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The Indian government so terribly mishandled its 21-day lockdown demand that Prime Minister Modi was compelled to unprecedentedly ask for forgiveness from the nation’s poor after his policy was responsible for suddenly uprooting millions of migrants across the country who fled their cities of temporary residence to return back home to their villages where they feel more confident of their chances for surviving World War C, but the credible threat remains that some of them might already be infected with COVID-19 and could therefore end up carrying this deadly virus all throughout the country.

Shame on YOU. Ok, one need not be a financial genius or economist to know that in 2008-09 Uncle Sam gave away the store to the failing Wall Street banks and investment corporations. We paid for it, you and me working stiff taxpayers, to the tune of well over one trillion US dollars. What did the so called ‘bailout’ do for we who punch in the hours at work?

What was that original stimulus given to each of us? Perhaps what, a $ 1000 check in the mail?

Meanwhile, the ‘Too big to fail’ devious banks got taken off life support to the tune of billions for each of them. A must see film about the aftereffects of the Sub Prime scandal is Marc Levin’s 2012 documentary ‘Lost on Long Island’. He follows a group of laid off employees from different segments of the Wall Street financial community… with shocking results. That is how many working stiffs suffered by that bubble burst and the ensuing Bush/Cheney and then Obama gift to those sharks. What many in the media like to label as ‘The Middle Class’ revealed itself to be just working stiffs getting continually disappointed and screwed by the two headed monster: Predatory Corporate Capitalism and Good Old Embedded Uncle Sam.

This current pandemic, a worldwide phenomenon, is destroying both people’s lives and the economies throughout the world.

Companies cannot operate, working stiffs get laid off, and once again Uncle comes to the rescue of who? Of course, the super rich who run this corporate capitalism on steroids US empire. The FED recently decided what it did 12 years ago and created money electronically, funneling it right to those Wall Street behemoths and other Big Business. We are talking trillions this time! Oh, the new carrot fed to the mule to make him compliant is of course that $ 1200 one time only check to each citizen… and of course a four month extension of unemployment insurance.

Let’s see, the white collar and even blue collar working stiff who earns, let us say, $ 30k a year, will get much less than the $ 600 a week he or she was used to getting. The higher up you go on that payroll scale the more the gap between one’s actual pay and the unemployment insurance check. Translated: How in the hell can folks make it through this pandemic, which could last more than a few months? Public banking advocate attorney Ellen Brown has been touting what former candidate Andrew Yang was on board with: A Universal Basic Income plan to give each citizen $ 1000 (minimum) per month… not just a ‘one time only’. This UBI as they call it would be over and above one’s current earnings and would have nothing to do with unemployment insurance. Ellen says Uncle Sam has now bailed out the banks… now bail out working stiffs!

This writer leaves it to the slew of progressive economists like someone as knowledgeable as Dr. Jack Rasmus to go over the minute details of this current bailout AKA Stimulus. My concern is to point the finger at the Army of Predatory Capitalists who made out like kings in 2008-09, and are now going to have a repeat performance…on we working stiff’s dime. Go and read Aaron Glantz’s great book Homewreckers to see how those sharks made out from the Bush/Cheney and Obama bailouts. Just one for instance, already mentioned in a previous column of mine (and through my recent interview with Aaron Glantz), is that of our current Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin. Glantz reveals how Mnuchin, an alumnus of the giant shark Goldman Sachs, watched how mortgage giant Indy Mac was ready to fold up. He and his fellow investors bought Indy Mac for peanuts, changed the name to One West, and were holding well over 100,000 toxic mortgages… well over! The FDIC, supposed to be our savior, became an indirect co-conspirator with Mnuchin’s company. Why? Well, here is how Glantz said it worked. When his One West company was holding a mortgaged home originally assessed at $ 300K, and now worth only $ 100K, the FDIC allowed One West to sell it for that $ 100k and then gave One West an additional $ 200k. No kidding! When my partners and I owned a failing cafe business in 2008, we had to sell it for 50% less than we put into it. Where was Uncle Sam then to help us?

So, what is the answer to this dilemma? Is it simply going out and voting in November, for whom, Twiddle Dum and Twiddle Dee politicians? Well, getting rid of the Trump crew is always a great motivation, but that is where it ends for we working stiffs. Currently, we cannot even rally in public, due to this pandemic. Yet, once the smoke finally clears a bit, we who labor for this empire need to get out and demand from our elected officials that they are supposed to represent us and not the 1/4 of 1 percent. Education of our young is priority one, along with education of the majority of working stiffs who most likely would not even see through the scam of this financial moment. Sad. Fool me twice, shame on ME!

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

The violence of this disease was such that the sick communicated it to the healthy who came near them, just as a fire catches anything dry or oily near it. And it even went further. To speak to or go near the sick brought infection and a common death to the living; and moreover, to touch the clothes or anything else the sick had touched or worn gave the disease to the person touching.  —from Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio‘s The Decameron, an account of the plague, or Black Death, that ravaged the city of Florence and killed between 25% and 50% of Europe’s population.

The Virus Hits Home 

Wednesday, March 25, 2020. I’m sitting in the waiting room of Duke Medical Center’s orthopedic unit in Durham, North Carolina. My wife has fractured her ankle and needs to see a specialist. Otherwise, both of us are in relatively good health given our advanced age (early 70s) and the various ailments we’ve collected over the years. As we entered the facility, we had to answer a series of questions regarding our exposure, or lack thereof, to the novel coronavirus—COVID-19. Thankfully, neither of us are experiencing symptoms (though one can be asymptomatic and still be infected) and, as far as we know, have not been near anyone who has the disease. In the waiting room, the chairs are roughly 5 feet apart in keeping with the latest set of precautions issued by the Center for Disease Control.

Friends and family members have been in contact with us to see how we’re coping with this pandemic and if we need any kind of help. (So far, we don’t.) The airwaves are delivering a nonstop flow of stories about the spread of the disease, the latest fatalities, the danger of social isolation as a result of sheltering at home, and of course the latest pronouncements from our incompetent president concerning his administration’s efforts to catch up to the rest of the world in containing the virus. A recurrent theme in these newscasts is the shortage of ventilators, testing kits, and hospital beds in this country, thanks in large part to a for-profit healthcare system and the federal government’s appalling lack of preparedness—to say nothing of the administration’s cruel disregard for the well-being of our most vulnerable people.

A few days ago, I had a ride with a Lyft driver. Instead of the weather, we talked about the pandemic and the state of panic he observed when food shopping at a local Walmart. People, he said, were afraid of not having enough to eat in the event of a complete breakdown of the economy. He described the carriages overflowing with canned goods, paper products, and foods with a long shelf life. Like millions of others, I’ve done my share of “stocking up” should a national quarantine come to pass but have avoided hoarding supplies. Today, searching for a coffeehouse where I could hunker down and get some writing done, I had to reckon with the fact that most public venues in the state are shuttered until further notice.

Of course, the most tragic part of this pandemic is the growing number of deaths from COVID-19. Surprisingly, 20% of US deaths from the virus have occurred among young adults. As of this writing, the death toll in Italy has surpassed China’s death toll, and the global advance of the virus shows no sign of slowing down. As senior citizens, my wife and I are naturally worried about becoming infected. Would our immune systems rise to the occasion and beat back the rapidly escalating number of pathogens invading our cells, or would we succumb to its malignant spread and end up dying from multi-organ failure in an understaffed hospital with no ventilator to open our airways?

Maximum Pressure

Shortages of life-saving drugs and essential equipment, medical facilities overwhelmed with critical cases, an increasing number of deaths from what should have been preventable causes—these are some of the indications of a healthcare system in crisis. They are also the direct consequences of the sanctions imposed by the US on countries around the world. While we hurry off to grocery stores to stock up on provisions and fear, quite rationally, that our hospitals and clinics might run out of what we would need to stay alive in the event of infection, it bears remembering the thousands of men, women and children who have already died as a result of sanctions and the countless others whose lives are in jeopardy due to the “maximum pressure” policy of economic sanctions.

Currently, the US has levied sanctions against a dozen plus countries, including Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Nicaragua, North Korea, China, Cuba, Libya, and Yemen. The sanctions are either comprehensive or selective, depending on foreign policy and national security goals. They are anything but a benign alternative to military force. With the possible exception of selective sanctions targeting “terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, [and] those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” comprehensive sanctions against sovereign governments are, I would argue, calculated to bring about regime change.

Countries most likely to fall victim to unilateral US sanctions are those whose governments refuse to conform to the dictates of the US hegemon. According to Vijay Prashad, Indian historian and journalist, “The objectives of these [comprehensive] sanctions are broadly all the same—that the United States will suffocate a country’s ability to trade and access finance as long as it does not do what the United States of America asks it to do.” Iran and Venezuela are two contemporary examples in which comprehensive, unilateral sanctions, imposed by the US, are having a devastating impact on those countries’ civilian populations.

The case of Iraq under UN/US sanctions for 13 years may seem like ancient history to some or deemed not germane to contemporary issues of war and peace, and great power rivalry. But it appears the US has learned nothing from the failure of the economic embargo to change Iraq’s government, which was eventually accomplished through direct military intervention. The pervasive suffering of ordinary Iraqis during the embargo was rarely covered by US media. UN reports and anecdotal evidence from eyewitnesses documenting the effects of sanctions among Iraq’s most vulnerable populations—children, the poor, the elderly—were either ignored or downplayed. If Iraq was experiencing unprecedented levels of child and maternal mortality, and a frightening increase in deaths from severe malnutrition and normally preventable water-borne diseases, then surely these were the results of Saddam Hussein’s hoarding of available resources and his government’s incompetence and corruption.

Granted, the collapse of Iraq’s healthcare system can be attributed to a variety of causes, including harmful policies of the regime. But the most destructive cause and the “force multiplier” of sickness, death and poverty was the UN-imposed and US-enforced economic sanctions. While they were in place, hardly a word was spoken in the mainstream media about this humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Iraq. Joy Gordon, Professor of Social Ethics at Chicago’s Loyola University, undertook an exhaustive study of Iraq sanctions and published her results in a book: Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. She writes:

What I want to explore now is the question of how a human catastrophe of this magnitude came about: what the policies and practices were that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths; decimated the health of several million children; destroyed a whole economy; made a shambles of a nation’s education and health care systems; reduced a sophisticated country, in which much of the population lives as the middle class in a First World country, to the status of Fourth World countries. . . . [These] are the result of measures that compromised the economy as a whole by broadly restricting imports in a society that was heavily dependent on imports; by restricting or undermining oil sales in an economy that was heavily dependent on oil sales for its gross domestic product (GDP); and by undermining the infrastructure—electricity production, telecommunications, transport, and water and sewage treatment—in an advanced industrialized society that was highly dependent on modern infrastructure. (Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 87.)

Much the same is happening to Iran and Venezuela, where US sanctions, intended to effect regime change, are exacerbating each country’s economic problems and ongoing humanitarian crisis. In 2017, the Trump administration imposed a new round of financial sanctions on the government of President Nicolas Maduro and PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company. A statement issued on August 25, 2017 by the White House press secretary characterized the government as a “dictatorship” and blamed the “regime” for creating a humanitarian crisis:

The Maduro dictatorship continues to deprive the Venezuelan people of food and medicine, imprison the democratically elected opposition, and violently suppress freedom of speech. The regime’s decision to create an illegitimate Constituent Assembly — and most recently to have that body usurp the powers of the democratically elected National Assembly –represents a fundamental break in Venezuela’s legitimate constitutional order.

Venezuela’s economic woes pre-date the imposition of US sanctions and are likely the result of the government’s monetary policies and its dependence on the sale of oil, its major export. According to analysts writing in 2016 for The Atlantic:

Oil exports have been responsible for 95 percent of Venezuela’s exports earnings and nearly half of its government’s income. And in 2015 alone, the revenue from oil exports and of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)—the state-owned oil-and-natural-gas company—plummeted by more than 40 percent.

While other countries that depend heavily on oil exports have managed to keep their economies afloat even when the price of oil drops precipitously, President Maduro insisted on paying back foreign creditors despite the country’s limited financial resources and failing to diversify the country’s exports. Before the latest round of US sanctions (in 2017 and again in 2019), the Venezuelan people were already experiencing extreme hardship as inflation rose to 180%, food shortages became widespread, and the economy went into a tailspin. Since 2014, the US has implemented 43 unilateral sanctions against the government of Venezuela even as that country’s economic crisis worsened. These sanctions prevent Venezuela from selling its oil on the global market, in addition to freezing the government’s financial assets in the US and shutting down its access to international banking systems. John Bolton, former US national security adviser, referring to the sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August 2019, clarified the scope of these latest coercive measures:

I want to be clear that this sweeping executive order authorizes the US government to identify, target and impose sanctions on any persons who continue to provide support to the illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro.

In response, Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights chief, feared this new set of unilateral sanctions could have a “severe impact on the human rights of the people of Venezuela” and lacked “sufficient measures to mitigate their impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the population.” Analysts writing in The Lancet, a highly respected, peer-reviewed medical journal, went much further in their condemnation of US sanctions.

The impact of the US sanctions on the Venezuelan population cannot be overstated. More than 300,000 Venezuelans are at risk due to a lack of life-saving medications and treatment. An estimated 80,000 HIV-positive patients have had no anti-retroviral therapy since 2017. Access to medication such as insulin has been curtailed because US banks refuse to handle Venezuelan payments for this. Thousands to millions of people have been without access to dialysis, cancer treatment, or therapy for hypertension and diabetes.

Particular to children has been the delay of vaccination campaigns or lack of access to antirejection medications after solid organ transplants in Argentina. Children with leukemia awaiting bone marrow transplants abroad are now dying. Funds for such health-assistance programs come from the PDVSA state oil company. Those funds are now frozen.

Food imports dropped by 78% in 2018 compared to 2013. The very serious threat to health and harm to human life caused by these US sanctions are thought to have contributed to an excess of 40,000 deaths in 2017–18 alone.

The pursuit of regime change by way of comprehensive economic sanctions amounts to collective punishment of the civilian population, which is unequivocally prohibited under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention: “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” In addition to violating both international and federal US law, the sanctions “fit the definition of genocide” in so far as they are intended to “destroy a people, in part or in whole.”

One of the thousands of victims of US sanctions in Venezuela was a seven-year-old boy awaiting a bone marrow transplant to treat his chronic lymphoblastic leukemia. The cost of this expensive procedure was to be handled through a financial agreement between Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, and an Argentinian-Italian network of hospitals. But the agreement was rendered null and void as a result of the sanctions, which block any kind of financial transactions with the government of Venezuela. As a witness to the effects of sanctions on the people of Iraq, I visited a number of pediatric oncology wards in public hospitals in several major cities, including Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. The children in these wards, for the most part, were receiving palliative care. The doctors were not able to administer a complete chemotherapy regimen since many of the necessary drugs were not available. And they were not available because the US- and British-dominated UN Sanctions Committee in New York placed holds on a range of humanitarian supplies including chemotherapy drugs. I remember all too clearly one Iraqi doctor looking around the room at the children under his care and saying to me, “Mr. George, all of them are going to die.”

The “Most Severe” Economic Sanctions

On May 8, 2018, during a White House address, President Trump announced that the US would pull out of the long-term deal the Obama administration had successfully negotiated with Iran in 2015 to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), involved Iran and a consortium of world powers: the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, collectively known as the P5+1. During his address, Trump accused Iran of being the leading state sponsor of terror and of fueling conflicts throughout the Middle East by supporting so-called “terrorist proxies,” including Hezbollah and Hamas. The he attacked the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1:

At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program. . . . The fact is this was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made. It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will. . . . The agreement was so poorly negotiated that even if Iran fully complies, the regime can still be on the verge of a nuclear breakout in just a short period of time. The deal’s sunset provisions are totally unacceptable. If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Everyone would want their weapons ready by the time Iran had theirs. . . . it is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement. The Iran deal is defective at its core.  If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen. . . the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

Trump also announced that he would shortly authorize the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran: “We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanctions. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.” Trump has referred to the sanctions on Iran as “the most severe ever imposed on a country.” They are certainly the most severe ever imposed on Iran. The decade-long sanctions on Iraq were, arguably, far more devastating and left hundreds of thousands of deaths in their wake. Nevertheless, the sanctions on Iran have provoked a humanitarian crisis comparable to what the people of Venezuela are enduring. In both cases, the US government bears the lion’s share of responsibility for this shared suffering.

It’s worth noting that Trump’s decision to trash the agreement with Iran has been widely criticized. The day after Trump’s announcement, Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, had this to say:

The Iran pact is supported by virtually every country in the world. The vast majority of those in the U.S. national security establishment, current and retired, have supported it, as have the vast majority of nuclear scientists and policy experts. Even within Israel, there is strong support among intelligence and defense officials.

Responding to the arguments Trump put forth for pulling out of the deal, Zunes noted that there is no evidence that Iran was “cheating” by not living up to the terms of the agreement. Moreover, to ensure compliance, Iran had been subjected to “one of the most rigorous inspection regimes in history.” The slightest violation on Iran’s part would have triggered a return of the sanctions the deal had relaxed. Trump was right about one thing. It was a one-sided deal with the US holding all the cards. The sanctions returned, not because of Iran’s failure to abide by the terms of the pact but in deference to Washington hardliners, including Donald Trump, who are determined to prevent any challenge to US hegemony in the Middle East. Iran, a strong, regional power, is perceived as a threat mainly because it challenges US geostrategic ambitions in that part of the world. It follows that this “threat” must be neutralized, and coercive, comprehensive economic sanctions is the preferred instrument, or weapon, for getting the job done. The cost to the Iranian people is simply not factored into Washington’s power politics. Discounting ethical or moral considerations, much less simple humanity, the US will do whatever it takes to keep the world in its back pocket, even if this means destroying a country’s economy and impoverishing its people in the process.

Earlier this year, during a visit to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed his approval for the sanctions and praised them for “draining [Iran’s] capacity to conduct strategic activity in the region and destabilize the Middle East. They’re having to make harder choices today. It will take time . . . . There remains work to do.” It appears that the sanctions have already accomplished a great deal. All social and economic indicators paint a uniformly grim picture of a society on the verge of total collapse. As in Venezuela, the US “maximum pressure” sanctions regime is eating up the life savings of people; causing businesses to close their doors; driving up the rate of inflation for foodstuffs to 74%; increasing housing costs by more than 95% in the country’s largest cities; and decimating the entire healthcare system. Because of the perilous gap between wages and the escalating cost of living, there has been a “catastrophic drop in living standards” with a 30% increase in the number of people who fallen into the category of “absolute poverty.” These are people surviving on $1.08 or less per day.

In addition to the rising cost of living, rates of unemployment, divorce, suicide, crime, and substance abuse are also rising as the society implodes under the unrelenting pressure of sanctions and the impoverishment they cause. According to a statement issued by Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC):

The grievous harm sanctions cause the Iranian people cannot be overstated. As the economy and unemployment levels make daily life unbearable for millions of Iranians, families are choked off from life-saving medicines and starved of critical infrastructure.

The sanctions that have hit Iran the hardest are those impacting the energy, shipping, and financialindustries. In response, oil exports have plummeted, leading to a dearth of petrodollars for re-investing in the country’s infrastructure. At the same time, foreign investment is practically non-existent. To make matters worse, the sanctions prevent US companies from trading with Iran and penalize foreign companies or countries that conduct financial transactions with Iran. Trump’s stated goal is to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero.

Under the terms of the sanctions, medicine, medical supplies, and other humanitarian supplies are exempted. However, since financial transactions with Iran are in principal banned, the country is unable to pay for imported supplies. In addition, its major source of revenue, oil exports, has dried up. As a result, medicine and medical supplies are in effect sanctioned and increasingly unavailable, and this has led to a predictable healthcare crisis. Ahmad Jalalpour, an Iranian journalist writing for The Nation, interviewed doctors about their daily struggle to cope with dwindling supplies of equipment and drugs:

Doctors in Iran’s hospitals tell countless horror stories about making do with fewer drugs, fewer spare parts for their medical equipment, and a much larger pool of people with serious medical conditions. ‘It really seems like I’m in a field hospital in a war zone at times,’ said a surgeon working in a midsize town in southwestern Iran. ‘We have daily quotas of how much anesthesia we can administer each day. At the same time, there are days when you just can’t turn away many patients. So what do you do? You become creative and do a lot of praying.’ According to this surgeon, it is not unusual at his hospital for an ob-gyn to perform a C-section delivery with localized anesthesia.

Year of the Plagues

The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the healthcare crisis in Iran where the number of deaths from the virus continues to rise. US sanctions, which have already crippled Iran’s healthcare system, have made it all but impossible for medical professionals in Iran to treat the growing number of confirmed cases. Sarah Lazare, web editor of In These Times, reported on the impact of sanctions on Iran’s ability to deal with the pandemic. In her article for Jacobin online magazine, she writes:

On March 12, Iran’s Health Ministry reported dire shortages of key supplies, including syringe and infusion pumps. . . . several companies were reluctant to sell testing kits to Iran over concerns about violating a complex web of sanctions, until the World Health Organization (WHO) stepped in and instructed them to. . . .Relief International, one of the few humanitarian organizations that has been bringing medical supplies into Iran, issued a stark warning nearly three weeks ago: ‘There is an extreme shortage of these supplies in-country, where stock is often low due to the steep price of medicines and medical equipment—a consequence of US sanctions.’

The doctors, nurses, and pharmacists on the front lines of the crisis have been sounding the alarm about the dire circumstances for days. ‘Medical professionals in Iran are seeing the early signs of shortages,’ warned Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Abbas Kebriaeezadeh (the latter is a pharmacology professor at Tehran University of Medical Sciences) in a March 3 article. ‘They are calling the Iranian vendors of respiratory masks, surgical gowns, and ventilators only to hear that the goods are out of stock. They are struggling to get antiviral medication even to those patients exhibiting the most acute symptoms.’

Last year, in response to a question from Roxana Saberi of CBS about the effects of the sanctions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo answered: “Things are much worse for the Iranian people, and we’re convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime.” Despite the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Iran, the Trump administration has warned the European Union not to violate the sanctions by establishing an alternative way for Iran to pay for medical supplies.

If ever there were an opportunity for people to recognize each other’s humanity and cast aside their mutual fears and antagonisms, now is that opportunity when everyone is facing the same life-threatening disease. We share one fate, one Earth, one life in one unimaginably intricate web of needs and aspirations. The Buddhists call this mutuality and interdependence Indra’s net—a metaphor for all that is. (In ancient Vedic scripture, Indra was considered the greatest of deities.) The ends of this metaphorical net stretch to infinity in every direction, and at the intersection of each strand, there rests a perfect jewel in whose many facets every other jewel is reflected. To flatten the curve of the coronavirus’s spread, in my view, a coordinated, global effort is necessary in which everyone’s life is seen as precious and worthy of the highest standards of healthcare. Like the jewels in Indra’s net, when one of us falls ill and needs emergency care, we all suffer when there is no testing kit available or when ventilators and respirators are not in stock. The deadly effects of US sanctions, like the coronavirus, are capable of infecting entire societies, causing otherwise preventable deaths, spreading disease, eroding vital civilian infrastructure, and showing the world once more that one of this country’s principal exports is massive human suffering, most notably among defenseless populations.

To flatten this curve means identifying with the victims of US sanctions, specifically, and US foreign policy more generally. It means raising our voices, waking up our compatriots to the impact of sanctions on people in Iran and Venezuela (two of the many countries currently under sanctions), and working in solidarity with organizations opposed to collective punishment for the purpose of regime change. It also means taking a principled stand against the Administration and members of Congress who support the imposition of sanctions, while supporting representatives opposed to them.

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George Capaccio is a writer and activist who has recently relocated to Durham, North Carolina. During the years of US- and UK-enforced sanctions against Iraq, he traveled there numerous times, bringing in banned items, befriending families in Baghdad, and deepening his understanding of how the sanctions were impacting civilians. His email is [email protected] He welcomes comments and invites readers to visit his website: www.georgecapaccio.com

The Western mass media is extremely busy frightening its own citizens and the entire world with statements like:

“A leaked government document has suggested up to 500,000 people could die from coronavirus if the disease is able to infect up to 80 per cent of the country.”

That’s what The Independent wrote on 26 February 2020. And that horrifying number of the fatalities ‘could occur’ according to the ‘documents’ in the United Kingdom.

It all feels bizarre. As if the Western regime were preparing its citizens and the world ‘for the most awful scenario.’

As if there were no solution to this dire global crisis.

“Chinese Virus”, says the U.S. President Donald Trump. He pronounces it with spite, and naturally, China feels deeply insulted. Some citizens and the government officials had enough of the continuous, racist abuses, and they are openly protesting.

Well, first of all, do we even really know where the virus has originated from? In Wuhan? But how did it get to Wuhan, and what triggered the epidemy? We don’t know. Nobody really knows.

Without pointing fingers or drawing conclusions, what we do know is that the U.S. has been engaged in various chemical and biological warfare, in several parts of the world, including Latin America. It also does all it can to provoke and to even damage the People’s Republic of China: psychologically, politically, economically and, perhaps, physically.

These are facts. No need to draw conclusions, yet.

In the meantime, China is helping more than 80 countries worldwide to combat the epidemy.

The White House obviously does not like what China is doing. It is petrified that the most obvious facts would be detected by the people in the United States, in Europe and the rest of the Planet: that the North America failed, that the European Union failed, and that most of the allies of the West failed, squarely and patently.

And the more China is doing to save the humanity, the more punches it is receiving. And not only China, but also Cuba, and several other socialist nations, which are defending their people instead of business interests.

On 21 March 2020, The Daily Beast wrote in its report ‘White House Pushes U.S. Officials to Criticize China For Coronavirus ‘Cover-Up’:

“As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow at a rapid pace in the U.S., the White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” and creating a global pandemic, according to two U.S. officials and a government cable obtained by The Daily Beast.”

And that’s not all. The report continued:

“The cable was disseminated to officials at a time when the administration is engrossed in a communications battle around how to disseminate the flow of crucial health information to the American public while at the same time deflecting criticism that the White House was unprepared for the pandemic and that President Trump is at odds with members of his coronavirus task force.”

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On 20 March 2020, RT wrote:

‘Washington has passed off blame to Beijing for its own failures in addressing the Covid-19 outbreak, China’s Foreign Ministry said, hitting back at the ‘Chinese virus’ rhetoric with the ironic term ‘Trumpandemic.’

“Some people in the United States attempt to stigmatize China’s fight against the epidemic and shirk its responsibility to China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told reporters on Friday, referring to the finger-pointing adopted by President Trump and other top officials (after weeks of US media outlets calling it the ‘Chinese’ and ‘Wuhan’ virus).

This practice ignores the huge sacrifices made by the Chinese people to safeguard human health and safety, and denigrates China’s major public health security contributions.”

The bottom-line is clear: China defeated the coronavirus in an incredibly short time. It shared its experience, then began helping many countries, including those in the West.

Chinese airplanes and even trains packed with equipment and medical staff are helping to save lives on all continents, in some 80+ countries. Russia is doing its best, too, and so is Cuba.

What is difficult to comprehend is why the Western countries refused to follow Chinese example? Approach of London, Washington and Rome is sporadic, schizophrenic, deadly.

Compared to what the West is doing now to its people, China, even at the height of the virus outbreak, was using a relatively mild approach. Most of the major Chinese cities were never fully locked-down. While the battle of COVID-19 was raging, China continued to function. Every step of Beijing was logical and determined. Millions of lives were spared as a result.

So, why, despite of extreme measures applied, are hundreds of Italians dying every day, as well as hundreds of other Europeans and North Americans?

Italy is one of the richest countries on Earth.

Is it just a sloppiness of the Western medical system? Is it simply a bad planning? Or is it something much, much more sinister?

We will investigate, analyze, and find out soon.

But whatever it is, it is damaging the world, already ruining, directly and indirectly, millions of lives, perhaps irreversibly.

President Trump may be insulting those brave countries which are defending their citizens, as well as the countries that are fighting for the survival of men, women and children, regardless of their age, race and nationality. But it is China, Russia and Cuba, which are now clearing the mess created by Washington, Rome, Paris and London. The world is finally paying attention! And it is Beijing, Moscow and other capitals, which are now asking questions!

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A shorter version of this article was first published by China Daily Hong Kong.

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

Featured image is from Morning Star

“For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.”   – Hamlet

On May 1, 1962, President John Kennedy was meeting in the Oval Office with a group of Quakers who were urging him to do more for peace and disarmament.  As he kept explaining the great political opposition he was facing within his own government, they kept urging him to do more.  He listened very closely to their words and finally said, “You believe in redemption don’t you.”  By the next spring he had turned decisively toward the peacemaking the Quakers had urged upon him, resulting in his murder in the fall by treacherous government forces, led by the CIA, that opposed him all along.

Now that Dylan has burst forth from behind his many masks and gifted the world with his incandescent new song about the assassination, with a title taken from Hamlet, from the mouth of the ghost of the dead King of Denmark –“ Murder Most Foul “– we have entered a new day in an odd way.  For those who have wondered over the years if Dylan had “sold out,” here is their answer. For those who have wondered if he would go to his grave reciting the words of T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock – “I am no Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be” – here is Hamlet’s booming response. Not only does this song lay bare the truth of the most foundational event in modern American history, but it does so in such a powerfully poetic way and at such an opportune time that it should redeem Dylan in the eyes of those who ever doubted him.

I say “should,” but while the song’s release has garnered massive publicity from the mainstream media, it hasn’t taken long for that media to bury the truth of his words about the assassination under a spectacle of verbiage meant to damn with faint praise.  As the media in a celebrity culture of the spectacle tend to do, the emphasis on the song’s pop cultural references is their focus, with platitudes about the assassination and “conspiracy theories,” as well as various shameful and gratuitous digs at Dylan for being weird, obsessed, or old.  As the song says, “they killed him once and they killed him twice,” so now they can kill him a third time, and then a fourth ad infinitum.  And now the messenger of the very bad news must be dispatched along with the dead president.

The media like their Hamlets impotent and enervated, but Dylan has come out roaring like a bull intent on avenging his dead president.

He has the poet’s touch, of course, a hyperbolic sense of the fantastic that draws you into his magical web in the pursuit of deeper truth.  In many ways he’s like the Latin American magical realist writers who move from fact to dream to the fantastic in a puff of wind.

Dylan is our Emerson.  His artistic philosophy has always been about movement in space and time through song.  Always moving, always restless, always seeking a way back home through song, even when, or perhaps because, there are no directions.  “An artist has got to be careful never to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere,” he’s said.  “You always have to realize that you are constantly in a state of becoming and as long as you can stay in that realm, you’ll be alright.”

Sounds like living, right.

Sounds like Emerson, also.  “Life only avails, not the having lived.  Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.  Thus one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes.”

“Murder Most Foul” is Dylan’s soul becoming. 

“A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true.  They’re like strange countries that you have to enter.  You can write a song anywhere …. It helps to be moving.  Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving,” he wrote in Chronicles. 

“Murder Most Foul” is a moving song in every sense of the word – a trip to truth.

Dylan has long been accused of abandoning his youthful idealism and protest music.  I think this is a bum rap.  He was never a protester, though his songs became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements.  There is no doubt that those songs were inspirational and gave people hope to carry on the good fight.  But in turning in a more oblique and circumspect musical direction, following his need to change as the spirit of inspiration moved him, Dylan’s songs came to inspire in a new way. You could always tell his sympathies lay with the oppressed and downtrodden, but for decades he didn’t shout it, with perhaps the one exception being the powerful, hard-hitting, and mesmeric Hurricane in 1975.  With that one he stepped into the ring to brawl.

