On April 15th, 27 members of Maghawir al-Thawra, a militant group in the Al-Tanf zone, which is both funded and trained by the US-led coalition, surrendered to the Syrian Army with all of their weapons and equipment. These included 9 vehicles, 11 weapons including 4 heavy machine guns and 5 grenade launchers, as well as up to 7,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibers for small arms, more than 20 RPG rounds, and 6 high-tech communication devices.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, while the Maghawir al-Thawra members were moving to surrender, they were attacked by US-controlled forces and lost 3 vehicles.
Oleg Zhuravlev, chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria said militants confessed that “they had been trained by US instructors to commit acts of sabotage at the oil-and-gas and transport infrastructure facilities, as well as to organize terror attacks on territories controlled by Syrian government forces.”
Later on the same day, Russian and Turkish forces conducted a 4th joint patrol along the M4 highway in southeastern Idlib. As on the previous occasions, the patrol took place along a short chunk of the highway west of Saraqib. The rest of the safe zone area agreed by Russian and Turkish leaders on March 5 in Moscow remains in the hands of radical militant groups.
In an official statement released on April 14, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham announced that it had formed 3 new units: the Talhah ibn Ubaydullah Brigade, led by Abu Hafs Binnish, the Ali ibn Abi Talib Brigade, led by Abu Baker Mheen and the Zubayr ibn al-Awam Brigade, led by Abu Mohamad Shura. The group provided no insight into the number of fighters in the new units or their tasks, but the estimated number of the new force is about 1,500.
Last month, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a large recruitment campaign to revive its depleted special forces, the “Red Bands,” as well as its Inghimasi [suicide bombers] force.
Despite the fact that militants profit from the ceasefire regime with direct military protection from Turkey and are using the gained time to re-arm their units and train new fighters, they see any kind of Turkish cooperation with Russia as a direct threat to their interests. In some cases, this even leads to acts of aggression and threats against their sponsor’s forces.
For example, in a video which recently appeared online, members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham were threatening to behead Turkish soldiers moving along the M4 highway and pin their heads to the top of the nearby earth barrier. This is the real face of the so-called moderate opposition that Ankara supports in Greater Idlib.
On April 15, an airstrike targeted an SUV in the town of Jdaidit Yabws right on the border with Lebanon. The vehicle allegedly belonged to Hezbollah, which has become the target of Israeli missiles. The first one missed allowing the passengers to exit the vehicle a few moments before it was hit by the second missile.
The UAE-based Sky News Arabia and al-Arabiya claimed that high-ranking commanders of Hezbollah were the target of the Israeli strike.
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The short answer is it’s unknown — why it’s better to be safe than sorry. More below on what may lie ahead.
COVID-19 is a more contagious version of seasonal flu/influenza.
According to Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases/Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina, the novel coronavirus may be more transmissible than previously believed — including in hospitals, nursing home, and other settings where large numbers of people interact.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 102 nursing homes in the state reported 551 COVID-19 cases over a 24-hour period.
With staff and visitors coming and going from facilities, it’s highly likely that some individuals will be infected and spread the virus to others. The same is true for hospitals.
Symptoms of seasonal flu/influenza and COVID-19 are similar, why misdiagnosis may be widespread.
Mayo Clinic infectious diseases specialist Dr. Gregory Poland explained that seasonal flu in the US and elsewhere “cause(s) many more deaths than COVID-19, and the tragedy is that many people die because they consider it ‘just the flu.’ ”
It happens every year like clockwork with no screaming headlines.
Millions of Americans contract it annually. Hundreds of thousands are hospitalized, and tens of thousands die.
In terms of the human toll and cost, it’s far more serious than COVID-19.
Pollard: “Right now, the number of COVID-19 cases pales in comparison to the number of flu cases. Unlike COVID-19, seasonal flu is in every state and every community in the US” — every year.
Symptoms of seasonal flu/influenza and COVID-19 can be mild or severe. Both illnesses can cause pneumonia and are contagious.
Seasonal flu can be caused by any one of a number of different virus strains — COVID-19 by the novel coronavirus.
Person-to-person transmission is similar for both. It’s believed that
COVID-19 droplets linger longer indoors after an infected person leaves the area.
Antiviral medications can ease flu symptoms, short of curing them.
There are no known treatments for COVID-19, claims otherwise exaggerated.
Scientists have been studying seasonal flu/influenza for decades, a considerable body of knowledge about it accumulated.
Because COVID-19 is new, there’s little reliable information on to what extent it can spread, what causes the disease, its seriousness, and number of potential deaths.
Based on what’s known, over 80% of cases are mild. Globally, around 6% of individuals infected with COVID-19 died, about 5% in the US.
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Protection researchers analyzed 44,672 COVID-19 cases from Dec. 31, 2019 – February 11, 2020.
They found 80.9% of cases to be mild, 13.8% severe, and 4.7% critical.
“Critical cases were (called) those that exhibited respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction/failure.”
Preliminary US data published by the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report showed about 12% of COVID-19 infected US individuals were hospitalized.
The death rate for seasonal flu in the US is around 0.1%. For COVID-19, it’s 1.4% so far — based on data through late February, published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Older adults, individuals with weakened immune systems and/or other major health issues are most vulnerable to infection.
Thailand Medical News (TMN) “serve(s) the medical industry (and) laymen interested in…the latest (health-related) developments and news” from the country, region and “around the world.”
Its latest edition believes COVID-19 outbreaks so far are a “dry run” for what likely lies ahead, adding:
Numbers of infected individuals worldwide “are expected to rise even more exponentially in the next few months despite claims by governments that the peak is happening and that ‘curves are being flatten’ as we are actually really just moving into the real first wave of the pandemic.”
It’s suspected that “at least tens of thousands of individuals are…asymptomatic,” who are unwittingly spreading disease to others.
Despite research and published data for the past four months, there’s relatively little scientifically known about the novel SARS-Cov-2 virus and the COVID-19 disease it causes.
TMN: “There has been so much fake news and misinformation about the virus and the disease from day one…”
“(R)ecommendations and guidelines that most countries are now basing their treatments protocols on are turning out be gross and criminal misinformation.”
“(A) lot of deaths could actually be attributed to this from drugs being used that cause cardiac failure in patients, drugs that actually caused toxic reactions, wrong usage of ventilators that actually resulted in deaths etc.”
No scientifically known efficacious COVID-19 treatments exist.
“(M)any diagnostic platforms we are using are actually not accurate especially with emerging new mutated strains,” said TMN.
“(A) new report has emerged that CT Scans might not even be giving the real picture.”
“Many…experimental drugs that are being used are not only toxic but in some cases can have long term (detrimental) effects” to human health.
“(I)n some cases…data (on) experimental drugs (used) are being manipulated by governments and pharmaceutical companies either for diplomatic dominance and leverage or for greed.”
Many natural/non-toxic and other potential treatments for COVID-19, including “certain common drugs… are being deliberately ignored or suppressed by those in power…”
Reports by establishment media are unreliable at best, harmful to human health and welfare at worst.
Officially reported data, especially in the US and West, are questionable.
Much information publicly reported about COVID-19 based on official sources are “based on hearsay and ‘half-baked’ studies,” according to TMN.
There’s little reliable information about mutated COVID-19 strains, how they evolve, and if recovered individuals from the virus are immune to infection from it, other strains, or for how long.
Are current coronavirus outbreaks wave one with others to follow that could be much more widespread?
TMN believes what’s ongoing “is not even the first wave,” adding:
What’s happening is “just starting to begin (and may) worse(n).”
There’s “a global shortage of medical equipment and drugs, and already food chains are being infected.”
If economies are opened too soon, “millions more (people may be) infected…”
Current conditions and what may follow could continue for some time.
Hindsight will explain best, including more knowledge about the novel coronavirus, related strains, and what treatments, if any, are efficacious.
For now, taking precautions to stay safe is sensible advice. Follow reliable independent sources of information, largely found online.
A Final Comment
Establishment media reports about the effectiveness of Gilead Sciences’ experimental remdesivir antiviral drug to treat COVID-19 patients, based on clinical trials, are greatly exaggerated, according to the company.
