. Unlike Moscow, for whom the interest in “invading” the Baltic is null, Washington has clear interests in occupying the region, so as to face Russia. That is the main reason for the presence of NATO troops in the Baltic expected for the Defender Europe 2020 drills – now canceled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Baltic States are adhering to the discourse of Western think tanks, however, under no perspective this opposition to Russia can be profitable for them. Following the interests of Washington, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have too much to lose.

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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.

Israeli security officials said on Tuesday that they expect the operational efficiency of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to decline with thousands of troops quarantined due to the coronavirus crisis, Arab48.com has reported.

According to Wallah news website, 4,267 Israeli soldiers are in quarantine by order of the Ministry of Health. Many have tested positive for the virus, Covid-19. Although some officials denied that operational efficiency has been affected, others expressed their concerns because many senior officers are among those in quarantine.

As of Tuesday, said Arab 48.com, the IDF has imposed a curfew on military bases for 30 days in order to reduce the opportunities for soldiers to associate with others. Furthermore, several security procedures have been suspended as part of precautionary measures against the spread of the virus.

The IDF is worried about relocating troops as this might take the virus from one brigade or unit to another.

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Featured image: Israel fights with coronavirus fears – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

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Sanctions: Unilateral Coercive Measures for Regime Change in Venezuela

By Nino Pagliccia, March 20, 2020

In discussing the issue of “sanctions” there are two main points that need to be made. One is the use of the correct terminology when referring to the government actions that the US, Canada and the EU take in order to achieve regime change. The second is of course the impact that those actions have.

The blame of imposing “sanctions” falls fully on the US government as it currently applies them to 39 countries! However, throughout, when I refer to the US “sanctions”, particularly in the Venezuelan context, I also mean to include Canada as well as the EU as willing accomplices and accountable perpetrators.

The Coronavirus Is Not “The Plague”: It Is the U.S.

By Edward Curtin, March 20, 2020

Now it is all about us and the coronavirus panic.  It is about how many of us might die. It is about stocking toilet paper.  For the rich, it is about getting to their second or third houses where they can isolate themselves in splendor. As I write, 150 or so Americans are said to have died of Covid-19, and by the time you will read this the number will have climbed, but the number will be minuscule compared to the number of people in the U.S.A. and those numbers will be full of contradictions that few comprehend unless, rather than reacting in fear, they did some comprehensive research.

15 Among Brazilian Delegation that Met with Trump Now Have Coronavirus

By Zero Hedge, March 20, 2020

It’s been eleven days since the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his delegation met with Trump and many White House staffers at Mar-a-Lago on March 7. First it was Nestor Forster, Brazil’s Chargé d’Affaires in Washington, and Nelsinho Trad, who both tested positive for Covid-19, and as of early this week it was further announced Brazilian Foreign Trade Secretary Marcos Troyjo has been confirmed for the virus.

As the US Blames China for the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Rest of the World Asks China for Help

By Joe Penney, March 20, 2020

Western Europe and the U.S. are struggling under the weight of the crisis, with cases rising exponentially every day and higher death rates in Italy than anywhere else. China’s private and public sectors are filling in gaps in equipment where other states are failing, although the spread of the disease is such that demand for those materials might quickly outpace China’s supply. The government and Jack Ma, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder of the Alibaba Group, have already sent doctors and medical supplies to France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Iran, Iraq, the Philippines, and the United States. Chinese citizens living abroad are flying home in large numbers to avoid catastrophic health failures elsewhere. In Massachusetts, a Chinese woman tried and failed to be tested three times for Covid-19 before flying back home to be tested and treated.

Washington Post Photographer Spots Crossed-Out ‘Coronavirus’ in Favor of ‘Chinese Virus’ in Trump Notes

By Eoin Higgins, March 20, 2020

The president’s own handwriting scrawling the term across his notes at a press conference drew outrage on social media as observers like Daily Beast reporter Sam Stein noted the “obvious attempts to start a debate over political correctness” rather than Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, which threatens the lives of thousands if not millions of Americans.

Workers and the Virus: Radical Lessons from Italy in the Age of COVID-19

By Alessandro Delfanti, Beatrice Busi, and Erika Biddle, March 20, 2020

In the face of the mounting coronavirus crisis, we need to start asking a crucial question: who pays for the lockdown? The last three weeks have taught some hard lessons to Italian workers. Indeed, workers have been shouldering the bulk of the crisis. This applies to workers in all sectors, and even more intensely with activities related to care. If the right to work safely cannot be guaranteed, all nonessential activities must be shut down.

A Tale of Two Foreign Policies: The Train-Wreck Abroad Is Bipartisan

By Philip Giraldi, March 20, 2020

Now that the Democratic Party has apparently succeeded in getting rid of the only two voices among its presidential candidates that actually deviated from the establishment consensus, it appears that Joe Biden will be running against Donald Trump in November. To be sure, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard are still hanging on, but the fix was in and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) made sure that Sanders would be given the death blow on Super Tuesday while Gabbard would be blocked from participating in any of the late term debates.

Coronavirus, Vaccines and the Gates Foundation

By F. William Engdahl, March 20, 2020

We must admit that at the very least Bill Gates is prophetic. He has claimed for years that a global killer pandemic will come and that we are not prepared for it. On March 18, 2015 Gates gave a TED talk on epidemics in Vancouver. That day he wrote on his blog, “I just gave a brief talk on a subject that I’ve been learning a lot about lately—epidemics. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a tragedy—as I write this, more than 10,000 people have died.” Gates then added, “As awful as this epidemic has been, the next one could be much worse. The world is simply not prepared to deal with a disease—an especially virulent flu, for example—that infects large numbers of people very quickly. Of all the things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic.”

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The US media is relentlessly spinning fear, panic and despair, with the endorsement of “authoritative” American scientists. “The new coronavirus could kill millions across the United States”, according to Dr. Kathleen Neuzil a specialist in vaccines at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. (CNBC, March 18). 

The media routinely exaggerate the health impacts as part of their fear and panic discourse.

Lets look at the figures.  The latest  coronavirus data in the U.S released by the CDC on March 18, 2020 are as follows:

• Total cases: 10,442
• Total deaths: 150
• Jurisdictions reporting cases: 54 (50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and US Virgin Islands)

UPDATE: Since the publication of this article, the reported CDC total cases and total deaths have increased substantially.

• Total cases: 15,219
• Total deaths: 201

March 20 figures

According to latest media hype, citing and often distorting scientific opinion (CNBC)

Statistical Models by Washington think tanks predict a scenario of devastation suggesting that “more than a million Americans could die if the nation does not take swift action to stop its spread as quickly as possible”.