But for the most part over the years, a listener has had to catch his drift. If you go to the music, and dip into his various stylistic changes over the decades, however, you will find a consistency of themes.  He deals with essentials like all great poets.  Nothing is excluded.  His work is paradoxical.  Yes, he’s been singing about death since twelve, but it has always been countered by life and rebirth.  There is joy and sadness; faith and doubt; happiness and suffering; injustice and justice; romance and its discontents; despair and hope.  His music possesses a bit of a Taoist quality mixed with a Biblical sensibility conveyed by a hopelessly romantic American.  He has fused his themes into an incantatory delivery that casts a moving spell of hope upon the listener.  He is nothing if not a spiritual spell-binder; similar in many ways to that other quintessential American – the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whose best work was a poetic quest for an inspired salvific poetry.

While speaking the unspeakable truth about President John Kennedy’s murder might seem hopeless, it is actually a sign of great hope.  For our only hope is in telling the truth, which Bob has done.

This is art, not theory, and art of a special kind since Dylan is an artist at war with his art.  His songs demand that the listener’s mind and spirit be moving as the spirit of creative inspiration moved Dylan.  A close listening will force one to jump from line to line, verse to verse – to shoot the gulf – since there are no bridges to cross, no connecting links.  The sound carries you over and keeps you moving forward. If you’re not moving, you’ll miss the meaning.

I have no wish to explicate the poet’s brilliant work.  It speaks for itself.  It says far more than it actually says about a system rotten to the core, a country where everything went wrong since “The day the killers blew out the brains of the king/Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing.”

If you listen to Dylan’s piercing voice and follow the lyrics closely, you might be startled to be told, not from someone who can be dismissed as some sort of disgruntled “conspiracy nut,” but by the most famous musician in the world, that there was a government conspiracy to kill JFK, that Oswald didn’t do it, and that the killers then went for the president’s brothers.

Your brothers are comin’, there’ll be hell to pay

Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?

Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming,” we’ll get them as well

This is an in-your-face tale, set to music with a barely tinkling piano, a violin, and a soupçon of percussion, whose lightest words, as Hamlet’s father’s ghost said to him:

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

Thy knotty and combinèd locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

“Murder Most Foul” truly startles.  It is a redemptive song.  Dylan holds the mirror up for us. He unlocks the door to the painful and sickening truth.  He shoves the listener in, and, as he writes in Chronicles, “your head has to go into a different place.  Sometimes it takes a certain somebody to make you realize it.”

Bob is our certain somebody. In these dark times he has offered us his voice.

You believe in redemption, don’t you?

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

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 is from OffGuardian

As draconian lockdowns, punitive regimes and surveillance become the norm of the coronavirus world, Sweden has treaded more softly in the field.  This is certainly in contrast to its Scandinavian cousins, Denmark and Norway.  The rudiments of a life uninterrupted generally remain in place. Cafes, restaurants and shops, for the most part, remain open and stocked.  As do gyms and cinemas.  Vibrant after-ski parties persist, much to the bemused horror of those across the border. 

Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, embracing the principle of voluntariness over coercion, has issued warnings to citizens to keep travel down to a minimum, avoiding anything non-essential.  The traditional age group – those over 70 – have been told to mind their movements and stay at home.  In the prime minister’s words during a televised speech,

“Us adults need to be exactly that: adults.  Not spread panic or rumours.  No one is alone in this crisis, but each person carries a heavy responsibility.”

Despite all of this, Sweden’s authorities show that they do have a foot on the brake, albeit one applied with slow motion caution.  Gatherings used to be limited to 500 – that confidently embraced number has now been reduced to 50, a measure that will be policed.  Bars can only provide table service.  Colleges and universities have moved to a virtual format in line with recommendations issued on March 18. 

But the Public Health Agency exerts a powerful influence, insisting that a lockdown is simply unwarranted.  Local sports tournaments and matches required no cancellations – exercise and sports were healthy initiatives.  Organisers of events and seminars were responsible for conducting a risk assessment and providing information “about good hand hygiene, and access to hand washing facilities for all participants.”

The focus, rather, is on individual initiative, minimising instances of transmission while herd immunity builds up, or a vaccine is found.  If over 70, avoid using public transport, shopping in supermarkets, visiting areas of congregation. 

“Instead, ask friends, family or neighbours to do your shopping etc.” Work from home, if you can.  “This is to decrease the speed of transmission and the number of people needing hospital care.”

Central to such recommendations is a modelling game.  As with all such games, risks abound.  The go-easy approach has certainly caused little alarm in the country; if anything, it has given the Social Democrats a hearty boost.  The wisdom of authorities is generally taken for granted, suggesting the customary, even awesome power of the Swedish civil service.  The eggheads remain in charge. 

The Swedish example shows a differing approach to measurement, which invariably involves looking at a crystal ball of sorts.  Paul Franks and Peter Nilsson, both epidemiologists based at Lund University, suggest that the government is gambling on simulations made by the public health authorities on “surge requirements”. “From these simulations, it is clear that the Swedish government anticipates far few hospitalisations per 100,000 of the population than predicted in other countries, including Norway, Denmark and the UK.”

The observations by Franks and Nilsson are filled with characteristic scientific caution.  Which modelling do you go for?  Using British variants suggests a higher death toll for Sweden, though the authorities seem to be holding to the point that most infected people will have no symptoms, leaving one in five requiring a stint in hospital.  And Britain is not Sweden. 

We are left with the treacherous nature of public health modelling.  COVID-19 prediction models, for instance, tend to rely on the examples in China and Italy, furthering upon data gathered from previous Ebola outbreaks, SARS and MERS.  This brings the old question of demography into play, and the need to gather evidence of community transmission (so far, material on this is sketchy in Sweden).  An inescapable fact is that Sweden has one major metropolitan area, so any accurate modelling would require material specific to that.  Ways of interaction between generations would also have to be considered.  In Sweden, less intergenerational conduct would lessen the risk to the elderly.  More than half of Sweden’s households consist of one person, another telling factor.

The data does not tend to focus on hospital admissions and fatalities, a point stressed by Franks and Nilsson.  “This latter can be used to be a ‘poor man’s estimate’ of community transmission, providing approximately how many fatalities occur among those infected.”  The accuracy of this is somewhat compromised by the two-week period between diagnosis and the mortality, a “very blunt instrument” indeed. 

The numbers of COVID-19 cases in Sweden have not been negligible.  From the first recorded case on February 4, 2020, the total, as of March 30, 2020, stands at 4,028.  Deaths come in at 146, though a disproportionate number come from a Somali community located in less commodious quarters with extended families. 

Despite the highest death toll of the Nordic countries, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell is supremely confident that the “strategy” has worked well, with Sweden showing a relatively flat curve of infection relative to Italy and Spain.  “We want to slow down the epidemic until Sweden experiences a sort of peak, and if the peak is not too dramatic we can continue.”    

A large number of citizens, bearing their heavy responsibility, have chosen to avoid public transport – Storstockholms Lokaltrafik claims a fall of 50 percent in the number of commuters.  Schools might be open, but many parents are keeping their children at home.  Remote and work-from-home options have been embraced by companies with gusto. 

The warning calls, while not shrill, are in evidence.  An epidemiological battle is taking shape, though it remains one dominated by parrying disagreements of expertise.  Britain’s chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance has much praise for the approach, having made similar suggestions to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the “herd immunity” phase of discussions.  In contrast, a petition featuring over 2,000 doctors, scientists and academics, which boast among its numbers the chairman of the Nobel Foundation, Prof Carl-Henrik Heldin, has called for more aggressive measures. 

“It is risky to leave it to people to decide what to do without any restrictions,” opines a paternalistic Joacim Rocklöv, an epidemiologist based at Umeå University.  “As can be seen from other countries this is a serious disease, and Sweden is no different than other countries.” 

Virologist Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, based at the Karolinska Institute, has not held back in her views, claiming with some punchiness that the government has committed all the big no-nos in responding to a pandemic.  “We’re not testing enough, we’re not tracking, we’re not isolating enough – we have let the virus loose.”  In so doing, Sweden had been placed on the path to catastrophe.  To avoid a lockdown, a mass-testing approach as adopted by South Korea would have to be adopted.  Time will tell which one stacks up.

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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]

Featured image is from caglecartoons.com

South Korea has accomplished a remarkable success in its fight against fearful virus COVID-19 and it is now the object of global curiosity, envy and even admiration.

More than 100 countries faced with rapid waves of virus attack are seeking for Korea’s help and cooperation. Even the mighty president of the U.S. Donald Trump has phoned on March 24 asking President Moon Jae-in‘s help.

South Korea’s president gladly agreed to send medical equipments needed for the fight against the virus in the country of Uncle Sam.

This paper has four sections. In the first section, I examine the nature of the Korean model’s success, while, in the second section, I discuss the principal factors responsible for its success. In the third section, I try to see if there is any basic philosophy in the model.  Finally, in the fourth section, I am asking myself if we have learned anything from the crisis.

How Successful? 

The results of the anti-virus war can be measured in terms of tracking, the number of tests, the ratio of healing, the number of infected and the rate of mortality.

One of the most difficult parts of the whole process of war against the virus is the tracking. Once one finds the infected person through the test, one has to find all the persons who had first round contact with the original person.

There are, let us say 10 persons. Now, some of these 10 persons may have had the contact with some other people. Here, we have the second round contact and the chain of contact goes on and the virus spreads further.

Korea has done a superb job of tracking owing to the use of cell phones and the collaboration of the general public. This process may involve human right issues, but the government requires the target person’s consent. Furthermore, the government guarantees the confidentiality of personal information.

Korea has so far conducted 330,000 tests, 15,000 per day. Through these tests, as of March 26, about 9,000 have been identified as being infected. Of this number, about 50%, that is, 4,500 persons have been cured.

Of 9,000 infected, 158 lost lives as of March 26 yielding the mortality rate of 1.8%. It is rather low compared to other countries’ mortality rates. But, it is more than possible that Korea’s mortality could increase.

These impressive results were possible because of the Korea’s ability to rapidly stabilize the virus propagation.

On February 19, the daily number of the infected was 39 and it rose rapidly to 610 on March 2nd to fall to 47 on March 26.

So, 12 days were needed to reach the peak of the infection curve and 24 days to hit the near bottom of the curve.

In short, Korea was able to stabilize the virus outbreak in 36 days.

However, now, Korea has to deal with the infected persons coming from the U.S. and other foreign countries.

There is another problem. Many protestant churches are holding Sunday services despite the government’s warning; this increases the danger of community transmission of the virus.

The amazing thing is that Korea has done it without a general lockdown of the society. Only the Taegu City area had partial lockdown for a few weeks.  Even here, the government did not order the lockdown; it was decided by the citizens themselves.

The rest of the country was allowed to lead a normal life, although the streets and shops were less crowded than usual as the result of people’s voluntary isolating to avoid infection.

It is interesting to point out that Korea has done it despite   politically motivated obstruction by the conservative party (the Liberty Korea Party: LKP) in collaboration with the cult sect, Shincheonji.

They tried to discredit Moon Jae-in government’s anti-virus war efforts in order to increase their chance of winning the general election of April 15.

The Shincheonji has been the primary factor of the exponential explosion of the infected. At times, almost 70 % of the total number of the infected persons was composed of Shincheonji members. And, the cult sect did not fully cooperate with the government in identifying and locating the possible infected.

Another amazing thing about the Korean model is that despite such difficulties, Korea has achieved to stop the wave of the virus without panic or hoarding of toilet papers, foods and other goods of necessity. The super markets have been relatively well stocked throughout the trial time.

Why Successful? 

The success of the Korean model may be attributable to the following factors: preparedness, apolitical approach, reliance on science and technology, use of masks, quality of leadership and citizens’ voluntary participation.

• Preparedness

During the crisis of SARS of 2002-2003, Korea was not well prepared to fight the virus. Fortunately, as soon as the progressive government of Rho Moo-hyun came along in 2003, the government prepared a complete manual of fighting virus.

However, when the conservative government took over the power in 2008 by Lee Myong-bak and Park Geun-hye in 2013, the manual was thrown away, simply because it had been prepared by a progressive government.

Fortunately, as soon as the progressive government of Moon Jae-in took over the power in 2017, the manual was restored and much improved. This has made Korea well prepared for its fight against the COVID-19.

• Apolitical Approach

In general, one of the difficulties often encountered during the public health crisis is the collusion between business and politics. The collusion invites not only the misallocation of resources needed for the fight against the virus but also it delays the progression of the fight.

It is more than possible that this difficulty is being experienced by many countries, even developed countries.

The collusion hampers the anti-virus fight. For example, if the government decides to give the contract of mask production to an incompetent producer who is close to politicians in power, the supplied masks could be of poor quality or the supply of masks could be delayed.

The infected people need hospital care. If the government designates, for the care of the infected, one particular hospital because of bribes, the propagation of the virus could be accelerated.

In many cases, the government does not take anti-virus measures in time- and loses the golden time- because of the pressure coming from large corporations which are important source of political funding and bribes; these corporations are afraid of losing sales and profit which could result from the government’s anti-virus measures.

Thus, politically motivated government decisions, in time of virus crisis, may surely aggravate the crisis and delay the solution.

Right from the beginning of the virus crisis, Moon Jae-in’s government took apolitical approach to the crisis. This approach was an interesting contrast to the behaviour of the conservative party, LKP.

The solution of the MERS (2015) crisis was delayed because of the   government-Chaebols collusion.

There were many victims of the MERS virus; they had to be hospitalized. Samsung Hospital was and is one of the major hospitals in Korea. Unfortunately, because of this hospital’s poor virus control, as many as 91 individuals were infected in the hospital.

But, the government did not announce this fact, because of the hospital’s possible demand not to report it. If the government announced this fact, Samsung Hospital would have lost a large number of usual patients and profit.

Because of this political and financial collusion of the conservative government with the Samsung Group, the MERS crisis lasted longer and its impact was devastating more than necessary.

The conservative party, currently the chief opposition party, exploits, once again, the virus crisis for its political purpose.

It has spread all sorts of fabricated facts and lies to discredit, in collaboration of the cult, Shincheonji, the government efforts to stop the invasion of the virus.

Fortunately, the government of Moon Jae-in was above politics; it was concerned only with saving the lives of the people.

• Reliance on Science and Technology

The apolitical approach to the fight against the virus allowed Korea to appeal to science and technology.

A reputed Korean expert in the area of virus-related diseases insisted on the importance of humility in front of science, because the virus listens only to science; there is no place for anti-virus measures which are for political gains or business profit.

Korea has been humble in front of the science and technology. The sustained scientific and technological research activities by universities, government-run laboratories and private technology firms have made a major contribution to the fight against the COVID-19.

In particular, Segene Inc.,Gencurix, GeneMatrix, SolGent Co. and iLamp have discovered the composition of the virus by identifying the genes. The products of these firms have made it possible to produce massively and rapidly efficient test kits. In particular, iLamp’s product “Novel COV19 Detection kit” is popular and it allowed a complete test in 20 minutes.

Moreover, further research has produced “the drive-through test system” and “the booth-based test device.” As a result, Korea could test, in safety, as many as 15,000 individuals a day; up to now, Korea has tested 330,000 individuals.

There is another role played by technology. Korea is one of the most advanced digitalized countries. The digitalization of commerce has allowed the rapid distribution of necessity goods and services through e-commerce. This is one of the factors of the relative absence of hoarding of goods and the prevention of the panic.

• Use of Masks

In the West including Canada and the U.S. the general public is discouraged – even forced – not to wear masks. The government insists that only the people working for the public health should wear them.

This policy of the government can be explained by two possible reasons. One is the belief that the masks cannot protect us from being infected. The other is the shortage of the supply of masks.

According to experts in Asia, the masks are good devices of protection not only from the air born virus but also the virus coming from human touch.

There are those who seem to believe that the Asians wear masks because of the “culture.” It is hard to believe that there can be a culture in which people love to suffer by wearing the mask. This is sheer nonsense to relate mask wearing to culture.

The plausible reason for asking Canadian not to wear masks should be the shortage of its supply. Here again, it is not convincing, for Canada’s industrial capacity can solve the problem.

Do not forget, the medical team wear masks, because the masks do protect them. If so, they protect the general public, too.

Incidentally, it may be added that the popular use of masks in Korea allowed the continuous operation of factories, restaurants, shopping centers and a host of other businesses.

• Leadership

The most important determinant factor of the success of the Korean model is, perhaps, the leadership of the government and strong public faith in Moon Jae-in. This leadership has been demonstrated in various collective activities.

First of all, the quality of human resources of the government is pretty high and they are well motivated. Most of the key positions in the government are filled with people who have two characteristics.

Most of them are the anti-corruption generation who fought against the corrupted conservative policies and at the same time, they are highly qualified professionally and motivated for their functions.

In other words, under Moon’s government, we rarely see those who are nominated for bribes or connections.

Second, the present government is free from political debt to the corrupted establishment. This has allowed the government to focus on the job of saving lives without being forced to protect vested interests.

Third, President Moon is not only respected but also loved by the great majority of the people. His entire career has been devoted to the fight for the poor and the weak. This has led the people to have confidence in the information provided by the government policy makers. Such confidence has made people to follow faithfully the government instructions.

Fourth, the confidence in the leadership has facilitated the communication between the government and the people.

In Korea, there is a system in which, if more than 200,000 persons request something to the government, the Blue House (Korean White House) must react.

For instance, more than 2,000,000 people have requested the abolition of the cult Shincheonji. This has allowed Seoul City to take harsh punitive measures against the cult sect. On the 25th of March, the cult  did lose its legal status.

• Character of Ordinary Koreans

One of the most important reasons for the success of the Korean model is the character of the ordinary Koreans.

For centuries, they have been exploited and mistreated by the ruling class, called “Yang-ban.” This has created a situation where the ordinary people had to find the problem solutions themselves without relying on the ruling class.

They organized the “Dong-hak:東學” (Eastern Studies) and revolted against the corrupted officials during the latter half of the 19th century and succeeded in abolishing the feudal “Yang-ban” system; they rose against the Japanese colonial government in 1919; they fought against the corruption of the conservative governments’ police and military dictatorship.

Finally, 17,000,000 people carried out the Candle-Light Revolution of 2016-2017 and impeached Park Geun-hye.

This tradition has made the ordinary Koreans to unite and find solution themselves even without the help of the government; this tradition has led to the culture of “Jeong-情” which can be translated into caring each other and the collective will to solve the problems all together. There is no doubt that this culture has been one of the key factors of the Korean model’s success.

Philosophy of the Korean Model?

There is another interesting feature of the Korean model; it is its inclusiveness. Korea believes that the COVID-19 crisis is not a simple national crisis of Korea; Korea believes that it is a global crisis and, hence, Korea must participate actively in the global anti-corona-virus fight.

Recently, a delegation of WHO came to Korea in order to organize a global team of scientific research hoping to produce a global manual of anti-corona-virus fight. The Foreign Minister of Korea, Kang Kyung-hwa said this:

“We are taking this approach of openness and transparency not just domestically but to the international community that is highly interdependent with rest of the world.” (Interview with abs-cbn, March 3, 2020)

On March 26, President Moon Jae-in took the initiative of an online conference with the heads of G20 in order to share the experience of Korea’s anti-virus fight.

Learn Anything from the Current Crisis? 

I may allow myself to say a few words on the current global corona-virus crisis.

First, for last half century, the world has been blindly devoted to GDP growth, as if it were the only reason for man to exist.

Under the banner of neo-liberalism, the humanity has been chasing after more and more advanced technology and bigger and bigger GDP.

But what we got? We got wider income disparity, increasing jobless, increasing depletion of natural resources, worsening natural environment. Only a few got richer.

What is upsetting is that with all that money, knowledge and technology, man has not been able to prepare for the corona-virus invasion.

There are thousands more viruses in the nature; some of which could be more deadly than corona-virus. Can’t we take some money from the billionaires and produce more masks, tests kits and medical gowns?

Second, the COVID-19 has shown us that it does not care about the race, income or geography. The COVID-19 is telling us that we need a global preparedness for other virus that will surely attack us.

So we need international cooperation. China has been generous in sharing its experiences and sending needed medical equipment to needy countries. Korea is doing the same.

Third, Washington’s attitude toward the current crisis is quite disappointing, to say the least.

Mike Pompeo, the State Secretary of the U.S. seems to like to use the word,”Wuhan Virus” and Donald Trump looks happy when he picks the expression “Chinese Virus.”

It is true that the first location of massive breakout of the virus was the city of Wuhan, but this does not mean that the city was the location of virus origination; we do not know who the ground zero infected person was. The virus could have come from outside China and planted in Wuhan.

Owing to excellent papers of the Center for Research on Globalization by Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Peter Koenig, Stepĥen Lendman and many others, we have meaningful information on the origination location of the corona-virus. These papers make it clear that the virus could have originated in the U.S. and transmitted to China.

Even if the virus originated in China, it has been the tradition of not mentioning the place of the origination in order to avoid harmful stigma and promote international cooperation.

The U.S. has the largest economy and the most powerful army in the world. Therefore, it is natural to expect some generosity and mature behaviour as the world leader. But I am asking if it is a real leader.

Fourth, the world, especially the developed countries, should repent for not having prepared for such a global crisis like the COVID-19 crisis; it is about the time to mobilize resources to create a world in which the public health security is as important as economic growth.

To conclude, I offer my sincere compliments to the Quebec Premier, François Legault, and his team for their devotion to the fight against the corona-virus.

If Korea’s experience means anything at all, it is the importance of the united participation of the people. The Quebec people can be united as they were united during the Quiet Revolution.

As the premier said, the Quebec people should become “a singly army unit” and march forward to kill the enemy, the COVID-19.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) of the Centre de Recherches sur l’Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) He is Research Associate of the Center for Globalization (CGR)

Trying to predict anything amongst the Coronavirus pandemic is a fool’s game. But amongst the chaos, one thing is certain. The oil industry is in deep, deep trouble.

For the foreseeable future, the only certainty on the oil price is that it is going down into a place where bankruptcy beckons for many companies.

The boom and bust of the Big Oil cycle continues, but the boom days have gone, possibly forever. The cycle is broken.

Demand for oil is plummeting. As the global experts at Rystad Energy outlined last week:

“We now estimate 2 billion barrel less oil demand in 2020 due to the virus outbreak, with an average daily production of 95 million bpd for the year, i.e. approximately a -5% contraction vs the 2019 level of 100 million bpd.”

According to Business Insider, the crude oil price “tanked” today as Coronavirus fears slammed energy demand.” The price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI), seen as the US benchmark, dropped below $20 a barrel, while Brent crude hit $23.03, its lowest price since 2002.

As the Financial Times noted today simply, with the price war continuing between Saudi Arabia and Russia, there is “no sign of the oil price slump easing any time soon.”

The business paper outlined how:

“High cost production from US shale and Canadian tar sands will come under pressure, so too will those producers in the North Sea. But Russia’s oil producers could turn a profit even if prices fall to $15 a barrel.”

In Canada, where the dirty tar sands is not cheap to produce, the industry is particularly vulnerable. At the end of Friday, the National Observer was reporting that the “price of Canadian crude plunged to a new historic low of USD $5 per barrel”.

Or put another way, the Observer noted:

“Western Canadian Select (WCS), the Canadian benchmark, is going for roughly the same price as a Big Mac.”

This is not sustainable. Warren Mabee, the director of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen’s University, told the Observer:

“This is really unknown territory.” Mabee added that “he wouldn’t be surprised if Canadian crude prices briefly go negative – a scenario where producers are paying people to take away product.”

“For some companies, unfortunately, it will be a death blow,” Mabee told the Observer. “They won’t have the money to continue with their operations.”

If the industry has no money, a government dependent on that industry has no money either. For example, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s budget relies on forecasts of nearly $60 per barrel. Not $5. On Friday, Kenney told Albertans to expect “what will likely be the largest single contraction in our economy in history.” The boom has bust again.

Canada may be in particular trouble, but the whole industry is not in a good shape. The Guardian reported yesterday that:

“Global oil producers have begun shutting down their oil rigs on the largest scale in 35 years as the coronavirus continues to drive market prices to their lowest level since 2002.”

The global investment bank, Goldman Sachs, also believes that we could be heading for negative pricing too:

“Given the cost of shutting down a well, a producer would be willing to pay someone to dispose of a barrel, implying negative pricing in landlocked areas,” it said in an investor briefing earlier today.

This is economic madness: the oil industry is now paying people to take its oil. But when the pandemic is over, with so much production shut in, “paradoxically, this will ultimately create an inflationary oil supply shock of historic proportions.”

The oil cycle is now going from bust to bust. From shock to shock. Never has it been more important to break the cycle and move towards a just, clean transition.

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The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) follows up with concern the healthcare situation in the Gaza Strip and seriously warns of a catastrophic deterioration that would strike the health care sector in the case of a Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.  PCHR is concerned over the healthcare system’s inability to respond to the needs of patients if an outbreak occurs.

According to PCHR’s follow-up, the healthcare facilities in Gaza are already on the verge of collapse due to the Israeli- imposed closure on the Gaza Strip for the last 13 years, exacerbated by the repercussions of the Palestinian internal division and political bickering.  All of this has caused a fragile healthcare system in the Gaza Strip, a perpetual shortage of essential drugs and medical devices and insufficient number of specialized health professionals; rendering the system unable to meet the basic medical needs of the Gaza Strip population in normal times.

According to the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza, the Israeli closure barred MOH from importing new medical devices or spare parts for malfunctioning ones. The crisis of medical devices shortage imposes a major obstacle for the development and sustainability of the Gaza hospitals and medical centers in a manner that would be proportional to the population’s health needs. In a statement published on 21 March 2020, MOH announced its urgent need for respirators, intensive care units and equipment, medicines, medical consumables and protective gear to prepare it to combat Coronavirus. MOH’s appeal came after the Israeli authorities allowed the entry of limited quantities of medical supplies into the Gaza Strip on 18 March 2020, including equipment for diagnosing those infected with the Coronavirus, hundreds of protective gowns and goggles for the protection of medical personnel, upon a request Submitted by the World Health Organization (WHO).

MOH in Gaza announced the first 2 cases of Coronavirus in the Gaza Strip after a total of 118 people were tested (116 of them tested negative for the novel Coronavirus.)  Moreover, 1399 persons were forced into quarantine, distributed on 22 quarantine centers across the Gaza Strip while 1969 are placed under home quarantine.[1]

On 19 March 2020, Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said in a statement that he is worried about the potential impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) on the Gaza Strip population. He added that the Gaza health care system was collapsing even before the pandemic, because its stocks of essential drugs are chronically low and its natural sources of drinkable water are largely contaminated. He explained that Gaza’s population is also a physically more vulnerable population due to the malnutrition, deteriorating living conditions and high population density. Lynk warned that the possible widespread outbreak of the novel Coronavirus in the besieged Gaza Strip will exacerbate pressures on medical personnel[2].

Furthermore, on 21 March 2020, Mr. Jamie McGoldrick, UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement that there can be frightening consequences of Coronavirus in Gaza Strip due to the high population density and limited health facilities. He added that “we are very concerned about the situation in Gaza Strip, it is a complicated area due to the long-term closure and the imposed-Israeli restrictions that could worsen the situation.”  McGoldrick also believed that the outbreak of Coronavirus in the Gaza Strip would turn it into “an incubator, especially when people get stuck in a densely populated area where health system suffers from the lack of funding, medical resources and equipment”[3].

In light of the fear of a health sector collapse in the Gaza Strip and the foreseeable inability of the healthcare system to deal with patients in the case of a Coronavirus spreads, PCHR:

• Stresses that the primary responsibility for providing medical supplies to the Gaza Strip population lies with Israel and it must take all necessary preventive measures available to combat the spread of infectious diseases in accordance with Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
• Calls upon the international community and WHO to put pressure on Israel and compel it to comply with its obligations, and to allow the entry of medical supplies and equipment necessary for Coronavirus medical examination.
• Calls upon the international community and humanitarian organizations to provide assistance to the health system in the Gaza Strip, including medical supplies to Gaza Hospitals, in order to combat the spread of Coronavirus.
• Stresses the need for coordination between MOH in Gaza and Ramallah to combat the spread of Coronavirus.
• Calls Upon the Palestinian National Authority to establish a unified higher emergency committee that includes all Palestinian governorates to follow through on the measures taken to combat the spread of Coronavirus, and to disseminate up-to-date information on inflicted cases and access health service.

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Notes

[1] To review MOH’s full report issued on 23 March 2020, visits the following link:https://www.moh.gov.ps/portal/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Corona-23-03-4.pdf

[2] For the full statement issued on 19 March 2020, see the UN News website: https://news.un.org/ar/story/2020/03/1051642

[3] For the full interview published on  21 March 2020, see the UN News website: https://news.un.org/ar/story/2020/03/1051802

The Syrian Army and Iranian-backed militias deployed a new batch of reinforcements to the frontline in southern Idlib and western Aleppo. According to local sources, fresh troops reinforced by armoured vehicles and battle tanks were placed near Saraqib, Kafranbel, and Urma as-Sughra. These areas were the hottest points of the conflict between Syrian troops and Turkish-led forces during the previous round of escalations in Greater Idlib. Turkey and its proxies are also preparing for a new round of confrontations.

During the past week, at least four Turkish military convoys, with battle tanks and even MIM-23 Hawk medium-range air-defense systems, entered Idlib, allegedly to secure the ceasefire regime and contain the terrorist threat. How Turkish troops are planning to use air defense systems against al-Qaeda terrorists that do not have aircraft remains a mystery.

At the same time, sources close to Idlib militants announced that Ankara is forming five new units consisting of its own troops, members of the National Front for Liberation and the Syrian National Army. Both these militant groups are funded and trained by Turkey. The newly formed units will be led by Turkish officers and allegedly include 9,000 Syrian militants and a similar number of Turkish troops. Pro-Turkish sources speculate that this force will be tasked with securing the M4 highway in southern Idlib and clearing the area of radical groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. After this, a security zone will be established and joint Turkish-Russian patrols will be launched in the area as it was agreed to by Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The problem with this theory is that the Turkish-backed groups, which should supposedly be involved in this operation are allied with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-linked organizations. So, they will have little motivation to confront them shifting the burden of fighting to Turkish troops.

According to pro-government sources, the Turkish motivation is different. They note that Ankara is very unsatisfied with the performance of their proxies during the recent battle against the Syrian Army. So, it opted to make a new attempt to create elite units that should deliver a devastating blow to the brutal Assad regime that is cowardly resisting the occupation of Syrian territory by Turkey.

Turkish-backed forces also increased their activity in Syria’s northeast. On March 29, the 20th Division of the so-called Syrian National Army attacked positions of Kurdish militias near the village of Sayda. Pro-Turkish sources claimed that a truck equipped with a 23mm machine gun belonging to Kurdish forces was destroyed and that many fighters were killed. Turkish proxies still cherish radiant hopes to capture the nearby town of Ayn Issa thus seizing control of the crossroad of the M4 highway and the Tall Abyad-Raqqah road.

The US-led coalition continues evacuation of smaller bases and regrouping of its forces in Iraq. After the withdrawal of coalition troops from al-Qaim and al-Qayyarah, they left from the Kirkuk K1 base. Means and forces from these facilities will be redeployed to other US bases in the country, mainly Camp Taji. There are no signs of any kind of US troop withdrawal from the country despite the demands from the Baghdad government. To the contrary, the Pentagon recently announced that it was working to deploy Patriot air defense systems to protect US troops in Iraq from missile attacks.