A Thursday statement said the following:
“We understand the urgent need for a Covid-19 treatment and the resulting interest in data on our investigational antiviral drug remdesivir.”
“The totality of the data need to be analyzed in order to draw any conclusions from the trial.”
“Anecdotal reports, while encouraging, do not provide the statistical power necessary to determine the safety and efficacy profile of remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19.”
“We expect the data from our Phase 3 study in patients with severe Covid-19 infection to be available at the end of this month, and additional data from other studies to become available in May.”
Gilead’s stock price soared on the news. Equity market futures in the US and abroad rose sharply — based on misinformation.
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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.”
The US president is in a warring mood. Having declared himself a president at war, a meaningless gesture given that the US is always, somewhere in the world, at war, finding necessary enemies in distraction was always going to be a priority. Donald Trump already had the “China virus” in his artillery, attaching nationality to pathogen. Now, and it took some time in coming by his standards, is the World Health Organization, a body which has, as its utopia, an idea of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
The US tends to contribute a large slice of funding to the WHO – some $400 million a year and ten times, say, what China does. It has been foot dragging lately: $200 million is still to be paid for the last round. (As a point of interest, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the second largest donor, with a touch over $200 million based on 2018-9 figures.) In a flourish of indignation, Trump has decided to freeze the revenue stream. On Tuesday, he claimed that the WHO had “failed in its basic duty” in responding to COVID-19.
“I am directing my administration to halt funding while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”
The White House has been eager to disgorge any material to press outlets keen to understand the nature of WHO villainy and corruption. Accusations read like mirror portraits, and the headline of one of the factsheets is hysterical: “Delaying world mobilization in the fight against COVID-19: Working with China to cover up the deadly spread of COVID-19, who hindered critical efforts that could have saved lives.”
The charge list on the White House fact sheet is the usual muddle of slung mud and mild accuracy: the role played by brave Taiwan; the WHO deference to “Chinese propaganda that covered up the virus’ spread and fatalities, praising Beijing for its false efforts and promoting the use of Chinese traditional medicine to treat the disease.”
Nor can we deny the obvious remark that the US was “not alone in its well-founded criticism. WHO has faced constant critique over its poor coordination, lack of transparency, and finances from multiple parties.” This would sound like a superb summary of the Trump administration, but the president lacks humour in such matters.
The organisation’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who had previously praised Trump as showing “leadership” in this crisis (we are all entitled to slips), was regretful. The US had been “a long-standing and generous friend… and we hope it will continue to be so.”
The WHO is the convenient whipping boy of pandemic and epidemic; of premature assessment or over eager commitment. Uncertainty is its curse, leaving it vulnerable in such instances as the swine flu epidemic, when it was accused of being too quick off the mark in declaring it to be a pandemic; or too foot slow in declaring the West African Ebola outbreak a pressing health emergency. And forgotten in its current shade of demonization by Washington is the fact that the WHO, for decades, was belittled for being an auxiliary of US foreign policy. “Like other United Nations (UN) agencies,” comes a sombre assessment in the American Journal of Public Health in 2016, “the WHO quietly abandoned its dreams of a collaborative community of nations and instead began to come to terms with international political realities. The agency moved closer to US foreign policy and became partially captive to US resources and priorities.”
By no means should the WHO be seen as angelic. No international organisation is, marked as they tend to by the gravy train effect, the flabby end of upper management more interested in first class travel than fighting healthy problems. At the same time, it has also operated with one hand tied behind its back, reliant, as it were, on the initial drips and drabs coming from the source country where an infectious outbreak has taken place. Its chief has, it is true, shown an unsettling tendency to praise the Chinese effort, which has veered between harsh and muscular concealment to harsh and muscular quarantine. But it is worth casting an eye to the more workmanlike nature of the process of how the WHO formed a picture of what was happening.
China’s first smidgens of information on COVID-19 reached the WHO on December 31, describing it as “a pneumonia of an unknown cause”. On January 5, the organisation, based on what was provided by Chinese sources, stated that the material showed “no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission.” No causal agent had been as yet identified or confirmed, and the WHO admitted to having “limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster of pneumonia of unknown etiology.” The advice given in that note now seem like the haunted warnings of premature assessment: no recommended specific measures for travellers; no application of travel or trade restrictions on China. Again, the caveat, weighty as ever, was always on what was in the hands of WHO functionaries, who, it should be said, are not entirely shock horrors in the epidemiology department.
In time, the picture became more muddled as information started to clot the canvas. The Wuhan Health Commission refused to rule out the possibility of human-to-human transmission. The WHO, as January progressed, started drawing parallels, basing its assessments on other coronaviruses. What this chaotic swirl of information does not seem to show, as Trump alleges, is that Taiwan in its exchanges with WHO, went heavy on the idea of human-to-human transmission.
Then came Trump’s own glorious words of praise, lost in consciousness but retrievable in cyberspace.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” he tweeted with boyish enthusiasm on January 25. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank President Xi!”
Not exactly hostile.
Trump’s change of heart revolves upon supposed tardiness in sending in that class of individuals he tends to despise: the experts.
“Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China’s lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death.”
Lacking in this resentful assessment is the point that plagues all international bodies: their need to respect the sovereignty of member states.
The immediate consequences of such funding will have the effect, as has been threatened before, of driving the WHO to bankruptcy. The front organisation responsible for marshalling the medical side of combating disease and infection will be hobbled. Trump can at least have one historical comfort: in pulling US funding, he joins the defunct Soviet Union in refusing to pay membership fees for several years after it had “deactivated” its membership. Grievances with international governance, be it over health, security, even sport, never age.
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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]
John Lennon, prolific as a writer as much as a performer, wrote this:
Working Class Hero
As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
There’s room at the top they’re telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
This was powerful stuff in the 70s as it should be now, 40+ years later. Sadly, nothing has changed for the better for us working stiffs. Matter of fact, it is even worse in 21st Century Amerika!! As this writer and countless other great writers have offered, the disparity between the Haves (1/4 of 1 % of our nation) and Have Nots (the rest of us, especially the working poor or ‘near poor’ is comparable to the Gilded Age (1870s to 1900 approx.).
This Military Industrial Empire has seen corporations literally eating up Mom and Pop America for generations. All one has to do is observe those Amazon delivery trucks flowing through your neighborhoods to realize the impact. Drive by those Wal-Mart Supercenters any hour of the day, even in this pandemic, to see how powerfully these giants control things. How many Wal-Mart Associates (don’t you just love how they call clerks such a nice name?) have to get food stamps and need Medicaid? As it is, over half of the corporation’s employees are Part Time, which means they get less in the way of benefits. Of course, both Amazon and Wal-Mart are NON UNION, thus, not so great for any such benefits that even terrible unions would secure them.
This writer remembers, with a sad prism, of when my late parents were in a nursing home from 2000-04. Of course, this was one of the millions of corporate owned and operated nursing homes, where top mgmt made out like the bandits they were, and the lowest tier employees…. How about the janitor they employed, who earned less than $8.00 an hour? This fellow, with an infirmed mother at home, had to work 33 hours weekly at the place (this was so he would not qualify as a Full Time employee), and then he picked up a 2nd job as janitor at the local hospital (also P/T) at about the same pay. No sick pay, no vacation pay, no holiday pay (I actually wrote about him when I saw him working on Christmas day), no health coverage… no nothing!
One day, when I visited my parents (I went by three times a week) I arrived as an aide was going to give my mom a shower. It was very difficult to move my semi invalid mother in and out of the bathroom and shower. I asked the aide ‘How much do you make an hour?’ He replied ‘Nine dollars an hour’. Nine dollars!! I knew that the nurses at the place were getting around $ 22 and hour… and they deserved more! But $ 9.00 and hour to wipe our parent’s asses clean when they sometimes shit themselves? Can one even imagine how difficult it is to do such work? For $ 9.00 and hour? No union, no real benefits to speak of. I remember, before my mother passed away, and I received, as their legal representative, a printout of the monthly medications she was getting, along the costs billed to Medicaid. It was astounding! What they were pushing into her old and frail body was incredible! Did anyone ever hear of homeopathy? Of course, the elder care doctor assigned to her came and went ‘whenever’ as the nurses and aides did all the grunt work. Her doc did such a great job that my mom died because she got gangrene in her foot from an infection that it seems no one seemed to notice. They finally hospitalized her and had to cut off BOTH her legs from the knee down… and she died a few days later… better for her, believe me.