One model from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that between 160 million and 210 million Americans could contract the disease over as long as a year. Based on mortality data and current hospital capacity, the number of deaths under the CDC’s scenarios ranged from 200,000 to as many as 1.7 million. (The Hill, March 13, 2020)

 

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Who to Believe? 

The most commonly reported symptoms [of COVID-19] included fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath, and most patients (80%) experienced mild illness. Approximately 14% experienced severe disease and 5% were critically ill. Early reports suggest that illness severity is associated with age (>60 years old) and co-morbid disease. (largely basing on WHO’s assessment of COVID-19 in China)

 The Hill, March 19, 2020

And then these “mild symptoms” of COVID-19 are used as a public health justification for the closing down of entire countries, precipitating large sectors of the World population into unemployment, poverty and despair.

Bear in mind that, the COVID-19 hits the 60 years+ elderly (most of whom are not part of the labor force), particularly those who do not have adequate health coverage. In the US the COVID-19 deaths are largely recorded in the 70 years + range. The confirmed death rate from COVID-19 is 1.4% of total “confirmed” and “presumed” cases (CDC data).

Compare “the Mild Illness and Recover in Two Weeks” of COVID-19 (barely acknowledged by the media) to the devastating social and economic consequences of the lockdowns ordered by powerful financial interests.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, thousands of small enterprises across the land have been spearheaded into bankruptcy. Millions of families have lost their lifelong savings as a result of the collapse of stock markets. Precipitated into a debt trap, they may lose their homes.

And that scenario will not “recover” in two weeks. It’s a long term depression. What we are dealing with is the destabilization of the US economy and an engineered transfer of billions of dollars of money wealth. 

COVID-19 Recovery Rates

The CDC Data tabulates  both “confirmed” and “presumptive” positive cases since January 21, 2020. Yet what it fails to mention is that among the confirmed and presumptive cases, a large number of Americans have recovered. But nobody talks about recovery. It does not make the headlines.

In China, there is a distinction in the data between “confirmed cases infected” and “confirmed cases recovered”. The  recorded recovery rate in China is of the order of 80% since the outbreak of the epidemic in Wuhan in early January. (See Xinhua, March 19 2020)

In the US,  the hike in “confirmed and presumptive cases” started in late February to early March (see graph below).

Applying recommended medication, the recovery rate –according to the WHO report cited above– would be of the order of two weeks for most patients under 60 (a longer period of recovery for the population group over  60).

What this suggests is that the COVID-19 public health crisis in America could be brought under control in a matter of months. But if that were to happen, it would undermine the implementation of Big Pharma’s Vaccination project.

There are serious difficulties in the testing process. Reliable test kits are “in short supply”.

Presumptive vs. Confirmed Cases

According to the CDC the data presented for the United States 10,442 cases ““include both confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported to CDC or tested at CDC since January 21, 2020″.

The presumptive positive data does not confirm coronavirus infection: Presumptive testing involves “chemical analysis of a sample that establishes the possibility that a substance [COVID-19] is present“(emphasis added). But it does not confirm the coronavirus infection. The presumptive test must then be sent for confirmation to an accredited government health lab. A confirmatory testing implies “identification of the specific substance [coronvirus] through further chemical analysis.”

It is worth noting that the WHO does not tabulate presumptive data. Its total confirmed cases figure is significantly lower than the total “confirmed and presumptive” cases presented by the CDC.

WHO figures for the US: 3586 total confirmed cases plus 1822 new confirmed cases. (March 16, 2020)

(discrepancies with CDC data may also be due to delays in data processing).

State and local data are at odds with the figures published by both the WHO and the CDC, they are invariably much higher.

There are flaws in the process of of COV-19 testing and data collection by local, State and CDC.

The CDC data does not include “testing results for persons repatriated to the United States from Wuhan, China and Japan”. Why?  

The above statement suggests discrepancies in the overall assessment of confirmed cases. Why is the publication of the data pertaining to persons repatriated from China and Japan withheld by the CDC? Is that data classified?

Officially, according to the WHO and the CDC the coronavirus takes its origin from China which suggests that all the cases in the US took their origin in China. Why then are these estimates not included?

The White House ordered meetings where officials discussed the coronavirus to be classified, …  Federal health officials were directed to keep dozens of meetings that started in mid-January, including discussions on the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions confidential, … According to the sources, those without security clearances were not permitted in the high-security room, typically used for military and intelligence operations, at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where the meetings took place. (The Hill)

And what do the pathology reports of the lab tests pertaining to imported China viruses reveal? What strains? Classified.

Trump call it the “Chinese virus”: Are the COVID-19 “confirmed case” of imported “foreign” infections from China/Japan the source of “transmission” to those COVID-19 cases recorded across the United States?  There is no available evidence to that effect.

Seattle, “America’s Wuhan”? 

Examine the CDC Map below (March 19). The largest concentrations of confirmed and presumptive positive cases are in New York State (NYC Metropolitan area) and the State of Washington (Seattle).

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Data problem, causality? The State of Washington accounts for more than ten percent of the cases.

44.7% of the recorded COVID-19 deaths in the United States have been recorded in Washington State. Most of the cases and deaths are concentrated in Seattle.

The population of Washington State is 7.5 million, barely 2.2% of total US population (330 million).

We will not speculate on the data issue. It is a matter which has to be carefully investigated.

As of March 15,  67 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in Washington State. (total for USA; 150, according to CDC)

According to Washington state data,  there are 1,187 confirmed cases of COVID-19. (Not including presumptive cases).

“And King County officials said there are now 562 confirmed cases just in King” (March 18). Most of the deaths are elderly (70s to 90s), many of whom mysteriously died at Life Care Center. Out of 67 deaths, 30 were recorded at the Life Care Center.

What is significant is that none of the recent CDC and state level reports intimate that U.S. cases of COVID-19 infection have been transmitted from China directly or indirectly.

Note

Bear in mind the methodology of CDC estimates is defined as follows: State and local public health departments are involved is testing and data collection independently of the CDC. “In the event of a discrepancy between CDC cases and cases reported by state and local public health officials, data reported by states should be considered the most up to date.” (CDC, March 18, 2020)

Following Iraqi president Barham Saleh’s nomination of Adnan al-Zarfi (Zurufi or Zurfi) as the new Prime Minister, Iraq has entered a critical stage.  The Shia block is divided. The 30 days given to al-Zarfi to nominate his cabinet will lead either to a quorum of the parliament recognising his new cabinet and in consequences to a bloody future that could lead to unrest and even partition of Iraq or absence of a quorum. Why did President Saleh nominate al-Zarfi?