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Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany’s Hesse state, has committed suicide apparently after becoming “deeply worried” over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier said Sunday (29 March).

Schaefer, 54, was found dead near a railway track on Saturday. The Wiesbaden prosecution’s office said they believe he died by suicide.

“We are in shock, we are in disbelief and above all we are immensely sad,” Bouffier said in a recorded statement.

Hesse is home to Germany’s financial capital Frankfurt, where major lenders like Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have their headquarters. The European Central Bank is also located in Frankfurt.

A visibly shaken Bouffier recalled that Schaefer, who was Hesse’s finance chief for 10 years, had been working “day and night” to help companies and workers deal with the economic impact of the pandemic.

“Today we have to assume that he was deeply worried,” said Bouffier, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“It’s precisely during this difficult time that we would have needed someone like him,” he added.

Popular and well-respected, Schaefer had long been touted as a possible successor to Bouffier.

Like Bouffier, Schaefer belonged to Merkel’s centre-right CDU party.

He leaves behind a wife and two children.

Der Tod von Finanzminister Thomas Schäfer erschüttert die Landespolitik. Ministerpräsident Volker Bouffier spricht davon, dass die Sorgen um die Zukunft den Minister „erdrückt“ haben könnten. https://t.co/ElLhkQCjRo

— FAZ Rhein-Main (@FAZ_RheinMain) March 29, 2020

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Featured image: An undated handout photo made available by the Ministry of Finance of German state of Hesse shows Finance Minister Thomas Schaefer. According to the Wiesbaden public prosecutor’s office, the Minister of Finance of Hesse, Thomas Schäfer, was found dead on 28 March 2020. [EPA-EFE/SABRINA FEIGE]

Bulgaria says there is no Macedonian language but rather it is a Bulgarian dialect. There is academic consensus that the Ancient Macedonians were Greek. Albanians claim nearly half of North Macedonia in their project for Greater Albania. North Macedonia is a complex and complicated country, but despite this fact, on Friday, it became NATO’s thirtieth member, with Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, saying “North Macedonia is now part of the NATO family, a family of thirty nations and almost one billion people. A family based on the certainty that, no matter what challenges we face, we are all stronger and safer together.”

There was little surprise that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed jubilation by saying that their membership “will support greater integration, democratic reform, trade, security and stability across the region. North Macedonia’s accession also reaffirms to other aspirants that NATO’s door remains open to those countries willing and able to make the reforms necessary to meet NATO’s high standards, and to accept the responsibilities as well as benefits of membership.” Pompeo is effectively opening the floodgates for more NATO members.

North Macedonia’s accession into NATO marks the completion of one of the key goals of the country since it separated from Yugoslavia, namely the entry into NATO and the European Union. This was made possible by the 2018 Prespa Agreement to end the long-standing name dispute with Greece by changing its name from the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” to the “Republic of North Macedonia.” This ended North Macedonian claims to the legacy of the Ancient Macedonians as Article 7 outlines that they “are not related to the Ancient Hellenic civilization, history, culture and heritage.” With the messy name and historical issue with Greece resolved, North Macedonia was given a clear path to join NATO, taking less than two years from the Prespa Agreement to become a full member, and is now being fast-tracked into the European Union. But why was it necessary for North Macedonia to join NATO? Let’s examine what the 30th NATO member brings to the table:

An active military of 8,000 people with 5,000 in reserve.

An air force consisting of 20 helicopters.

No Navy.

An annual military budget of some $150 million.

North Macedonia brings absolutely nothing of material value to NATO. That is because there is no expectation for North Macedonia to bring any great material value to NATO, and rather its geographic location is of interest to the alliance. North Macedonia is to serve as a base against Serbia and Russian influence in the Balkans, in the same way that other NATO members in the Balkans do, as well as Kosovo’s illegal sovereignty. Of Serbia’s eight neighbours, only Bosnia is not a NATO member, but is ruled from the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. It is unlikely Serbia will join NATO in the near future as 89% of Serbs are against NATO membership according to a 2019 poll. This makes Greece and Serbia the only two countries in the Balkans where NATO is looked at negatively by the majority of the population, as in North Macedonia for example, 66% of the population wanted to join NATO according to a 2018 poll.

NATO wants to complete the process of encircling Serbia, a Russian ally, and has effectively made Serbia an island in the sea of ​​anti-Russian states. NATO hopes that by encircling Serbia, it can force Belgrade to become pro-Western, something that will never happen since it was the West who orchestrated the collapse of Yugoslavia, bombed Serbia mercilessly in 1999 and protected Kosovo’s illegal independence. North Macedonia’s accession is another piece of the puzzle to encircle Serbia, but it becomes all the more confusing why they choose to play this game considering Skopje must increase their military budget to meet NATO standards when 22% of their citizens live in poverty and their GDP is ranked 130 in the world.

Of course, by joining NATO, North Macedonia will hardly pose any threat to Serbia and Russia, but it does put a psychological impact on Belgrade as it continues to feel pressurized to conform to Western demands and question whether they should abandon their Russian allies. This does not discount though that North Macedonia is now simply another periphery state in a disorganized organization that defends American interests and hegemony around the world. But the mutual defense of NATO means that the organization will have to expand its security umbrella even further. There is a very low risk of North Macedonia being attacked by any of its neighbours though, which suggests that besides being aimed against Serbia and Russia, its membership, like all of the small countries in the alliance, like Estonia and Montenegro, is for the U.S. arms industry who continue to profit by selling weapons to these states under the guise of conforming to NATO doctrine.

As we enter the Multipolar Age, North Macedonia is a unique country as it is wedged between the East and West of Europe. Rather than embracing this new world system emerging, one that is being accelerated into existence because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is going into the comfort of the status quo that attempts to maintain U.S. hegemony.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

A civilization or culture is defined as a set of customs, traditions, ethics, values, language, music, dance, gastronomy, clothing, religion, and social and political organization of a people, ethnic group, tribe, or nation.

British scholars of the 19th century classified the peoples and races as Civilized, Barbarians and Savages, based on their respective “evolutions.” Such classification was based primarily on three factors:

1. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution;
2. the Industrial Revolution in the beginning of industrial capitalism; and
3. the Reformation of the Catholic Church, the schism from which Protestantism arose.

False premises that led to false conclusions.

Such a classification made the field fertile for the appearance of a Capitalist/Protestant ethic, which would produce today’s capitalist system.

The Theory of Evolution (not a science, but a theory) postulates that only the most capable, among the various species of living organisms, survives and evolves. Darwin labeled his theory Survival of the Fittest. This competition for survival and evolution would be in genetic, biological, adaptive and/or mutative terms, in relation to the environment from which they would have evolved and where they would live. Human beings have been labeled Homo Sapiens, representatives of the supposedly most evolved species–the most apt. The civilized, barbaric and savages represented an attempt to hierarchize Homo Sapiens.

To speak of capitalist ethics is to incur a contradiction in terms as capitalism does not have an ethic, but a single overriding value: profits. On the other hand, a Protestant ethics is based on the Old Testament of the Bible and on the doctrine of Martin Luther that God, a supposedly elderly, male, white entity, distributes His blessings in the form of material wealth, power, good life to those most deserving and for whom He feels greater affection. The subtext is that the poor are poor because they are sinners. And Jesus, the messiah son of that God, was a white Jew. The pieces fit together historically.

• In the Civilized category would be the European, white and Christian colonial empires, with Anglo-Saxons being the civilized par excellence.
• Labeled as Barbarians would be Asians (yellow skinned, in their classification), nomadic peoples, Arabs and North Africans, Eskimos, all non-Christians (pagans), as well as all dark-skinned races that were not in the category of savages, such as the Indians (from India).
• Finally, the Savages would be the inhabitants of black Africa, the Indians of the American continent, the so-called primitives of the Pacific Islands: Aborigines, Maori, Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, etc., and cannibals.

Barbarians

The only two other civilizations respected by this novel Western Civilization were the Greek and the Roman, their progenitors–not very civilized to be sure, built and sustained by wars, conquests and slavery.

There were also the Slaves, captured like animals from the Savage group, who in the 19th century came predominantly from the native peoples of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. Christians believed that these savages, like animals, did not have a soul. Hence the legality and morality of their objectification by Christians who sold them as merchandise. Arabs also exploited the slave trade, a major source of investment/profits.

A corollary of such doctrines and beliefs were attempts to ‘civilize’ barbarians and savages through Christian missions that would take European religious organizations to evangelize the African, American and Asian continents, as well as the Pacific Islands. Such missions gave rise to genocides and exterminations of nations and native peoples who refused to be ‘evangelized’ and ‘civilized’. Spain (Corona de Castilla) is an extreme example of this in South and Central America where its conquistadores decimated the Inca, Maya and Aztec civilizations among others. The religious missions exist and persist today, albeit in derisory numbers and without much influence and credibility.

From the First to the Third World

The 20th century witnessed a change in the English classification, with the advent of Communism in Eastern Europe. The conceptualization of the divisions was then redefined as First World, Second World and Third World.

• Within the First World, were grouped the most affluent capitalist societies that were economically, politically and/or militarily dominant, and whose citizens were Jewish-Christians of white color.
• As Second World, were labeled all those countries that adopted the Communist/Marxist-atheist ideology/economy.
• And the Third World was left with everybody else: poor, destitute, barbarians, savages, all people of color, etc.; the majority of earth’s population.

God remains a white entity who rewards material wealth, and civilized Anglo Saxons and Judeo-Christians remain His chosen people.

After WWII, the divisions were renamed by the International Monetary Fund as Developed, Developing and Underdeveloped countries (IMF country classification.pdf). These labels remain in effect with the prejudices intact in the world’s deep culture/structure.

In this new characterization, all non-economic considerations were then discarded. Japan and the Soviet Union, for example, were accepted into the exclusive Developed Club of the First Civilized World, although the Japanese were Eastern, non-Christian and non-white, and the Soviets were Communists and atheists.

The North American empire claimed world leadership from the British empire and the Capitalist/Protestant ethics, with Anglo-Saxons always at the helm, acquired an irresistible and unstoppable momentum, with science and technology, the planet’s riches and resources becoming servants of the lords of capital.

The outcome of WWII was the determining factor for the definitive establishment of the capitalist market economy globally. It overcame Socialism/Communism and today stands above all the governments of the planet whose armed forces, police, and intelligence services are manipulated and used against anyone and everything that dares to challenge the Free Market Capitalist Economy whose foundation are the banks, central banks, financial institutions, hedge funds, and so on. A Mafia–by definition–getting what they need/want through lethal force, sanctions, Machiavellic manipulations, bullying, threats, and so forth.

Slavery of the Mind and Lack of Ethics

At the same time, unification has developed–complicity I would say–between economic, military, political, religious, intellectual, media and scientific elites from all countries in any of the categories. The New World Order of the third millennium is characterized by haves vs have nots, that is, who accumulates money vs. who is prevented from doing so. The number of billionaires grows exponentially with the spread of misery: the famous 1% against the remaining 99%. The class war that Karl Marx’s foresaw–also two centuries ago–hitting the bull’s eye. The present rat race is who is going to be the first individual trillionaire. Money addiction by definition. Keep in mind that this is all under the same Capitalist/Protestant/Judaic/Industrial Revolution/Anglo Saxon/Civilized ‘ethics.’

Today slavery is of the mind, conscience, awareness, aided by the Main Stream Corporate Entertainment Social Media and communication technology. Wall Street is a Church. The goals–profits, favors, privileges, powers–justify any means necessary. Armies are their faithful servants. Does this survival of the fittest have anything to do with that advocated by Darwin two centuries ago? Is this state of affairs natural, normal? We are destroying the planet–its oceans, rivers, forests, insects, animals, the atmosphere–for whom or what to be the fittest? Those who win a nuclear war? Something went definitely wrong on the way to heaven.

We must extinguish from our collective psyche the idea that human beings are naturally divided into economic, social, or other spurious classes by birth. We learned to reason collectively from within the confines of the Theory of Evolution [a theory and not a science, I repeat], which implies competition rather than cooperation. The nomenclature has changed and adapted to new conditions, but the prejudice remains; it must be eliminated. We are not royals or commoners, slaves, barbarians, savages, capitalists or workers; our primary identity is humans. Period.

Global finance capitalism is not and should not be seen as a last word. Its greatest deficiency lies in providing an unequal, unjust and unfair distribution of wealth between producers/capitalists/shareholders and wage-workers, consumers. The cruelty and aggression  of this system against nature reached its peak at the beginning of this century, especially among international elites that, allied, constitute the aristocracy that nourishes and maintains the royal family of industrialized countries, the most apt among the Fittest. What a farce! A false, illusory and illogical socio-economic engineering that is incompatible with the intelligence, compassion, imagination and nobility of character inherent in human beings and humanity, revealed in the arts, culture, science, even in the new technologies unfortunately used primarily to kill, control and dominate for selfish delusional purposes.

The three pillars of high finance and international movers are:

1. oil,
2. armaments (legal and illegal),
3. drugs (legal and illegal).

International capitalism has become hopelessly dependent on the activities of organized crime, in fact adopting its Modus Operandi.

Government officials are hostage to their complicity with lobbies. The mafia entered the system and imposed its ethics. This state of affairs is not resolved with terrorism, but with radical changes not only in the paradigms of economic, political and social structures, but also and especially in the minds, in the individual consciences/consciousnesses that are beget in the womb of reality. We are the builders of our own realities–from the personal to the collective.

Need for an Alternative

For each Hitler there is a Gandhi. For each Trump there is a Nelson Mandela. For each Bolsonaro or Boris there is a Luther King. Those who are not part of the solution are, by necessity, part of the problem in a world with a record population of close to 8 billion interdependent beings where everyone affects everyone and nobody is an island. We represent a colony on earth—not a globalization construct, not merely numbers, statistics or resources to be exploited.

It is undeniable that societies classified as Civilized, First World or Developed, led by the USA and the West but spread throughout, retain the reins of world markets, politics, economics and culture, being the main producers of weapons, technology, science and atmospheric pollutants as well as wealth (or poverty, depending on the viewpoint) and materialistic values. As such, they also retain the greater share of responsibility for the misery that spreads throughout the so-called Third World. After the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union, the number of members of the underdeveloped has increased, not because poverty has expanded, but because the labels have changed places. In English, there is a rhyme: the West and the Rest.

We need a viable alternative–more benign–to the ‘trickle down’ economy, more aptly named ‘trickle up,’ which slowly and inexorably corrodes and erodes the spirit of nobility in everyone’s character, whether labeled or believed to be civilized, barbaric or savage. We become slaves to the monster we believe in, our Leviathan. The so-called Capitalist/Protestant ethics is outrageous, ignominious. God is not the God of the affluent, white people. This is an incongruity, heretic, unadulterated primitivism.

Our mental paradigm must change, both individually and collectively, towards cooperation, nonviolence, conflict resolution by peaceful means, and sharing–with equity and reciprocity–of the planet’s resources, instead of lethal competition for them; passing through the elimination of sick nationalisms and sociopathic and homicidal patriotisms that kill legally en masse. Our mental constructions must be modified by ourselves, by education, and not by the state. If there were no soldiers logically there would be no wars as generals do not fight each other. We must achieve a degree of civilization that does not require authority, police, justice, militarism or weapons of any type or size for collective control and destruction. Replaced by social servants, leaders. Utopia? I believe not; if we work for it.

United in our diversity and accepting our differences instead of dividing us into races, we may, in any future, acquire a Consciousness of Civilized Beings–and act on it. Without this shift in consciousness any other meaningful change is unlikely as Darwin’s myopic and ethnocentric theory will continue to influence our lives, private and public, and our spiritual (not religious) evolution.

I recommend the works of Prof. Johan Galtung.

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This article was originally published on Transcend Media Service.

Antonio Carlos da Silva Rosa (Antonio C. S. Rosa), born 1946, is founder-editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS (from 2008), an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and recipient of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility’s2017 Anthony J. Marsella Prize for the Psychology of Peace and Social Justice.

All images in this article are from TMS

This Forbes Opinion Article was first published on Forbes in February 2010 under the title Why the WHO Faked the Pandemic. (edit to the title)

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The World Health Organization has suddenly gone from crying “The sky is falling!” like a cackling Chicken Little to squealing like a stuck pig. The reason: charges that the agency deliberately fomented swine flu hysteria [in 2009]. “The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible,” the agency claims on its Web site. A WHO spokesman declined to specify who or what gave this “description,” but the primary accuser is hard to ignore.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.”

Even within the agency, the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemiology in Munster, Germany, Dr. Ulrich Kiel, has essentially labeled the pandemic a hoax. “We are witnessing a gigantic misallocation of resources [$18 billion so far] in terms of public health,” he said.

They’re right. This wasn’t merely overcautiousness or simple misjudgment. The pandemic declaration and all the Klaxon-ringing since reflect sheer dishonesty motivated not by medical concerns but political ones.

Unquestionably, swine flu has proved to be vastly milder than ordinary seasonal flu. It kills at a third to a tenth the rate, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Data from other countries like France and Japan indicate it’s far tamer than that.

Indeed, judging by what we’ve seen in New Zealand and Australia (where the epidemics have ended), and by what we’re seeing elsewhere in the world, we’ll have considerably fewer flu deaths this season than normal. That’s because swine flu muscles aside seasonal flu, acting as a sort of inoculation against the far deadlier strain.

Did the WHO have any indicators of this mildness when it declared the pandemic in June?

Absolutely, as I wrote at the time. We were then fully 11 weeks into the outbreak and swine flu had only killed 144 people worldwide–the same number who die of seasonal flu worldwide every few hours. (An estimated 250,000 to 500,000 per year by the WHO’s own numbers.) The mildest pandemics of the 20th century killed at least a million people.

But how could the organization declare a pandemic when its own official definition required “simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” Severity–that is, the number of deaths–is crucial, because every year flu causes “a global spread of disease.”

Easy. In May, in what it admitted was a direct response to the outbreak of swine flu the month before, WHO promulgated a new definition matched to swine flu that simply eliminated severity as a factor. You could now have a pandemic with zero deaths.

Under fire, the organization is boldly lying about the change, to which anybody with an Internet connection can attest. In a mid-January virtual conference WHO swine flu chief Keiji Fukuda stated: “Did WHO change its definition of a pandemic? The answer is no: WHO did not change its definition.” Two weeks later at a PACE conference he insisted: “Having severe deaths has never been part of the WHO definition.”

They did it; but why?

In part, it was CYA for the WHO. The agency was losing credibility over the refusal of avian flu H5N1 to go pandemic and kill as many as 150 million people worldwide, as its “flu czar” had predicted in 2005.

Around the world nations heeded the warnings and spent vast sums developing vaccines and making other preparations. So when swine flu conveniently trotted in, the WHO essentially crossed out “avian,” inserted “swine,” and WHO Director-General Margaret Chan arrogantly boasted, “The world can now reap the benefits of investments over the last five years in pandemic preparedness.”

But there’s more than bureaucratic self-interest at work here. Bizarrely enough, the WHO has also exploited its phony pandemic to push a hard left political agenda.

In a September speech WHO Director-General Chan said “ministers of health” should take advantage of the “devastating impact” swine flu will have on poorer nations to get out the message that “changes in the functioning of the global economy” are needed to “distribute wealth on the basis of” values “like community, solidarity, equity and social justice.” She further declared it should be used as a weapon against “international policies and systems that govern financial markets, economies, commerce, trade and foreign affairs.”

Chan’s dream now lies in tatters. All the WHO has done, says PACE’s Wodarg, is to destroy “much of the credibility that they should have, which is invaluable to us if there’s a future scare that might turn out to be a killer on a large scale.”

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Michael Fumento is director of the nonprofit Independent Journalism Project, where he specializes in health and science issues. He may be reached at [email protected].

No matter what’s the origin of COVID-19, the response to this virus lead to a series of drastic and unprecedented changes on a global level. The dystopian future is now. Here’s how this pandemic created the largest human experiment in history.

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The response to the COVID-19 pandemic launched the largest human experiment in world history. At the moment of writing these lines, over a third of the global human population is forced into confinement. Furthermore, the global economy came to a screeching halt as several governments ordered the closing of all non-essential businesses.

Never in world history have we seen such sweeping and far-reaching measures that affect each individual at such a profound level. In a matter of weeks, the ability of billions to move around freely and to earn a livelihood completely vanished.

While these measures are said to be temporary in order to stop the propagation of the virus, an important fact remains: They’ve actually become a reality. And this means that they can easily become a reality at any point and time in the future.

Although it is comforting to think that our governments have our health and best interests at heart, it is rather naive to believe that the most powerful people in the world do not see this pandemic as an amazing opportunity. One of the elite’s favorite sayings is “never let a good crisis go to waste”. And this crisis is definitely not going to waste. This pandemic has enabled the “testing” of various authoritarian measures that are exactly in line with the world elite’s long-term plans. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a better plan to simultaneously terrify, isolate, subdue, impoverish and demoralize a society as a whole – creating the perfect context to reshape to fit specific interests.

In short, the dystopian future is now. For years, this site has been warning about plans for a world government that is based on intense mass media indoctrination and high-tech police state surveillance. We are living all of this now – to a degree that many of us did not even fathom a few weeks ago.

If this global lockdown lasts a few weeks, the world might recover and regain some sort of normality (until the next crisis). However, if this goes on months (as some experts predict), the impact on society will take on biblical proportions.

Here’s a look at the many facets of this lockdown and their possible long-term impact on humanity as a whole.

Mass Media Takeover

Mass media preparing the masses for a long crisis.

The first “symptom” of COVID-19 was the complete takeover of mass media on a global level. Nearly every media source – no matter its target audience or niche interest – switched to 24/7 COVID coverage. All other news topics became irrelevant and got evacuated from the public discourse. Nearly all forms of entertainment – most notably professional sports – were put on hold, forcing people to solely focus on the pandemic.

In newspapers, scoreboards displaying sports results were replaced with a morbid “deaths and confirmed cases” scoreboard that is custom-made to generate fear. Every day, billions of humans anxiously follow these “scores”, knowing that their freedom and livelihood depend solely on these government-issued numbers. If the numbers do not go down, the confinement goes on.

As COVID-19 took over mass media, popular culture as a whole instantly turned into a barren wasteland. There are no new cultural products and no artists releasing material that could ease minds, provide some entertainment or, perhaps, provide some much-needed insight. Most artists are reduced to social media “influencers” who repeat the Orwellian orders heard everywhere else around the world: “Stay home and wash your hands”.

In short, nearly all forms of social and cultural distractions were replaced with wall-to-wall COVID coverage. As people consume a steady stream of frightful news, levels of anxiety keep going up, creating an ideal context for the introduction of police-state measures. And these measures were welcomed with thundering applause.

High Tech Police State

Chinese citizens must show a government-issued QR code on their phone in order to take public transportation.

The threat of a deadly pandemic is the perfect context to introduce aggressive police state tactics. People are scared and they want to see decisive measures taken by their government. However, once this is all said and done, will society recover 100% of its freedoms? Or will it gradually go back to about 50%, celebrating each percent as a victory?

The first casualty of the pandemic was air travel. Simply put, it just stopped. All flights were canceled and people abroad were told to go back home as soon as possible. Once everyone got home, everyone was told to remain home. Then, in a matter of days, governments went from banning “large gatherings” to banning gatherings of “2+ people”.

These unprecedented restrictions on human contact generated a climate of fear and paranoia as people began to alert authorities of illegal gathering. While these “snitches” would argue that “the faster the epidemic is eradicated, the faster we all return to normalcy”, precedents are being set.

Police in India beat lockdown violators with sticks.

The pandemic has also justified the use of high tech surveillance at a level never seen before. Here are some examples from around the world:

In China, government-installed CCTV cameras point at the apartment door of those under a 14-day quarantine to ensure they don’t leave. Drones tell people to wear their masks. Digital barcodes on mobile apps highlight the health status of individuals.

In Singapore, the government rolled out an app called TraceTogether. It uses Bluetooth signals between cellphones to see if potential carriers of the coronavirus have been in close contact with other people.

Over in Hong Kong, some residents were made to wear a wristband which linked to a smartphone app and could alert authorities if a person left their place of quarantine.

In South Korea, the government used records such as credit card transactions, smartphone location data and CCTV video as well as conversations with people, to create a system where confirmed cases were tracked. The result was a map that could tell people whether they had gone near a coronavirus carrier.

On Thursday, the South Korean government launched an enhanced tool that it says can help track patients even more closely in near real time, in order to see where the disease was moving.

Meanwhile, Israel’s security agency Shin Bet is using citizens’ cell phone location data to track where they’ve been so they can enforce quarantine controls and monitor the movements of those infected. Controversially, the data has been collected over the past few years and intended to for counterterrorism purposes, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said this data trove and the collection of it had not been previously reported.

Some parts of India were stamping the hands of people arriving at airports telling them how long they had to be quarantined, Reuters reported. Reservation data from airlines and trains were being monitored to make sure those people didn’t travel, the report added. In the south Indian state of Kerala, authorities have been using a mixture of telephone call records, surveillance camera footage and phone location data to track down people who may have been in contact with coronavirus patients.

In the U.S., the government is talking to Facebook, Google and other tech companies about the possibility of using location and movement data from Americans’ smartphones to combat coronavirus.
– CNBC, Use of surveillance to fight coronavirus raises concerns about government power after pandemic ends

“We have absolutely no reason to believe that the government agencies that are eager to expand their power in response to COVID-19 will be willing to see those authorities lapse once the virus is eradicated.”

Major Economy Shift

Initial unemployment insurance claims in the United States. From 2010 to 2020, a steady decline … until a sudden and historical peak.

COVID-19 incited several governments to enact a controversial measure: The closing of all non-essential businesses. This led to millions of workers to instantly losing their jobs. It also led to some unhealthy wheeling-and-dealings with governments to determine which businesses are deemed essential or not.

While most major corporations will weather the storm and hire back employees, a great number of small and medium businesses will not survive the shutdown.

The situation also creates clear winners: Major chains such as Walmart, Costco, Walgreens, McDonald’s and Amazon. In fact, due to a staggering jump in sales, Amazon recently announced the hiring over 100,000 employees to help cope with the demand. However, not unlike most jobs available at these major chains, the offered pay nears minimum wage.

If the lockdown persists, we can expect a major shift in the global economy: Small and medium businesses will struggle and die while gigantic entities will thrive as they turn into monolithic “distribution centers” for essential goods.

To prevent a complete crash of the global economy, governments announced trillions of dollars in financial aid to those impacted by the shutdown. However, this money does not come out of thin air: It will result in massive debts and, most likely, higher taxes. In poorer countries, financial aid is rare or non-existent – a recipe for impending chaos.

In the end, all economic crises always end up favoring the elite. The net result of the financial crash of 2008 (and its bailouts) led to the funneling of tens of trillions of dollars from the pockets of the middle class towards the world elite. This COVID crisis will most likely end with similar results.

In Conclusion

While the above assessment might seem grim, it is an objective analysis of a planet in lockdown. In a matter of weeks, the entire planet went from normalcy to fear, panic, paranoia, confinement, unemployment, police-state surveillance and extreme social distancing. Millions of citizens who thrived on freedom and free enterprise are now on “house-arrest” and must rely on the government for subsistence.

Although the absolute necessity of these measures is up for debate, there is no possible debate about their necessity once the virus is gone. And we need to make sure that the dystopian nightmare we are living now does not become permanent. Because, right now, some power-hungry people are salivating and they will only want more of this.

In these critical times, we must keep track of the many ways society is being altered and we must make sure that, once the virus is gone, liberty is fully restored. Because, as Thomas Jefferson said: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

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The New York Times of March 20, asks rhetorically – “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?”

A Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in relation to China’s novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) categorized  as a viral pneumonia. was declared by WHO’s Director General, Dr. Tedros on 30 January 2020, when outside of China there were only 150 WHO-registered infections.

This declaration – nowhere justified – has devastating effects on the entire world population and the world’s socioeconomic fabric. The globe is literally on lock-down, until – who knows – but the latest date put forward by President Trump is 12 April 2020. It can almost be taken for granted that the date will have global validity. The world at large dances to the tune of the United States.

Some ten days ago, Mr. Trump declared, that this “situation” is enough and that it is time to get the economy working again. He is a business man and knows best. He suggested March 30 for going back to work. He then must have gotten instructions from his higher-ups, that more time was needed – this is just my guess – to prepare whatever sinister plan is in the making. So, he postponed by two weeks the “back-to-normal” day.

The coronavirus, COVID-19, has a catastrophic impact on the world, on the population, on the economy, and most importantly on the livelihoods of about a quarter of the world population, who are at the margin or below the level of vulnerability and precariousness. Without work, even occasional, hourly or daily work to make some money to buy food, these people are doomed – doomed to die from disease, famine or sheer neglect. Their disappearance will be unnoticed. They are the non-people.

This fake global public health emergency (January 30) was imposed on almost every country of the 193 UN members. It is “fake”, because when it was declared, as said before, there were only 150 cases outside of China, in a population of 6.4 billion people.

This is by no stretch of imagination a pandemic.  (While the PHEIC was declared on January 30th, the pandemic was casually confirmed by the WHO Director General on March 11)

Noteworthy is, this decision was taken by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (21 – 24 January 2020), behind closed doors, by an entirely non-medical, but political body. Dr. Tedros, WHO’s DG, who for the first time in WHO’s history, is not a medical doctor, was present.

The short- medium- and long-term impact of this decision will be of a dimension that nobody can fathom at this time. It may bring a paradigm shift in our lives and society that mankind has never experienced in the last 200 years and beyond.

In Germany, scientists with integrity start moving, standing up against authority, telling them the facts. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, sent an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calling for urgent re-evaluation of the response to Covid-19, asking the Chancellor five crucial questions. This is the letter, dated 26 March 2020.

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi explaining his Open Letter (turn on subtitles and translation)

What about China? You may ask. China is different. Virologists in Wuhan found out very early that what was originally called 2019-nCoV (renamed by WHO to COVID-19), was nothing else but a stronger mutation of the SARS virus that hit Hong Kong and China in 2002 / 2003 and which killed worldwide 774 people. Since the SARS virus was tailor-made for the Chinese genome, Chinese scientists knew that its new and stronger mutation was also focused on the Chinese DNA.

China also knew, since it was a lab-made virus, that it came from outside, probably from the US which is waging an economic war against China. A deadly virus may be an ideal -and invisible – tool to weaken China and her economy. Therefore, without a moment of hesitation, China declared as quarantine large areas of the country, and later proceeded to a complete lock-down. Thanks to this fast reaction by President Xi and the people’s discipline, China is now in control of COVID-19 – and her economy is rapidly recovering.

It looks like “a global coup d’état” – carried out in selected countries imposing curfew and even house arrest on everyone – not by guns or bombs, not by rolling tanks in the streets and an oppressive police force, but – by an invisible tiny-tiny enemy, a microscopic virus. Can you imagine! Its sheer genius. Controlling the world by – a virus. You have to give it them. The 0.01% has brought the 99.99 % to their knees – and begging, begging for mercy. Begging for vaccinations, ignorant of the cocktail of substances that this malignant dark force may want to inject into your body. Please, please bring us vaccines. People will run into the streets – when it is allowed again – offering their arms and bodies to anyone who comes with a syringe.