As the late Edward R. Murrow would say it “This is Amerika” Maybe this tragic pandemic will finally wake up the ‘Sleeping giant’ of our mass of working stiffs. Yes, the Wobblies were correct. We need ONE BIG UNION to save us from the vipers of this empire.
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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Cross Currents and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
The world is now desperate to find ways to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and to find effective treatments. As of April 6, more than 200 clinical trials of COVID-19 treatments or vaccines that are either ongoing or recruiting patients. New ones are being added every day, as the case count in the U.S. (and globally) skyrockets. The drugs being tested range from repurposed flu treatments to failed ebola drugs, to malaria treatments that were first developed decades ago. Here, we take a look at several of the treatments that doctors hope will help fight COVID-19.
Antiviral EIDD-2801 shows promise
An oral drug called EIDD-2801 has shown promise in test-tube experiments with human lung and airway cells, scientists reported online April 6 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The drug might even be more efficient at blocking the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, than remdesivir, a drug being tested against COVID-19 in clinical trials that began in March. While remdesivir stops the novel coronavirus from replicating entirely, EIDD-2801 introduces genetic mutations into the virus’s RNA. As the RNA makes its copies, so many damaging mutations accumulate that the virus is no longer able to infect cells, Scientific American reported. The drug also seems to work against several RNA viruses, and as such, the researchers said it could be a multipurpose antiviral.
And unlike remdesivir, which needs to be given intravenously, this drug could be swallowed as a pill. “EIDD-2801 is an oral drug that could be administered at home, early after diagnosis,” lead study author Timothy Sheahan, of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said in a statement from the journal. “This has the potential to be as ubiquitous as Tamiflu in the future, as long as it proves to be safe and effective in people.”
The research was completed by scientists at Emory University, UNC Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. The Miami, Florida-based Ridgeback Biotherapeutics has licensed the drug and was just granted permission by the Food and Drug Administration to start human trials of the drug over the next few months, the company said in a statement.
Japan flu drug
A drug developed by Fujifilm Toyama Chemical in Japan is showing promising outcomes in treating at least mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, Live Science previously reported.
The antiviral drug, called favipiravir or Avigan, has been used in Japan to treat influenza, and last month, the drug was approved as an experimental treatment for COVID-19 infections, Pharmaceutical Technology reported.
So far, reports suggest the drug has been tested in 340 individuals in Wuhan and Shenzhen. “It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment,” Zhang Xinmin, of China’s science and technology ministry, said March 17, The Guardian reported.
The drug, which works by preventing certain viruses from replicating, seemed to shorten the duration of the virus as well as improve lung conditions (as seen in X-rays) in tested patients, though the research has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed science journal.
A separate study, published April 8 to the preprint database medrXiv, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, compared favipiravir to another flu drug, umifenovir (Arbidol). In the randomized, controlled study of 240 people, favipiravir did not help people recover faster compared to umifenovir. However, favipiravir did significantly shorten the time that people had fevers or coughs, the study found.
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but preliminary research in human and primate cells suggests that the drugs could effectively treat COVID-19.
A 2005 study found that chloroquine could quell the spread of SARS-CoV when applied to infected human cells in culture. SARS-CoV is closely related to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2002. Chloroquine disrupts the ability of the SARS-CoV virus to enter and replicate in human cells, Live Science previously reported. The cell culture studies of SARS-CoV-2 revealed that the drug and its derivative hydroxychloroquine undermine the novel virus’ replication in a similar way.
Doctors in China, South Korea, France and the U.S. are now giving the drug to some patients with COVID-19 with promising, albeit anecdotal, results so far. The FDA is organizing a formal clinical trial of the drug.
As of Feb. 23, seven clinical trials had been registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry to test whether COVID-19 infections could be treated with hydroxychloroquine. In addition, the University of Minnesota is studying whether taking hydroxychloroquine can protect people living with infected COVID-19 patients from catching the virus themselves.
In one heavily referenced study, conducted in France, a small number of patients with COVID-19 received either hydroxychloroquine alone or hydroxychloroquine in combination with an antibiotic called azithromycin. The authors reported that detectable concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 fell significantly faster in the study participants than coronavirus patients at other French hospitals who did not receive either drug. In six patients also given azithromycin, this promising effect appeared to be amplified.
However, the CDC noted that the small, non-randomized study “did not assess clinical benefit[s]” associated with the treatment; in other words, the study did not probe whether the treated patients were more likely to recover and survive their illness. Additionally, the agency advised that doctors should be cautious when giving either drug to patients with chronic disease, such as kidney failure, and especially those “who are receiving medications that might interact to cause arrhythmias.”
A failed Ebola drug
A Gilead Sciences drug that was originally tested in people with Ebola, remdesivir, is being repurposed to see if it can effectively treat COVID-19.
The drug was found not to be effective in Ebola, but in lab studies, it has proven effective at inhibiting the growth of similar viruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In a petri dish, remdesivir can prevent human cells from becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to a letter published in the journal Nature in February.
The Food and Drug Administration has currently approved use of remdesivir for compassionate use, meaning only patients with severe COVID-19 disease can be approved for treatment. In other countries, requirements to receive remdesivir may be less stringent.
Five clinical trials in China and the U.S. are currently evaluating whether remdesevir can reduce complications or shorten the disease course in COVID-19 patients, the medical news site STAT reported.
Many doctors are excited about the drug’s potential.
“There’s only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy,” Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization said last month, as reported by STAT. “And that’s remdesivir.”
George Thompson, an infectious disease specialist at UC Davis Medical Center who treated an early, severe case of COVID-19, told Science magazine that their patient got better after getting the drug, about 36 hours after diagnosis. The doctors initially thought the patient would die, Thompson said.
However, such anecdotal evidence can’t demonstrate effectiveness, and the lab has yet to analyze blood samples to show that the patient’s clinical improvement following the administration of remdesivir coincided with a drop in viral load (concentration of viral particles). On the flip side, a study posted to the preprint database medRXiv looked at three patients treated with remdesivir. The study, which was not peer-reviewed, found no clear time-dependent relationship between getting the drug and seeing improvements in symptoms. The patients also experienced rectal bleeding, elevated liver enzymes, vomiting and nausea, which could potentially be tied to the drug.
Another quandary is that antiviral drugs generally work better the earlier patients get them, but because remdesivir is not FDA-approved for general use, only patients with the most severe, and late-stage, disease, qualify for its use in clinical trials, Thompson told Science.
On Sunday (March 22), Gilead Sciences announced that they were temporarily halting compassionate use of remdesivir, due to “overwhelming demand.” Instead, they are focusing on approving previously submitted requests and streamlining the process, while directing people to enroll in clinical trials, STAT reported.
An HIV drug combination
The antiviral drug kaletra, a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, generated early excitement. However, new data from China, published March 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine, could not detect a benefit when patients took the drug.
A total of 199 people with low oxygen levels were randomized to either receive kaletra or a placebo. While fewer people taking kaletra died, the difference was not statistically significant, meaning it could have been due to random chance. And both groups had similar levels of virus in their blood over time.
However, other studies are still ongoing, and there’s still a possibility this combination could show some benefit. As with other antivirals, this drug would likely work better if given earlier in the disease course.
An immunosuppressant and an arthritis drug
For some patients with COVID-19, the virus itself doesn’t do the worst damage. Rather, in some people their immune system goes into overdrive and launches an all-out assault known as a cytokine storm. That immune overreaction can damage tissue and ultimately kill people.
To quiet such cytokine storms, doctors are now trying an immunosuppressant known as Actemra, or tocilizumab. The drug is approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. It blocks a cell receptor that binds something called interleukin 6 (IL-6). IL-6 is a cytokine, or a type of protein released by the immune system, that can trigger dangerous inflammatory cascades.