In 2018 Speaker Mohamad Halbousi proposed Barham Saleh as President. The proposal was adopted by “Al-Fateh”, the largest Shia coalition, with the agreement of the Sunni. Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and US presidential envoy Brett McGurk were against the nomination of Saleh. It was Iranian IRGC Major General Qassem Soleimani who pushed for Barham Saleh to become president. Saleh, upon his nomination, promised Soleimani to be “better than Mam Jalal” (Uncle Jalal Talibani, one of Iran’s closest allies). Once Saleh was elected, he was asked by the “Al-Fateh” coalition, to nominate Adel Abdel Mahdi as prime minister, and he complied.  One year later, Abdel Mahdi was asked by the Marjaiya in Najaf to resign in response to street demonstrations demanding reforms, necessary infrastructure and better job opportunities.

Soleimani met with Shia leaders who all agreed– with the exception of Hadi al-Ameri, who wanted to be the Prime Minister of Iraq – to nominate Qusay al-Suheil. Al-Fateh forwarded the name to President Barham Salih who refused to appoint al-Suheil and went to Erbil for a few days, enough time for the street to reject the nomination. It was Sayyed Moqtada al Sadr – who rejected the nomination of al Suheil – who then contacted President Saleh and informed him that he represented the largest coalition, called “Sairoon”. Saleh, who feared Moqtada’s reaction, sent a letter to the parliament and the constitutional court asking them to define the “largest coalition”. None managed to respond clearly to this request.

The Iraqi constitution’s definition of the “largest coalition” is elastic and subject to interpretation. President Barham Saleh maliciously threw this apple of discord between the parliament and the constitutional court. It was Nuri al-Maliki who in 2010 introduced a new definition of “large coalition” to beat Ayad Allawi, who had managed to gather 91 MPs and was eligible to form a government. Al-Maliki formed a broad coalition after the MPs took their oaths and established that he was leading the largest coalition, as defined by the final alliances formed after the parliamentary elections, rather than by the poll results.

President Salih told Soleimani that the Shia coalition was divided and that he was not in a position to decide. At the same time, Salih accommodated the Americans who saw that Soleimani’s candidates were failing to win consensual approval. Iran’s Shia allies were effectively contributing to the failure of Soleimani’s efforts to reach an agreement among Shia over a PM nominee.

By forwarding his resignation on November 29, 2019, to President Salih, Adil Abdel Mahdi made it clear he no longer wished return to power. On February 1, Salih nominated Mohamad Allawi on Moqtada al-Sadr’s demand. Moqtada was given the leading role in choosing a candidate following the US assassination of Soleimani at Baghdad’s airport. This leadership was agreed to in Tehran by General Ismail Qaaani, who believed Moqtada should lead all groups because he was the main instigator of the protests. Even if the people in the street no longer welcomed Moqtada, he remained the only one capable of clearing the road and allowing the formation of a new government. Iran’s priority was for the parliament and the government to concentrate on the withdrawal of all foreign forces, led by the US.

Mohammad Allawi failed to achieve a parliamentary quorum because he behaved condescendingly towards some of the Shia, the Sunni and the Kurds. Allawi believed that Moqtada’s support was sufficient and that all the other groups and ethnicities would have to accept his choice of ministers. Allawi presented his resignation to Salih on March 2.

According to article 73/3 of the Iraqi constitution, the sole authority for nominating a prime minister belongs to the president, who has 15 days to select a candidate. However, President Salih gave the Shia 15 days to choose a candidate. A coalition of seven members representing all Shia groups was formed—they presented 17 candidates. Three names were offered: Naim al-Suheil, Mohamad al-Soudani and Adnan al-Zarfi. Naim al-Suheil received the most votes but was rejected by Faleh al-Fayad.

Although al-Zarfi is a member of the al-Nasr party led by former PM Haidar Abadi (al-Nasr was formed in 2018), Nuri al-Maliki pushed hard for al-Zarfi (also a member of al-Da’wa party) and sent him to Beirut to convince the Lebanese to bless his nomination. Iran was against the designation of a US national (al-Zarfi holds a US passport). Confronted by Iran’s rejection, Al-Maliki managed to convince Moqtada al-Sadr to nominate al-Zarfi. Al-Maliki managed even if al-Zarfi was the one who fought against Jaish al-Mahdi – with US support – in Najaf in 2004, persecuted Moqtada in the city and expelled him to Baghdad. Moqtada al-Sadr – who recently refused any prime minister holding dual nationality – put his signature on the agreed paper offered to Salih along with Nuri al-Maliki, Haidar Abadi and Sayyed Ammar al-Hakim as per the newly claimed “largest coalition”.

It was a golden opportunity for Salih, with the absence of Soleimani, to please the Americans, the Kurds, the Sunni and a large group of Shia. Salih used his constitutional authority to nominate al-Zarfi as a prime minister. It will be a blow to Iran if al-Zarfi manages to form his government and present it to the parliament.  With the support of such a large coalition of Shia-Sunni-Kurdish MPs, he will no doubt reach the necessary quorum.

One of the main reasons Moqtada al-Sadr supported al-Zarif (apart from al-Zarif’s promise to satisfy Moqtada’s requests in the new cabinet) is the birth of a new group called “Osbat al-Thaereen” (the “Movement of the Revolutionary Association” – MRA). This group claimed twice its responsibility for bombing al-Taji military base where the US and other members of the coalition have a permanent presence. Sayyed Moqtada rejects any attacks on US forces and prefers acting through diplomatic channels (via the parliament). Many Iraqi groups close to Iran swore to seek the withdrawal of the US forces mainly due to the Pentagon’s refusal to discuss a full removal of troops. The US is only willing to relocate troops. Moreover, the US is reinforcing its presence in crucial bases in Iraq (K1, Ayn al-Assad and Erbil) and is about to bring the Patriot interception missile system to its bases in Iraq, without Iraqi government consent.

If al-Zarfi manages to get parliament approval, he may seek to avoid any withdrawal negotiations with the US. He would also merge Hashd al-Shaabi and attempt to disarm the Iraqi groups close to Iran. But al-Zarfi is not in a position to seek a change of the parliament’s decision related to the US withdrawal. That issue will concern the newly elected parliament. However, al-Zarfi, like any new prime minister, is expected to gather a large number of MPs in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, enough to seek the prolonged presence of the US forces in Iraq.

Osbat al-Thaereen warned the US forces in Iraq.

This scenario is only applicable if al-Zarfi manages to reach the parliament in 30 days with a new cabinet and to retain his allies, notably the Shia. Iran will do everything possible to make things difficult for al-Zarfi. The ex-governor of Najaf was accused of burning the two Iranian consulates in Karbala and Najaf last year and is expected to follow the path of his al-Nasr coalition leader (former PM Abadi) in respecting US sanctions on Iran. That would be devastating to Iran’s economy, already suffering from the harshest US sanctions ever.