The injections include many nefarious agents that sterilize, that may bring long-term neurological damage – damages that may be passed on to future generations, DNA-manipulating proteins – life-reducing agents? Injections may also comprise an electronic nano-chip that keeps track of all personal data, from health records to bank accounts. At the stage of total despair, people are not interested. They want to get rid of fear and sleep again in peace at night.

The 2009 H1N1 Swine flu Pandemic

This man-made outbreak of a pandemic is not new. Of course, it’s never mentioned in the mainstream media, that the corona virus COVID-19 is laboratory-made (and so are SARS, MERS, H1N1 Swine Flu, Ebola, Zika and many more), and that outbreaks can be and are being targeted on specific populations. In fact, the infamous Plan for a New American Century (PNAC), which is still very much alive, in its update of 2000, mentions on p.60 – that future wars may not be fought with conventional or nuclear weapons, but with invisible agents, biological weapons, viruses which are more effective than conventional weapons and don’t destroy infrastructure.

The new corona is the making of a bonanza for Big Pharma. It was planned for years, and patterned on the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak, or the H1N1 virus. The latter lasted for about a year – April 2009 to April 2010. According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Swine flu killed about 12,500 people in the US, and caused worldwide about 300,000 deaths. (These CDC estimates were questionable. Were they backed up by lab exams? In most cases they were not in a position to differentiate between H1N1 and the seasonal flu).

Then, like today, WHO declared a pandemic – green light for the pharma industry to race for the production of a vaccine. The Big Pharma promised they could produce 4.9 billion H1N1 vaccines – they delivered millions to governments – which by the time they arrived were no longer used, because the flu was over. The taxpayers paid billions in vain. Since the annual flu mutates from year to year, there was no use to keep the vaccines. What some governments did, though – listen to this! – they sent them to Africa as development assistance, where the vaccines, of course, were equally useless.

Media Disinformation

Today, we are again confronted with a tireless 24 x 7 propaganda machine, dishing out fear and anxiety — because of an invisible virus. An enemy that cannot be seen by the population. An enemy that cannot be followed, for example, how it spreads, or doesn’t spread. An enemy that the people just have to believe the authorities exists. How clever! Propaganda and fear are enough to dominate within a few weeks the entire world population.

For example, a new Oxford University Study concluded that COVID-19 most likely exists in the UK since January 2020, and that in the meantime about half of the British population has been infected, and is, thereby, immunized against the virus. Most people have none or only mild symptoms. This would mean that only about 1 out of 1,000 infected people needs to be hospitalized, this corresponds to the common flu or less. Here is the study.

An American physician and the founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, Dr. David Katz, says:

“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near-total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.”

Nobody of those who hyped-up the pandemic-panic seems to have a clear view of the Big Picture. Government officials around the world are co-opted. They follow orders. They know they must. Or else. This is an important step to bring about this gigantic societal paradigm change for the New World Order (NWO) to reign. It involves a shift or enormous sums of resources over time, in the trillions, are being moved from the common people to a small powerful financial elite.

Key Organization: Agenda ID2020

There is a little-known agency, called Agenda ID2020 which is behind implementing the broader agenda. – The Agenda ID2020 is a public-private partnership, including UN agencies and civil society. Key partners include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (co-founder), the Rockefeller Foundation (co-founder), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance that “brings together public and private sectors with the shared goal of creating equal access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries”; Accenture, A global management consulting and professional services firm; and IDEO.Org, an international consulting firm, “to design products, services, and experiences to improve the lives of people in poor and vulnerable communities.”

Agenda ID2020’s principal objective is implementing an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity. In May 2016, at the impulse of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Office for Partnership (UNOFP) organized an international Summit in New York to create Agenda ID2020. According to the Summit’s own website, Agenda ID2020 is a strategic, global initiative launched in response to the Sustainable Development Goal 16.9:

“Provide legal identity to all, including birth registration, by 2030 …. harnessing Digital Identity for the Global Community…. Around one-fifth of the world’s population (1.8 billion people) is without legal identity, which deprives them of access to healthcare, schools, shelter.”

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 16 is to “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” To implement and justify this objective, the vaccination king, Bill Gates, needed a special sub-goal, No.16.9 – see above.

Agenda ID2020 is closely linked to GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – also a Bill Gates creation. Gavi identifies itself on its website as a global health partnership of public and private sector organizations dedicated to “immunization for all”. GAVI is supported by WHO, and needless to say, its main partners and sponsors are the pharma-industry.

The ID2020 Alliance at their 2019 Summit, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”, in September 2019 in New York, decided to roll out their program in 2020, a decision confirmed by the WEF in January 2020 in Davos.

Event 201: Simulating a Worldwide Epidemic 

Curiously, on October 18, 2020, The Gates Foundation, WEF and the John Hopkins Institute for Public Health sponsored Event 201 in New York City. Essentially, Event 201 focused on simulating a worldwide epidemic, which was coincidentally based on the SARS outbreak and called 2019-nCoV, the name first given to the outbreak in China, before WHO changed it to a more generic form, COVID-19.

The simulation resulted over an 18-month period in 65 million deaths worldwide, a stock market dive of 15%-plus and countless bankruptcies and unemployment. Just a few weeks later, the first 2019-nCoV infected person was identified in Wuhan. Coincidence?

Is it also just a coincidence that ID2020 is being rolled out at the onset of what WHO calls a Pandemic? – Or is a pandemic needed to ‘roll out’ the multiple devastating programs of ID2020? – See this.

After three months of the outbreak, and only two weeks of complete world lock-down, we can already see signs of disastrous obliteration as the stock market dove at least 30%, wiping out savings of small investors, bringing about bankruptcies of millions and millions of small and medium-sized enterprises around the globe, creating unemployment of biblical proportions, untold misery, poverty  famine – and deaths – by starvation, rooflessness, despair, absence of health care – and ultimately suicide.

The New York Times reports on 27 March, more than 3.3 million new claims for unemployment benefits, in an economy that is coming apart. President Trump on 27 March signed a bill for US$ 2 billion as a rescue package. Nobody really knows whom and how this money should benefit the desperate and jobless, the hungry and homeless. This money is peanuts, as compared to the overall damage to the US economy alone. Now, at the beginning of the crisis it is estimated at between US$ 3 and US$ 5 trillion, about a fourth of US GDP. Worldwide – US$ 10 to US$ 20 trillion? And, we are far from the end if the calamity.

In developing countries, or the Global South, where poverty for a large proportion of the population is already rampant, the impact of this man-made disaster is even worse- and potentially irreversible. The NYT reports that an estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide are in an acute precariousness.

Developing countries, especially big cities, have a large “informal” sector – often 30% or higher of the so-called work-force – which consists mostly of younger people from age 15 to 35, who have no fix jobs, who find occasional work on a daily or hourly basis on meekly wages that allow them just barely to survive. With small enterprises or construction sites coming to a halt – going broke in most cases, these people have no longer not even a minimal income. Their numbers will grow, as the economy is spiraling further into recession, the magnitude of which is uncertain, but most likely gigantic – and possibly irrecoverable.

These people, moneyless, roofless, hungry, and often sick and desperate, they may turn to crime, or to suicide. In Greece, for example, according to the Lancet, the suicide rate increased almost exponentially after the 2008 / 2009 also man-made debt-driven depression (by Greece’s European traitors). Crime rates may explode. Hungry people have nothing to lose. Looting supermarkets for food and other shops for cash – is nothing new. Shanty towns in Europe and North America may rapidly proliferate. Migration to rich or richer countries my explode.

Countries will be offered “rescue” type loans by the sorts of the World Bank and the IMF. The WB has already offered at least US$ 12 billion to alleviate the adversities of the COVID-19 crisis. The IMF started out with US$ 50 billion, and now following demand – from an estimated already 60 countries, upped the ante to a trillion. Some IMF board members call for the creation of a special fund of up to 4 trillion SDRs (Special Drawing Rights).

The “rescue” of these countries will be sheer debt bondage – even if low interest – debt has to be repaid and the collateral is privatization of social services, infrastructure, concessions to foreign corporations to exploit their natural resources, oil, gas, forests, water, minerals, all what the rich oligarchs who stand behind this criminal Agenda ID2020 covet. And so, another shuffling of funds from the grassroots to the top will take place – and further dependence and enslavement of people and entire nations is in the books.

The next step in this paradigm shift is uncertain may not follow immediately after this corona-crisis.

That would be too obvious. Instead there may be a respite – where the people may breathe – and forget. Yes, forget. Because that is an important tool of those who manage and manipulate humanity, our forgetfulness. We may ask ourselves, what makes very-very rich and powerful people so pathologically inhumane for wanting to dominate not only mankind, but the entire Mother Earth with all her rich resources? What is it that brings about so much evil? – I don’t have the answer.

On a Positive Note…

After Dark follows Light. That’s a universal law of nature. And as the saying goes, every dark cloud has a silver lining. Might it be that this low-intensity ticking of the world may have an earth rejuvenating effect? Big portions of industrial pollutions have been wiped out, and healthier, oxygenated air moves in. Air and water are in constant transition. They move fast and endlessly. Even a short break in the lambasting of nature may bring bright results – which in turn, may inspire changes in human behavior. And a whole new ecological ball game may emerge.

Trees are breathing again, the sea starting to regenerate her constantly moving marine life, heavy industrial chimneys spewing out carbon dioxide have stopped – the skies got bluer, the grass greener, insects return and are happily chirping away – and the birds start singing again? – A dream? Some of it may have begun – there may be some humans who awakened to this new potentially cleaner, healthier and safer environment, a world of smiles that reflects the light that is gradually replacing the dark. New, clean and safe life-sustaining activities may be born and coming to light. We don’t know. But we hope. Dynamics are unpredictable, but endless.

We, mankind, do have the spiritual capacity to abandon the disaster path of western neoliberal capitalism, and instead espouse solidarity, compassion and love for each other, for our society and for Mother Earth, nourishing the emerging new era of Light.

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

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

My dear fellow citizens,

I am a virologist, specialist in coronaviruses and respiratory diseases, whose views differ significantly from the experts who advise the government on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The situation is dire and I would like to offer you a clear plan for getting out of the health, economic and social crisis that Belgium and the rest of the world are facing.

Everything I am proposing is based on the basic principles of public health that have been known since ancient times; and the history of the five pandemics of the previous five centuries has only one refrain, the cities and the countries that emerge from pandemics relatively unscathed are those that respect these rules, the others pay their tribute. It was true yesterday, it is true today, it is enough to see how Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore handled the crisis from the start, and how China and South Korea recovered. Contrary to what the Prime Minister says, there are countries that are doing very well in their handling of this crisis.

The urgency of the situation

The very first principle of public health in a response to a pandemic can be summed up in one word, EMERGENCY! Always answer right away with absolutely all means available, as this is the best and only reasonable way to flatten the curve. Every hour counts, every hour lost means more people infected, more people hospitalized, more deaths, it’s just basic math.

If you hurt your fingertip and the wound becomes infected, you have to act quickly. Otherwise, your entire finger, then your hand and finally your arm will be affected. It’s the same with the population in the event of a pandemic, it’s an exact analogy. The infectious agent spreads from cell to cell in our body before infecting it in its entirety if we do not stop it, and in the same way the coronavirus spreads from individual to individual in our social body, and we must do everything to stop it, immediately, without any delay.

My point of view differs from that of other experts, and for me, the fault lies first of all with the WHO. They made two errors with absolutely catastrophic consequences in their management of this crisis. The first was to believe that this new coronavirus was transmitted in the same way as the two recently emerged coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. It is the classic mistake of generals to prepare for the coming war by thinking that it will be a repetition of the previous one. They dig fortified trenches, put heavy artillery in bunkers, and then a blitzkrieg overruns them.

SARS and MERS were not very contagious for respiratory viruses, and from an epidemiological point of view we knew for example that the contagion only happened when the patient was already sick for 4-5 days, which explains that for these two epidemics the virus was spread mostly to relatives and attending medical staff.

Our public health measures are not suitable for COVID-19

By contrast, COVID-19 is transmitted before the onset of symptoms, which implies that public health measures which could control a virus like SARS and MERS (but only if they were rigorously applied, with quarantine of people returning from risk area, and mass screening), could never be sufficient to contain such a contagious virus.

This contagiousness, comparable to that of rubella or mumps before vaccination, implies that this virus can only spread like wildfire in an immunologically naive population. And a virus capable of being transmitted by aerosol can only explain this contagiousness; it is a property of practically all respiratory viruses, SARS and MERS being notable exceptions to the rule.

The WHO has in fact admitted in a press release that aerosol transmission is possible and requires more study, when we don’t have time for more study. I worked in an institute dedicated to respiratory diseases and there the work on aerosols, chemical or infectious, is done every day, it is perhaps 10% of their activities; I have absolutely no doubt that this virus is transmitted by aerosol, if I can leave my reserve as a scientist who must doubt everything. In an emergency situation, we follow the preponderance of evidence.

The WHO’s first fault was that it did not recognize that aerosol transmission was substantial and therefore that the recommendations had to be changed to contain the spread of the virus, which they still have not done. The WHO’s second fault is to underestimate the contagiousness of the virus, with a basic reproduction number of ~ 2.5 when in reality it is ~ 7, with a doubling time of 2.4 days in the absence of any public health measure.

Italy has been in total lockdown since March 10 and we can clearly see that since the cessation of all non-essential economic activity, the progression of the coronavirus has slowed down (doubling time ~ 5.5 days on March 24 compared to ~ 3.3 days before the lockdown), but it still remains exponential [update: doubling time 9.7 days for this last week on March 29, a lockdown makes a big difference, it works].

There is therefore progress, but it is insufficient, and that is why the Italian government is considering even stricter measures. We are only 4-5 days behind Italy when we consider the difference in population size, so in proportion to the infected population we will be in the same percentage of cases as Italy in 4-5 days.

We will not stop the exponential progression with the current measures.

In Belgium, we have had a doubling time of ~ 3.3 days for the past 15 days, the same figure as Italy before its lockdown. On March 24, Italy is at 5.5 days of doubling time, but it is still not enough. So we are not doing enough in Belgium, we will not stop the exponential progression with the current measures.

The recipe for successful countries is: sanitary cordon, screening of travelers, massive use of adequate masks by the population, quarantine when necessary, surveillance of respiratory diseases, massive screening, tracing of possible contacts, and early hospitalization when necessary. But you have to be organized before the pandemic to be able to apply this recipe.

As we find ourselves in an insufficiently prepared pandemic, what to do?

The first thing to realize is that those who continue to work in a non-essential occupation must stop immediately for two reasons. First of all, in practice the 1.5 meters are not respected, you just have to see the preparation for the swearing in of the government to realize it. Then and above all, a virus that is transmitted by aerosol respects no distance.

So the first measure to take is the immediate cessation of all non-essential economic activity, with only teleworking allowed. Certainly we can do without going to the hairdresser in a crisis. It is imperative to close the daycare, Belgian style, leaving a daycare for essential staff, but otherwise it is necessary to close the daycare. Babies can be very contagious, for example a 6 month old baby in South Korea, under observation in a hospital because her parents were infected, produced an amount of virus considered contagious for 20 days. Her only symptom? 38 °C for less than an hour over the total duration of the observations.

To understand what is going to happen, we must now consider two distinct populations in Belgium, those who remain active because they have an essential function, and those who are confined to lockdown, because the prognosis is very different for these two populations.

The population on lockdown

In any viral epidemic, there are three fractions: a) the uninfected population, b) an infected but asymptomatic fraction (and here potentially contagious and the number of which is unknown), and c) an infected fraction with various symptoms and varying degrees of severity. When we put the population in lockdown (we start with 4 weeks then we reevaluate), we limit our contacts to only the household and the people met in food stores.

So infected people will only contaminate at most those who live under the same roof, plus a very small fraction outside their house. The number of people infected in this population can therefore only be multiplied at most by, say, four; the average number of people living under the same roof should be taken as a multiplier. During the lockdown, those who were infected and asymptomatic can either get rid of the virus naturally or become symptomatic, be identified and then treated appropriately for the severity of their symptoms.

Contrast this to a scenario of no containment during these 4 weeks, where the number of people infected would be multiplied by 256, at the current rate of 3.3 days as doubling time. The measures in place today in Belgium will lengthen this doubling time, but not enough, the curve will remain exponential.

So for the population whose activity is not essential, it is the most basic common sense that the lockdown be imposed today, and the sooner it is implemented, the sooner we can get out and return to an almost normal economic activity. And the sooner it is implemented, the fewer people will be infected, hospitalized and dead in the final assessment.

The population with essential function

It is of course the population that is most at risk during the lockdown period. I had a flashback to this scene in Stanley Kubrick’s film, Barry Lyndon, where we see the troops advancing in close rank, and lines after lines fall under the musket fire, the madness of war, mid-19th century version.

I went on Facebook to get feedback, and I get messages from everywhere, especially those on the front lines. I’m also on the COVID-19 group for medical doctors. In public medical personnel present a brave face, like the government, they cannot show their feelings, but in private there are all the feelings, the fear, the rage, the incomprehension that in the 21st century, a society that believes itself advanced, finds itself so unprepared to face a relatively small number of cases.

Let’s remember the difference between isolation (or surgical) masks and the famous N95/FFP2 masks. The first wave in Wuhan the medical staff was short of FFP2, all the photos show them with surgical masks; result: 3,000 infected medical staff. The Chinese government sends reinforcements, 42,000 medical personnel equipped with FFP2; result: zero infection out of 42,000!

Our doctors and nurses proudly go into battle without the necessary protection, namely a N95/FFP2, knowing that they will become infected one after the other, falling like the soldiers of the empire, like already Dr. Philippe Devos with whom I was on a TV set at the beginning of the month. But we cannot say that publically in our society, in France a scientist has been rebuked for daring to say that Macron sends the medical staff to the “case-pipe”, another metaphor for heavy casualties. It’s apparently too raw to describe reality simply; you have to wrap it in lots of euphemisms.

It is simply UNACCEPTABLE as a situation and absolutely everything must be done to rectify it as soon as possible. It is infuriating to learn that we placed only ONE order in Turkey for such a vital material as FFP2 masks, when we should have placed a 100 orders! And then there was fraud and we received nothing! We can sue them but it will not save any life here.

China is once again offering this equipment for sale and by chartering a plane you can have the equipment in two days. There was an article in La Libre (a Belgian newspaper) by a journalist in Hong Kong who was offended that members of the French government continued with the disinformation that these masks would not help the population, and she made the essential point that these masks were available in China, what are we waiting for?

FFP2 must be recycled for the moment

Furthermore, I tried to communicate the importance of recycling FFP2 masks, without any success. It is a matter of life and death. These masks are considered for single use and staffs throw them away too quickly. This is not the place to be technical, but I have proposed four methods to recycle them and they must be implemented according to the sterilization equipment available in hospitals, information that I have still not been able to obtain. We must educate medical staff on how to extend the life of these masks and recycle them, today, the urgency is immense.

The army, firefighters and probably the police have gas masks, which should not be left in the barracks, they are even more effective than the FFP2. We do not care if it looks crazy to see doctors with gas masks, I prefer to see them stay alive and able to care for patients, and also it would prevent them from becoming vectors of spread themselves. How many gas masks, which are cleanable and reusable, are available?

Finally, for the front line staff who cannot be protected by an FFP2 or a gas mask, what about using hydroxychloroquine? I floated the idea on Facebook COVID-19 medical doctor, the prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine to see their responses, which of course ranged from total rejection to approval as an idea worth pursuing.

The major objection is that the studies are preliminary, but we don’t have time for a study with more double-blind patients, our healthcare staff will be needlessly infected by then. The prophylactic use of this drug for malaria is well demonstrated, there is a population for whom it would be contraindicated but it is well known and we are talking about medical personnel, not self-medication.

It is necessary to leave the choice to each individual to protect themselves in this way or not, according to the availability of the proper masks. Do not believe that the doctors do not know their rights, which is in particular not to work in conditions that put them in excessive danger. [Health minister] Maggie De Block’s statement on Monday, no FFP2 on the front line, shocked and woke up more than one caregiver.

The second difficulty is logistics and all wars are won or lost in logistics. It is not clear if we have enough of this drug, hydroxychloroquine, because of course the priority goes to COVID-19 patients, and patients afflicted with chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, etc., who also need this drug.

I hear that Belgium, like France, has taken over the national stock, and that France has several factories capable of producing hydroxychloroquine. We have to know what is in stock and their productive capacity, and how much France would be able to supply, with what delay, in order to calculate the judicious use of our stocks.

And, if we know that reinforcements will arrive in time, let us use part of our stocks as prophylactics for those on the front line who want them because they do not have an adequate mask, including those who do not see symptomatic COVID patients, because of contagion by asymptomatic individuals. Those who cannot be protected by FFP2 or hydroxychloroquine must remain in reserve, it is imperative!

FFP2 masks for the population, a simple solution for returning to work.

To finish with the masks, let us understand that what will get us out of confinement, lockdown, and will allow the population to resume almost normal work, is the massive production of FFP2 masks for the entire population, small (children) and adults (adults). The faster the necessary production tools are put in place, the faster Belgium can get back to work, it’s really that simple.

During the minimum 4 weeks of lockdown, massive screening is needed, and the establishment of the task force is a step in the right direction. We cannot lift the lockdown until our ability to track down infected individuals has been greatly increased.

At Vo’Euganeo in Italy, all the confined residents (3,300) were tested a month ago. Result: out of 89 positive cases, there are only handful contaminations, reports La Voix du Nord. The approach I propose works when you can combine lockdown and massive screening.

Screening, screening, screening

This screening should especially not be limited to the nucleic acid of the coronavirus. A team from Namur (and many others around the world) produced a serological test that was validated and then promptly prohibited, on the pretext that it will not detect recently infected patients before they produce antibodies. An absurd position, because all doctors are already well aware of this limitation.

This test is useful, let us think of all those who were quarantined because of flu symptoms, but who could not be tested due to lack of sampling equipment, or not given enough priority for testing during the test shortages. They would like to know what infected them. A screening for the presence of nucleic acid, the screening test currently used, no longer makes sense if people got rid of the virus at the time of being tested. In addition to valuable information on the spread of the virus in our country, positive cases identified by this technique would motivate a disinfection of their home.

Other logistical aspects that require urgent attention are the situation of the truckers who are on their knees and no longer have access to the facilities that normally allow them to function humanely, and the farmers who replant. We must ensure that we replant what Belgium will need because there is the risk that countries keep their agricultural production for domestic purposes in this pandemic situation.

It is of course necessary to increase the number of respirators available.

Universal income for the duration of the government-mandated lockdown.

We must also support the population with a form of universal income for the duration of the lockdown mandated by the government, it is not only necessary financially for many who have their rent and food and other bills to pay, but it will certainly decrease the general anxiety of the population, which will allow it to resist the virus more effectively. It will also facilitate acceptance of containment and compliance with the rules.

Finally, with Belgium rebuilding itself post-corona and preparing for the probable return of the virus in October, once again masks for everyone is the simple and effective solution (and we can manufacture them in fabrics, which must to be validated of course, and make them recyclable).

We must consider that our medical staff and other first lines will probably be in a state of revolt, comparable to that of the yellow vests, because of the horrendous conditions in which they were forced to operate.

Our society must change, why return to society as it was organized before when it failed in its most basic duty? And of course politics has an essential role to play. Let’s not have preconceived ideas, Paul Craig Roberts proposes a rational approach which has proven itself for companies in difficulty, which we would be very inspired to consider: see this and this.

So in summary, and without further ado:

1. Italian-style lockdown, all non essential economic activities are suspended;
2. Belgian day-care centers closed;
3. FFP2 masks or gas masks or hydroxychloroquine, for all those on the front line; recycling of masks; those who have no real protection remain in reserve; more respirators are needed;
4. Massive nucleic acid and serological screening of all suspected cases;
5. Industrial production of FFP2 masks to put the population back to work when the health lockdown is lifted;
6. Universal income during the government-mandated lockdown period.

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Marc Wathelet is a Belgian virologist and specialist in coronaviruses and respiratory diseases.

Originally published in French by Sudinfo Belgique 

The measure agreed to near-unanimously by both right wings of the one-party state is all about transferring countless trillions of dollars from ordinary Americans to the nation’s privileged class.

Deception defines it by including crumbs for about 150 million US households. Most people are unaware of how Congress and the White House are fleecing them.

The scheme is straight from Wall Street’s playbook, discussed in my books titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America” and “Banker Occupation.”

What Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein once claimed was doing “God’s work” is all about making money the old-fashioned way by stealing it.

GS and other Wall Street banks do it by fraud, grand theft, market manipulation, front-running, pump and dump schemes, scamming investors, bribing politicians, serving in senior government posts, and getting trillions of dollars in bailouts on request.

According to Section 4018/Division A of the corporate bailout bill, “a new special inspector general…within the” Treasury Department is established to oversea distribution of half a trillion dollars in corporate bailout funds.

In his Friday signing statement, Trump claimed the measure “includes several provisions that raise constitutional concerns” — regarding executive branch authority and the separation of powers.

The bill mandates congressional oversight over distribution of funds, the newly created inspector general required to report to Congress on how this is administered.

Trump wants control of the slush fund to hand disbursements to regime favorites with no oversight.

He cited the Constitution’s Article II, Section 3, stating that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” — the so-called Take Care Clause.

According to the Constitution Center, it’s “a major source of presidential power because it seemingly invests the office with broad enforcement authority.”

“Yet, at the same time, the provision also serves as a major limitation on that power because it underscores that the executive is under a duty to faithfully execute the laws of Congress and not disregard them.”

Three US presidents, including Trump, were in part impeached for allegedly violating the Take Care Clause.

The same holds for most or all of their predecessors and vast majority of current and former congressional members.

George Washington once said:

“It is my duty to see the laws executed. To permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to” that duty.

Yet US presidents time and again breach international, constitutional, and US statute laws, accountability never forthcoming.

While presidents are required to observe and enforce the laws of the land, Thomas Jefferson refused to enforce the Sedition Act he called unconstitutional.

In his Friday signing statement, Trump effectively said he’ll decide whether or not to submit to Congress reports by the special inspector general.

This action will undermine transparency in disbursement of funds required under Section 4018 of the corporate bailout bill — including by establishment of a congressional oversight panel charged with reviewing inspector general reports.

Trump also said he won’t observe a provision of the measure that gives Congress oversight authority over State Department, Veterans Affairs Department, and USAID expenditures.

“These provisions are impermissible forms of congressional aggrandizement with respect to the execution of the laws,” his statement said — clearly written for, not by, him.

Together with trillions of dollars of  Fed created free money for business favorites, the corporate bailout bill is all about transferring unprecedented amounts of wealth from the public to America’s privileged class.

A manufactured crisis is being used to commit the grandest of grand theft, along with further eroding human and civil rights.

Things perhaps are heading toward eliminating them altogether on the phony pretext of protecting national 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.

Involuntarily, week by week Nepal’s population, joined by the global community, will find itself compelled to abandon hitherto starry-eyed views of ‘America’ as redeemer, source of truths, and all things good. (It’s already happening.)

Working in your country for over four decades, I’ve never met people more enthralled with the U.S. as you are. Everyone I know strives to send children here. You order your iphone direct from U.S.A.; you quote the NY Times and CNN; villagers too consult Facebook for ‘reliable’ news; Kathmandu residents patronize your local reproduction of Starbucks and Pizza Hut. (The only exception to these addictions is Hindi dramas; they’re accessed from India.)

On its side, America too is charmed by Nepal. We admire your beguiling, robed monks, your extravagant and vibrant Hindu rituals, and docile residents welcoming us on treks through your Himalaya.

Appreciating the value of your exceptional loyalty (perhaps based on historical Gurkha-Britishalliances) the U.S. extends an open door to Nepalis: with your abiding charm, your industrious  graduates and Buddhist gurus, and your 6,000 earthquake victims, (admitted on TPS-visas in 2015, regardless of their largely fraudulent claims, then granted extensions last year).

Politically, Nepalis are inexplicably complacent at home. For most of your history you were subjected to the rule of absolute monarchs. Although never occupied by foreign invaders. Following your successful 10-year Maoist guerilla campaign, you eventually rid yourselves of that oppressive sacred kingship. That was followed by your declaration as a republic, multi-party involvement, a democratic constitution and a 2015 election  that endowed the winning Marxist/Leninist Party with power. Few lives had been lost in that process and expectations were high moving ahead. Despite the ended monarchy, an expanded free press, a vibrant tourism industry and the injection of foreign aid, your nation’s economy was never reformed, your class disparities never addressed. The elite remained entrenched; favoritism, corruption, graft, and nepotism deepened.             Corruption is worse today than ever. Although officially secular, consumptive spending on temples and rituals has increased, and high caste privilege remains. Your economy is crippled: as new plutocrats sap the wealth, your administration grows fat on bribes while allowing ordinary families to depend on overseas remittances; (5-7 million jobless, a fifth of your 28 million, are migrant workers in Malaysia and Arab Gulf states).

The U.S.’s open door combined with the generosity of foreign social service organizations lodged in Nepal, maintains this status quo.

It was to be expected that you and your government would await the arrival of foreign medics and health supplies along with instructions from here about how to treat your COVID-19 victims. Instead, growing awareness of that plague arrived with waves of those sons and brothers sent home from their curtailed employment overseas. (This influx may reverse the drop in agri-production after farms were abandoned or mortgaged, resulting in cash-dependency, more reliance on imported food and other needs, more demand for iNGO assistance.)

Meanwhile, by March 15^th Nepal reported only a single case of infection—a figure no Nepali accepted.

Your government (neither as impoverished nor indebted as outsiders suppose) is unabashedly corrupt and inattentive; so you’re unsurprised at its negligence in identifying infections and moving to protect you from the spreading scourge.

According to those of you I speak to on a weekly basis, the Nepali leadership was as slack as Americain quarantining your population. You bide the time, accustomed to mismanagement and lies waiting for America’s magic pill to arrive. (By March 28^th, only 4 positive cases had been announced, again causing public skepticism.) Now on lockdown—imposed on the heels of U.S. orders for its citizens — you can’t even take your demands to the streets, a strategy used so effectively against your monarchy.

While the American leadership has finally awakened to the severity of the pandemic, now rushing to contain the damage; it can draw on abundant resources, however belatedly. Nepal is slowly rousing itself, but it lacks those resources.

In our phone conversations, it seems you feel forsaken, not by your government but by the U.S. and elsewhere. You must be shaken by witnessing the depravity of your hero.

As you see, every government is occupied with its own overwhelmed health systems.

If anyone comes to your rescue I expect it will be China, your northern neighbor and a steadfast benefactor. Beijing’s earthquake aid in 2015 was immediate, efficient and unmatched. (China has had major infrastructure projects underway there—partly to balance your traditional reliance on India.) Just yesterday, responding to today’s crisis, Chinese help is on its way to Kathmandu. Your government’s incompetence will be ameliorated, for the present.

In the long run, your romanticized image of the omnipotent richest-country-in-the-world, will dissolve. You’re not the alone. The world had already glimpsed the unmasked face of the global bully in the person currently occupying the White House. Now your view is further refined by the U.S.’ presumption of immunity, our sloppy response to the epidemic, our ill-equipped medical system, the impotence of our military might.

It’s time for Nepal to consider a new policy, not one that transfers over-dependence to China, but one of resourcefulness and self-sufficiency, perhaps on the model of Cuba or Vietnam. A logical step for a Marxist-led government, don’t you think?