On March 19, pharmaceutical company Roche announced that it was launching a trial to see if tocilizumab could improve outcomes in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. One group will receive the drug plus other standard treatments, while another group will receive a placebo, plus standard treatments.
Regeneron is enrolling patients in a clinical trial to test another IL-6 inhibitor, known as sarilumab (kevzara), for treating COVID-19 pneumonia. The logic behind using sarilumab is similar to that for tocilizumab.
A blood pressure drug
Losartan is a generic blood-pressure medication that some scientists are hoping could help patients with COVID-19. The University of Minnesota has launched two clinical trials using the inexpensive, generic drug. The first would evaluate whether losartan can prevent multi-organ failure in those hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia. The second would evaluate if the drug can prevent hospitalizations in the first place, Reuters reported.
Losartan works by blocking a receptor, or doorway into cells that the chemical called angiotensin II uses to enter the cells and raise blood pressure. SARS-CoV-2 binds to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, and it’s possible, the thinking goes, that because losartan might block those receptors, it may prevent the virus from infecting cells.
Complicating things, a paper published March 11 in the journal The Lancet has raised the possibility that common drugs for hypertension, such as ACE inhibitors and so-called angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs), which includes losartan, might actually spur the body to make more ACE2, thereby increasing the ability of the virus to infiltrate cells. A recent study of 355 COVID-19 patients in Italy (study in Italian) found that three-quarters of the patients who died had hypertension, and the authors propose this is one reason for their increased susceptibility.
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Sarnia-Lambton’s MP wants Canada to implement COVID-19 cures she claims have been proven in the United States, but are opposed by Canadian health experts.
Marilyn Gladu, the former Conservative health critic, said the Liberals are talking about waiting for a vaccine — but that could take years.
“In the United States, they’ve been successful with the treatment of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc sulphate,” said Gladu. “They’ve tried this on thousands of COVID patients, with nearly 100 per cent recovery rate, and so the FDA has approved this as an emergency measure, but Canada has not.”
Gladu said the prudent thing is to start taking advantage of medication options like the U.S. is.
“So, while our government continues to have, what I would call, ineffective programs to get money to people and businesses that are struggling, I think the real answer is for people that are seniors, for people that have underlying medical issues, yes, they need to be isolating themselves and protecting themselves, but for the rest of the public, we need to get back to work.”
Gladu said she recognizes that people are struggling.
“Every [COVID-19] death is tragic. But, the reality is more people are dying of suicide, more people are dying from cancer and smoking and we don’t shut the economy down for that. So, where we see that there’s a remedy available and we see that for most of the population this is not a concern, people are losing their businesses in Sarnia-Lambton, they’re losing their livelihoods and there’s no end in sight.”
Despite Gladu’s claims, Bluewater Health Chief of Staff Dr. Michel Haddad said there hasn’t been any evidence to show that hydroxychloroquine has been helpful in the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.
“There’s a lot of talk out there about different treatments,” said Haddad. “There’s no single agent that actually kills this virus. The Tamiflu we use for influenza is non-effective. We have been using cocktails of antibiotics, without real evidence to be honest with you.”
Haddad said he’s seen patients die and survive after using hydroxychloroquine.
“The most effective way to control this [COVID-19] is having a vaccine. Then we can control the spread and have hard immunity, but we’re not there yet and that’s going to be months away. So the first step is physical distancing, slow things down, stay away, washing hands, you can’t just stay in for a year of course, but at some point, as we loosen up, we have to be careful how we go back to work again once the government says it’s safe to do so.”
Haddad said he’s very encouraged by the province’s decision to delay things for four more weeks. He said it will give a sense of how many cases we have, if they’re still dropping and if we’re on the other side of the curve locally.
-With files from Stephanie Chaves
The full interview between Melanie Irwin and Marilyn Gladu done April 14, 2020 at 5 p.m. can be heard below:
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Featured image: Sarnia-Lambton MP Marilyn Gladu speaks during Question Period at the House of Commons. December 11, 2019. (Screenshot from video of Question Period)
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An old road between Balikpapan and Samarinda passes through the poor villages, through rural slums, as well as stalls selling second-rate local fruits. The cheap, unhygienic eateries, are now half-empty. While the traffic is still heavy here, the ‘real action’ is somewhere else; a few kilometers away, where the new motorway is being constructed; a motorway which will, eventually, connect Balikpapan, Samarinda and potentially the new Indonesian capital city which is expected to rise somewhere around the now dirt poor Sepaku Village, in the area of Penajam Paser Utara.
The government of President Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi) is promising that the new capital will touch the skies, eclipsing places like Brasilia, Malaysian Putra Jaya, or Canberra. Nothing short of Dubai or Manhattan, in the middle of the logged out, monstrously scarred, poisoned island of Borneo, known as “Kalimantan” in Indonesia.
While virtually all Indonesian cities could easily be defined as urbanistic disasters, the new capital is supposed to be totally different, boasting green wide avenues and impressive architectural masterpieces that would be envied by the entire world.
Indonesia has already made one such an attempt in its recent history – it promised to convert its island of Batam which is located just a stone’s throw from Singapore – into something much more impressive than Singapore itself (a city-state with one of the highest quality of life on Earth).
Two years ago, I travelled to Batam, where I discovered a grotesque, bitter reality. I reported it in one of my previous essays entitled, “Batam Island – Indonesia’s Sorry Attempt to Create Second Singapore”. The island had been thoroughly destroyed. Nothing public was left, and nothing, absolutely nothing was built for the people. Precisely just as in all other parts of Indonesia. The ugliness of the urban areas of Batam was unimaginable. Corruption was omnipresent. The feeble attempt to turn the island into an industrial, productive area, collapsed. What survived, at least for some period of time, was the prostitution and gambling. Eventually, the gambling ‘industry’ collapsed, too. Only prostitution, together with some sand exports to Singapore, prevailed.
Presently, there is not one single city in Indonesia, which could be defined as livable. Not one.
Why would the new capital be any different? Why would Indonesian people believe the government, which has been known for lying, for building sand castles, and for many long decades of absolute ineptness?
There is not one elegantly built sidewalk, anywhere in Indonesia. So why should there, suddenly be, hundreds of kilometers of beautiful avenues and promenades in the middle of Borneo?
All public places, in all the Indonesian cities, have been commercialized, privatized, or outright stolen. Why would it be different now? What is this talk about big parks, green areas? Every big project in Jakarta, Surabaya or Bandung begins like that: endless promises of “city walks”, of malls overflowing with green areas. In the end: nothing! A concrete sprawl, parking lots, and nothing public whatsoever. Maritime cities lacking promenades, urban centers without public parks, concert halls, or first-rate museums. There is no place on Earth like this: absolute extreme corruption, and spite for the people.
So, is there any reason why the new capital would change the entire culture of graft, or lack of productivity and imagination? It will be, after all, constructed by the same individuals, same developers, same companies and the same government, as in all other parts of the country.
Along the old road on which we drive, most of the people live in poverty, or if international standards were to apply: in misery.
At Bukit Suharto (Suharto Hill), a peripheral area of the planned new capital, Ms. Niah, an old woman living alone in her shack, selling traditional rice cakes for a living, is not hopeful about her future. Here, as elsewhere in Indonesia, governments have come and gone, dropping empty promises, leaving people with basically nothing, just wooden walls, stained mattresses, and pasrah, which can be loosely translated as ‘submissive melancholy’.
“I did not know about the plan to move the capital here, by the government. They tell us nothing. What I know is that I have never felt the benefits of development carried out by the government. For decades, there was no help that I’d receive. I don’t even get that subsidized rice delivery, which each and every poor Indonesian is entitled to, at least in theory. I get nothing. On the contrary, I actually feel disadvantaged by what is called development. Since the government built the toll road not far from here, the traffic of the vehicles on this road has been reduced, and as a result, my rice cakes do not sell.”
A few hundred meters away, Mr. Abdul Gani, a retired civil servant actually worries about his future. The government may force him out of his home, if it felt that his land may be at least of some use for the new capital project.