Al-Zarfi as prime minister will be a major blow to Iran and to those who support its objectives and ideology in Iraq. The coronavirus will not keep Iran away from the Iraqi theatre; Iran will not allow Iraq to fall under US control. If al-Zarfi comes to power, the stability of Iraq will be shaken, and partition will be back on the table. An era of instability can be expected in Mesopotamia under an Iraqi prime minister considered to be an ally of the US, particularly following the assassination of Qassem Soleimani.

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ISIS cells are once again active in eastern Syria. Late on March 17, the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces repelled an ISIS attack in the area between the town of al-Sukhna and the T3 station. The attack involved over two dozen ISIS members supported by at least 6 vehicles equipped with heavy weapons. Pro-opposition sources claim that at least 20 Syrian soldiers were killed in the clashes. Pro-government sources deny casualties and say that terrorists were forced to retreat after they had been targeted by artillery and mortar fire.

The ISIS presence in the desert area of eastern Syria had been slowly decreasing over the past year. Additionally, government forces carried out several security operations cracking down on the remaining ISIS cells in southeastern Deir Ezzor and eastern Homs. However, the terrorist threat was not removed. Syria and Russia say that ISIS members use the US-controlled zone of al-Tanf as a safe haven to hide from Syrian Army operations.

Five civilians were reportedly killed and 15 others injured in a rocket strike on the city of Afrin on March 18. Pro-Turkish sources say that the rockets were launched by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) or affiliated rebels. The YPG created the brand of the Afrin Liberation Forces in December 2018 in order to distance themselves from regular attacks on the Turkish-controlled part of northwestern Syria. In this way, the YPG, which is the core of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, was seeking to distance itself from operations against Turkish forces. The goal was to continue receiving military and financial support from the United States, while simultaneously using the same resources to carry out attacks on the formal ally of the US under another brandname.

Alaa al-Omar, a commander of one of the largest units in the Turkish-backed Ahrar al-Sham Movement, was assassinated near Jisr al-Shughur in the southwestern part of Greater Idlib. Al-Omar was among commanders of Turkish proxy groups involved in sabotaging joint Russian-Turkish patrols along the M4 highway. Pro-government sources claim that his assassination is a result of the contradiction between al-Omar’s unit and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Turkistan Islamic Party, which controls Jisr al-Shughur. According to this theory, al-Omar was not active enough in organizing protests against the safe zone deal.

Regardless of the contradictions among the Idlib armed groups, the M4 highway remains closed and the Turkish-Russian agreement on the safe zone in the area is not being implemented.

Meanwhile, the US joined al-Qaeda-led efforts to kill the deal on Idlib. US Secretary Mike Pompeo accused Russia of killing “dozens of Turkish military personnel” and promised “additional measures” to support Turkey in the Idlib question. Apparently, somebody in Washington is very sad that no new Russian-Turkish war has yet taken place in early 2020.

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Tulsi and Bernie dropped out. 

On March 19, she made it official, shaming herself and disappointing supporters by endorsing Biden. See below. 

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So will Sanders officially in the coming days (dropping out and endorsing Biden).

He likely privately informed his family and key campaign staff of his decision to end his race for the White House.

Like virtually always before, the choice for US voters this November is between death by hanging or firing squad — in other words, no choice at all.

America’s one-party system with two right wing shuts out independents and others not representing continuity.

Big money controls things. Secrecy and backroom deals substitute for a free, fair and open process.

Key election results are pre-determined. Horse race reporting substitutes for discussing vital issues mattering most.

Voters have little reliable information to guide them from establishment sources, just independent ones largely online if make the effort to follow them.

Voter disenfranchisement is rife — millions of Americans left out because of past criminal records, including innocent people wrongfully imprisoned, others for political reasons or offenses too minor to matter.

Half or more of eligible voters opt out because their needs and welfare aren’t addressed.

Monied interests running things manipulate the process with electronic ease to assure things always turn out the same way — while presenting the illusion of a free and open system.

The US process is what Adam Smith called “the defense of the rich against the poor.”

Democracy is pure fantasy. None whatever exists. Monied interests alone are served, the vast majority of Americans and others abroad exploited to benefit the nation’s ruling class.

In dropping out of the race on Thursday, Gabbard tried having things both ways, saying:

“(T)he best way (she) can be of service at this time is to continue to work for the health and wellbeing of the people of Hawaii and our country in Congress, and to stand ready to serve in uniform should the Hawaii National Guard be activated,” adding:

Biden is Dem party choice to face Trump in November. “Although (she doesn’t) agree with (him) on every issue,” her further remarks left supporters hugely disappointed, saying:

“I know that he has a good heart and is motivated by his love for our country and the American people (sic).”

“I’m confident that he will lead our country guided by the spirit of aloha — respect and compassion — and thus help heal the divisiveness that has been tearing our country apart (sic).”

“…I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my full support to…Biden in his quest to bring our country together (sic).”

Gabbard added that she’ll continue pursuing policies for peace, “mutual respect and cooperation…combatting terrorism, and removing the existential threat of nuclear war which hangs over the heads of all of us.”

She’ll support policies aiming “bring an end to the new Cold War and nuclear arms race, and end regime change wars, which are costing us trillions of dollars, so we can invest these precious resources in the needs of the American people — health care, rebuilding our infrastructure, education, and so much more.”

Why then is she supporting Biden whose agenda is polar opposite what the above remarks say she stands for?

For nearly half a century as US senator, vice president, and presidential aspirant, he supported and still supports US wars of aggression against nonthreatening states.

He’s militantly hostile to people of color, opposes human and civil rights for everyone, backs the worst of Israeli high crimes, champions the humanly destructive war on drugs, is anti-social justice, and has been hostile to the rule of law and other democratic values throughout his years in Washington.

Earlier Gabbard said she won’t seek reelection as House representative for Hawaii’s 2nd district.

Her Thursday remarks left open what avenues she’ll pursue after the 117th Congress is sworn into office without her in January 2021.

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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 combination of crippling American sanctions, the compliance with the aforesaid by the US’ “comprehensive global strategic partner” India (formerly one of Tehran’s top energy partners) out of fear of so-called “secondary sanctions”, the uncontrollable outbreak of COVID-19 in the Islamic Republic, and the authorities’ mismanaged response to all of this has put Iran on the brink of collapse and made it desperate enough to appeal to the IMF for a $5 billion emergency loan for the first time in six decades.