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

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Midnight on Planet Lockdown: Dylan Strikes Again

By Pepe Escobar, March 30, 2020

What spectacular timing. Like a shot ricocheting at Heaven’s Door as a virus pandemic rages and Planet Lockdown is the new normal, Bob Dylan has produced a stunning 17-minute masterpiece dissecting the November 22, 1963, assassination of JFK – releasing it at midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Thursday.

For baby boomers, not to mention obsessive Dylanologists, this is the ultimate sucker punch. Countless eyes will be plunged into swimming pools revisiting all the memories swirling around “the day they blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing.”  But that’s not all: the Dylanmobile takes us on a magical mystery tour of the 60s and 70s, complete with the Beatles, the Age of Aquarius and the Who’s “Tommy.”

U.S., Canada Side with Fanatical Coup Regime in Bolivia

By Asad Ismi, March 30, 2020

Washington has also been opposed to Morales’s remarkable achievements in the areas of poverty reduction, wealth generation and redistribution, the nationalization of mineral wealth and the enshrinement of Indigenous rights. All of these dramatically signified reduced U.S. control over Bolivia highlighted by the expulsion of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2013 and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2008, partly for “political interference.”

Netanyahu Uses Coronavirus to Lure Rival Gantz Into ‘Emergency’ Government

By Jonathan Cook, March 30, 2020

Benny Gantz, the former Israeli general turned party leader, agreed late last week to join his rival Benjamin Netanyahu in an “emergency government” to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. 

Two weeks ago he had won a wafer-thin majority vote in the parliament that gave him first shot at trying to put together a coalition government.

Instead he has conceded to Netanyahu, who will remain prime minister for the next 18 months. Gantz is supposed to take over in late 2021, though Netanyahu has a formidable reputation for double-dealing.

DOJ Seeks to Exploit Coronavirus Emergency to Detain People Indefinitely

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, March 30, 2020

In light of the national emergency Donald Trump declared on Friday, March 13, his Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking Congress to allow the attorney general to indefinitely detain people without trial in violation of the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The DOJ also seeks to hold hearings without the defendant’s consent and exclude anyone with COVID-19 from eligibility for asylum.

Cuba – An Example of Solidarity in a Time of Crisis

By Nino Pagliccia, March 30, 2020

In January 1959 something new arose in Cuba from the rebellion against the rotten US supported government that had condemned the majority of Cubans to poverty and ignorance. The new society that emerged has resisted a fierce blockade on its economy for the last 60 years, despite of which it has thrived and set the most valuable example to humanity: the value of solidarity.

It is quite striking that just few months into the new Cuban revolution Che Guevara stated in a speech on revolutionary medicine “[what] we have done is practising charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity.” 

Putin Says ‘the Rich Must Pay’ for the Coronavirus

By Mike Whitney, March 30, 2020

Putin has settled on a more rational and compassionate plan. He’s going to launch a relief program that actually focuses on the people who need it the most. Then, he’s going to cover the costs by taxing the people who are most capable of shouldering the burden. His intention is not to “soak the rich” or to redistribute wealth. He simply wants to find the most equitable way to share the costs for this completely unexpected crisis.

Coronavirus Shutdown and the Worldwide Corporate Debt Crisis

By Christian Parenti and Dante Dallavalle, March 30, 2020

The coronavirus shutdown is hammering supply and demand across the globe. That has forced the real economy into a sharp recession and triggered a rolling financial crisis. Below is a primer on one key piece of this mess: the crisis in corporate debt markets. This branch of finance is vitally important because even healthy companies often need access to credit. If they do not get it, they go under.In 2008, the vector of crisis ran from mortgage-backed securities to the rest of the financial sector and then to the real economy. This time, the real economy is being hit directly, and the damage is reverberating back into financial markets.  The failing markets, in feedback-loop fashion, further threaten the real economy as corporations find it harder to borrow. As the corporate debt markets sour, major companies will go bankrupt. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Some analysts expect the economy to contract by an annualized rate of 30 percent during the second quarter of 2020.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Thursday sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin calling on the United States to ease economic sanctions against countries where sanctions are hindering the humanitarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic – specifically Iran and Venezuela. Sen. Murphy’s letter is co-signed by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

“It hurts our nation’s security and our moral standing in the world when our sanctions policy results in innocent people dying. I am particularly concerned about the impact of sanctions on the COVID-19 response in Iran and Venezuela,” said Murphy.

The senators wrote,

“As these countries struggle to respond to their domestic health crises, U.S. sanctions are hindering the free flow of desperately needed medical and humanitarian supplies due to the broad, chilling effect of sanctions on such transactions, even when there are technical exemption. While the shortcomings of these national governments are largely due to their endemic corruption, mismanagement, and authoritarian behavior, broad-based U.S. sanctions have exacerbated the failing medical response. Helping these nations save lives during this crisis is the right thing to do from a moral perspective, but it is also the right thing to do from a national security perspective.”

Full text of the letter can be found here and below.

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Dear Secretary Pompeo and Secretary Mnuchin,

We are writing to express our concern regarding the deteriorating humanitarian crises in countries under U.S. sanctions as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread. We are particularly concerned about the impact of sanctions on the COVID-19 response in Iran and Venezuela. As these countries struggle to respond to their domestic health crises, U.S. sanctions are hindering the free flow of desperately needed medical and humanitarian supplies due to the broad chilling effect of sanctions on such transactions, even when there are technical exemptions.

While the shortcomings of these national governments are largely due to their endemic corruption, mismanagement, and authoritarian behavior, broad-based U.S. sanctions have exacerbated the failing medical response. Helping these nations save lives during this crisis is the right thing to do from a moral perspective, but it is also the right thing to do from a national security perspective. The Iranian and Venezuelan regimes are American adversaries, but the good people of these nations are not our enemy. By allowing our sanctions to contribute to the exceptional pain and suffering brought about by the coronavirus outbreaks in both nations, we play into the anti-Americanism that is at the heart of both regimes’ hold on power.

Importantly, there is ample precedent for providing short-term, targeted sanctions relief to facilitate humanitarian and medical assistance. For instance, when a massive earthquake struck Iran in 2003 killing 26,000 people, the Bush administration temporarily suspended sanctions to send 150,000 pounds of medical supplies and more than 200 aid workers on military aircraft to help the people of Iran recover. Short term abeyance of sanctions does not weaken our nation—it strengthens it by showing that above all else, America cares about the preservation of human life.

As you know, Iran is experiencing one of the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus in the world, and the situation continues to deteriorate. As of March 23, the death toll in Iran from COVID-19 infections is more than 1,800, with researchers stating that deaths could stretch into the millions. U.S. sanctions have had a clear impact on the ability of Iran’s medical industry to cope with the crisis. Human Rights Watch reported in 2019 that U.S. sanctions on Iran had “drastically constrained the ability of the country to finance humanitarian imports, including medicines, causing serious hardships for ordinary Iranians and threatening their right to health.”

Venezuela’s medical system is in freefall. Only 25 percent of doctors have reliable running water in their hospitals and clinics, while two-thirds do not have gloves, masks, soap, goggles or scrubs. While the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Venezuela remains relatively small, the dysfunction of the healthcare system and the inability to adequately test undermines the accuracy of such statistics. Humanitarian organizations report that over-compliance by businesses fearful of violating U.S. sanctions has undermined their ability to get medical goods and equipment to the Venezuelan people.

We understand that the administration has stated that humanitarian and medical needs are exempt from U.S. sanctions, but our sanctions regime is so broad that medical suppliers and relief organizations simply steer clear of doing business in Iran and Venezuela in fear of accidentally getting caught up in the U.S. sanctions web. Moreover, the administration’s decision to impose additional new sanctions in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak has only contributed to the sense among companies that they should avoid doing any business involving these countries, even if their work is humanitarian in nature. To improve clarity and ensure that our sanctions do not exacerbate the health crises in Iran and Venezuela, we call on the administration to provide:

• A clear general license authorizing specific medical goods and equipment to facilitate international relief efforts. This license would aid in the donation or sale of items including testing kits, respiratory devices, personal protective equipment and medicine.
• Proactive efforts to establish new financial channels for sanctioned countries to pay for humanitarian goods.
• A 90-day waiver of sectoral sanctions that impede a rapid humanitarian response.
• Unconditional delivery of aid through a third-party country or entity.
• In Iran, an easing of sanctions barring technology companies from delivering services to the Iranian people, which inhibits the spread of public information on how to combat the virus.

One of America’s greatest sources of strength is our reputation as a compassionate nation. But at this moment, strategic rivals like China are attempting to undermine our leadership by criticizing U.S. sanctions policy while sending medical aid to countries like Venezuela and Iran. In order to counter Chinese influence as well as protect the health of millions of people, we encourage you to implement targeted U.S. sanctions relief in countries including Iran and Venezuela for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Doing so would send the irrefutable message that while the United States opposes these regimes, we will always stand with their citizens.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

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Featured image: A person in protective clothing walks through a temporary 2,000-bed field hospital for COVID-19 coronavirus patients set up by the Iranian army at the international exhibition center in northern Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2020. Ebrahim Noroozi | AP 

An Open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. Professor Bhakdi calls for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid-19 and asks the Chancellor five crucial questions. The let­ter is dated March 26. This is an inofficial translation; see the original letter in German as a PDF.

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Dear Chancellor,

As Emeritus of the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz and longtime director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, I feel obliged to critically question the far-reaching restrictions on public life that we are currently taking on ourselves in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

It is expressly not my intention to play down the dangers of the virus or to spread a political message. However, I feel it is my duty to make a scientific contribution to putting the current data and facts into perspective – and, in addition, to ask questions that are in danger of being lost in the heated debate.

The reason for my concern lies above all in the truly unforeseeable socio-economic consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe and which are also already being practiced on a large scale in Germany.

My wish is to discuss critically – and with the necessary foresight – the advantages and disadvantages of restricting public life and the resulting long-term effects.

To this end, I am confronted with five questions which have not been answered sufficiently so far, but which are indispensable for a balanced analysis.

I would like to ask you to comment quickly and, at the same time, appeal to the Federal Government to develop strategies that effectively protect risk groups without restricting public life across the board and sow the seeds for an even more intensive polarization of society than is already taking place.

With the utmost respect,

Prof. em. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi

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1. Statistics

In infectiology – founded by Robert Koch himself – a traditional distinction is made between infection and disease. An illness requires a clinical manifestation. [1] Therefore, only patients with symptoms such as fever or cough should be included in the statistics as new cases.

In other words, a new infection – as measured by the COVID-19 test – does not necessarily mean that we are dealing with a newly ill patient who needs a hospital bed. However, it is currently assumed that five percent of all infected people become seriously ill and require ventilation. Projections based on this estimate suggest that the healthcare system could be overburdened.

My question: Did the projections make a distinction between symptom-free infected people and actual, sick patients – i.e. people who develop symptoms?

2. Dangerousness

A number of coronaviruses have been circulating for a long time – largely unnoticed by the media. [2] If it should turn out that the COVID-19 virus should not be ascribed a significantly higher risk potential than the already circulating corona viruses, all countermeasures would obviously become unnecessary.

The internationally recognized International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents will soon publish a paper that addresses exactly this question. Preliminary results of the study can already be seen today and lead to the conclusion that the new virus is NOT different from traditional corona viruses in terms of dangerousness. The authors express this in the title of their paper “SARS-CoV-2: Fear versus Data“. [3]

My question: How does the current workload of intensive care units with patients with diagnosed COVID-19 compare to other coronavirus infections, and to what extent will this data be taken into account in further decision-making by the federal government? In addition: Has the above study been taken into account in the planning so far?  Here too, of course, “diagnosed“ means that the virus plays a decisive role in the patient’s state of illness, and not that previous illnesses play a greater role.

3. Dissemination

According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, not even the much-cited Robert Koch Institute knows exactly how much is tested for COVID-19. It is a fact, however, that a rapid increase in the number of cases has recently been observed in Germany as the volume of tests increases. [4]

It is therefore reasonable to suspect that the virus has already spread unnoticed in the healthy population. This would have two consequences: firstly, it would mean that the official death rate – on 26 March 2020, for example, there were 206 deaths from around 37,300 infections, or 0.55 percent [5] – is too high; and secondly, it would mean that it would hardly be possible to prevent the virus from spreading in the healthy population.

My question: Has there already been a random sample of the healthy general population to validate the real spread of the virus, or is this planned in the near future?

4. Mortality

The fear of a rise in the death rate in Germany (currently 0.55 percent) is currently the subject of particularly intense media attention. Many people are worried that it could shoot up like in Italy (10 percent) and Spain (7 percent) if action is not taken in time.

At the same time, the mistake is being made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – regardless of other factors. This violates aPrinciples of  only when it is certain that an agent has played a significant role in the disease or death may a diagnosis be made. The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies of Germany expressly writes in its guidelines: “In addition to the cause of death, a causal chain must be stated, with the corresponding underlying disease in third place on the death certificate. Occasionally, four-linked causal chains must also be stated.“ [6]

At present there is no official information on whether, at least in retrospect, more critical analyses of medical records have been undertaken to determine how many deaths were actually caused by the virus.

My question: Has Germany simply followed this trend of a COVID-19 general suspicion? And: is it intended to continue this categorisation uncritically as in other countries? How, then, is a distinction to be made between genuine corona-related deaths and accidental virus presence at the time of death?

5. Comparability

The appalling situation in Italy is repeatedly used as a reference scenario. However, the true role of the virus in that country is completely unclear for many reasons – not only because points 3 and 4 above also apply here, but also because exceptional external factors exist which make these regions particularly vulnerable.

One of these factors is the increased air pollution in the north of Italy. According to WHO estimates, this situation, even without the virus, led to over 8,000 additional deaths per year in 2006 in the 13 largest cities in Italy alone. [7] The situation has not changed significantly since then. [8] Finally, it has also been shown that air pollution greatly increases the risk of viral lung diseases in very young and elderly people. [9]

Moreover, 27.4 percent of the particularly vulnerable population in this country live with young people, and in Spain as many as 33.5 percent. In Germany, the figure is only seven percent [10]. In addition, according to Prof. Dr. Reinhard Busse, head of the Department of Management in Health Care at the TU Berlin, Germany is significantly better equipped than Italy in terms of intensive care units – by a factor of about 2.5 [11].

My question: What efforts are being made to make the population aware of these elementary differences and to make people understand that scenarios like those in Italy or Spain are not realistic here?

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Notes

[1] Fachwörterbuch Infektionsschutz und Infektionsepidemiologie. Fachwörter – Definitionen – Interpretationen. Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin 2015. (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)

[2] Killerby et al., Human Coronavirus Circulation in the United States 2014–2017. J Clin Virol. 2018, 101, 52-56

[3] Roussel et al. SARS-CoV-2: Fear Versus Data. Int. J. Antimicrob. Agents 2020, 105947

[4] Charisius, H. Covid-19: Wie gut testet Deutschland? Süddeutsche Zeitung. (abgerufen am 27.3.2020)

[5] Johns Hopkins University, Coronavirus Resource Center. 2020. (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)

[6] S1-Leitlinie 054-001, Regeln zur Durchführung der ärztlichen Leichenschau. AWMF Online (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)

[7] Martuzzi et al. Health Impact of PM10 and Ozone in 13 Italian Cities. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. WHOLIS number E88700 2006

[8] European Environment Agency, Air Pollution Country Fact Sheets 2019, (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)

[9] Croft et al. The Association between Respiratory Infection and Air Pollution in the Setting of Air Quality Policy and Economic Change. Ann. Am. Thorac. Soc. 2019, 16, 321–330.

[10] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Living Arrange ments of Older Persons: A Report on an Expanded International Dataset (ST/ESA/SER.A/407). 2017

[11] Deutsches Ärzteblatt, Überlastung deutscher Krankenhäuser durch COVID-19 laut Experten unwahrscheinlich, (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)

Fear is an instrument of social control and repression.

Time and again, terrified people bow to the will of their ruling authorities even when harming their own rights and well-being.

The philosopher Seneca once said that

“(t)here are more things…likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Edmund Burke explained that

“(n)o passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

According to HL Mencken,

“(t)he whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

America’s second president John Adams said

“(f)ear is the foundation of most governments.”

The 9/11 mother of all state-sponsored false flags was a powerful example of how an entire population was manipulated to believe barbarians at our gates threaten everyone — the mother of all Big Lies ignored at the time.

False flag mass deception gets people to willingly go along with what otherwise would be considered unacceptable.

Ruling authorities take full advantage — especially because establishment media feature the official narrative ad nauseam.

Fear-mongering reports drown out alternative views.

Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels noted that

“(i)t would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle.”

“They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas in disguise.”

Herman Goering reportedly said:

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.”

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Orwell understood the power of mass deception.

“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” he once said.

In his book The Prince, Machievelli said

“(s)ince love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

“(F)ear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

Machiavelli believed that leaders must be deceptive and cunning to maintain control, that ends justify the means.

He argued that leaders unable to force their will on subjects can never be successful.

He inverted the Golden Rule, saying

“do evil unto others as they would do evil unto you.”

He also believed that rulers should distance themselves from state-sponsored criminality – shifting blame for their wrongdoing onto others.

Influenced by Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan favored authoritarian leadership for control because the “danger of violent death, and the life of man (is) solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The power of mind-manipulating propaganda has entire populations believing that COVID-19 may infect and harm almost everyone.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that around 90% of Americans are hunkering down at home as much as possible — fearful of COVID-19 contagion.

About 60% of US households stockpiled food and essential supplies. Three-fourths of respondents said COVID-19 disrupted their lives, about 70% citing the virus as a source of stress.

Over half of respondents believe they’re at risk of infection, about 70% believing an immediate family member could become ill from COVID-19.

The poll was conducted from March 22 – 25. As infections in the US increase — combined with official and media fear-mongering — these numbers are likely to grow.

On national television March 29, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci scared Americans to death, saying:

The US could have “millions of (COVID-19) cases.”

“(L)ooking at what we’re seeing now..I would say (there could be) between 100 and 200,000 (deaths).”

Trump extended nationwide social distancing guidelines through April 30 — after earlier wanting normal activities resumed by Easter, April 12.

No one knows the severity or duration of COVID-19 outbreaks. For most people, infections cause short-term illness that enables the body to build up antibodies against its reoccurrence.

The elderly, people with weakened immune systems, and others with significant pre-existing health issues are most vulnerable to something more serious.

Here’s what some experts are saying:

Microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi:

“The life expectancy of millions is being shortened” by anti-COVID-19 measures.

“The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless people.”

“The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All this will impact profoundly on our whole society.”

Pulmonologist Wolfgang Wodarg:

“(W)hat is missing right now is a rational way of looking at things.”

“We should be asking: How did you find out this virus was dangerous?”

“How was it before? Didn’t we have the same thing last year? Is it even something new? That’s missing.”

Community Health Sciences and Surgery Professor Joel Kettner:

“I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza.”

“(T)he message to the public (is) about fear of coming into contact with (other) people…I worry about many, many consequences related to that.”

Former Israeli health ministry director general Yoram Lass:

“In every country, (many thousands of) die from regular flu (annually) compared with those who die from the coronavirus.”

One example is “the swine flu in 2009. (I)t reached the world…and until today there is no vaccination against it.”

“At the time there was no Facebook. (COVID-19) is a virus (a) with public relations” campaign.

“Whoever thinks that governments end viruses is wrong.”

Infectious diseases specialist Pietro Vernazza:

“(A)round 85% of all infections have occurred without anyone noticing the infection.”

Around “90% of the deceased patients are verifiably over 70 years old, 50% over 80 years.”

Epidemiologist Hendrik Streeck:

“The new pathogen (COVID-19) is…less dangerous than Sars-1.”

Founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center David Katz:

“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near-total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself.”

“The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will.”

“The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.”

University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy director Michael Osterholm:

“Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores, theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed and on the public dole.”

“The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold.”

Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis Peter Goetzsche:

“No such draconian measures were applied during the 2009 (Sars) influenza pandemic, and they obviously cannot be applied every winter, which is all year round, as it is always winter somewhere. We cannot close down the whole world permanently.”

Facilitated by a virtual daily drumbeat of fear-mongering, the US and other governments are instituting draconian policies with public consent.

What’s going on in the US is all about transferring countless trillions of dollars from ordinary people to privileged ones.

As during the 2008-09 financial crisis, it’s also about favored businesses consolidating to greater power and influence by acquiring failing enterprises at fire sale prices.

Most important, what’s going on is a slippery slope toward full-blown tyranny by compromising and eliminating human and civil rights on the phony pretext of protecting the general welfare.

Time and again we’re lied to by our ruling authorities — notably during manufactured crises like 9/11 and now.

A Final Comment

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday found that nearly one-fourth of US adults said they either were laid off or furloughed by their employers.

More of the same is likely coming to what extent will only be known in the fullness of time.

Over 80% of respondents support shelter in place and stay at home orders to keep COVID-19 from spreading, regardless of the economic impact.

The power of mind manipulation works as intended.

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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 TruePublica

What spectacular timing. Like a shot ricocheting at Heaven’s Door as a virus pandemic rages and Planet Lockdown is the new normal, Bob Dylan has produced a stunning 17-minute masterpiece dissecting the November 22, 1963, assassination of JFK – releasing it at midnight US Eastern Standard Time on Thursday.

For baby boomers, not to mention obsessive Dylanologists, this is the ultimate sucker punch. Countless eyes will be plunged into swimming pools revisiting all the memories swirling around “the day they blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing.”  But that’s not all: the Dylanmobile takes us on a magical mystery tour of the 60s and 70s, complete with the Beatles, the Age of Aquarius and the Who’s “Tommy.”

If there’s any cultural artifact capable of sending a powerful jolt across a discombobulated America trying to come to grips with a dystopic Desolation Row, this is it, the work of America’s undisputed, true Exceptionalist. The times, they are-a-changin’. Oh, yes, they are.

There are so many nuggets in Dylan’s lyrics they would be worthy of a treatise, tracking the vortex of music, literature, film references and interlocking Americana.

This is essentially an incantatory mantra set to piano, sparse percussion and violin. We have two narrators: a dying Kennedy (“Ridin’ in the backseat next to my wife / Headin’ straight on in to the afterlife / I’m leanin’ to the left, got my head in her lap / Oh Lord, I’ve been led into some kind of a trap”) and Dylan himself.

Or this can be read as Dylan playing Kennedy’s doppelganger, plus occasional interventions, such as Kennedy’s would-be killers (“Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car / Shot down like a dog in broad daylight / Was a matter of timin’ and the timin’ was right / You got unpaid debts we’ve come to collect / We gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect / We’ll mock you and shock you and we’ll grin in your face / We’ve already got someone here to take your place”).

The pearl at the heart of the mantra is nothing sort of apocalyptic: “They killed him once and they killed him twice / Killed him like a human sacrifice / The day that they killed him someone said to me, / ‘Son, The Age of the Antichrist has just only begun.’”

Extra words to define it would be idle. Wherever you are in Planet Lockdown, sit back in stay at home social distancing mode, turn on, tune in and time travel. There will be blood on the tracks.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Dallas, Texas, location of the scene where John Kennedy was assassinated during an official journey in 1963. Photo: AFP / United States National Archives

Bob Dylan has chosen this moment, of all moments, to release his masterful epic on the assassination of President Kennedy, “Murder Most Foul.”  Why now?

Could it be that his artist’s heart feels a world under assault, once again, by the powers that be?  For whatever the actual lethality of the virus, (a question whose answer now appears to be far less terrifying than originally advertised), there is no doubt that we are all suffering from the same sort of “shock and awe” we did when our collective hopes for a New Frontier were blown away in 1963.

Now much of the world is locked down, physically and socially isolated, bankrupted and thrown out of work, with a whole “new normal” of medical and governmental authoritarianism on the way.

And Wall Street is about to receive the lion’s share of two trillion dollars.

You don’t have to have a religious streak for it all to feel something like the fulfillment of the prophesy spoken to Dylan’s narrator:

The day that they killed him, someone said to me, “Son, The Age of the Antichrist has just only begun”

When Kennedy died, so died the efforts he had been making to end the Cold War, to withdraw from Vietnam, to create a rising economic tide that would “lift all boats.”

And while much has been made of Lyndon Johnson’s carrying-on of Kennedy-era social and civil rights initiatives, the reality was as Martin Luther King described it:

“The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam, making the poor, white and Negro, bear the heaviest burden, both at the front and at home.”

Well, as Mark Twain once allegedly said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

Dylan describes the Kennedy assassination as “the greatest magic trick ever under the sun/ Perfectly executed, skillfully done.”

What trick is playing out all around us as you read this?  And would we see it now, as so few really saw it then?

It happened so quickly, so quick by surprise

Right there in front of everyone’s eyes 

It would seem Dylan, courageously, has sent us a message when we needed it most, with little in the way of encryption. It is up to us to break the simple code, take in its meaning, and act.

Act as we didn’t then.

“This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.”

And also with you, Bob.

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John Kirby is the director of FOUR DIED TRYING, an upcoming feature documentary about the extraordinary lives and calamitous deaths of John Kennedy, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy.

On November 10, 2019, a U.S.-backed group of neofascists in Bolivia deposed the government of Evo Morales on spurious accusations of electoral fraud. The coup government’s first act was to unleash the army and police on mainly Indigenous protestors in the capital of La Paz, killing at least 10 people. Further massacres pushed the coup’s death toll above 30, with hundreds more wounded in clashes between supporters of Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party and state police.

The coup regime is now led by Jeanine Áñez, a Christian-fundamentalist senator and opponent of Morales, who in 2013 tweeted (translation):

Image on the right: Deputy Senate speaker Jeanine Anez speaks from the balcony of the government Quemado Palace in La Paz after proclaiming herself the country’s interim president (AFP / Aizar RALDES)

“I dream of a Bolivia free of indigenous satanic rites, the city is not for ‘Indians,’ they better go to the highlands or El Chaco.”

On claiming the presidency after the army “asked” Morales to step down (he fled to Mexico following threats to his life and has since moved to Argentina), Áñez declared,

“Thank God the Bible has returned to the Bolivian government.”

About two-thirds of Bolivia’s population is Indigenous, forming a major part of Morales’s support base. Before the coup, MAS held majorities in both the Bolivian chamber of deputies and the senate.

Entering the presidential palace on November 10, also with a bible in his hand, was Luis Camacho (image below), a millionaire neofascist and prominent member of both the U.S.-supported right-wing separatist group Santa Cruz Civic Committee (of Santa Cruz province) and its paramilitary Youth Union (also U.S.-funded), which attacks Indigenous people. Both groups were involved in an attempt on Morales’s life in 2009.

“God has returned to the palace,” Camacho posted to Facebook on November 10. “To those who did not believe in this struggle I say God exists and is now going to govern Bolivia for all Bolivians!”

The coup regime has scheduled new elections for May 3, 2020, but these are unlikely to be free and fair. As Alexander Main, director of international policy for the U.S.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), tells me, many MAS leaders have been targeted with dubious charges.

“Morales himself is unlikely to return to Bolivia to help support the MAS campaign, as he has been accused of terrorism and sedition by top de facto officials,” says Main. “It appears likely that the de facto authorities will do all they can to prevent MAS leaders from running and they may also create an environment of fear and intimidation for MAS supporters that want to be involved in the electoral campaign.”

Angus McNelly, lecturer in Latin American politics at Queen Mary University of London (U.K.), agrees with Main, pointing out that 100 MAS politicians have been arrested or were forced to flee from the law. Former government minister Carlos Romero was blockaded in his house by a civilian vigil after his address was leaked and had to seek medical care for lack of food and water.

“Romero was arrested while he was at hospital receiving medical care,” McNelly notes. “This attack on the MAS might mean that it cannot field its strongest candidates, and that some sections [of the populace] are afraid to vote for the MAS.”

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Morales was accused by the opposition of winning the October 20, 2019 election through fraud. The U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), which sent an electoral observation mission to Bolivia, announced the day after the vote—but before all the votes were counted—its “deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.”

However, a CEPR analysis of the election returns showed “no evidence that irregularities or fraud affected the official result that gave Morales a first-round victory.” In fact, the centre declared on November 8, “statistical analysis shows that it was predictable that Morales would obtain a first-round win, based on the results of the first 83.85 per cent of votes in a rapid count that showed Morales leading runner-up Carlos Mesa by less than 10 points.”

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR, accused the OAS of lying to the public about the election results, pointing out it was “highly questionable” for the organization to issue a press statement doubting the election results “without providing any evidence for doing so.” He added that the OAS “isn’t all that independent at the moment,” considering the Trump administration was “actively promoting this military coup” alongside its right-wing allies in the region. These allies include the former Argentine government of Mauricio Macri and the Bolsonaro presidency in Brazil. Immediately following the coup, Chrystia Freeland, then Canadian foreign minister, declared her government’s support for new elections, claiming, “It is clear that the will of the Bolivian people and the democratic process were not respected.”

The OAS statement on election results put the coup machinery in motion. Camacho’s paramilitary gangs served as shock troops, kidnapping and torturing elected officials, burning public buildings, ransacking Morales’s home, attacking his ministers and holding their families hostage to compel their resignations. Bolivian general Williams Kaliman Romero, who trained at the U.S.-run School of the Americas, then “suggested” to Morales on November 10 that he should resign.

According to Sacha Llorenti, Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, “Loyal members of Morales’s security team showed him messages in which people were offering them $50,000 if they would hand him over.” Some reports out of Brazil and Argentina have claimed Kaliman was paid US$1 million by the U.S. for his role in the coup and that he has since fled to the United States, along with other Bolivian police chiefs who were paid to look the other way on the day of the coup. As Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, puts it, “The United States’ fingerprints are all over the coup.”

Morales claimed in an interview with Agence France Press that the U.S. overthrew him to gain control of Bolivia’s vast lithium reserves. Lithium is used to make batteries for electric cars and Bolivia has the largest deposits of the mineral in the world. Demand for lithium is expected to soar as the manufacture of electric cars expands. According to Morales, Washington has not “forgiven” him for pursuing lithium extraction projects with China and Russia rather than the U.S. “Industrialized countries don’t want competition,” he said, “that’s why I am absolutely convinced, it’s a coup against lithium. We were going to set the price of lithium.”

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Washington has also been opposed to Morales’s remarkable achievements in the areas of poverty reduction, wealth generation and redistribution, the nationalization of mineral wealth and the enshrinement of Indigenous rights. All of these dramatically signified reduced U.S. control over Bolivia highlighted by the expulsion of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2013 and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2008, partly for “political interference.”

“Bolivia made enormous social and economic progress during the Morales presidency,” Main tells me. “Thanks to the Morales government’s heterodox, state-led economic policies—which promoted strong growth and better redistribution of the country’s wealth—poverty was reduced by 46% and extreme poverty by 60%. Unemployment declined by 50%. An important factor behind these remarkable advances that should be noted by other governments in the region was the fact that public investment under Morales reached the highest levels of the region.”

Morales also almost tripled Bolivia’s per capita GDP and instituted three cash transfer programs for mothers, children and pensioners. Of course, all of Morales’s policies have not been beyond objection. There has been a contradiction between MAS’s support for Indigenous rights and the rights of nature (both embedded in the Bolivian constitution) and his continued promotion of and dependence on mineral extraction for the generation of revenue.

“Countries with left- and right-wing governments across the region have all pursued an extractive agenda in the region in large part due to the way Latin America has been inserted into the world market,” says McNelly. “The difference between Morales and his predecessors is that his government was able to capture more of the surplus and redirect it toward the Bolivian population. The problem for Morales is that the MAS was supposedly pursuing an alternative form of development through the notion of vivir bien (living well).”