“A few weeks ago, an officer came to the houses in our village to collect information on the ownership deeds for land, buildings and fields, without giving us a hint of what reasons the data collected is for. Then, there were rumors circulating in this area, that our land would be taken, confiscated by the government, because we do not have ownership certificates. Everything is vague for us. We don’t know what to expect.”
“Dubai? Manhattan? Really? Please be serious. No, we don’t believe that the government could build a city like Dubai here.”
All along the road, we hardly encounter any native people of Borneo. The entire area is now populated by so called trans-migrants – individuals and families that were injected here, mainly from Java, South Sulawesi and Bali, after the 1965 military coup orchestrated by the West and by the Indonesian right-wing elites and religious cadres. Trans-migrants have been historically placed along the important roads, effectively fragmenting Kalimantan/Borneo. The right-wing, in fact fascist dictator Suharto considered Dayak native people of this island to be ‘Communist’, because of their traditional, communal culture and way of life. He did not trust them. In fact, he busied himself destroying their “long houses”, and their philosophy of life.
Trans-migrants have also been playing an extremely important role in Borneo, which is one of the wealthiest, in terms of natural resources, islands on Earth: their increasing presence has guaranteed that the local people would not be able to one day unite and demand independence from the colonialist Java.
The entire island is now ruined as a result of Jakarta’s rule, as well as the “trans-migration”. It has been devastated, burned, deforested, poisoned. Once resembling paradise on earth, it is now scarred and humiliated. Its original inhabitants are subjugated, kept divided and badly informed, and uneducated on purpose.
In an unusually bold report, the Jakarta Globe wrote on December 18, 2019:
“A study has revealed the names of numerous national and local politicians who would reap profits from the capital city relocation mega-project, including the brother of defense minister Prabowo Subianto, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, and the coordinating minister of maritime affairs and investment, Luhut Binsar Panjaitan.
The study, “Who Is the New Capital City For?” was conducted by a coalition of civil organizations; Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi), Trend Asia and Forest Watch Indonesia, and took three months to complete.
It studied the oligarchic connections in the mega-project and its environmental and societal impacts.
The report revealed names of people who have assets and concessions in the extractive industries such as coal, palm oil and lumber as well as energy plants in the area of East Kalimantan where the new capital is going to be built.
It also suggested the project could be used as a smokescreen to brush off the corporations’ dirt for the environmental damage they have done there.
Within the 180,000-hectare area for the new so-called smart city, there are 162 mining, forestry, palm oil, coal and property concessions.
Around 158 of them are coal mines that have left at least 94 deadly-deep holes in the area…”
We met two leading researchers from the Institut Dayakologi (“Dayakology Institute”), Richardus Giring and Julianto Makmur, in the city of Pontianak, West Kalimantan.
Mainly, we wanted to know, whether the relocation of the capital to Borneo would benefit or harm the local people.
Mr. Giring elaborated:
“Since the issue of relocation of the capital was endorsed by the Jokowi government, I have never come across any open and transparent analysis. All the studies tend to show positive aspects, without considering the risks and negative impacts of the relocation; ignoring the interests of the Kalimantan people. There should be a serious study, analyzing what the relocation of the capital would do to the locals.”
“Aside from seeing the relocation of the capital as a solution to what is happening in Jakarta, this plan should also be seen from the perspective of the impacts on Kalimantan and its people. We do not want this capital relocation to be a kind of escape from the problems that Jakarta is facing; we don’t want to move those problems to Kalimantan.”
“The ecological injustice and the destruction of the social structure of the people of Kalimantan have been occurring since a long time ago. Consistently, various government sectoral (forestry, energy, etc.) have only made Kalimantan an area of plunder, be it its forests or other natural resources. The Kalimantan that we see today is a dreadful legacy of the past and present. Although there are still few areas of pristine tropical forests left on the island, they are only small remnants.”
Map showing relocation of the new Indonesian capital to the island of Borneo (Map: Caitlin Dempsey using Natural Earth Quick Start)
Working all over the island, filming and writing about the dreadful situation, for years, we could only agree. And Mr. Giring continued:
“What’s the point of promising a big, beautiful and magnificent new capital, if it is not preceded by proper and careful planning and study? So far, what they have done is only feasibility studies based on positive predictions. No studies on the risks, or on the negative impacts that may arise. If it is not done carefully, the whole thing will definitely turn out to be a blunder. We know that this is not just a plan: a lot of resources have already been spent. But still, the important thing is to anticipate beforehand what lies ahead; to study risks, the environmental impacts.”
“If not, people will have no sense of ownership. The new capital will only belong to Jakarta’s elites, and to Jokowi. And in the end, it will only move the problems from Jakarta to Kalimantan. It’s beginning to look like a beauty contest, where the important thing is how things look. As long as they appear to look magnificent, great! Short video clips created by designers/architects are shown everywhere by the mass media. But it is irrelevant to the people of Borneo and for the entire Indonesia.”
“I imagine that there will be many potential conflicts that will arise, such as land-grabbing caused by the politics of the state administration. There will also be an exodus of people to the new capital which will certainly trigger conflict with local people.”
“Well, this is our paradigm of development, which tends to sacrifice the interests of small people for the sake of the elites. On many occasions, here, development means sacrificing the poor/small people. In this case, they are being sacrificed solely for the sake of an ‘image or impression,’ as if they were not human beings with dignity.”
While the propaganda that is promoting the new capital is all over the Indonesian mass media, here in Kalimantan there is hardly any information, even about the precise location. The area designated by Jokowi’s regime is enormous. Everything has been hushed up, camouflaged, covered in secrecy. We ask, and people tell us where to go, but they are not sure. We drive back and forth, frustrated and tired.
On the second day, we finally came to a security post. Behind, the enormous and devastated land can be seen. We are told that it belongs to the retired General Prabowo Subianto, a man who ran against President Widodo in the last elections, in 2019, and after being defeated, was elevated to the post of Minister of Defense of the Republic of Indonesia. A former Lieutenant-General, he was accused of countless violations of human rights, in the territories occupied by Java, and in Jakarta itself, where his troops were involved in kidnapping and torturing student protesters.
Several security guards man the post. One of them is called Hambali, a gate security officer employed by the company PT. ITCI, which is owned by Prabowo Subianto himself.
Behind the barrier and the post, there is the vast location of the planned city center of the new capital.
Although in theory, this place is supposed to be “public”, after spotting us, the security personnel immediately go to work, asking us questions, checking IDs, making phone calls to some undisclosed locations. Our documents are photocopied.
“So, is this going to be an Indonesian Dubai?” We ask. “Or perhaps Manhattan, or Canberra?”
The senior guard utters laconically, before lifting up the barrier and letting us pass:
“I just hope that the new capital will be built as planned, although I am not sure that the new city will look like Dubai or Canberra or Manhattan.”
What follows is a nightmare, combined with Kafkaesque, grotesque images. Indonesia always manages to surprise, and to shock me.
First, on the road shoulder, there are several broken trucks, full of timber. The drivers and helpers are busy fixing their engines and tires. Flies and other insects are everywhere. Indiscriminate logging is obviously going on, up to now.
Our car moves on; begins climbing the rolling hills. The devastation is appalling, even by the standards of Borneo/ Kalimantan. Entire hills have been deforested, scarred. Huge, monstrous stubs of enormous trees line up the road. There are all sorts of makeshift ‘reforestation’ projects, obviously conducted to impress the local media. The result of all this is terrifying. The higher we get, the greater the scale of destruction: the total ruin of the island can be seen for tens of kilometers, in every direction. If this was once, decades and centuries ago, a paradise, it is now hell.
On top of all this, stands a small metal structure, called Sudarmono Tower, put together in the most amateurish manner. It is supposed to resemble the Eiffel Tower. Local people drive here; they climb it; adults, children, even grandmothers. There is nothing else to do, in this part of the world: the villages are encircled by palm oil plantations, mines and other commercial ventures. Now they have new entertainment – me. They stare, point fingers, repeating, as they always do when they see a foreigner: “bule, bule” (derogatory for “albino”).