In discussing the issue of “sanctions” there are two main points that need to be made. One is the use of the correct terminology when referring to the government actions that the US, Canada and the EU take in order to achieve regime change. The second is of course the impact that those actions have.

The blame of imposing “sanctions” falls fully on the US government as it currently applies them to 39 countries! However, throughout, when I refer to the US “sanctions”, particularly in the Venezuelan context, I also mean to include Canada as well as the EU as willing accomplices and accountable perpetrators.

First of all I would like to correct the terminology that is used. We often are coopted into the use of the language of the empire but we have to be alerted to the fact that empires write history based on their “vision” of the world as conquerors.

When the empire and the colonial powers to which we have referred above put words in our mouths, they also aim to put thoughts in our minds. This will certainly mislead our perception of the facts.

For example, it is almost inevitable to see references to Cuba in the corporate media as “communist-run Cuba”. But there is never a reference to the US as “capitalist-run United States”. While both statements are correct, the former needs to be emphasised to imply something “wrong”, the latter is ignored as the acceptable norm.

Another example is the use of “regime” to imply an authoritarian or illegitimate government, whereas the term “democracies” is used to describe governments that are close to the neoliberal dominant ideology.

Our first revolutionary act is to be aware and resist any attempt at brainwashing and weakening of our anti-imperialist outlook.

The dominant use of the word “sanctions” for the criminal actions that are being committed under that label is a euphemism. It hides the fact that the so-called sanctions are a crime, are an act of war, are illegal, break all established international laws, and are inhuman, be it in Venezuela or anywhere else.

This is the dictionary meaning of sanctions: “provisions of a law enacting a penalty for disobedience or a reward for obedience”.

“Penalty”! Penalty for what? For not submitting? For resisting domination? Where is the court case? Who is the judge? Where is the evidence that justifies the “penalty”?

“Disobedience”! “Obedience”! To whom? The US? Canada? The EU? The so-called Lima Group?

In the context of US and other powers application of the terminology is simply an outrageous abuse of power. Only the sovereign people can be the judges of their own governments and will “penalise or reward” using their democratic norms. Everybody else should stay out of it.

The use of this language in the geopolitical context is simply old colonial language. It is inconceivable in the 21st century! As it has been inconceivable for the last 500 years of colonialism in this continent.

That can only be interpreted as a demand for submission and surrendering of sovereignty.

If we accept that, we are accepting submission and domination by the dominant powers. Because that’s what “sanctions” imply.

What they call “sanctions” we call them by their proper name: Unilateral coercive measures.

They are “unilateral” because they do not imply a relationship with another as in bilateral or multilateral relations. It is a one-sided decision. There is no negotiation between two or more parties before an action is taken. The bully unilaterally strikes the victim. To give it an appearance of legality both the US and the neo-colonial countries have created their own laws as tools of aggression against the imaginary enemy. They have created enemies to justify their laws. To further justify the untenable position the bully dominant powers join in agreements like in the cases of the US-Canada agreement or the “Lima Group” to ostracise the victim, Venezuela.

And they apply “coercive measures” of their choice to force individuals, governments and institutions to follow their diktat. None of them are the real enemies, except in their own ideologically confused imagination.

More abusively, their laws are applied extraterritorially. And this is against any norm of international relations. Just recently, the US has applied extraterritorial unilateral coercive measures against the Russian oil company Rosneft for buying and shipping Venezuelan oil. The US has also imposed fines against a Swiss company associated with Rosneft.

We have witnessed for almost 60 years one of the longest unilateral coercive measures against any country in the case of the blockade of Cuba. Now the imperial history is repeated in Venezuela and other countries like Nicaragua. US coercive measures have been imposed on Nicaragua police force over ‘violent repression’.

A few days ago we read that the “US House of Representatives pushed through a Nicaragua regime-change bill with zero opposition”. This is a bill sponsored by hardliners that ramps up US economic warfare and regime-change measures against Nicaragua’s elected government.

All seems to indicate that Latin America is still the victim of the US Monroe Doctrine.

Referring specifically to Venezuela. What is the economic impact of US coercive measures on Venezuela?

US has imposed an oil blockade that has blocked the purchase of oil from Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA. It has also confiscated Venezuela’s US subsidiary CITGO, worth $8 billion. This is a huge blow for Venezuela, which received 90% of government revenue from the oil industry.

The U.S. government has also frozen $5.5 billion of Venezuelan funds in international accounts in at least 50 banks and financial institutions.

All sources of international borrowing options like the IMF and World Bank are also out of reach due to the financial blockade. Even if Venezuela could borrow money abroad, the United States has long blocked international trade by threatening “sanctions” on foreign companies for doing business with the country.

What is the human cost to Venezuelans, the ultimate victims?

According to a recent report by authors Weisbrot and Sachs of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, more than 300,000 people are estimated to be at risk because of lack of access to medicines or treatment. That includes 16,000 people who need dialysis, 16,000 cancer patients, and roughly 80,000 people with HIV.

More dramatically, the same authors, in their 2019 paper titled “Economic sanctions as collective punishment: The case of Venezuela”, also claim that “sanctions” have inflicted […] very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018. But the US has imposed escalating measures since 2015.

The authors conclude that “sanctions reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation.”

Further, about 15%-20% of Venezuelans have limited access to drinking water in their homes, because the government cannot acquire new foreign-built parts to fix broken pumps and pipes. Water is shipped by trucks weekly to needy communities. But the blockade, and the lack of parts for vehicles, is also impacting the number of water trucks that can be kept running. In some cases the fleet of trucks has been reduced by 75% over the last 3-4 years, to now only a handful of trucks.

The situation is getting worse with the increasing economic and financial blockade that the “sanctions” enforce reaching a limit that borders cruelty and even criminality. In the current circumstances Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab denounced a few days ago that coercive and unilateral measures imposed by the United States prevent the purchase of drugs and supplies to confront the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When foreign minister Jorge Arreaza called on the International Criminal Court last February to open an investigation into coercive measures imposed on Venezuela by the Trump administration he said, “With punishing ‘sanctions’, the Trump administration has given “a death sentence to tens of thousands of Venezuelans per year.”

He also said, “We are convinced that the consequences of the unilateral measures constitute crimes against humanity, against the civilian population.” And the US has violated “international law and human rights”.

In conclusion, we agree and we will continue accusing the empire and all neo-colonial powers.

• “Sanctions” are unilateral coercive measures.
• “Sanctions” kill.
• “Sanctions” are a crime.
• “Sanctions” are an act of war.
• “Sanctions” are a tool of hybrid war on Venezuela and other sovereign countries.

Socialism is NOT hurting Venezuela, the so-called sanctions are.