The social base of the MAS is largely rural and drawn from the Indigenous peasantry in the Andean highlands and the valleys of Cochabamba, McNelly explains. But these groups have very different conceptions of nature and how to manage resources.

“What essentially happened was that arguments for exploiting Bolivia’s extensive natural wealth for the good of all Bolivians—particularly those who were the social base of the MAS who saw the greatest material improvement—won over arguments for protecting Mother Earth.”

McNelly adds that this brought Indigenous communities benefiting from extractivism into conflict with other Indigenous nations that were “displaced and dispossessed” by such activities. Prominent examples are the conflict over the construction of the highway through the Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), the El Bala and Chepete hydroelectric dams and the Mallku Khota mine.

Domestic decisions about the structuring of the economy will always be limited by the ways a country has been inserted in the global economy, says McNelly. “The question is whether Bolivia has the option to follow an alternative pathway [as] a small, poor country with little to no room to manoeuver in negotiations with superpowers such as China or the United States. The whole region is inserted as a source of primary resources and changing a country’s position in the global economy is very difficult.”

The coup regime, which represents Bolivia’s white-dominated ruling class and is allied to western multinational corporations, will almost certainly reverse Morales’s resource nationalizations and wealth redistribution and poverty reduction programs if they are elected to government in May. In a January 3 Unitel (local Bolivian media) election poll, 20.7% of Bolivians said they would vote for MAS, followed by 15.7% for Áñez.

On January 19, Morales announced in Argentina that the MAS candidates for president and vice-president would be Luis Arce (former economy minister) and David Choquehuanca (former foreign minister) respectively. Jorge Derpic, assistant professor in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Georgia (U.S.), told Al Jazeera these choices were aimed at getting middle class votes and Indigenous votes. “MAS may be able to win the election with these two candidates,” Derpic predicted.

McNelly is more skeptical, pointing again to the massive attacks on MAS politicians by the right. “Although it is ahead in the polls, the MAS is unlikely to win in the May elections,” he tells me.

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This article was originally published on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor (CCPA Monitor).

Asad Ismi covers international affairs for the Monitor. 

Benny Gantz, the former Israeli general turned party leader, agreed late last week to join his rival Benjamin Netanyahu in an “emergency government” to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. 

Two weeks ago he had won a wafer-thin majority vote in the parliament that gave him first shot at trying to put together a coalition government.

Instead he has conceded to Netanyahu, who will remain prime minister for the next 18 months. Gantz is supposed to take over in late 2021, though Netanyahu has a formidable reputation for double-dealing.

Over the past year Gantz fought three hotly contested, though indecisive, general elections in which he vowed to bring down Netanyahu, who has ruled continuously for 11 years. 

He had promised supporters he would never sit in a government alongside Netanyahu, who is due to stand trial on multiple corruption charges.

Predictably, the U-turn tore apart Gantz’s Blue and White party. Denouncing the decision, two of the alliance’s three constituent factions said they would head into the opposition.

There has been increasing governmental paralysis over the past year with neither Gantz nor Netanyahu able to cobble together a majority coalition with other parties. 

The reason was the Joint List party, representing Israel’s Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the country’s population, which effectively held the balance of votes. None of the main Jewish parties was prepared to be seen relying on its 15 seats.

Even with Gantz’s depleted party, Netanyahu’s “emergency government” should now be able to muster more than 70 seats in the 120-member parliament, giving him a safe majority.

Renowned for his ability to pull off political miracles, Netanyahu appears to have gradually worn down Gantz’s resistance over the past 12 months. The coronavirus epidemic proved the final straw.

Netanyahu has exploited justifiable fears about the virus to cement his status as Father of the Nation. In regular addresses, he has presented himself as Israel’s Winston Churchill, the British wartime leader who helped vanquish the Nazis. 

He has now served longer as prime minister than the country’s founding father, David Ben Gurion. 

Gantz, it seems, assessed that there was no practical way to push for a fourth election during the current lockdowns. And in any case Netanyahu, given his complete dominance of the airwaves, would have been able to cast Gantz as recklessly endangering Israel’s health and its security by refusing to join him in government.

The Blue and White leader may have blanched too at the prospect of another no-holds-barred election campaign, unleashing yet more of the dirty tricks in which Netanyahu and his allies excel.

As Netanyahu has grown more desperate to stay in power – and fearful of being put on trial – the gloves have come off. In the last two elections, his officials have questioned Gantz’s mental health and spread unverifiable rumours that a phone stolen from him contained compromising photos passed on to Iran.

Further, because his path to power depended on backing from the Joint List, Gantz was the subject of endless smears from Netanyahu accusing him of getting into bed with “supporters of terrorism”. The result was a wave of death threats.

There was another consideration for Gantz. It had becoming increasingly clear that Netanyahu was prepared to provoke a constitutional crisis – and likely violence – to hold on to power.

Netanyahu’s strategy has been to undermine the court system and the parliament – the two main checks on the executive he controls.

Amir Ohana, his justice minister, has partially shut down the courts. That included postponing Netanyahu’s March 17 trial until the end of May. There is no certainty the case won’t be delayed again.

To deal with the resulting logjam of hearings, the cabinet passed emergency regulations last week to allow court cases to be conducted by video instead. But notably, an exemption was made for those facing indictment, such as Netanyahu.

The caretaker prime minister has also stood by mutely as his senior officials have unleashed a torrent of incitement against the Israeli supreme court, in a transparent effort to intimidate its judges and turn the public mood against the legal system.

Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of the parliament from Netanyahu’s Likud party, suspended the legislature on March 18 – two weeks after the election – and refused to hold a vote for his successor as speaker because Gantz’s bloc had a narrow majority.

The fear was that a new speaker would help pass legislation to prevent criminal suspects under indictment from serving as prime minister, ousting Netanyahu from power.

The supreme court ruled that Edelstein had committed “an unprecedented violation of the rule of law” and demanded that he allow the parliament to vote on his replacement. Instead, Edelstein resigned to avoid carrying out the ruling. 

Netanyahu’s closest allies, including the justice minister, rounded on the judges. Yariv Levin, the tourism minister, accused the chief justice, Esther Hayut, of launching a judicial “coup”. He mocked her, suggesting she come to the Knesset, backed by court guards, and open the parliament herself. 

As veteran Israeli analyst Ben Caspit observed:

“The coronavirus outbreak allows Netanyahu to keep undermining the rule of law for his own survival, almost unchallenged.”

Defending his decision to join the government, Gantz said: “These are not normal times and they call for unusual decisions.” 

He hopes to persuade his supporters that he has not capitulated completely. If things go to plan – a big if – Gantz should become prime minister in a year and a half’s time.

Reportedly, Gantz had also insisted that one of his legislators be justice minister – presumably to ensure Netanyahu cannot evade trial indefinitely. But that safeguard was almost immediately undermined by legislation the emergency government started drafting to exempt Netanyahu from a current law that would prevent him from serving as an ordinary minister while under criminal indictment.

As a Haaretz editorial observed this week:

“It’s hard to stomach this new reality in which people who, until not long ago, presented themselves as warriors against government corruption in general and the corruption attributed to Netanyahu in particular, have now become its defense attorneys.”

A further plus for Netanyahu is that in the meantime he will likely have Gantz as foreign minister – where he will be responsible, as a supposed “moderate”, for burnishing Israel’s “democratic” credentials abroad. 

It may not be plain-sailing.

This month Israel scored record lows in annual global democracy surveys. Freedom House noted Israel had slipped six points – “an unusually large decline for an established democracy” – even before the latest events, noting that Netanyahu had “anti-democratic tendencies”.

Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, from Netanyahu’s own party, has similarly warned that the country’s democratic institutions are under threat.

Convoys of cars have been defying the lockdowns to protest at Netanyahu’s increasing flouting of norms.

The first test of the emergency government will be whether Gantz’s inclusion stays the demonstrators’ hand for the time being or inflames yet more protests.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Throughout U.S. history, presidents have exploited national emergencies to exceed their constitutional powers. Abraham Lincoln illegally suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt confined people of Japanese descent in internment camps during World War II. And George W. Bush used his post-9/11 “war on terror” to launch two illegal wars, mount a program of torture, conduct extensive unlawful surveillance and illegally detain people.

In light of the national emergency Donald Trump declared on Friday, March 13, his Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking Congress to allow the attorney general to indefinitely detain people without trial in violation of the constitutional right of habeas corpus. The DOJ also seeks to hold hearings without the defendant’s consent and exclude anyone with COVID-19 from eligibility for asylum.

Trump, who delayed responding to the pandemic for an unconscionable period of time, has now declared himself a “wartime president.” He knows that wartime presidents are never defeated at the ballot box. Despite Trump’s incompetent handling of the crisis, his approval ratings are as high as they have ever been.

But, during Bush’s so-called war on terror, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld,

“We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens,” adding, “Even the war power does not remove constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties.”

Trump’s Powers During the National Emergency

In declaring the national emergency, Trump invoked the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, which provides for financial and technical assistance to state and local governments.

He also invoked the National Emergencies Act, which triggers more than 100 additional powers for the president, constitutional law scholar Stephen Rohde said on WBAI radio’s “Law and Disorder.” They include the authority to shut down radio stations, freeze bank accounts and even deploy the military.

Moreover, the Communications Act of 1934 says that when a president proclaims there is a state or threat of war, he can order “the closing of any facility or station for wire communication.”

Rohde worries that provision could include television, radio and the internet. “It can give a president a virtual kill switch,” he told “Law and Disorder” hosts Michael Steven Smith and Heidi Boghosian. “This panoply of powers that have existed and are now at the president’s beck and call are very dangerous.”

DOJ Proposes Indefinite Detention

The DOJ is proposing that Congress grant the attorney general power to ask a district court’s chief judge to suspend court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” documents reviewed by Politico reveal.

That authority extends 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.”

This would be a violation of the right to habeas corpus, which allows people to challenge the legality of their detention in court. The U.S. Constitution says only Congress can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it,” reads the Suspension Clause.

Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, sounded the alarm.

“So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over,” he said. “I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”

The DOJ also wants to amend the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow for hearings conducted by videoconference without the defendant’s consent.

And the DOJ seeks Congress’s permission to suspend the statute of limitations for criminal and civil cases during a national emergency.

Fortunately, there appears to be strong opposition in Congress to the DOJ’s proposal. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote, “Two Words: Hell No”; Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tweeted, “OVER MY DEAD BODY”; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Absolutely not.”

People Suspected of Having Virus Subject to Surveillance and Detention

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is planning the surveillance and detention of people suspected of having COVID-19. The agency’s internal pandemic response plan obtained by The Nation discusses quarantining detainees in tent cities at the border and coordinating with foreign and domestic intelligence agencies and the Pentagon.

“We do not yet know whether CBP will carry out surveillance, transfer and detention of individuals based actual or perceived health status,” immigration attorney Helen Sklar, a member of the executive board of the National Lawyers Guild-Los Angeles chapter, told Truthout. “We do know, however, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will not release immigrant detainees notwithstanding the near universal agreement among public health experts that their continued detention poses a grave danger to public health, including an elevated risk for chronic and infectious diseases such as COVID-19.”

Sklar said that ICE does not release detained immigrants for medical reasons even though it has long had the authority to do so.

Will Trump Suspend the Election?

The national emergency occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic has already led to the postponement of presidential primaries in Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, Connecticut and Louisiana. Could Trump use his emergency declaration to suspend the November presidential election?

Not legally, as the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits presidents to two terms, and Congress, not the president, has the power to schedule presidential elections.

The more likely scenario is that Republican governors will erect roadblocks to discourage people from voting during the pandemic. They could “tamp down the turnout in the elections if they are not robust in providing creative and innovative solutions for how people can vote either in person with social distancing at normal polling stations or by mail,” Rohde told Smith and Boghosian.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has proposed a bill that would require states to develop plans to conduct the election in light of “the very real threat looming this November.” The Resilient Elections During Quarantines and Natural Disasters Act of 2020 would require states to furnish postage-free absentee ballots with self-sealing envelopes and provide grants worth $5 million to states to pay for postage and high-speed scanners to count ballots.

Even if Trump loses the election, however, there is a danger he might illegally declare martial law and refuse to leave the White House.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump claimed the election was being rigged and refused to say he would accept the results if he lost the election.

Author’s Note: This article has been corrected to clarify that the national emergency declaration does not actively weaken Medicare, Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

People in Tehran tell MEE that Washington has granted sanctions waivers to some countries to allow them to release frozen Iranian central bank funds for urgent medical supplies

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The United States has agreed to grant sanctions waivers to some countries, allowing them to release frozen Iranian assets to help Tehran buy medicine and equipment to fight the coronavirus outbreak, sources in Iran told Middle East Eye.

This move comes amid strident public resiststance by Washington to growing international pressure to ease sanctions against Iran, where more than 2,300 people have died from the virus.

The US State Department on Friday dismissed that account, however, after the US Treasury had on Thursday imposed new sanctions targeting individuals and companies it accused of having links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Still, a senior source in Tehran told MEE that the US has agreed in recent days to grant waivers allowing some countries to release Iranian assets without facing punitive measures.

“The efforts of some countries have led to the release of some of the Iranian central bank’s money,” he said. “Those countries will receive a sanctions waiver [for releasing Iran’s frozen assets], this has been granted and we are following this issue.”

He added:

“The unfreezing of Iranian central bank money will decrease pressure regarding the lack of foreign exchange for importing medication and life necessities.”

The source, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, did not specify which countries had been granted waivers. He also said that there had been no official deal struck between Tehran and Washington.

Iran says it has billions of dollars in oil money frozen under US pressure by countries throughout the world.

Washington said on Friday that it was not easing its measures against Tehran.

“These reports are inaccurate,” a State Department spokesperson told MEE.

“Despite the regime’s disinformation, the truth is that it already has funds available to it to spend on humanitarian trade that would benefit the Iranian people. Instead, it chooses to spend this money on terrorism and proxy groups. The Iranian people deserve better.”

‘Probably done behind the scenes’

Washington imposed blanket sanctions on Iran’s central bank last September, but it did allow partial exemptions in February that would enable Tehran to buy food and medicine through a Swiss banking channel.

European diplomats in Tehran spoken to by MEE could not confirm that sanctions waivers had been granted, but one said that “if that happens, it will probably be done behind the scenes”.

Asked which countries may have received waivers, he suggested it was likely to be nations in Asia.

Another diplomat told MEE:

“There is a lot of pressure right now to help Iran in this difficult situation.”

Several other Iranian officials had suggested in recent days that a release of Iranian assets frozen as a consequence of sanctions was imminent.

On 25 March, Abdul-Naser Hemmati, the governor of Iran’s central bank, said:

“We have been informed that financial resources frozen due to US pressure may be released.”

In an Instagram post on Friday, Hemmati said that the central bank was doing “all in its power… to provide the foreign currency the country needs… to procure medicines and medical equipment”.

Hemmati said efforts to obtain a $5bn emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund and to secure the release of central bank assets frozen by US sanctions were on a positive track.

MEE also contacted the IMF for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

On Friday, Hashmatullah Falahat Pishe, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, told the ISNA news agency that some Iranian financial resources were supposed to be released, but said that the virus would continue to spread through Iran and the region if more was not done.

The United Nations and countries including the UK, Russia, China and Pakistan have urged the US to ease sanctions against Iran, which has been one of the countries worst hit by the global pandemic.

‘Dignity and humanity’

On 20 March, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani published a letter addressed to the American people in which he said that sanctions against Tehran risked undermining the worldwide fight against the virus.

“I warn that under a pandemic situation, Tehran, Paris, London and Washington are not far apart, and any hostile actor seeking to undermine Iran’s health system and restricting the needed financial resources to tackle the crisis will undermine the fight… all over the world,” he wrote.

Hinting that the crisis offered an opportunity for a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, Rouhani added:

“The Iranian people value friendship and respect based on the principles of dignity and humanity… We react to the language of force with the language of resistance and to the language of dignity with the language of respect”.

Officials within US President Donald Trump’s administration maintain that the US sanctions policy of “maximum pressure” has not hindered Iran’s response to the coronavirus outbreak because it excludes medicine and humanitarian aid.

On Monday, the State Department published a “fact sheet” accusing the Iranian government of mismanaging the response to the virus, and suggesting claims that sanctions had contributed to the crisis in the country were “Russian and Chinese propaganda”.

Still, Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told MEE earlier this week:

“Sanctions have weakened the Iranian economy to such an extent that the country is really ill-prepared to deal with this crisis. And the responsibility for that falls on the United States, which quit the Iran nuclear deal when Iran was in full compliance with it.”

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

The most frequent qualifier used to describe the global experience of the pandemic we are currently witnessing or affected by, is “crisis”. And I am reminded of political theorist Antonio Gramsci’s words: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Is the coronavirus COVID-19 Gramsci’s “morbid” symptom? I don’t know. He may have been thinking of more political symptoms. If he were alive today he may have named the level of desperation of the US government towards countries resisting its hegemony like Venezuela, Cuba, China, Nicaragua, Russia,…and the list goes on… as a morbid symptom. The agony of the dying empire that lashes against anything that is healthy and living.

The Trump administration is surpassing the threshold of what is acceptable from anybody in distress when it put a $25 million bounty “for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction” of the president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro and other top officials. Information or assassination? For the US State Department that is just semantics. Without doubt the US was behind the assassination attempt against Maduro planned in Colombia in August 2018 that took place in Caracas with drones carrying explosives. 

After all, the list of political assassinations by the US is quite extensive. The last one, this year, was that of Gen Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite military Quds force. Let no one be tempted to cast judgement on the victims. Only the assassin should stand trial.

The fact that the targeted killing against Maduro was ordered by the US State Department a few days ago at the precise time of a serious global health problem with the COVID-19 pandemic can only be interpreted as a Gramscian morbid symptom of the US administration collective disturbed minds.

But the state of mind of the US regime managers is not what I would like to focus on. 

If we take the etymological meaning of the word crisis, it comes from the Greek krisis meaning decision. That is, we are at a critical point where we are encouraged to look forward and make decisions. Those decisions may well be political and we hope that they will bury the old and lead to something “new” to be born.

In January 1959 something new arose in Cuba from the rebellion against the rotten US supported government that had condemned the majority of Cubans to poverty and ignorance. The new society that emerged has resisted a fierce blockade on its economy for the last 60 years, despite of which it has thrived and set the most valuable example to humanity: the value of solidarity.

It is quite striking that just few months into the new Cuban revolution Che Guevara stated in a speech on revolutionary medicine “[what] we have done is practising charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity.” 

In my professional life I have worked with Cuban health professionals and I have observed the superb public health system that Cuba has in place. It is a fully publicly funded system with complete geographical coverage. The best indicator of the health achievement is Cuba’s infant mortality rate that stands at 3.7 per 1,000 live births (for the US is 5.6) according to the World Bank (2018). Its major success comes from a very proactive prevention approach to primary care. 

A major part of the strength of the institutions is the predominant role of solidarity in Cuban society. This sense of social cohesion may in fact be one of the reasons why Cuba is dealing quite successfully with the COVID-19 pandemic with 80 confirmed case reported to date and no deaths. President Diaz-Canel recently stated, “Everyone of us depends on every one of us, and we all depend on each other.” Consequently, community leaders and health brigades have visited close to 643,000 families to ensure they have the support needed to confront the health emergency in the face of an increasing blockade by the Trump administration.

Solidarity in domestic affairs is matched by the Cuban program of medical cooperation at the global level. A description of this program states that it is based on the principle of international solidarity and started with its first medical brigade to Algeria in 1963. In a research paper this author uses the example of Cuba to illustrate the practice of solidarity in healthcare in the hope of a healthier future. 

However, given that healthcare deals directly with human lives and that resources are scarce, hard questions need to be asked: What is the value of human life? What acceptable trade-off—if any—can we make for a human life? What sacrifices are we willing to make as a society to save the life of a child? These are more than philosophical questions. The decisions we make around those questions will determine the kind of society we envision to have. This author and a Cuban colleague have suggested that Cuba has shown strong political will to sustain human life in Cuba as well as in other countries with matching resources. There is no better time to show political will to sustain good population health than at time of crisis.

In the last few weeks there have been many reports of Cuban health professionals being deployed to several countries that have asked for assistance to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic that even the corporate media has not been able to hide. For example, the conservative National Post has recognised the valuable contributions made by “communist-run Cuba” together with China and Russia even in a NATO country like Italy.

Meanwhile, capitalist-run USA calls on governments not to receive Cuban doctors. The White House attacked the Cuban health professionals, who in half a century of history have carried out missions in over 150 countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia, totalling more than 400,000 medical collaborators. That is irresponsible and contrary to human solidarity. What the international organization Médicins sans Frontières (MSF) is doing to alleviate the deadly burden of COVID-19 is commendable. What must de condemned is the fact that such a daunting task relies on charity through unpredictable donations. 

In conclusion, at a time of crisis – such as the spread of a deadly pandemic – we need to drop preconceived notions that might in fact exacerbate the crisis and search for ideas and strategies in order to build a new paradigm. Examples abound if we are objective observers. Cuba is such a living example of what is possible in the most severe health situation ever experienced in recent history in such a global scale. 

Solidarity as a human value– quite contrary to charity – is meanttoact upon the social organization in order to change it for the benefit of the larger collective. The exercise of solidarity is directed at awareness of the condition and at social change or the redefinition of power relations.

International solidarity, as a synonym of cooperation, could also be considered a pillar of foreign relations in a broader scale. What would it be like to have foreign relations between countries based on solidarity instead of hostility? Cuba shows us that it is possible.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Vladimir Putin has decided how Russia is going to pay for the corona-virus.

He’s going to tax the rich.

It’s a remedy that most Americans would support if they were given the choice, but they weren’t asked. Instead, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package for which the American taxpayer will be held entirely responsible. Even worse, the new legislation contains a $500 billion allocation (another corporate giveaway) that the Federal Reserve will use as a capital base for borrowing $4.5 trillion. That massive sum of money will be used to buy toxic bonds in the corporate bond market. Just as Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) were used to fleece millions of investors out of their hard-earned savings in the run-up to the 2008 Financial Crisis, so too, “toxic” corporate bonds were the weapon of choice that was used to pilfer trillions of dollars from investors in the run-up to today’s crisis. (Same scam, different instrument) The virus was merely the proximate cause that tipped the sector into meltdown. The problem had been festering for years and everyone in the financial community (Including the Fed, the BIS and the IMF) knew that it was only a matter of time before the market would blow sky-high. Which it did.

What every American needs to know is that our crooked bought-and-paid-for Congress just passed a bill that transfers the credit risk for $4.5 trillion of corporate sludge onto the National Debt. A bailout of this magnitude could impact the nation’s credit rating (Fitch has already issued a warning), send interest rates to the moon, dampen economic activity for years to come, and pave the way for a long and painful slump. The much ballyhooed $1,200 checks for unemployed workers are merely a tactical diversion that’s being used to conceal the giant ripoff that is taking place right under our noses.

In contrast, Putin has settled on a more rational and compassionate plan. He’s going to launch a relief program that actually focuses on the people who need it the most. Then, he’s going to cover the costs by taxing the people who are most capable of shouldering the burden. His intention is not to “soak the rich” or to redistribute wealth. He simply wants to find the most equitable way to share the costs for this completely unexpected crisis. In short, Putin was presented with two very bad options:

1– Let the Russian people huddle in their homes (“shelter in place”) until the food runs out and the bills pile up to the ceiling.

2–Or tap into a temporary source of revenue that will help the country get through the hard times.

He wisely chose the latter option not because he’s a fiery leftist who hates the “free market”, but because he realizes that in a time of national crisis, the people who are more able to pay, should pay. It’s a question of fairness.

And who are the people who will benefit from Putin’s plan? Well, he named them in a speech he delivered to the nation just last week. Here’s a clip:

“We also need to take additional steps, primarily to ensure the social protection of our people, their incomes and jobs, as well as support for small and medium-sized businesses, which employ millions of people….

First, all social protection benefits that our citizens are entitled to, should be renewed automatically over the next six months… if a family is entitled to subsidized housing and utility payments, they will not need to regularly confirm their per capita income to continue receiving this state support…all payments to war veterans and home-front workers timed to the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, 75,000 and 50,000 rubles, respectively, should be made before the May holidays…

Second, it is essential to support families with children……..Third, we need to support those on sick leave and people who have lost their jobs.” (Putin’s Address to the Nation)

See? No big payouts to failing corporations, no welfare checks for Wall Street, and no tax breaks for fatcat bankers and their crooked friends. Just money for the people who desperately need it: Families with children, veterans, home-front workers, the sick, the unemployed, and the homeless. Simple and fair.

The strategy is aimed at everyone who is impacted by the virus, not just the people who filed taxes last year like the Trump Plan, but anyone who needs public assistance. At the same time, financial support will be provided for small and medium-sized businesses, incomes will be protected, jobs will be guaranteed. and mortgage payments will be suspended. It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s fairly comprehensive and targets the people that are most vulnerable. It also underscores the primary responsibility of government during times of crisis, that is, to ensure the health, safety and security of its people. That is Job 1.

The Putin plan also provides support for medical personnel, doctors, nurses, emergency staff, hospital employees, health care workers and first-responders. Here’s Putin:

“We have mobilized all the capabilities and resources for deploying a system of timely prevention and treatment. I would like to specially address doctors, paramedics, nurses, staff at hospitals, outpatient clinics, rural paramedic centers, ambulance services, and researchers: you are at the forefront of dealing with this situation. My heartfelt gratitude to you for your dedicated efforts.”

Will Putin and his advisors make mistakes in containing the virus and ending the contagion as swiftly as possible?

Probably, but it certainly looks like they’ve got their priorities right. Putin seems to understand that the health and welfare of the Russian people has to be put before the stock market, finance capital or the voracious corporate kingpins. In contrast, Trump wants to put more people at risk of infection by sending them back to work after Easter. That’s just not the way responsible leaders behave, not if they really care about the health of their people. Here’s more from Putin:

“There are two more measures I would like to suggest. First, all interest and dividend income that flows from Russia and is transferred abroad into offshore jurisdictions must be taxed properly….I suggest that those expatriating their income as dividends to foreign accounts should pay a 15 percent tax on these dividends….

Second, many countries levy income tax on interest earned by individuals from their bank deposits and investments in securities, while Russia does not tax this income at all. I propose that people with over 1 million rubles in bank deposits and debt securities pay a 13 percent tax on this income…. I propose using the budget revenue from these two measures to fund initiatives to support families with children and help people who are unemployed or on sick leave.”

What does it mean?

It means that Putin is closing tax havens and tax loopholes so he can get the money he needs to pay for the epidemic. It means he’s taking on the wealthiest and most powerful people in Russia so he can provide relief for the people who are stuck in their homes trying to survive. It means he’s risking his own political future in order to do the right thing. Here’s Putin:

“People of Russia, we need the state, society and the people to work together.. We have to be mindful that we bear personal responsibility for our close ones, for those who live near us, and who need our help and support….It is our sense of solidarity that underpins the resilience of our society, as well as an unwavering commitment to mutual assistance and the effectiveness of the response we come up with to overcome the challenge we are facing.”

Shared sacrifice, solidarity and brotherly love. That’s what he’s talking about, isn’t it? The threads that bind a disparate group of people into a sovereign nation.

In America, we make the working poor pay for the excesses of the crooked rich, while in Russia, the wealthy are asked to make sacrifices for the sake of the country. Which approach do you think is better?

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

The WHO now calls the Coronavirus epidemic a ‘pandemic’ and calls on all countries to apply drastic health policies.

The rapid spread, morbidity and mortality associated with the disease are all the more worrying as they can quickly deplete health system resources to meet the needs of people. All countries are thus on alert.

In the United States, President Trump, after minimizing the threat for a while, has declared a state of national emergency. Prime Minister Trudeau invites people to reduce their trips for the time being.

Italy, overwhelmed, announced 250 dead in 24 hours, and chose the patients to be treated as a priority. Iran has declared 1000 new cases in 24 hours, knowing that the numbers are lower than the reality since the country does not have the resources to make the full national diagnosis.

Only China has turned the tide, with only 8 new cases reported in the last 24 hours, the lowest figure since mid-January. Iran and Italy are now the “front line” countries in the fight against COVID-19.

The situation is particularly serious in Iran where there is “a shortage of breathing apparatus and oxygen”, according to the head of WHO’s emergency health programs, Dr Ryan. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that ‘Iran is doing its best. They need more equipment.’

The behavior of the Covid-19 dictates seeking health security through a concerted global effort. It requires collaboration and coordination of actions without borders since our health security is more than ever interdependent.

The Covid-19 highlights the dual illegitimacy of the United States’ draconian and unilateral sanctions against various countries, Iran in particular.

In this case Iran, seriously affected by the pandemic, is unable to sell its oil. And banking sanctions prevent it from obtaining essential products for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of coronavirus. These sanctions jeopardize both lives in Iran and the global fight against the pandemic.

The United States refuses to withdraw the sanctions despite the request of the United Nations while Iran is one of the epicenters of the pandemic in the Middle East region, as China has been in Asia and Italy is in Europe. How many in Iran will die needlessly because of these illogical, illegitimate, immoral, and illegal economic sanctions?

Let us add that the sanctions of the USA against Iran are condemned by the UN, which endorsed the nuclear agreement through resolution 2231 of the UN Security Council.

Certainly the Iranian government is responsible for the shortcomings in the management of the health crisis. However, Italy is currently experiencing the same propagation situation, but the European budgets set aside for the control of the Covid-19 are in the order of several billion euros per country. Iran has much more limited financial resources, largely blocked by sanctions, with a population equivalent to that of Germany.

According to a US government-funded site, “Radio Farda,” Iran can only export 250,000 barrels of oil per day, one-tenth of what it exported before the 2015 agreement.

We can see that the strategy of Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran (an unprecedented financial and commercial blockade aimed at impoverishing the Iranians in the hope of pushing them to overthrow the government) has more responsibility for the country’s current difficulties in the face of the pandemic.

In this context of extreme tension imposed by the United States, the Iranian government felt, from the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, that it should not appear vulnerable.

With the US treasury having imposed third party sanctions on European, Indian and other firms, Iran has been pushed to increased dependence on China, the only country capable of somewhat challenging Trump. Iran has therefore not had the luxury of cutting trade and travel with China.

The call this week of the United against Nuclear Iran (UANI) to prevent pharmaceutical companies holding ‘special licenses’ (defined as ‘humanitarian exemptions’) from doing business with the Iran says a lot about the credibility of the protagonists of sanctions.

Another lobby recognized as a sanctioner, the FDD (Federation for defense of democracy) welcomed the coronavirus outbreak: ‘the virus has harmed the economy of the country where the sanctions could not have done it’.

The rhetoric weaponizing the “legitimate fight for human rights” to justify these cruel sanctions before public opinion is severely tested by the difficulties of Iran and the suffering of the Iranians, kept in a situation of vulnerability to the pandemic against all civilizational standards.

Health, hygiene and access to medical care are inalienable human rights. The American and Iranian peoples, and all of humanity, have a common enemy in this pandemic: the coronavirus and the unjust and inhuman sanctions.

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After a decade-long, worldwide corporate debt binge, the bill has come due: huge swaths of the corporate world are now at risk of default, with only governments able to save them. This time, any bailouts must place corporate investment under public control.

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The new coronavirus has already infected hundreds of thousands of people, taken more than 20,000 lives and caused a level of economic, social and political disruption not seen in decades.