We approached Ms. Imah, who was visiting the tower together with her family. She is from Sepaku Dua. She has no idea about politics, or about the ‘colonizing and then plundering’ of Kalimantan. If anything, she is one of the ‘colonizers’, but definitely not one of those who improved their lives by moving to the island. She knows nothing about the ‘grand plan’. Or, she knows very little. All she worries about are insignificant details: noise and possible overcrowding:
“This is my first time visiting the location of the planned center of the capital. Personally, I am worried about the relocation of the new capital to our village. Now, we live in a quiet and peaceful environment. I am sure there will be more and more people coming and it will become crowded.”
She does not know that she is living in thorough misery. Almost nobody around here, or even in the middle of the monstrous Jakarta and Surabaya slums, realize their conditions. ‘Quiet and peaceful’, she describes her environment. Wooden shacks, a medical and education system near the hard sub-Saharan African bottom, an entire island robbed, with more than 100% of its land (yes, you are reading correctly) sold to private businesses.
Ms Ponadi, a shop owner, from Sepaku Village, thinks only about the possible compensation. But she is not even sure that the compensation will be provided by the government:
“We came to this village decades ago, as trans-migrants, who started a new life from scratch. Now I already have enough land to pass on to my daughters and sons. Honestly, I would not be willing if we were told to move, to another place. If we had to move, the government would have to provide adequate compensation, for the hard-earned lives we have built here for decades.”
This land she is talking about used to belong to this island, and to the people of this island. But she does not understand. First, the fascist government sent them here, to spread their culture and religion, all around this island, which used to be inhabited by enormous, advanced and clearly socialist cultures. Now, the Javanese regime wants to cash in on its ‘investment’. Ms. Ponadi concludes, somehow sarcastically:
“How could they possibly be able to build a city like Dubai here? I am not convinced at all. Tall buildings will immediately collapse to the ground”.
She laughs, loudly. We don’t. All this is not funny. It is, somehow, damn serious.
We drive through Borneo, exhausted, depressed, and with the feeling that something terrible is once again taking place here.
For almost three years we have been filming and talking to people, all over this tremendous island, the 3rd largest on Earth, after Greenland and Papua. We have been documenting mighty rivers like Kapuas, now poisoned by mercury, hills leveled to the ground by mining companies, tremendous sprawls of land deforested, and converted into palm oil plantations. Chemicals, black carcinogenic creeks, and filth, are everywhere. Coal barges exporting the bowels of the island to all corners of the world. Villages and towns surrounded by monstrous commercial enterprises. Beaches covered by concrete, and then abandoned. Children playing in the middle of the roads. Sick people running, escaping to the Malaysian part of the island, where the medical care is much better and cheaper.
For almost three years, we have been collecting material for a huge documentary film, and a book.
The world knows nothing about Borneo; or almost nothing. Yet, its demise is as important as that of Amazonia. And the destruction is much more rapid here, than anything recorded in Brazil.
Our nerves are stretched. It is all one big insanity, and we are alone, totally alone in this: no support and no backing. And this huge, enormous country all around us, choking us. The Fourth most populous nation on Earth, totally indoctrinated by the pro-Western, pro-business regime, with hardly any diversity, with no mercy, no production and hardly any enthusiasm. A country that only consumes, and which lives off cutting down trees, polluting rivers and selling its riches to multi-national companies.
A Balinese thinker, Gung Alit, wrote a comment for this report:
“I do not agree with moving the capital to Kalimantan, because I prefer the forest to be sustainable. Even now they are already destroyed, so what would the forests look like if they really move the capital? Kalimantan Island would be more devastated. And once it gets more devastated, they will move again. That is ridiculous.”
Yes, they always move again. They come like locust, from Java, supported by Western, foreign, companies. They stay for as long as there is something to plunder. Then, they move again. It is because Indonesia does not produce, it only plunders, and buys toys for the rich, after selling the loot. It is a terribly frightening sight. Everything is make-believe: statistics lie, planners lie. The country has been ransacked, by less than 1% of the population.
And now, the Indonesian President, a megalomaniac, little businessman from Surakarta (Solo) is dreaming about something really huge. He is like some African king who drains his national resources, in order to build a useless, huge palace or a cathedral in the middle of the jungle.
The Diplomat published an article on April 3, 2020, by By Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat and Dimas Permadi. It contains two interesting paragraphs:
“It is also important to note that domestically Jokowi’s plan to move the capital has been a contentious issue, which has taken a toll on the president’s image. In fact, a survey carried out by the KedaiKOPI survey institute revealed that 95.7 percent of Jakartans reject the plan. Scholars have also argued that the plan is not feasible and would not solve the underlying issues the government aims to address.”
Naturally, to “elevate” the project, Jokowi selected several unsavory individuals:
“To realize this gigantic plan, Jokowi formed a new capital steering board consisting of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
Jokowi says he loves business, and he is enamored with the U.S. president Donald Trump. He can hardly believe that from a furniture seller he has gone ‘so far’, meeting the most notorious leaders of the West, shaking their hands, telling them how much they are wanted in Indonesia.
He talks big. He shuts up his critics. Journalists and activists are disappearing, or outrightly getting murdered. Laws muzzling any criticism are being introduced, gradually and consistently. Nobody dares to guess what may come next. New Order (“Ode Baru”) – the fascist pro-business regime of General Suharto, is being re-introduced.
In this political climate; in a climate of fear, intimidation and corruption, the new capital city of Indonesia is expected to rise.
As we sit in a car, in silence, driving towards Balikpapan City, my left eye begins to ache. It is just the beginning of a horror which I will have to face in just two weeks from now. My stomach has been destroyed, as always when I work in Indonesia, particularly in Kalimantan. Soon, both eyes, attacked by a local parasite, will collapse. It will happen in Hong Kong. And I will have to fly home, to Chile, half-blind and ruined after working in Kalimantan. My journey will take 8 days; from Hong Kong to Bangkok, to Seoul, Amsterdam, Surinam, Brazil and Peru.
In a few weeks, COVID-19 will come to Indonesia, but instead of mobilizing, Jokowi’s regime will tell its citizens to pray and drink herbal medicine. In such a situation, a tremendous amount of people may die, silently, and as always in Indonesia, unreported.
But now we slowly progressed towards the main regional center, and its airport. Ahead of us, there will be a horrid flight to Pontianak, in two days, on a filthy and overcrowded Boeing 737, so filthy that it resembles an old bus in some collapsed country. Then, a flight to Jakarta on the national carrier Garuda Indonesia, where several people sat around us would be emitting dry, persistent coughs. Unlike in the Philippines, Vietnam and of course China, no temperature checking, no medical checkpoints, until much, much later.
Indonesia is a collapsed country. I depicted it in my documentary film “DOWNFALL!” The fact that it has crumbled is a well-hidden secret. If it does something really well, it obstructs the truth, tricking its own citizens and the world. It shows its true face only when emergencies strike, as basically nothing works there: rescue operations, the medical system, or transportation.
Before leaving Balikpapan, we talked to several individuals there. Although in Indonesia, more than half of the population lives in misery (if international statistics were to apply), people here apply standardized neocon “logic”. Even in the slums, all over the archipelago, people use stock market jargon. It looks unnatural, terrifying, perverse.
Lusi (known, like most people in Indonesia, by only one name), a housewife, a visitor to the Mall Pentacity, in Balikpapan, readily offered her “analyses”:
“I agree and support the relocation of the capital. It will boost economic development, especially in the property businesses.”
Would she, personally, participate in the “economic development and property business”? When asked, she did not know what to say.
Mr. Arip Harahap, a senior architect, based in Jakarta, declared for this report, that moving the capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan, is “immoral”. He elaborated:
“First, it is not based on a proper planning and design process. All technical, socio-cultural studies are still too shallow. Second, considering the country’s economic situation, it is such a wasteful way of spending a budget. Third, it seems that there are the interests of groups close to the central government that will benefit from the project.”
Apparently, there are many such interests, of many groups close to the government. As the government and such groups are intertwined, forming one system, a regime, which has been, for long decades, cannibalizing the nation.