In fact, if it were not for Venezuela’s determination to implement socialism, Venezuelans would suffer tremendously more. Venezuelans are protected by the policies of the Nicolas Maduro government and the Bolivarian Revolution.

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This article was originally published on New Cold War.

This is based on a speech delivered at a rally against “sanctions” delivered in Vancouver, March 13, 2020

Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from teleSUR

 “Two categories of propaganda must be distinguished.  The first strives to create a permanent disposition in its objects and constantly needs to be reinforced.  Its goal is to make the masses ‘available,’ by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of fascination.  The second category involves the creation of a sort of temporary impulsiveness in its objects.  It operates by simple pressure and is often contradictory (since contradictory mass movement are sometimes necessary).”  – Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus’ great 1947 novel, The Plague, is a warning to us today, but a warning in disguise.  When he died sixty years ago at the young age of forty-six, he had already written The Stranger, The Fall, and The Plague, and had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The outward story of The Plague revolves around a malignant disease that breaks out in a town that is quarantined when the authorities issue a state of emergency. After first denying that they have a problem, the people gradually panic and feel painfully isolated.  Death fear runs rampant, much like today with the coronavirus. The authorities declare martial law as they warn that the situation is dire, people must be careful of associating, especially in groups, and they better obey orders or very many will die.  So the town is cordoned off.

Before this happens and the first signs that something is amiss emerge, the citizens of the town of Oran, Algeria remain oblivious, for they “work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich.”  Bored by their habits, heavily drugging themselves with drink, and watching many movies to distract themselves, they failed to grasp the significance of “the squelchy roundness of a still-warm body” of the plague-bearing rats that emerge from their underworld to die in their streets.  “It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of their secret humors; thrusting up to the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in its entrails.”  To them the plague is “unthinkable,” an abstraction, until all their denials are swept aside as the truth emerges from the sewers and their neighbors and families die from the disease.

“Stupidity has a way of getting its way;” the narrator, Dr. Rieux tells us, “as we should see if we were not always so wrapped up in ourselves …. plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

The American people are wrapped up in themselves.  Nor do they recognize the true rats.  They are easily surprised; fooled would be a better word.

Camus uses a physical plague to disguise his real subject, which is the way people react when they are physically trapped by human rats who demand they obey orders and stay physically and mentally compliant as their freedom is taken from them.

The Plague is an allegorical depiction of the German occupation of France during World War II.  Camus had lived through that experience as a member of the French Resistance.  He was a writer and editor of the underground Resistance newspaper Combat, and with his artist’s touch he later made The Plague a revelatory read for today, especially for citizens of the United States, the greatest purveyor of the plague of violence in the world.

We are all infected with the soul-destroying evil that our leaders have loosed upon the world, a plague of killing that is now hidden behind the coronavirus fear that is being used to institute tight government controls that many will come to rue in the months ahead, just as happened after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Coronavirus is a perfect cover-story for the occupation of the public’s mind by a propaganda apparatus that has grown even more devious over the past 19 years.

Ask yourself: Where is the news about U.S. military operations in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, etc.?  There is none in the corporate mainstream media, and little in the alternative media as well.  Have those operations ceased?  Of course not.  It’s just that the news about them, little that it was, has disappeared.

Now it is all about us and the coronavirus panic.  It is about how many of us might die. It is about stocking toilet paper.  For the rich, it is about getting to their second or third houses where they can isolate themselves in splendor. As I write, 150 or so Americans are said to have died of Covid-19, and by the time you will read this the number will have climbed, but the number will be minuscule compared to the number of people in the U.S.A. and those numbers will be full of contradictions that few comprehend unless, rather than reacting in fear, they did some comprehensive research.

But arguments are quite useless in a time of panic when people are consumed with fear and just react.

For we live in plague time, and the plague lives in us. But to most Americans, Covid-19 is the plague, because the government and media have said it is.  Like the inhabitants of Oran, the United States is “peopled with sleep walkers,” pseudo-innocents, who are “chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests.”  That their own government, no matter what political party is in power (both working for “deep-state,” elite interests led by the organized criminals of the CIA), is the disseminator of a world-wide plague of virulent violence, must be denied and divorced from consensus reality.

That these same forces would use the fear of disease to cow the population should be no surprise for those who have come to realize the truth of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks that followed, both of which were used to justify the endless “wars on terror” that have killed so many around the world. It is a shock for so many people who can’t countenance the thought that their own government could possibly be implicated in the death of thousands of U.S. citizens and the release of the deadly anthrax, which we know came from a U.S. lab and was carried out by a group of inside government perpetrators.

When it comes to the plague-stricken deaths visited on millions around the world for decades by the American government, this must be denied by diverting attention to partisan presidential politics, and now the coronavirus that engenders fear, loathing, and a child-like tendency to believe Big Brother.  The true plague, the bedrock of a nation continually waging wars through various means – i.e. bombs and economic and medical sanctions, etc. – against the world, disappears from consciousness.  As U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said to 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl in 1996 when Stahl asked her if the U.S. sanctions on Iraq that had resulted in the death of 500,000 Iraqi children were worth it: “We think the price is worth it.”

For “decent folks must be allowed to sleep at night,” says the character Tarrou sarcastically; he is a man who has lost his ability to “sleep well” since he witnessed a man’s execution where the “bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist.” He awakens to the realization that he “had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people.”  He loses any peace he had and vows to resist the plague in every way he can.  “For many years I’ve been ashamed,” he says, “mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn.”

The rats are dying in the streets. They are our rats, diseased by us. They have emerged from the underworld of a nation plagued by its denial.  Unconscious evil bubbles up.  We are an infected people. Worry and irritation – “these are not feelings with which to confront plague.” But we don’t seem ashamed of our complicity in our government’s crimes around the world.  For decades we have elected leaders who have killed millions, while business went on as usual. The killing didn’t touch us. As Camus said, “We fornicated and read the papers.”  He knew better. He warned us:

It’s a wearying business being plague-stricken.  But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it. That’s why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness.

Yet the fight against the plague must go on.  Tarrou puts it thus:

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, as far possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true. You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.  So I resolved always to speak – and to act – quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track.

These days, I keep thinking of an incident that occurred when I was a young investigator of sexually transmitted diseases, working for the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare through the Public Health Service as an epidemiologist.  My job was to track down sexually transmitted diseases by finding links of sexual contacts. One day I went to interview and take a blood sample from a poor woman who had been named as a sexual contact. I knocked on her door on the third or fourth floor of a walkup apartment building.  She looked through the peep-hole and asked who it was and I told her my name and what government agency I represented. I could tell she was very wary, but she opened the door. She stood there naked, a very heavy woman of perhaps 300 pounds. She nonchalantly welcomed me in and I followed her as she padded down the hall where she took a housecoat off a hook and put it on.