But for many far-right hardliners, it’s a crisis to be welcomed.

The hardest-core “accelerationists” – violent neo-Nazis who want civilisation to crumble, hope that COVID-19 will turn out to be their secret weapon.

“The situation is ripe for exploitation by the far right,” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, American University sociologist and expert on the far-right, told Al Jazeera. 

Aside from feeding into “accelerationist and apocalytic ideas”, Miller-Idriss said “the uncertainty the pandemic creates creates fertile ground for claims about the need for change or the solutions the far right purports to offer.”

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The pandemic, economic collapse and the government’s response to them are going to not only determine the 2020 election but define the future for this decade and beyond. People are seeing the failure of the US healthcare nonsystem and the economy. The government was able to provide trillions for big business and Wall Street without asking the usual, “Where will we get the money?” However, the rescue bill recently passed by Congress provides a fraction of what most people need to get through this period. Once again, a pandemic will reshape the course of history.

Last week, we wrote about the failings of the healthcare system and the need for a universal, publicly-funded system. This week, we focus on the need to change the US economic system. The economic crisis in the United States is breaking all records. The class war that has existed for decades is being magnified and sharpened. The failings of financialized, neoliberal capitalism is being brought into focus at a time when people in the United States have greater support for socializing the economy than in recent times.

This Thursday, there was a record 3.3 million applications for unemployment, an increase of three million from the previous week, but on the same day, there was a record rise in the stock market. This contradiction shows the divide between the economic insecurity of the people and investors profiting from the crisis. The 11.4 percent increase in the stock market on Thursday was the largest increase since 1933 while the record rise in unemployment was 40 percent higher than ever recorded. Projections are for 30 percent unemployment this quarter, which is five percent higher than the worst of the Great Depression.

The response to the economic crisis reveals who the government represents. While people’s economic insecurity grew, the government acted to primarily benefit the wealthiest. This realization should spur an uprising like the United States has never seen before. Perhaps the most dangerous to the ruling class is their incompetence has been exposed. As Glen Ford writes,

“The capitalist ‘crisis of legitimacy’ may have passed the point of no return, as the Corporate State proves daily that it cannot perform the basic function of protecting the lives of its citizens.”

Disaster Aid: Crumbs For The People, Trillions For The Wealthiest

Congress unanimously passed a $1.6 trillion coronavirus disaster aid bill this week. This is almost equal to the 2009 Recovery Act and the 2008 Wall Street rescue combined. Democrat’s votes were essential to passing the bill so they could have demanded whatever they wanted. This bill shows the bi-partisan priority for big business.

The bill is too little too late for people who have lost their jobs and for small businesses that have been forced to close. The law includes a one-time $1,200 payment to most people. This payment will arrive after rent and other debt payments are due for a US population with record debt. Congress does not understand the economic realities of people in the United States. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explained what was needed saying, “The answer is we need no evictions, no foreclosures on all properties, and the government should guarantee pay.” In addition, credit card companies should also put “a stay on interest on all debt.”

When COVID-19 first began, we pointed out that the US healthcare system was not prepared to respond and showed the problems of putting profits before health. The COVID-19 rescue bill did not pay for coronavirus testing or treatment. Millions of people who lose their jobs will lose their health insurance, demonstrating why healthcare should not be tied to employment. Adding to health problems, the law did not increase the SNAP food program for the poor.

Roughly one-third of the funding goes to direct payments to people, unemployment insurance for four months, hospitals, veterans’ care, and public transit. Two-thirds go to government and corporations. Adam Levitin describes the law as “robbing taxpayers to bail out the rich.”

Congress allotted at least $454 billion to support big business in addition to $46 billion for specific industries, especially airlines. Some of these funds will also bail out the fossil fuel industry. According to the way the Federal Reserve operates, they will be allowed to spend ten times the amount Congress allocated to support big business, $4.5 trillion. Jack Rasmus writes that the Federal Reserve had already “allocated no less than $6.2 Trillion so far to bail out the banks and investors.” He summarizes the disparity: “Meanwhile Congress provides one-fourth that, and only one-third of that one fourth, for the Main St., workers, and middle-class families.”

Trump shows the disdain government has for the people and its favoritism for big business and investors as he objected to paying for 80,000 life-saving ventilators because they cost $1 billion while the government provides trillions to big business and investors. Governors and hospitals are issuing dire warnings of what is to come, but the federal government is not listening.

Economic Collapse Shows The Need For Transformational Change

The economic collapse is still unfolding. The US is already in a deep recession that is likely to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis and could develop into a greater depression if the COVID-19 economic shutdown lasts a long time.

Already, the crises, the government’s support for Wall Street and its failure to protect the 99% are creating louder demands for system change. We need to put forward a bold agenda and agitate around it to demand economic security for all. As Margaret Kimberly writes, we are entering a period of revolutionary change because we know returning to normal is “the opposite of what we need.” Or as Vijay Prashad says, “Normal was the problem.”

While the urgent health and economic crises dominate, the climate crisis also continues. The climate crisis already required replacing the fossil fuel era with a clean and sustainable energy economy and remaking multiple sectors of the economy such as construction, transportation, agriculture, and infrastructure. Now, out of these crises, a new sustainable economic democracy can be born where people control finance, inequality is minimized and workers are empowered, along with creating public programs that meet the necessities of the people and protect the planet.

The US Constitution gives the government the power to create money; Article I, Section 8 says: “The Congress shall have power … to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin.” Congress needs to take back that power so the government can create debt-free money. Currently, the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress in 1913, is the privately-owned US central bank that produces money and sets interest rates. It puts the interests of the big banks first. The Fed can be altered, nationalized or even dismantled by Congress. Its functions could be put into the Department of the Treasury.

Monetary actions need to be transparent and designed to serve the necessities of the people and the planet. Money should be spent by the government into the economy to meet those needs while preventing inflation and deflation. In this way, the government would have the funds needed to transform to a green energy economy, rebuild infrastructure, provide education from pre-school through college without tuition, create the healthcare infrastructure we need for universal healthcare and more.  In addition, through a network of state and local public banks, people would be able to get cost-only mortgages and loans to meet their needs.

Moving money creation into the federal government would place it within the constitutional system of checks and balances where the people have a voice to ensure it works for the whole society, not only for the bankers and the privileged. This could end the parasitic private banking system and replace it with a democratic public system designed for the people’s needs as Mexico is doing.

Globalization must be reconsidered. Corporate globalization with trade agreements that favor corporate power is a root cause of this global pandemic. We need trade that puts people and the planet first and encourages local production of goods. This includes remaking agriculture to support smaller farms and urban farming using organic and regenerative techniques that increase the nutritional value of foods and sequester carbon.

What we need instead is popular globalization – developing solidarity and reciprocity between people around the world. We can learn from each other, collaborate and provide mutual aid in times of crisis as Cuba and other countries are doing now.

As businesses are bailed out by the government, they could be required to protect and empower workers. Workers’ rights have been shrinking since the 1950s as unions have become smaller and more allied with business interests. The right to collective bargaining needs to be included as a requirement for receiving government funds. For large public corporations, workers should be given a board seat, indeed the government should be given a board seat and an equity share in any corporation that is bailed out. For smaller businesses, as they reopen, it is an opportunity to restructure so worker ownership and workers sharing in the profits become the norm.

The US needs to build the economy from the bottom up. The era of trickle-down economics that has existed since the early 80s has failed most people in the United States. The government needs to create a full-employment economy with the government as the employer of last resort. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives US infrastructure a grade of D+ requiring a $2 trillion dollar investment that would create millions of jobs. The Green New Deal would create 30 million jobs over ten years according to the detailed plan put forward by the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins.

The coronavirus disaster aid includes a payment to every person in the US earning under $70,000. While the one-time $1,200 check is grossly insufficient, it demonstrates the possibility of a universal basic income. This would lift people out of poverty and protect them from the coming age of robots and artificial intelligence that will impact millions of existing jobs. The evidence is growing that a basic income works. A World Bank analysis of 19 studies found that cash transfers have been demonstrated to improve education and health outcomes and alleviate poverty

The United States economy is in a debt crisis that demands quantitative easing for the people. Personal, corporate and government debt is at a record high. While the economic collapse is being blamed on the coronavirus, the reality is that the pandemic was a trigger that led to a recession that was already coming. The US needs to correct those fundamentals — massive debt, a wealth divide, inadequate income, poverty — as part of restarting the economy. Just as the Fed has bought debts to relieve businesses of debt burden, it can do the same for the personal debts of people. We should start by ending the crisis of student debt, which is preventing two generations from participating in the economy. While we make post-high school vocational and college education tuition-free, we should not leave behind the generations suffering from high-priced education.

Rise-Up and Demand Change

To create change, people must demand it. Even before the coronavirus collapse, people were demanding an end to inequality, worker rights, climate justice, and improved Medicare for all, among other issues. In the last two years, the United States has seen record numbers of striking workers. The climate movement is blocking pipelines and infrastructure and shutting down cities. Protests against inequality and debt resistance have existed since the occupy movement.

Now, with the economic collapse, protests are increasing. It’s Going Down reports: “with millions of people now wondering how they are going to make ends meet and pay rent, let alone survive the current epidemic, a new wave of struggles is breaking out across the social terrain. Prisoners and detention center detainees are launching hunger strikes as those on the outside demand that they be released, tenants are currently pushing for a rent strike starting on April 1st, the houseless are taking over vacant homes in Los Angeles, and workers have launched a series of wildcat strikers, sick-outs, and job actions in response to being forced onto the front lines of the pandemic like lambs to the slaughter.”

Workers at the Fiat Chrysler Windsor Assembly Plant walked off the job over concerns about the spread of coronavirus. Pittsburgh garbage collectors refused to pick up trash because their health was not being protected. Chipotle employees walked off the job and publicly protested the company for allegedly penalizing workers who call in sick. Perdue employees in Georgia walked off their jobs on a production line over a wage dispute and management asked workers to put in extra hours without a pay increase during the pandemic. Some Whole Foods workers announced a collective action in the form of a “sick out,” with workers using their sick days in order to strike. In Italy, wildcat strikes erupted to demand that plants be closed for the duration of the virus. Postal workers in London took strike actions due to the risks of the virus.

The pandemic requires creativity in protest. Technology allows us to educate and organize online, as well as to protest, petition, email, and call. There have also been car marches, public transport drivers have refused to monitor tickets, collective messages have been sent from balconies and windows. People are showing they can be innovative to get our message across to decision-makers. We can also build community and strengthen bonds with mutual aid.

If the ownership class continues its call to re-open the economy despite the health risks, the potential of a general strike can become a reality. When Trump called for returning to work the hashtags #GeneralStrike and #GeneralStrike2020— calling on workers everywhere to walk off the job — began trending on Twitter. Rather than a strike against one corporation, people would strike across multiple businesses and could also include a rent and mortgage strike as well as a debt strike. The coronavirus has shown that essential workers are among the lowest-paid workers and that they make the economy function. We also understand that if people refuse to pay their debts or rent, the financial system will collapse. Understanding those realities gives a new understanding of the power of the people.

A general strike, as Rosa Luxembourg described it in 1906, is not ‘one isolated action” but a rallying call for a campaign of “class struggle lasting for years, perhaps for decades.” A general strike could take many forms, including a global day of action. Before the current crises, we saw the decade of the 2020s as a decade of potential transformational change because on multiple fronts movements were growing and demanding responses to an array of crises. Now, the triggers for the economic collapse could also be the trigger for transformational revolt.

We are all in this together. We are all connected and share a common humanity. If we act in solidarity during this time of crisis and in this decade of transformation, we can create the future we want to see for ourselves and future generations.

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

All images in this article are from PR

U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy and 10 other lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin urging them to alleviate the sanctions that the U.S. keeps against Iran and Venezuela amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are writing to express our concern regarding the deteriorating humanitarian crises in countries under U.S. sanctions as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread. We are particularly concerned about the impact of sanctions on the Covid-19 response in Iran and Venezuela,” the Democratic senators said.

“As these countries struggle to respond to their domestic health crises, U.S. sanctions are hindering the free flow of desperately needed medical and humanitarian supplies due to the broad chilling effect of sanctions on such transactions, even when there are technical exemptions,” they added.

On Thursday, Attorney General William Barr announced that the United States designed Venezuela as a state sponsoring terrorism.

Besides being arbitrary, this accusation makes it even more difficult for the Bolivian people and their government to buy basic goods in international markets.

Trump #HandsOffVenezuela!#MaduroValentíaYDignidad#QuédateEnCasa https://t.co/qTdiioBx8K

— Alberto Torres (@Marabino2010) March 27, 2020

The meme reads, “Solidarity with President Nicolas Maduro and the Venezuelan leaders unjustly and illegally persecuted by the US. This new outrage also seeks to hide the catastrophe that Covid-19 is causing under the Trump administration.”

Democratic senators also recalled that the short term abeyance of sanctions has “ample precedent” in the U.S. foreign policy.

“For instance, when a massive earthquake struck Iran in 2003 killing 26,000 people, the Bush administration temporarily suspended sanctions to send 150,000 pounds of medical supplies and more than 200 aid workers… to help,” Sen. Murphy and his colleges highlighted.

Although the sanctions are not supposed to cover medicines, it is recalled that companies are refraining from making transactions with Venezuela and Iran for fear of being punished.

“Our sanctions regime is so broad that medical suppliers and relief organizations simply steer clear of doing business in Iran and Venezuela in fear of accidentally getting caught up in the U.S. web sanctions,” the lawmakers stressed.

UN, EU Urge Venezuela Sanctions Relief as Coronavirus Outbreak Intensifies https://t.co/9MMupl6syX End the US imperialism sanctions.

— Paul Patrick (@PaulTyredagh81) March 26, 2020

“Moreover, the administration’s decision to impose additional new sanctions amidst the coronavirus outbreak has only contributed to the sense among companies that they should avoid doing any business involving these countries, even if their work is humanitarian.”​​​​​​​

The Democratic senators called on the Trump administration to provide a license authorizing specific medical goods and equipment such as testing kits, respiratory devices, and personal protective equipment.

They also for setting new financial channels for Venezuela and Iran to pay for humanitarian goods as well as unconditional delivery of aid through a third-party country or entity.

The letter was also signed by Senators Tom Carpenter, Patrick Leahy, Tim Kaine, Benjamin Cardin, Tom Udall, Sherrod Brown, Brian Schatz, Jeffrey Merkley, and Richard Blumenthal.​​​​​​​

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Featured image: Christopher Murphy at the McCall Center for Behavioral Health, Torrington, Connecticut, U.S, March 6, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @rep_am

The governments of China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela – all under sanctions from the United States – sent a joint statement to the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights and the Director-General of the World Health Organization calling for an end to the unilateral American economic blockade, as they are, “illegal and blatantly violate international law and the charter of the United Nations.” 

The eight countries, representing around one-quarter of humanity, say that Washington’s actions are undermining their response to the COVID–19 pandemic sweeping the planet. “The destructive impact of said measures at the national level, plus their extraterritorial implication, together with the phenomenon of over-compliance and the fear for ‘secondary sanctions,’ hinder the ability of national governments” in procuring even basic medical equipment and supplies, including coronavirus test kits and medicine. It is a “hard if not impossible deed for those countries who are currently facing the application of unilateral coercive measures,” to cope, they conclude.

The letter was shared on Twitter by Joaquin Perez, Venezuela’s Permanent Ambassador to the UN.

Today 🇨🇳,🇨🇺,🇰🇵,🇮🇷,🇳🇮,🇷🇺,🇸🇾,🇻🇪 addressed the #UNSG on the negative impact of sanctions on nat’l efforts to fight COVID19. We cannot allow a zero-sum game in the midst of a pandemic. #SanctionsAreCriminal & must end now! Political calculations cannot get in the way of saving lives! pic.twitter.com/ujnmyf7ASL

— Joaquín A. Pérez Ayestarán (@japerezve) March 26, 2020

That U.S. sanctions are “blatant violations of international law,” the letter states, is not in doubt. As the American Special Rapporteur to the UN, Alfred de Zayas, notes, only sanctions expressly verified and imposed collectively by the UN Security Council can be considered legal; any unilateral punishment is, by definition, illegal. De Zayas, a legal scholar, notes that sanctions are tantamount to a “collective punishment” against a population, an explicit violation of multiple articles of the UN Charter, the foundation of international law.

De Zayas traveled to Venezuela last year, describing the U.S. sanctions as akin to a medieval siege and accusing the Trump administration of “crimes against humanity.” The United Nations Human Rights Council formally condemned the U.S., called on all member states to break the sanctions, and even began discussing the reparations Washington should pay to Venezuela, noting that Trump’s sanctions were designed to “disproportionately affect the poor and most vulnerable.” None of this was reported in any major American media outlet at the time.

The sanctions meant that Venezuela was unable to import key medicines for conditions like cancer and diabetes, leading to scores of deaths. A 2019 report from the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy Research conservatively estimated the sanctions killed 40,000 Venezuelans between mid-2017 and 2018.

Yesterday, the Trump administration turned the screw tighter, putting out a bizarre hit on President Nicolas Maduro, offering $15 million to anybody who could bring him to them in chains. Other key figures like Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino and Head of the Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello also had bounties placed on their heads, supposedly because they were part of a drug trafficking ring.

The U.S. is also turning up the heat on COVID-19 plagued Iran. Senior Washington insiders like Newt Gingrich are dreaming that their sanctions will finally bring about regime change in the Islamic Republic. Sanctions led to the Iranian rial losing 80 percent of its value, with both food prices and unemployment doubling. While medicine is technically exempt from sanctions, in reality, Washington has frightened away any nation or corporation from doing business with Tehran. Even as coronavirus was raging through the country, no nation was willing to donate even basic supplies to Iran. Eventually, the World Health Organization stepped in and directly supplied it with provisions. An October report from Human Rights Watch noted that “the overbroad and burdensome nature of the US sanctions has led banks and companies around the world to pull back from humanitarian trade with Iran, leaving Iranians who have rare or complicated diseases unable to get the medicine and treatment they require.” At least 2,378 Iranians have died of COVID-19, many of them needlessly.

Despite the embargoes they are under, many countries on the sanctioned list have contributed greatly to the world’s fight against COVID-19. Despite facing a shortage of basic supplies like soap, Cuba continues to export doctors and other medical staff around the world, often to the worst affected areas. Meanwhile, China, the original epicenter of the outbreak, appears to have come to grips with the pandemic and is now exporting its battle-hardened medical staff as well as huge quantities of crucial supplies. This has been presented in the U.S. as a dastardly plot to “curry favor” and shift blame away from their supposed mishandling of the virus in the first place.

The United States has long had a fractious relationship with the UN, constantly using its veto power to sink progressive legislation that would weaken its military, cultural or economic hegemony. In 2017, the U.S. formally pulled out of the UN’s scientific and cultural organization, UNESCO, in response to the group admitting Palestine. American sanctions are not popular at all in the world; in November, for instance, the UN voted 187-3 (U.S., Israel, Brazil) to condemn Washington’s embargo on Cuba. It was the twenty-eighth consecutive year with vote totals varying little from year to year.

The sanctioned countries warn that Trump’s actions are killing not only Americans at home but people all over the world. “We cannot allow for political calculations to get in the way of saving human lives,” they conclude. However, precisely because the U.S. has so much power on the world stage, it is unlikely their protestations will get them very far.

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

Featured image: A person in protective clothing walks through a temporary 2,000-bed field hospital for COVID-19 coronavirus patients set up by the Iranian army at the international exhibition center in northern Tehran, Iran, March 26, 2020. Ebrahim Noroozi | AP 

A petition launched on March 19, 2020

The mass killing and destruction of Iraq that began 17 years ago today, assessed by the most scientifically respected measures available, killed over 1.4 million Iraqis, saw 4.2 million additional people injured, and 4.5 million made refugees.

The 1.4 million dead (and still rising) was 5% of the Iraqi population. That compares to 2.5% of the U.S. population lost in the U.S. Civil War, or 3.5% in Japan in World War II, 1% in France and Italy in World War II, 0.3% in the United States in World War II, and 0.001% in the United States in this war on Iraq.

The U.S. military has targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances. It has made use of cluster bombs, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new kind of napalm in urban areas. Birth defects, cancer rates, and infant mortality are through the roof. Water supplies, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, bridges, and electricity supplies remain devastated. Healthcare, nutrition, and education are nothing like they were before the war. And we should remember that healthcare and nutrition had already deteriorated during years of economic warfare waged through the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever imposed in modern history, sanctions that were accompanied by bombs and which followed the destruction of the Gulf War.

For years, the occupying forces have broken the society of Iraq down, encouraging ethnic and sectarian division and violence, resulting in a segregated country and the repression of rights that Iraqis used to enjoy, even under Saddam Hussein’s brutal police state – which, of course, was itself supported by the U.S. government for years.

While U.S. troops have been reduced in Iraq, they have never been removed. In January, the Iraqi Parliament voted that all U.S. troops should leave. The U.S. government has refused to leave, and has instead proposed installing (“defensive”) missiles in Iraq targeting Iran. While Iran is depicted in U.S. media as an evil enemy, the U.S. military does not claim that Iran is a threat to the actual United States, only to U.S. troops near Iran and U.S. “interests.” The refusal to leave and the decision to install missiles endanger Iraq, Iran, the entire region, and a world at risk of nuclear escalation and climate collapse that cannot afford any more wars.

The terrorist attack on Baghdad 17 years ago, which was intended to “shock and awe” people into terror and submission, followed months of pro-war propaganda in U.S. corporate media and from the U.S. government.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Joe Biden promoted the White House’s lies about weapons of mass destruction, pushed hard for war, and orchestrated hearings that excluded dissenting voices.

Many were fooled or claimed to be. Donald Trump’s last public comment on the war before it started was that he supported it.

It is now popular in U.S. politics to deny having supported the war, even to claim to have ended it. But there is virtually no discussion of the moral and practical necessity of complying with the wishes of the Iraqi government – wishes that line up with a demand that many of us have been making for exactly 17 years – to withdraw all U.S. troops and mercenaries and bases and weapons from Iraqi soil.

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Former Obama regime chief of staff/Chicago mayor/earlier and current investment banker Rahm Emanuel once notoriously said:

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. I mean, it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

Post-9/11, a permanent US state of war became official bipartisan policy — at home on human and civil rights, abroad against sovereign independent states to replace their legitimate governments with pro-Western puppet ones.

The objective then and now is all about concentrating greater wealth and power in the hands of privileged interests at the expense of peace, the rule of law, and fundamental rights and welfare of ordinary people everywhere.

Michel Chossudovsky explained that current financial crisis conditions were “carefully engineered” — COVID-19 the pretext to do things not possible or easily accomplished during normal times.

Global stock market collapses “resulted in one of the most important transfers in money wealth in modern history,” Chossudovsky explained, involving trillions of dollars that may continue mounting to amounts only to be known in the fullness of time.

Is more US war on war-ravaged Iraq part of the plot? Are Americans too distracted by COVID-19’s effect on their lives and welfare to notice or care?

According to the NYT, “(a) secret Pentagon directive (calls for) try(ing) to destroy” Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) in Iraq that are connected to the country’s military.

“The Pentagon has ordered military commanders to plan for an escalation of American combat in Iraq, issuing a directive last week to prepare a campaign to destroy an Iranian-backed militia group that has threatened more attacks against American troops.”

So-called Operation Inherent Resolve commander General Robert P. White argued against what he said would require thousands more US forces deployed to Iraq.

Pompeo and national security advisor O’Brien urge increased US hostilities against Iran with Americans distracted by COVID-19 and the Islamic Republic going all out to contain outbreaks in the country.

Trump regime war secretary Esper and Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley oppose the idea.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Robertson falsely said US forces are in Iraq “at the invitation of the Iraqi government and remains focused on partnering with Iraqi security forces for the shared goal of permanently defeating ISIS remnants. We are not going to discuss hypotheticals or internal deliberations.”

Iraqi ruling authorities and vast majority of its ordinary people want them out.

Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani, assassinated by the Pentagon in January, aided Baghdad in creating and training PMUs as a force allied with Iraq’s military to combat US-supported ISIS.

PMUs are not “Iranian-backed,” falsely implying control of them by Tehran. They’re Iraqi security forces involved in protecting their homeland, controlled by the country’s military.

According to Press TV, PMU forces are holding military drills “in preparation for possible war with the US,” thousands of fighters involved.

Last week, PMU group Kata’ib Hezbollah reported “ ‘suspicious activities by the US and its mercenaries’ in Iraq in preparation for an operation.”

If launched, will it include large-scale Pentagon aerial and ground operations?

Kata’ib Hezbollah believes the plot includes Pentagon shock and awe-type aerial operations and ground operations, similar to US aggression in 1991 and 2003.

The US came to Iraq to stay. Its bases in the country are platforms for control of the country and regional wars.

They’re used to supply ISIS and likeminded jihadists in Syria with weapons and other material support.

Last month, Iraqi lawmaker on the nation’s security and defense commission Karim Aliwi accused the Trump regime of “transferr(ing) over 1,000 terrorists from Syria to Iraq, and it wants to foment chaos and change the equations by using the ISIL card and fomenting insecurity in the Western cities of Iraq.”

According to the Arabic-language al-Maloumeh News website, US military bases in Iraq and Syria are safe havens for ISIS fighters.

Their presence (along with likeminded US-controlled jihadists) is a virtual time bomb that could explode any time in either or both countries like earlier.

Will the Trump regime take advantage of Americans focused solely on COVID-19’s effects on their lives and welfare to escalate war in Iraq, perhaps Syria, and elsewhere?

Will it transfer more of the nation’s wealth to military, industrial, security interests from ordinary Americans both right wings of the one-party state are indifferent toward?

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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.

China’s President Xi Jinping spoke on the phone with Donald Trump on Friday March 27.

President Xi offered China’s support in fighting the virus in the US.

The Chinese are astute diplomats.

At the outset, China was held responsible for “spreading infection” Worldwide.

The contentious issue: will Trump drop the Coronavirus “Made in China” tag?

Earlier in March, Trump was unequivocal: “China has to pay for this… “The world is paying a very big price for what they did”.

But it now appears that the “Made in China” virus rhetoric is on hold. And China’s foreign ministry is no longer insinuating that the “Chinese virus” was “Made in America”… brought to Wuhan during the October 2019 Military Games.

Donald Trump said he’ll stop using the term “Chinese virus”:

 “I don’t regret it, but they accused us of having done it through our soldiers, they said our soldiers did it on purpose, what kind of a thing is that?”

“Look, everyone knows it came out of China, but I decided we shouldn’t make any more of a big deal out of it. I think I made a big deal. I think people understand it. But that all began when they said our soldiers started it. Our soldiers had nothing to do with it.”

.

To which Donald Trump retorted:

Diplomacy Restored? Ask the Chinese. It has to do with the “Transmission” of the Virus

Meanwhile, Beijing contends that most of the new COVID-19 cases in China are being brought into the country by foreign visitors including Americans.

Screenshot NYT, March 26, 2020

And then in Late March the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison who’s a close ally and friend of Donald Trump  (unintentionally) drops a bombshell:

“The country which has actually been responsible for a large amount of these (coronavirus cases) has actually been the United States”

 

Scott Morrison and Donald Trump (below)

Screenshot MSN News , March 20, 2020

Concluding Remarks:

“Where Did it Come From? That is the Question!”

An armed group named the Islamic Revenge Movement (IRM), hostile towards both Turkish forces and the Syrian Army announced its existence in northern Syria. In a video message released on March 20, the IRM claimed that in 2019 its members conducted 118 attacks killing 13 Turkish officers, 187 Turkish-backed militants and 24 pro-government fighters. The IRM also vowed to continue its fight against the “tyrant state” of Turkey and the “Assad regime” in 2020. The claims of the IRM are very questionable, as the group provided no evidence with which to confirm them.

Furthermore, pro-Kurdish sources were first to release the IRM video arguing that the group consisted of former al-Qaeda members. They also released the name of the supposed group leader:  “Abu Osama al-Shami.” Syrian opposition and pro-al-Qaeda sources called the group fake. According to them, the video is just a coverup for actions by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Both groups prefer to distance themselves from acts of direct aggression against the Syrian military and the Turkish Army in northern Syria. In the public sphere, the YPG plays a victim oppressed by the bloody Assad regime and Erdogan the Invader. In reality, it already has a special brand created to distance the group from attacks on Turkish troops and proxies in Afrin – the Afrin Liberation Forces. The Turkish-rooted PKK pretends that it has no bases and fighters in the region despite the fact that a large part of YPG commanders and members is linked with the PKK.

Iran reportedly increased its military presence in southern Damascus. According to pro-opposition sources, the Shiite-majority area of Set Zaynab was turned into a stronghold of pro-Iranian forces. Syrian government sources deny these reports.

On the evening of March 26, Israel shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of Hezbollah, which allegedly violated “Israeli airspace”. The photo released by the Israeli military allows to identify the UAV as a modified variant of the commercially-available Skywalker X8. Armed groups across the entire Middle East modify such drones for combat purposes installing on them submunitions as well as use such UAVs for reconnaissance.

In Iraq, the United States withdrew its forces from the al-Qayyarah Air Base and handed it over to the Iraqi military. A spokesman for the US-led coalition, Col. Myles B. Caggins III, said hundreds of coalition troops will “temporarily” evacuate the base as a protective measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus. About 800 troops of the U.S.-led coalition were deployed at the airbase, which hosted approximately $1,7 million dollars worth of coalition equipment. The al-Qayyarah Air Base became the 2nd important military facility abandoned by US forces in March. The withdrawal of US troops from the previous one – al-Qaim – took place last week. These developments are being carried out under the pretext of the COVID-19 outbreak and the defeat of ISIS, but local sources link them with the increasing number of attacks on US forces across the country that the Pentagon cannot contain successfully without a large-scale military escalation.

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In the midst of the most recent attacks of the United States against Venezuela, the government of Donald Trump today designated President Nicolás Maduro as part of a supposed narco-terrorist structure and named a price for his arrest or assassination, along with other leaders of the revolutionary Venezuelan process. Without any evidence or any proof, Washington accuses Venezuela of having responsibility in narco-trafficking. The reality is that we are actually the victims of this plague, and Washington’s close ally and our neighbors, the Republic of Colombia, is one of the world’s biggest drug producers, especially of cocaine, a fact certified by the UN and US authorities themselves. 

But let us put the decision in context

1. Under the leadership of President Maduro, Venezuela has been carrying out an effective struggle against Coronavirus, managing until now to contain the virus to a great extent. It was our country that was the first in the region to decree quarantine, and thanks to the cooperation with China, Russia, and Cuba we have all of the medical capacities to respond to this pandemic. Such decisions have had the support of the majority of the Venezuelan people, including broad sections of the opposition. 

2. There have been advances in an important process of dialogue with the democratic sectors of the opposition many of which in the context of the pandemic have expressed to be in favor of working with the government and in demanding an end to the unilateral coercive measures (improperly referred to as sanctions) that affect our economy and our people. 

3. From different parts of the globe, there are more and more voices speaking out against the blockade suffered by Venezuela, among those we highlight the recent declarations of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrel; the General Secretary of the UN, Antonio Guterres, and Michelle Bachellet, High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN. 

4. Last March 23, the transit police in Colombia seized an arsenal of war weapons, and due to our efficient work of our intelligence services, we knew that their final objective was to go to Venezuela to carry-out terrorist actions against President Maduro and other authorities. The whole network of this conspiracy, that has support from the US and from Colombia, was denounced yesterday with details by our Communications Minister, Jorge Rodriguez. 