The Jakarta Globe continued its damning report, naming names:
“The corporations and the oligarchs have a chance to ensure their investments are safe with this project. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact the indigenous Paser Balik tribe had their land taken away by ITCI Hutan Manunggal in the 1960s,” Jatam coordinator Merah Johansyah said at the report’s launch in Jakarta on Tuesday.
The names mentioned in the report include lumber businessman Sukanto Tanoto, the owner of ITCI Hutan Manuggal; Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s younger brother; Rheza Herwindo, the son of corruption convict and ex-House speaker Setya Novanto; Thomas Aquinas Djiwandono, the treasurer of the Gerindra Party and Prabowo’s nephew; lawyer and ex-Justice Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra; and the ubiquitous Luhut.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced the location of the new capital city, at Penajam Paser Utara in East Kalimantan, on April 29, only 12 days after he won the presidential election.
“The government never asked for approval from the people of East Kalimantan. The decision [to move the capital there] was taken 12 days after the presidential election without consulting the public. That was a crime as far as public participation in politics is concerned,” Merah said.”
Investigating oppression against the indigenous people in Indonesia, as well as the destruction of the environment all over the archipelago by the collusion of local oligarchs, foreign multi-nationals and Indonesian government, is an extremely dangerous job, particularly now, under Jokowi’s administration. People get hunted down, killed, arrested and in the case of foreigners, regularly deported.
Recently, Philip Jacobson, 30, was arrested and imprisoned in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, after attending meetings of the indigenous people of Kalimantan, and reporting for Mongabay.
The Environmental science website, Mongabay, is an outspoken publication, that is persistently critical of the situation in Indonesia. Regarding the new capital, it reported on 6 January, 2020:
“The site of the new capital on the island of Borneo is home to 162 existing concessions, most of them for coal mining, according to a report from a coalition of NGOs. This contradicts the government’s claim that the city will be built on vacant land, and raises the prospect of the concession-holders exploiting the opportunity for profit, said Merah Johansyah from the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), one of the NGOs in the coalition.
“If the government says it’s going to be the public who will benefit [from relocating the capital], that’s a big lie,” he said at the launch of the report in Jakarta. “The ones that will benefit are these companies.”
And so, the story goes. Six decades of attempts to move the Indonesian capital, from Jakarta to Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. First, the enthusiastic effort by President Sukarno, to raise the socialist, Soviet-style city of Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan, literally in the middle of nowhere. Then, the U.S.-backed fascist coup put a full stop to all the progressive aspirations and people-oriented development. Recently, after getting re-elected, Jokowi announced his grand plan to abandon the polluted, embarrassingly poor and ‘sinking’ Jakarta, and move the capital city to Penajam Paser Utara in East Kalimantan.
Unlike the left-wing vision of Sukarno, Jokowi’s design is nihilistic, and if implemented, it will benefit only big business and the oligarchs. The great majority of the Indonesian people will gain absolutely nothing.
The great migration of morally and economically corrupt bureaucrats and their butlers from Jakarta to East Kalimantan, would further damage the already extremely devastated island. Native people there will get more and more marginalized and oppressed. If this happens, there will also be very little chance for them to ever regain control of their own island.
As this report is being written, the Indonesian economy is collapsing, due to the COVID-19 epidemy. Even before the lockdowns, the commodity-based economy of the fourth most populous nation was not doing well. Now the situation is truly shattering now.
Statistics in Indonesia are manipulated and are totally incorrect. In reality, the majority of the nation lives below international poverty lines, living in urban and rural slums, lacking basic sanitation, access to clean water, decent medical care, healthy and nutritious food, education and housing.
Can Indonesia afford to waste 33 billion dollars on moving its capital city? And everyone knows that 33 billion will at some point inflate to 50 billion, then perhaps to one trillion, until we will all lose count. If the project goes ahead, it will be nothing more than yet another re-distribution of the national wealth – delivering billions of dollars into the hands of very few corrupt oligarchs and so-called “elites”.
The ‘project’ should stop. It has to stop, but can it still be stopped?
In Indonesia, the greed of the rulers is much greater than logic. Most of the citizens are uninformed, lethargic and submissive. People are resigned.
Will the new capital ever get built? So far, there is only the tiny fake Eiffel Tower sticking up towards the sky, surrounded by plundered nature. Almost nothing moves. There is almost total silence there, as if it were the silence before the storm.
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Mira Lubis is a professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tanjungpura University, West Kalimantan. She was a researcher at Center for Wetland, People and Biodiversity at the same university. She is currently working on her doctoral research in Architecture, at University of Indonesia, topic The Political Ecology of Riverine Culture and Settlements along the Kapuas River, West Kalimantan.
Central Asia is at risk of collapse if the socio-economic consequences of World War C aren’t addressed after much-needed remittance flows from Russia were abruptly cut off as a result of that country’s emergency quarantine measures, which in turn could inadvertently make the already impoverished population there much more susceptible to criminal and terrorist influences unless Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey, and the US coordinate their existing efforts to turn Central Asia into the connectivity crossroads of the supercontinent so as to give the region’s people credible hope for the future.
Political analysts are scrambling to predict what the COVID World Order will look like upon the end of World War C, but few (if any) to the best of the author’s knowledge have addressed the consequences that global pandemic will have on Central Asia despite the landlocked region’s strategic position between Russia, China, Afghanistan, and Iran, among other important players in close proximity such as Pakistan and Turkey. This part of the world is usually stereotyped in most of the public imagination simply as “The ‘Stans”, which people assume are underdeveloped, sometimes energy-rich, authoritarian states. That impression is largely true, to be honest, but there are three more important details to know about the region.
Central Asia faces serious internal and external HybridWar threats stemming from simmering ethno-regional tensions within and between “The ‘Stans” (despite tremendous progress in resolving these issues over the past few years since the passing of former Uzbek President Karimov in 2016) and the lingering possibility that fundamentalist Islamic ideologies from abroad might one day become more appealing, respectively. The region also has the very promising potential of serving as the connectivity crossroads of Eurasia by virtue of its geostrategic position, though the hitherto lack of progress that’s been made on this front up until recently is why millions of economic migrants left for Russia to support their families back home through remittances.
Therein lies the most immediate trigger for a chaotic chain reaction of consequences in the region stemming from World War C since these much-needed remittance flows have been abruptly cut off as a result of the emergency containment measures implemented by Moscow over the past few weeks, which will surely have very serious ramifications in Central Asia. According to the World Bank, remittances accounted for the following percentage of GDP by relevant country: 33% for the Kyrgyz Republic; 29% for Tajikistan; and 15% for Uzbekistan. Most dangerously, the first two countries (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) have a history of violent unrest, with the first suffering two Color Revolutions in 2005 and 2010 and the second a civil war from 1992-1997.
The fact that their economic lifelines have been cut off bodes extremely negatively for their future stability, as it does for Uzbekistan’s as well though the latter has a history of being able to better manager these sorts of threats. Still, Uzbekistan would be adversely affected by any outbreak of instability in its two fragile neighbors, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that ISIS is trying to carve out a caliphate in Afghanistan, one which it intends to expand into Central Asia one day. There’s a risk that the already impoverished populations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan might become more susceptible to criminal and/or terrorist influences the worse that their economic situation gets as a result of the abrupt shutdown of remittance flows from Russia.
Russia and China can’t afford to see Central Asia collapse as one of the most dramatic consequences of World War C since this would directly endanger their own security. Apart from the obvious threat that a growing black hole of instability would pose for them in the sense of becoming a new terrorist hotspot, the collapse of the region could cause millions of refugees to flee to Russia due to the extensive chain migration networks that they’ve established there since the dissolution of the USSR. This could in turn catalyze an unprecedented Migrant Crisis in the Eurasian Heartland which could also likely lead to the fleeing masses transforming into a swarm of “Weapons of Mass Migration” in terms of how destabilizing their sudden influx into Russia would be.