There is, as you know, an old tale by Hans Christian Anderson called “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Although the emperor parades around naked, the adults make-believe he is clothed. Only a child sees the obvious. I was 23-years-old naïve young man at the time of this unforgettable incident, but it echoes in my mind as a reminder to myself that perhaps that woman was unconsciously teaching me a lesson in disguise.  The year was 1967, and when I went out to get into my government car with federal license plates, a white man in a white shirt in a white car in a poor black neighborhood, a hail of bricks rained down toward me and the car from the roof opposite.  I quickly jumped in and fled as the ghettos were exploding. Soon the National Guard would be called out to occupy them.

Intuition tells me that although the emperor has no clothes and a vast PSYOPS occupation is now underway, too many are too grown-up to see it.

It’s an old story continually updated.  Like The Plague.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

Featured image: Protesters take to the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, for a million-man rally to call for an end to the military presence of the United States in their country. Photo | Mehr

Even as coronavirus spreads rapidly across the globe, causing a health crisis of historic proportions, the U.S. military is engaging in new military attacks in the Middle East. The U.S. must cease all military interventions and redirect its military budget to combat the pandemic.

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Amidst the unprecedented crisis that the world is currently facing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. military is continuing to carry out airstrikes abroad. On March 12th, the U.S. launched several rockets, hitting five targets in southern Iraq, which Iraqi military officials say damaged an unfinished civilian airport and killed three Iraqi soldiers, two police officers, and a civilian worker. The attack was one in a series of retaliations against Iran, begun back in December, which escalated after the killing of Iran’s commander of the elite military Quds Force, Qasim Solemani. Thursday’s strike was in direct retaliation for an attack made the previous day by an Iran-backed militia that killed one British soldier and two American troops.

Even as nearly 4,300 cases of coronavirus (a modest projection due to insufficient distribution of test kits) have already appeared in the U.S. and with deaths projected to be more than 2.2 million, the U.S. continues to redirect funds that could be used for aid to combat the public health crisis towards military intervention. The U.S. military is currently taking extra steps to bolster its bases in the Middle East by sending Patriot antimissile batteries and other weapons to Iraq in the coming weeks. As a result, hundreds of new troops will head into the country to man the missile-defense batteries, despite Iraq’s demand to remove troops from the region. While the U.S. continues to shore up its military strength against Iran, the people of Iran are desperately suffering not only from one of the world’s most severe outbreaks of the coronavirus, but also from crippling drug and food sanctions that have hindered the government’s ability to effectively respond to the pandemic.

Until recently, President Trump referred to the coronavirus as nothing more than the flu, belittling the potentially deadly outcomes for those who contract the virus. The federal government has been incredibly slow to respond to the coronavirus crisis within the United States. Not only does the coronavirus present a serious health crisis, exacerbated by the U.S.’s inadequate healthcare system, but it has also catalyzed a severe economic crisis for workers. As many fear the ramifications of the virus, more than 27 million Americans remain uninsured and could potentially face crippling medical debt. Further, despite Trump’s assertion during his State of the Union address in January that the United States is currently boasting its lowest unemployment numbers in years, many of those jobs are low-paying jobs within the gig economy; they provide little security and no benefits to precarious workers. As a result, 18% of U.S. workers have lost their jobs or are working significantly reduced hours since the coronavirus hit. Meanwhile, the military’s retaliatory response to the attacks were swift and followed by precise action. Despite the many already suffering as a result of the coronavirus, the U.S. continues to bolster its war machine.

The U.S. should not be spending money on setting up new Patriot missile systems on American bases around the world, deploying droves of new troops, or fortifying aircraft carriers in the Middle East. The U.S. must redirect all military funds to an emergency public health response. Rather than occupying, bombing, and oppressing people in other countries, this year’s military budget of $738 billion should be used to build hundreds of makeshift hospitals and provide thousands of ICU beds across the country. Further, the U.S. must close all military bases abroad, cease all military aid, and end economic sanctions. By continuing military interventions, the U.S. is also detracting from Iraq’s ability to combat its own coronavirus crisis, which it is attempting to contain, but is on the rise. The U.S. must get out of Iraq also so that Iraq, and all other countries suffering as a result of U.S. military intervention, can focus on their own public health responses.

A health crisis of this scale and magnitude requires an immediate and tactical response in order to effectively combat the outbreak. The scarcity of products like ventilators, masks, hand-sanitizers, gloves, and other materials needed to stop the spread of the virus only highlights the irrationality of the U.S.’s continued military spending and efforts abroad. If the U.S. has the resources to bomb Iraq, then it has the resources to combat the pandemic.

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Featured image is from Syria News

Over the course of nearly three-and-a-half months, the novel coronavirus outbreak has infected over 127,000 and left over 4,700 dead. While this has sparked global panic and a WHO-declaration of a pandemic, then death toll is still a far cry from that of starvation, Malaria and war.

This was the point made by BAFTA-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger who took to Facebook on Thursday, to highlight how, despite the fact that 24,600 people died each day from starvation and 3,000 children from preventable Malaria, no pandemic has been declared for them.

“A pandemic has been declared, but not for the 24,600 who die every day from unnecessary starvation, and not for 3,000 children who die every day from preventable malaria, and not for the 10,000 people who die every day because they are denied publicly-funded healthcare, and not for the hundreds of Venezuelans and Iranians who die every day because America’s blockade denies them life-saving medicines, and not for the hundreds of mostly children bombed or starved to death every day in Yemen, in a war supplied and kept going, profitably, by America and Britain. Before you panic, consider them,” Pilger posted on Facebook.

He also tweeted the same in shorter form.

Pilger’s post attracted a storm of comments on both platforms.

He has been a staunch critic of interventionist US and UK foreign policy. His documentaries have looked at the rebellions within the US army during the Vietnam war, at the atrocities committed by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and how the US bombing of the country enabled this, as well as films on the devastating impact of US wars and interventions across the world, as well as that of neoliberal globalisation.

A pandemic is declared, but not for 24,600 dead every day from unnecessary starvation, or 3,000 children dead every day from preventable malaria, or the countless daily dead from America's blockade on Venezuela and Iran and its bombs on Yemen. Before you panic consider them.

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) March 12, 2020

He had earlier tweeted that the coronavirus was being used as an excuse by the US and its allies to wage war against China.

“Under cover of coronavirus, the US and its ‘allies’ are waging war against China. The racist travel bans and media hysteria are not approved by WHO. China’s response to the emergency has been a model -unlike the US whose current flu epidemic has killed 10,000 and isn’t news,: he tweeted on February 3.