After the miniscule opposition mobilizations called for by Mr. Juan Guaidó during 2020, from Washington they have decided to opt for violent ways to achieve their anxiously awaited “regime change” in Venezuela. 

This dangerous, irrational and criminal decision announced today by the Trump administration occurred in a context where the Bolivarian Government is being strengthened and a crisis is erupting in the US due to the pandemic that is rapidly spreading in that nation. They clearly support on violence and terrorism, as it has clearly been manifested in the declarations released today by a traitor, former Venezuelan soldier, General Cliver Alcalá Cordones, who from Colombia confessed that the weapons seized were indeed planned to be used to carry-out attacks in Venezuela. This plan had the approval of Juan Guaidó and the US government, through functionaries and mercenaries of military contractors. Among other things, Alcalá points out that the purchase of weapons was instructed by Guaidó and he has a contract that proves it. 

It is important to highlight that for the last several years, especially since August 4, 2018 when there was an attempt of magnicide in Caracas against President Maduro through the use of drones loaded with explosives, there have been frequent denouncements made of these terrorist groups operating from Colombia. The information, even of the locations where the terrorists are trained, has been sent to the competent authorities but the government of Iván Duque has yet to speak on the matter. Following this, we have proceeded to denounce the situation of complicity of the Colombian government with the terrorists before the General Secretary of the UN. 

This is a very dangerous moment, especially taking into account the upcoming presidential elections in the US, which are ripe – as we have seen historically- for actions that help guarantee the re-election of the sitting president.  

We therefore ask for your solidarity with the Venezuelan people and to remain alert in the face of this new phase of aggression.

We will win!

#SanctionsAreACrime

#MaduroBraveryandDignity

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Featured image: President Nicolás Maduro, 2016. (Cancillería del Ecuador via Flickr)

Trump likes to call himself a ‘war president’. But his claiming this term turns the definition into a bad joke.

Here’s a few brief thoughts on that theme:

Today Trump announced he was ‘invoking’ the war production act to get GM to produce ventilators at its abandoned Lordstown, OH, auto plant.

But wait. Didn’t Trump already ‘authorize’ the War Production Act a couple weeks ago? Was ‘authorization’ just a PR stunt? Appears so. And authorize who to do what? Well, that was never defined either. Nothing happened after authorization. It was just a media soundbite. It was all a sales pitch and marketing spin to the nation. Kind of like someone bankrupt saying ‘the check is in the mail’. Or ‘call me on friday when I get paid’. You can’t believe a word he says.

If Trump were a true war president, instead of the fake and caricature that he is, he’d have seized the Lordstown GM plant weeks ago, ordered the requisitioning nation wide of all required materials to produce ventilators, moved all necessary technical personnel for production to the plant, used the Army Corp of Engineers to build new housing onsite at the plant for the new workforce; requisitioned local construction equipment necessary for such; then run the plant 24-7 and deliver ventilators via the USAF C-135 fleet to cities most in need.

If he were war president, he wouldn’t have ‘invoked’ the war production act just for ventilators, but for all needed medical-hospital equipment. And told everyone involved if they didn’t deliver on time they’d be fired.

In the interim, he would have ordered FEMA to immediately purchase all medical equipment worldwide asap, regardless the price (no negotiations), to be delivered again via USAF to needed cities directly, without diversion to warehousing by the Federal government.

No. Trump isn’t even close to a war president. He couldn’t stand in Franklin Roosevelt’s shadow. Or Harry Truman’s. Or Woodrow Wilson’s even.

No, Trump is a ‘true believer’ that the market solves everything and immediately. Just wave the magic market wand and it will appear! Like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, just pull a couple levers, make some loud noise, and it will all happen by itself. Just ask private enterprise and they’ll do it!

In 1941-42 Franklin Roosevelt activated US War Production. A special War Production Board was formed within days of December 7, 1941. It was empowered to requisition anything and everything considered necessary for the war effort. And it did. Roosevelt’s first executive order was to mass produce penicillin, which was thought impossible at the time. The US did it within a few months. Millions would be saved from infections during the war as a result. So where’s Trump’s Executive Order to produce a vaccine for the virus? He calls in a few CEOs from big Pharma and then conducts a media event. Why haven’t all the best medical research minds been mobilized, put in a room in Atlanta at the CDC or even the Pentagon, and told don’t come out until you have it?

During world war II the US didn’t wait for private enterprise to convert factories to war production. The government itself built factories and plants, then leased them over to the private sector to manage. It built entire sections of cities to house workers coming to the new facilities from around the country. You couldn’t obtain building materials to build a house during war time. Ford motor company made a total of 169 cars during the war. But was able to produce tens of thousands of trucks and tanks. So where’s our factories to produce ventilators, N95 masks, face shields, medical gowns, and all the rest of PPE needed. (I’ll tell you where, they were offshored decades ago by US capitalists seeking cheaper wages and greater profits…mostly to Asia and to China which, by the way, now has a surplus that it’s giving to Italy). But when US state governors tried to buy from offshore, the ventilators and PPE are seized by FEMA and the Federal Government. Trump’s administration not only can’t deliver, it’s become an obstacle to governors’ trying to do so. It’s like a general telling his troops to launch an attack but leave half your guns and ammunition here at headquarters company!

If Trump is a war president, he should be sacked, demoted, and sent to a base on the north shore of Alaska to count the caribou.

Trump is a Herbert Hoover wrapped in a Neville Chamberlain; an incompetent general who dribbles out ammunition to his colonels (governors) and tells them to steal from each other if they don’t have enough. He’s an armchair general whose chair has no arms! He’s all ‘talk the talk &amp’ and no ‘walk the walk’, as we used to say!

He’s a commercial real estate pitch man, a barker for a carnival sideshow government, and pathological liar who insults us by running his daily ‘dog & pony’ sales pitch he dares to call a press conference.

Give him a pension and send him away to count the Caribou. Better yet, to the US base in Antarctica to count penguins!

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Strict measures -even extraordinary ones- are of course required to deal with the tumult flowing from an unleashed global pandemic.

But the people must be watchful and remain ever vigilant of the conduct of their leaders. There will be threats related to state restrictions on personal freedom, as well as those in the sphere of economics.

For instance, the funds released to several large corporate concerns do not strike me as being borne out of necessity. Indeed, in certain instances there is more than a whiff of suspicion that some banks and corporations are using bail out money as a means of covering the losses they have accrued in recent times; losses which several analysts believe was threatening a new recession along the lines of the one which followed the near economic collapse of 2008. On that occasion, several American investment banks and corporations which ought to have been wound up and their directors jailed, were given monies by the Federal Government.

The $2 Trillion package earmarked by President Donald Trump which includes a $32 Billion bailout of airlines and $25 Million to an arts centre for lost ticket sales may be repugnant to those taxpayers who will fund the package. It was agreed upon before any consensus was reached as to the implementation of a UBI (Universal Basic Income) package for Americans.

It is not only the oligarchs who are in effect profiting from a general situation of misfortune. The discovery that a number of US politicians had dumped their stocks shows how those in privileged positions can abuse their office because of their access to information not within the public domain.

Political leaders who were facing long-standing difficulties will doubtless seek to use the situation to their advantage. Emmanuel Macron in France now has the opportunity to control the Yellow Vest Movement, while Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel can stave off the criminal indictment hanging over his head.

People need to remember that history is replete with situations where the state and the officials of state have been given powers under emergency situations, which were not officially revoked when ‘normality’ resumed. J. Edgar Hoover, the long-term head of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is one example. Hoover expanded his jurisdiction and power during the 1930s and then the 1940s courtesy of President Franklin Roosevelt, who in the first instance wanted the FBI to spy on political extremists (communists and fascists) and later, under conditions of war, to deal with threats related to sabotage, subversion and espionage. Hoover of course went on to use these powers in the post war years to entrench his position by spying on politicians and conducting surveillance against political and social movements to which he was opposed.

The threat of the coronavirus is thus not limited to biological harm. The response to it may likely have important ramifications in regard to personal liberties, as well as the economic well-being of nations whose oligarchs through their political servants are already engaged in securing their wealth at the expense of the mass of people.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

“To expose another human being to serious illness, and to the threat of losing their life, is grotesque and quite unnecessary. This is not justice, it is a barbaric decision.”- Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, March 26, 2020

Social distancing is not a word that seems to have reached certain parts of the British legal system.  Granted, it is an odd one, best refashioned as an anti-social act for the sake of preservation.  Marooned in some state of legal obliviousness, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser (image below) had little time for the bail application made by counsel for Julian Assange.  The WikiLeaks publisher had again rubbed the judicial person the wrong way.  Her memory was not unfazed: Assange had absconded in 2012 and had blotted his copy book.  He would not be permitted to it again.

Not that the application was unsound.  The central ground was the safety of the publisher, whose health has been assailed by seven years of confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, followed by his incarceration at the high security facility at Belmarsh.  Prisons, featuring high concentrations of people, have become fertile grounds for spreading COVID-19.  The March 17 report by Richard Coker, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, cautioned on how the transmission of the virus in “congregate settings” typified by “poor sanitation, poor ventilation, and overcrowding” could lead to overwhelming “a population, particularly a population with co-morbidities or that is elderly.”  Coker was unequivocal in recommending that unnecessary detention regimes should be eased.  “This should be done before the virus has chance to enter a detention centre.”  

Representatives of the UK penal system have shown varying degrees of concern.  There have even been calls for early release or means by which prison is avoided as a form of punishment altogether.  The UK Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene executively to reduce numbers.  The head of the Prison Governors Association Andrea Albutt has warned about the dangers posed by current detention arrangements.  “We’ve lots of prisoners, two people in a cell built for one”, citing Swansea as an example where 80 percent of prisoners were doubled up.  “We have that all across the country.”  Far better, she suggested, to reduce the population.  Such a measure “helps stabilise prisons”, “calm prisoners”, and reduce the staff to prisoner ratio. “If we have less prisoners doubled [up in cells], it will be easier to isolate those who’ve been confirmed as having the virus or have the symptoms so we can delay the spread.”  

Those standing by current UK prison guidelines remain defiantly confident that enough is being done.  The Ministry of Justice is convinced that “robust contingency plans” have been put in place prioritising “the safety of staff, prisoners and visitors.”  Procedures dealing with managing “the outbreak of infectious diseases and prisons” were already in place, and were being used to identify COVID-19 cases.  Sanitising facilities such as hand washing “are available to prisoners, staff and visitors and we have worked closely with suppliers to ensure the supply of soap and cleaning materials.” 

The ministry remains unclear on how the principle of social distancing, one seemingly anathema to the penal system, has been applied.  For her part, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, considers such measures in crowded, unhygienic facilities “practically impossible”.  Undeterred by such observations, the MOJ merely refers to a temporary suspension of “the usual regime”, meaning that “prisoners can no longer take part in usual recreational activities such as using the gym, going to worship or visiting the library.”  Nor can prisoners receive visits.  Such measures are bound to cause ripples of dissatisfaction.

Not much of this impressed the judicial consciousness.  Assange’s legal team were valiant in their efforts to state the obvious.  These were proceedings taking place on the third day of the country’s coronavirus lockdown.  Edward Fitzgerald QC, sporting a facemask, insisted that, “These [medical] experts consider that he is particularly at risk of developing coronavirus and, if he does, that it develops into very severe complications for him…  If he does develop critical symptoms it would be very doubtful that Belmarsh would be able to cope with his condition.”  Prisons were “epidemiological pumps”, fertile grounds for the transmission of disease, and Assange’s continued detention posed endangering circumstances “from which he cannot escape.”  

Baraitser remained unconvinced.  She was satisfied that there were no instances of COVID-19 at Belmarsh, a very cavalier assessment given that a hundred staff personnel were in self-isolation.  She was more moved by the submission from Clair Dobbin, representing the US government, that Assange posed a high risk of absconding.  Granting bail to him posed “insurmountable hurdles”.  Fitzgerald’s response, to no avail, was to focus the matter on Assange’s survival, not absconsion.   

Judge Baraitser has shown a certain meanness through these case management and extradition proceedings.  In the Wednesday hearing at the Westminster Magistrate’s Court, things had not improved.  “As matters stand today, this global pandemic does not as of itself provide grounds for Mr Assange’s release.”  These were words uttered on the same day that 19 prisoners in 10 prisons in the UK had tested positive for COVID-19.     

The ruling angered Doctors for Assange, comprising a list of some 200 physicians scattered across the globe.  “Despite our prior unequivocal statement that Mr Assange is at increased risk of serious illness and death were he to contract coronavirus and the evidence of medical experts,” their March 27 statement reads, “Baraitser dismissed the risk, citing UK guidelines for prisons in responding to the global pandemic.”  The group cited Baraister’s own solemn words deferring to the wisdom of the UK prison authorities.  “I have no reason not to trust this advice as both evidence-based and reliable and appropriate.” 

The medical practitioners took firm issue with the steadfast refusal of the judge to accept the medical side of the equation.  Not only was he at “increased risk of contracting and dying from the novel disease coronavirus (COVID-19)”, declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, he was also more vulnerable because of the torments of psychological torture and a “history of medical neglect … fragile health, and chronic lung disease.”

The pattern of rejection and denial has been a consistent feature in Baraitser’s rulings regarding Assange’s case.  When his legal team sought to liberate their client from the glass case in court for reasons of advice and consultation, the judge refused.  She even refused to accept the reasoning of the prosecutor James Lewis QC, who suggested that letting Assange sit with his legal team was an uncomplicated matter.  Her reasoning: To let Assange leave his glassed perch would be, effectively, an application for bail and mean he had escaped the court’s custody.  True to form on Wednesday, Assange, present via videolink, had his connection terminated after an hour.  This prevented him from hearing the defence summation and the concluding remarks of the judge.  The despoiling of justice, even in the face of a pandemic, remains an unwavering aspect of Assange’s fate.    

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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]

More than 15 military transport planes flew from Russia to Italy delivering disinfection units, 180 doctors, 100 personnel which include specialists in biological protection, nurses, ventilators, and masks.  The experts sent to Italy have worked on international epidemics including African Swine Fever and in developing an Ebola vaccine. Italy’s Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte had requested help from Russia, and the government commissioner for the coronavirus emergency, Domenico Arcuri, confirmed the help had arrived.  ‎‎Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s Foreign Minister, personally welcomed the first Russian plane to arrive on Sunday. Videos emerged online of the trucks on their way to northern Bergamo near Milan, the hardest hit by the virus. 

Lombardy regional councilor for health services, Giulio Gallera, announced the arrival of Russian doctors at Papa Giovanni Hospital in Bergamo. Moscow has a tradition of international solidarity that dates back to the Soviet era.

“Never had so many Russian planes and personnel landed before in a NATO country,” reported the Italian daily ‘La Repubblica’.

Italy imports gas to fuel their power plants, and Rome has previously called on the EU sanctions against Russia to be relaxed, even though the plea has not been heeded, and sanctions have been repeatedly renewed.

Italy’s Civil Protection Agency Facebook page was full of grateful comments, and some anger at the US, which was seen as not forthcoming with aid in the darkest hours of Italy’s need.

New alliances emerging

The current global political scene is changing rapidly as a result of the coronavirus.  We are seeing new super-powers emerging, such as China and Russia, and former power-houses weakening, such as the US and NATO.  The shifting sands of alliances remind us of a similar situation before WW2. Italy, and several other EU members, may find themselves forging new alliances that are headed east.  The current US domestic political chaos gave Russia and China the chance to offer an alternative to nations who may be ready to wrest-free of the former US domination. This situation leads to a new version of the old ‘Cold War’ era, in which the world was split into West and East camps of influence.

The critics

The saying “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” means that you shouldn’t criticize a gift, but that didn’t stop the Italian daily ‘La Stampa’ from reporting an unnamed high-level political source that most of the Russian supplies sent to Italy were ‘useless’.

Russia’s Ambassador to Italy Sergei Razov dismissed the report as perverse.

“Such assertions are the product of a perverse mind. A selfless desire to help friendly people in trouble is seen as insidious,” Razov told Russian media.

When asked if Russia expected Italy to return the favor by trying to get EU sanctions lifted, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the notion as absurd.

“We’re not talking about any conditions or calculations or hopes here,” he said on Monday. “Italy is really in need of much more wide-scale help and what Russia does is manageable.”

Besides the desire to help a neighbor in need, there is the fact that the majority of the 658 people with confirmed cases in Russia have recently flown back from western Europe, making the case for Russian self-protection as well as Italian friendship.

Russian administration is well-organized and able to impose strong measures in such a crisis, as compared to other countries that have been slow to institute strict measures and precautions.

The EU response

European Union countries have been slow to help their fellow members. Italy, France, and Spain have urged a massive response; however, the EU is divided on a potential rescue plan for the region’s economy, with Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Finland opposed to what they see as unreasonable expectations. Nine EU countries including France, Italy, and Spain have called for a common debt plan administered by a European institution to raise funds on the market; but, Germany and the other tight-fisted members stress that all EU countries can finance themselves.

Matteo Salvini, former deputy prime minister, speaking to the Italian Senate, said

“In Brussels, it is clear they are yet to understand the situation. If the German Government keeps talking about the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) without conditions which provides that funds are given to Italy but have to be paid back in the future, Berlin and Brussels got it wrong,” clearly furious at the German and EU stance.

The origins of the Italian crisis

Mario Di Vito is a correspondent for the Italian daily, “Il Manifesto”.  He compares the coronavirus crisis in Italy to that of a world war. In explaining how the virus moved rapidly he points to Confindustria, the association of Italian industrialists, who pressured the government to not shut down production, and the Mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, continued to tell people to leave their houses and to live a normal life; however, once the number of dead and infected spiked it was apparent those early decisions were deadly.  The stay-at-home order from PM Conte came much too late, and the weakness of the Italian healthcare system was exposed as the sick and dying rose into the thousands.

The Italian numbers mounting

Two weeks of military-enforced stay-at-home orders have paid off with signs of the slowing down of new infections and deaths since Italy’s first positive test on February 20. Italy has by far the most virus deaths of any nation in the world, numbering 8,165. While the official count of positive cases is 80,539, experts assume the actual number may be much higher. At least 33 doctors have died and 6,414 medical personnel have tested positive in Italy.

“We know it before we go into battle, and we accept it,” Dr. Luca Lorini, head of intensive care in a hospital in Bergamo told the Associated Press.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a Syrian American award winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

We must remind our people that over 150 million Africans live throughout the so-called Americas. We especially must raise this reality at critical moments like this when the corporate media and establishment opinion is legitimizing U.S. gangsterism that could kill thousands of people in Venezuela. (Black Working Class will Never Abandon Venezuela)

BAP’s support for the people of Venezuela and its project for establishing peace, human rights and development for its people will not be deterred by the latest attack on that nation with the flimsy and incredible indictment of Nicolas Maduro by the Trump Administration.

The use of drug and biological warfare against insurgent colonized populations has been a consistent feature of the U.S./European colonial project since 1492. As an African people in the United States, we have a long and tortured history of being on the receiving end of U.S. state’s narco-war against our people as a weapon of counterrevolutionary subversion.

The widespread expansion of heroin that occurred in Black communities during the period of the U.S. war against Vietnam was documented as having been facilitated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and became a convenient weapon as part of the multi prong counter-insurgency strategy of the state against the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

In the 80s, the introduction of crack cocaine into our communities was documented by courageous journalists like Gary Webb, who established that there was a relationship between the various intelligent agencies — once again primarily the CIA — and drug dealers using Nicaragua as a transit point for drugs into the U.S. The relationship was established in order to secure revenue for arms purchases to support counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua, who were working with the U.S. to overthrow the Sandinista government that came to power in 1979. Planes would land in the U.S. full of cocaine and leave with arms for delivery back to Central America, destined for Nicaragua.

Therefore, narco-terrorism is nothing new for our communities. After introducing dangerous drugs into our communities, the state would then wage a so-called war on drugs. The war on drugs in the U.S., as the general “war on crime,” was always intended as a weapon to wage war against the most organized elements of the Black resistance movement, just as the indictment of President Maduro is being used to undermine the revolutionary process in Venezuela.

The charge leveled at the Venezuelan leader might have some semblance of credibility for some sectors of the U.S. population, and it will be used by the corporate press to further legitimize the illegal and murderous objectives of U.S. imperialism. However, for BAP we are quite clear about the real narco and state terrorists.

The bounty placed on Maduro reminds us of the expansion of the bounty placed on the head of our dear sister and freedom fighter Assata Shakur and her addition as the first woman ever to the U.S. “most wanted terrorists list” by the Obama Administration.

We were not deterred or confused by that move and we will not be confused by this one against the people of Venezuela.

Stand in solidarity with the struggling peoples and nations of the world for peace, with people(s)-centered human rights, and a new vision of humanity beyond capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination.

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How likely are you to die from Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19)? Based on the hysteria spreading across the globe, it would seem like the chances are fairly high.

But Statnews.com would report on the actual projected death rate of those who contract Covid-19 based on US Center for Disease Control (CDC) data, noting:

…the death rate in Covid-19 patients ages 80 and over was 10.4%, compared to 5.35% in 70-somethings, 1.51% in patients 60 to 69, 0.37% in 50-somethings. Even lower rates were seen in younger people, dropping to zero in those 29 and younger.

The article also noted that the worst cases involved not only people who were much older, but involved people who were also already unhealthy and vulnerable.

Others have noted that many will likely get Covid-19, think they have an ordinary cold, get better and never even be tested, thus never making it into the statistics meaning the actual death rates are likely even lower than being reported.

In other words, Covid-19 may be slightly more dangerous than the common flu, but not by much. Those who fall into a vulnerable category should obviously be more careful, but the hysteria being spread by governments and ordinary people alike is posing a bigger threat to human wellbeing than the actual virus itself.

Hysteria Will Cause More Harm Than the Virus Itself 

The economic damage alone this hysteria is creating will negatively impact the lives of many more ordinary people than the virus ever could and for a much longer period of time than Covid-19 takes to run its course within the typical human body or across various populations.

For nations like the US who are already in terminal economic, social and political decline, replicating its crumbling economy, society and political system in other nations, even if temporarily by spreading Covid-19 hysteria, may seem like a viable option when all other options, from soft-power to overt military force, have failed to keep the planet in line and within Washington’s unipolar “international order.”

Nations that have been reluctant to take extreme measures are being pressured to do so by a spreading wave of hysteria, deliberate or not, forcing them to close borders, shut businesses and disrupt the lives of millions, the vast majority of which are in no danger at all from the virus.

A similar trend was seen during the opening years of the US-led so-called “War on Terror” which other nations were forced into backing, including nations like Russia who knew full well the US itself was the chief state sponsor of the very terrorists Washington was supposedly fighting, but were reluctant to take issue with it in the face of perceived public fear over extremism following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Considering just how badly the US exploited and abused that fear, it is hardly a surprise that people today are skeptical of handing large amounts of power over to the same sort of people in the face of another supposed threat.

Governments probably should take certain measures during such outbreaks, but ensuring the line between commonsense steps and the abuse of power is not crossed should be a primary public concern.

Regarding Covid-19, common sense should still be exercised. Avoiding large crowds, staying healthy, eating well, exercising and overall taking care of your body so that your body’s immune system can take care of you is the best measure and means of staving of Covid-19 or any other infectious disease, during a pandemic or not.

If you are part of a vulnerable demographic, obviously exercise more caution.

Create More Resilient Economies Regardless 

If extreme measures really are necessary to stop the spread of Covid-19 and other viruses like it, nations must create permanent infrastructure that ensures economic continuity before, during and after outbreaks, rather than being repeatedly caught off-guard each time a new virus appears.

Even by the most hysterical accounts, Covid-19 is not a doomsday scenario. It is not even a major human health threat. It is slightly more alarming than the ordinary flu, which itself is only a danger for those who are already in poor health and should already be exercising extra caution day-to-day.

Covid-19 requires a slightly more cautious and considered approach than managing the average flu.

Since we may never know where Covid-19 originated and how much of this hysteria is warranted, how much is simply human nature’s tendency to overreact and how much of it is a deliberate attempt to destabilize nations and economies around the globe, nations and communities must reexamine how they do business on a daily basis and think of ways to continue doing business even under the most extreme circumstances and in a way that will allow business-as-usual even amid another coronavirus outbreak or similar disruption.

Those nations which do not, set themselves up to be targets of those well-equipped to spread hysteria and stir up public panic which in turn will place pressure on targeted governments and endanger political, economic and social stability.

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Gunnar Ulson is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

From Father of Turks to Father of Ottomans

Turkey’s president Erdogan will no doubt go down in history as the leader who overturned the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and ended the country’s experiment as a secular nation-state. Perhaps that experiment was doomed to fail from the start—Turkish leaders over the decades have never found a workable formula for including the Kurds in the larger Turkish body politic, except through policies of forcible assimilation.

Erdogan, however, was the first to decide to put an end to it and instead reorganize Turkey around principles of neo-Ottomanism and pan-Turkism, in which the economically powerful, politically viable, and culturally proximate Turkish state would no longer seek to join the European Union. Instead it would become a source of international governance, development, and security assistance to the polities which emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and even to those which were not part of the empire.

As this policy was guaranteed to provoke a negative reaction from every other power player in the region, including Turkey’s ostensible allies in NATO, Erdogan ended up pursuing a policy of “equidistance” with every politically relevant player in his neighborhood. NATO, yes, but also S-400 from Russia. Allowing Russian military flights to use Turkish airspace, yes, but also sales of Bayraktar attack drones and other military equipment to Ukraine. Turkish Stream, yes, but also the Instanbul Canal.

Ending Montreaux

The 1936 Montreaux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits is but one of many Ataturk’s legacies. Signed in 1936 in the Montreaux Palace in Switzerland, it is arguably the only arms control treaty of the interwar era still extant. At the time, it represented an effort to put an end to the centuries of conflict over the control of the Black Sea Straits by giving Turkey control while at the same time limiting other powers’ ability to project naval military power in or out of the Black Sea. In some respects the restrictions on the passage of warships are very real. For example, the Convention allows no more than nine warships with a total displacement of 15 thousand tons to pass through the Straits at any one time. In practice it means a single US AEGIS cruiser or destroyer, and while nothing prevents additional ships from passing later, the total tonnage of foreign warships belonging to powers that do not have Black Sea coastlines of their own cannot exceed 30 thousand tons (45 thousand in exceptional cases), which, again, limits the US Navy to no more than 2-3 AEGIS ships. Combined with a ban on capital ships, which includes aircraft carriers, from foreign navies, it means NATO would be hard-pressed to mount a serious aeronaval operation against any target on the Black Sea. While Montreaux was not greatly tested during World War 2, and the Warsaw Pact aerial and naval preponderance meant challenging it would be a futile exercise in the first place, it has proven its worth in the last decade, particularly after the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Federation. Had it not been in place, NATO’s demonstrations of force in the Black Sea might have been considerably more muscular, to the point of accidentally triggering an armed confrontation. While Russia has always been a supporter of the Montreaux Convention, its current relative military weakness in the Black Sea, where it faces the navies of three NATO member states and currently also that of Ukraine, means the Convention is all the more important to its security.

However, the proposed Istanbul Canal is not covered by the Montreaux Convention, as it specifically pertains to regulating military traffic through the Straits. To be sure, interested parties are bound to argue the intent of the Convention was to cover the passage of naval warships in and out of the Black Sea, and establish a certain level of collective security there. With that in mind, it should not matter whether foreign warships enter the Black Sea via the Straits or through the new Istanbul Canal. Moreover, even when the Canal is functioning any warship entering the Black Sea will have to have passed through one of the two straits—the Dardanelles, since the Istanbul Canal, if completed, will bypass only one of the two straits. The Montreaux Convention specifically refers to the “regime of the Straits”, not a regime of the Bosphorus. Nevertheless, one can be equally certain that some interested parties will make the legalistic argument that that the Montreaux Convention only regulates the passage of warships that pass through both of the straits. Ships may, after all, gain access to the Sea of Marmara that separates the two straits without restrictions placed on ships passing into the Black Sea. Turkish officials have been ambiguous on the future status of the Montreaux Convention, should Istanbul Canal enter into operation.

Gas Warfare

The second dimension of the proposed canal is economic. While the Montreaux Convention does not regulate the passage of cargo ships through the straits, the Bosphorus in particular remains a relatively narrow and convoluted passageway. When one also considers the high population density on both banks of the Bosphorus, the use of this strait by oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers raises particular safety concerns. Indeed, up to about 2015 the Turkish government prohibited LNG carriers from traversing the Bosphorus. While this changed during Erdogan’s rule, the ever-present danger of a serious incident means it is only a temporary solution.

Thus even if Turkey opts to apply Montreaux Convention rules on passage of warships remain unaffected, Istanbul Canal will have the potential to considerably increase tanker traffic in and out of the Black Sea. In view of Erdogan’s interest in building up relations with Ukraine, and Ukraine’s search for alternative sources of natural gas, the Canal would have the effect of increasing Turkey’s sphere of influence over the Black Sea. At the moment, there is not a single LNG terminal anywhere on the Black Sea. However, that could change once the construction of the canal moves forward. The most likely candidates are Ukraine, with a proposed site in Odessa, and Romania, with the natural location being Konstanta. US interest in promoting its own interests and expanding political control through oil and gas exports means that either or both projects would be met with enthusiastic US support.

The Mentally Sick Man of Europe

While even the most optimistic estimates do not predict the canal could be built in less than a decade, at a cost approaching $100 billion. Turkey’s own financial situation is not such that it can allow itself such a luxury without undermining other projects, and Erdogan’s ability to alienate other leaders means outside funding might be difficult to come by, particularly if outside funding means outside control over the canal. Yet the whole idea behind the canal is that it should serve the sovereign needs of Turkey. In such circumstances, who would be willing to bankroll Erdogan’s unpredictable whims? No amount of refugee crises is liable to extract that kind of a contribution from the European Union, and US funding would naturally come with US control. So it is no surprise the project’s initial construction start date of 2013 has slipped rather dramatically. Even right now, in 2020, the Turkish government is only talking about launching a tender to select firms that would be engaged in its construction.

Therefore at the moment Istanbul Canal is confined to the realm of pipe dreams. In order for it to be completed, it would have to become the biggest state priority in Turkish politics, and would require international financial and possibly also technological support. While there is no doubting Erdogan’s determination to transform Turkey into a power player capable of dictating its will to its geopolitical neighbors and rivals, the country he governs lacks the capacity for transforming his dreams into reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Guardian on March 27:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: WHO

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

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

Image on the right is from the WHO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aviva Chomsky writes further,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

1 Worldometer, Coronavirus Cases, 28 March 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Health.mil

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

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

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

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

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

What does that mean?

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

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

How can you be sure?

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

Whoever thinks that governments end viruses is wrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what did you mean?

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

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

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

The economic damage is harder than the health damage

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

You need courage to present an opposing opinion

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

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

Well, it’s clear who you mean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leonardo Flores

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Artigo original em inglês:

Venezuela’s Coronavirus Response Might Surprise You

Tradução: Flávio Gonçalves

Imagem: Médicos venezuelanos em visita ao domicílio do COVID-19. Foto cortesia de @OrlenysOV

Leonardo Flores é especialista em política latino-americana e activista da CODEPINK.

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

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

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

Dear Ferdie:

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

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

Do let me know if you hear any more news.

Sincerely, “Dusty”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All images in this article are from the author