He tweeted a few days later decrying the growing isolation of China on the international stage.

In 2016, Pilger produced the documentary The Coming War on China warning that the US was increasingly mobilising its forces and allies across Asia for a war with China.

More recently, in 2019, he produced the documentary, The Dirty War on the National Health Service, where he talked about how Britain’s National Health Service was steadily and secretly privatised over the year, with deadly consequences for the country’s poor and working classes.

On 28 January China said it would welcome international help as it struggled to contain coronavirus. No substantial help has come. Instead of solidarity and defying WHO, the US, Australia, Britain seek to isolate China, returning it to a state of siege and the dangers of the past

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) February 5, 2020

He received the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1991, wherein he was described as a “man who in the best sense bears witness”.

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It’s been eleven days since the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his delegation met with Trump and many White House staffers at Mar-a-Lago on March 7. First it was Nestor Forster, Brazil’s Chargé d’Affaires in Washington, and Nelsinho Trad, who both tested positive for Covid-19, and as of early this week it was further announced Brazilian Foreign Trade Secretary Marcos Troyjo has been confirmed for the virus. 

President Bolsonaro reportedly tested negative, and so did Trump; but Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who had shaken hands with many among the Brazilian delegation members during their Florida trip, tested positive last last week and went into quarantine. Senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg Jennifer Jacobs now says at least 15 among the Brazilian delegation that had met with Trump’s team has now been confirmed for coronavirus, citing Brazil’s Globo.

“General Heleno, 72, confirms he has coronavirus… In recent days, the minister went to into quarantine and has kept in touch with staff and authorities,” Globo reports.

And Bloomberg elsewhere confirms “Brazil’s top security official is the 15th member of President Jair Bolsonaro’s recent delegation to the U.S. to test positive for coronavirus.”

“General Augusto Heleno, 72, said he’s undergoing additional testing to confirm the result. He joined Bolsonaro at a dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on March 7 and has since maintained a normal work schedule, including meetings at the presidential palace,” the report adds.

Newsweek reports the list among the Bolsonaro delegation that have tested positive so far as follows:

In addition to Helano, the other Brazilian delegates that tested positive for the virus include, Federal Deputy Daniel Freitas, the President of the Federation of Industries of Minas Gerais Flavio Roscoe, Special Secretary for Foreign Trade and International Affairs Marcos Troyjo, President of the National Confederation of Industry Robson Braga de Andrade, Bolsonaro’s press secretary Fabio Wajngarten, Brazilian Senator Nelsinho Trad, Brazilian Diplomat Nestor Forster, Bolsonaro’s Special Secretary for Social Communication Samy Liberman, Bolsonaro’s publicist Sergio Lima, Bolsonaro’s lawyer Karina Kufa and four other members of Bolsonaro’s support team.

Some members of the White House staff are already self-quarantining and working from home, including White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, after she came into contact with members of the Brazilian delegation.

Outgoing chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has also been voluntarily self-isolating in South Carolina, awaiting his test results.

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Featured image: Trump and Bolsonaro meeting in Florida on the weekend of March 7, via EPA

As the number of coronavirus infections spirals out of control, the U.S. and countries around the world have reported major shortages of ventilators, respirators, test kits, surgical masks, and other essential health equipment for dealing with the pandemic. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump continued to blame China and doubled down on his use of the racist term “Chinese virus.”

Yet now that the situation in China appears to have stabilized, the country is positioning itself at the head of the global response to Covid-19, adopting a unique leadership position that may alter global power relations, despite the biggest shock to its industrial output and economy in recent history and its coverup in Wuhan at the beginning of the crisis.

Western Europe and the U.S. are struggling under the weight of the crisis, with cases rising exponentially every day and higher death rates in Italy than anywhere else. China’s private and public sectors are filling in gaps in equipment where other states are failing, although the spread of the disease is such that demand for those materials might quickly outpace China’s supply. The government and Jack Ma, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder of the Alibaba Group, have already sent doctors and medical supplies to France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Iran, Iraq, the Philippines, and the United States. Chinese citizens living abroad are flying home in large numbers to avoid catastrophic health failures elsewhere. In Massachusetts, a Chinese woman tried and failed to be tested three times for Covid-19 before flying back home to be tested and treated.

“The Chinese government has been trying to project Chinese state power beyond its borders and establish China as a global leader, not dissimilar to what the U.S. government has been doing for the better part of a century, and the distribution of medical aid is part of this mission,” said Dr. Yangyang Cheng, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University who writes the science and China column for SupChina.

The most effective responses to the pandemic thus far have involved very high levels of Covid-19 testing. South Korea’s case is the most notable. The country has conducted roughly 300,000 tests and is able to do 15,000 a day, while flattening its curve and managing to avoid the draconian lockdowns implemented by China that are now taking hold in Western Europe and some American cities. The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom, underlined South Korea’s strategy on Monday. “Our key message is: test, test, test,” he said.

The U.S. has failed to catch on to that message, as only about 60,000 tests have been conducted overall despite a population more than six times that of South Korea’s, according to government officials at a presidential press briefing on Tuesday. Trump called the WHO’s test “a very bad test” at the same briefing. In the meantime, intensive care units at many American hospitals could be overrun with sick patients in a matter of days. Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in New York City, one of the nation’s top cancer facilities, has only a week’s supply of masks and limited supplies of ventilators and personal protective equipment, according to BuzzFeed News.

Even though American laboratories are beginning to produce larger quantities of Covid-19 tests, they are behind China’s capacity to do so and are unlikely to be able to provide much medical aid to other countries in the short term. In contrast, the Jack Ma Foundation has sent 500,000 testing kits and 1 million masks to the U.S., which will be distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Urgent medical supplies had been blocked by Trump’s trade war with China, and an exemption wasn’t granted until March 6.

China is now in a growing dispute with the U.S. after Chinese and American officials traded accusations over who was responsible for the virus, with Asian-Americans in the U.S. facing greater racism and prejudice as a result. China expelled American journalists on Tuesday following new restrictions on Chinese journalists in the U.S. and a tweet from Trump calling Covid-19 “the Chinese virus.” At a press briefing on Wednesday, Trump said “we’ll see what happens” when asked if he was considering “punishing China.”

U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar told reporters on Sunday that he would not divulge the number of ventilators in the country for security reasons, but it is clear that the U.S. has a shortage of equipment that the federal government cannot hide. “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Trump reportedly told American governors on a conference call Monday, before igniting a Twitter spat with Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York. Even though the U.S. needs ventilators, Italy and Germany were the ones scrambling to purchase them from major producers Dräegerwerk and Hamilton Medical, while other firms indicated that they haven’t received an influx of new orders.