There’s no silver bullet solution to this dark scenario, but it would nevertheless be helpful if the regional states and the stakeholders in their stability (Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey, and even the US as explained by the author in his piece titled “The US’ Central Asian Strategy Isn’t Sinister, But That Doesn’t Mean It’ll Succeed“) coordinated their efforts in order to ensure that Central Asians’ immediate socio-economic needs are met. Russia, China, Turkey, and the US could follow in the EU’s footsteps after the bloc allocated €48 million to Tajikistan for this purpose and extended an earlier €30 million loan, whether they do this jointly or on their own bilaterally with each of the three relevant countries (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan).
Without taking care of people’s pressing socio-economic needs, there’s no way to guarantee that they won’t become politically and/or religiously radicalized throughout the course of World War C as their living standards continue to plummet as a combined result of their own countries’ emergency quarantine measures and the abrupt shutdown of much-needed remittance flows from Russia for the same reason. This short-term solution won’t suffice for anything longer than the duration of the crisis and its immediate aftermath since what’s urgently required is visionary thinking aimed at reducing these geostrategically positioned countries’ dependence on remittances, especially since not all migrants might return to Russia after the crisis.
The Eurasian Great Power might be compelled to limit migration flows in the coming COVID World Order, both for self-explanatory health reasons but also to provide newly unemployed Russians with the opportunity to replace Central Asian workers in jobs that used to ironically be described as the ones that “Russians don’t want to do” (the same as how the jobs occupied by Latin American migrants in the US are described as the ones that “Americans don’t want to do”). It’s for this reason why all interested stakeholders should invest in turning Central Asia into the connectivity crossroads of the supercontinent, which was already an uncoordinated plan in progress prior to the onset of World War C.
The existing projects are the Eurasian Land Bridge between China, Kazakhstan, and Russia and the Middle Corridor connecting China and Turkey through Central Asia and the Caucasus (via the Caspian), while N-CPEC+ (the proposed northern expansion of CPEC connecting the global pivot state of Pakistan and Russia through Afghanistan and Central Asia) is a promising prospective one that might even see some American investment per what was explained in the previously hyperlinked article about the US’ regional strategy. Should tangible progress be made on these projects, then they could provide some limited employment opportunities to Central Asians in the short-term but also limitless other ones in the long one upon completion.
Whether as merchants, laborers in newly created factories (likely built by foreign investment), or service industry employees, the common denominator linking together these connectivity corridors is that they provide credible job opportunities to Central Asians that could in turn reduce the likelihood of them becoming susceptible to criminal and/or terrorist influences. The priority focus for all interested players must be on crafting long-term solutions that replace the lost remittance flows from Russia with a plethora of local job opportunities that ultimately culminate in the gradual diversification and development of the Central Asian economies. It’s a daunting task that won’t be accomplished right a way, but it’s the best strategy to pursue.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
“…so many of the out-of-the way things had happened lately, that Alice has begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
Crises – not regular downturns but major crises – are characterized by the uncertainty they bring. They interrupt the normal and require yet-to-be discovered abnormal responses in order for us to move on. In the midst of these periodic calamities, we don’t know how or even whether we will stumble out of them nor what to expect if they do end. Crises are, consequently, moments of turmoil with openings for new political developments, good and bad.
Because each such crisis modifies the trajectory of history, the subsequent crisis occurs in a changed context and so has its own distinct features. The crisis of the 70s, for example, involved a militant working class, a challenge to the American dollar, and a qualitative acceleration in the role of finance and of globalization. The crisis of 2008-09, on the other hand, involved a largely defeated working class, confirmed the central global role of the dollar, and brought new ways of managing a uniquely finance-dependent economy. Like the previous crisis, the 2008-09 crisis yielded more neoliberal financialization, but this time it also opened the doors to right-wing populism alongside an acute disorientation of traditional political parties.
The Crisis This Time: Health Versus the Economy
The crisis this time is unique in an especially topsy-turvy way. The world, as Alice would express it, is getting “curiouser and curiouser.” In past capitalist crises, the state intervened to try and get the economy going again. This time, the immediate focus of states is not on how to revive the economy, but how to further restrict it. This is obviously so because the economy hasn’t been brought to its knees by economic factors or struggles from below, but rather, by a mysterious virus. Ending its hold over us is the first priority. In introducing the language of ‘social distancing’ and ‘self-quarantine’ to cope with the emergency, governments have suspended the social interactions that constitute a good part of the world of work and consumption, the world of the economy.
This accent on health, while putting the economy on the backburner, has brought a rather remarkable reversal in political discourse. A few short months ago the leader of France was the darling of business everywhere for leading the charge to decisively weaken the welfare state. France would become, he heralded, a business-friendly nation that “thinks and moves like a start-up.” Today Emmanuel Macron is gravely proclaiming that “[f]ree healthcare … and our welfare state are precious resources, indispensable advantages when destiny strikes.”
Macron was not alone in scrambling to reverse himself. Politicians of all stripes raised the idea of limiting factory production to socially necessary products like ventilators, hospital beds, protective masks and gloves. Telling corporations what they should produce became commonplace, with the UK’s conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, calling on auto companies to “switch from building cars to ventilators” and President Trump, astonishingly going further and “ordering” GM to make ventilators under the Defense Production Act. In this new world, it’s hard to remember that over the past year any suggestion of doing what political leaders are now themselves demanding was ignored or derisively waved off, and not only by them and by business, but even by some key union leaders.
At the same time, to those who previously turned a blind eye, the crisis graphically exposed the extreme fragility of working-class budgets.With so many people facing severe deprivation and the threat of social chaos, all levels of government have been forced to address people’s basic health and survival needs. Republicans are now joining Democrats in proposing legislation to postpone mortgage payments, tighten rent controls and cancel interest payments on student debt. Their disagreements are generally not over whether to get more money to workers forced to stay home and to radically improve sick pay and unemployment insurance, but how significant these supports should be. During the Great Depression there was a similar political shift that legitimated social programs and labour rights. However that development was a concession to popular mobilization; this time, it is a response to the extent of the health pandemic and the need to keep people away from work.
This is not to say that the ‘economic’ is being ignored, only that its traditional precedence is taking a back seat to the social, i.e., the health threat. There remains a deep and concerted effort to preserve enough of the economic infrastructure (production, services, trade, finance) to facilitate a return to some semblance of normality ‘later’. This is leading to massive bailouts and this time – unlike the crisis of 2008-09 – the money is flowing not just to banks but also to sectors like air travel, hotels and restaurants, and in particular to small and medium sized businesses.
The economy was foremost in the mind of Trump in his initial casual response to the health crisis, leading one exasperated blogger to comment that “if the Martians invaded earth, our first response would be to lower interest rates.” After Trump was convinced by his advisors that this response would not do, a far more sombre Donald Trump appeared on our screens, winning praise for looking and sounding properly presidential and decisive. The Democratic establishment, which had to that point focussed on defeating Sanders – in part because they feared Trump would exploit Sanders’ radicalism electorally, in part because they feared the implications of a Sanders victory for their hold on the party – were now kept awake by another scenario: what if Trump’s emergency measures pre-empts the Dems from the left. “Up is down, north is south” a Democratic Party insider wryly commented.
Consistent in his inconsistency, Trump turned on a dime again, a matter of his own business and populist instincts and reinforced by the stock market, Fox News and the business leaders that had his ear. The lock-down, he announced, will be over in a matter of “days, not weeks or months.” This mindless declaration couldn’t prevail as the body count grew and hospitals were overwhelmed, and we were reminded – not for the last time – that by virtue of America’s place in the world, Trump was not only the most powerful of world leaders, but also the most dangerous.
Contradictions of Money Printing
Governments everywhere have magically found a way to pay for all kinds of programs and supports written off as impossible before. The sky, it seems, is the limit. But leaving aside the crucial issue of whether, after years of cutbacks in funds and skills, states have the administrative capacity to fully carry out such programs, can this all really be paid for by simply printing money?
The common critique is that in economies at or near full employment, such massive injections of funds will be inflationary. Though there will be bottlenecks and possible inflation in certain sectors, in the current reality of record idle capacity the inflationary concern can be ignored. And with every country being disciplined to take the same actions by the pandemic, the usual discipline of capital outflows is inoperable – there is nowhere to run to. Yet, contradictions there are, though in our present circumstances they now take a different form.
First, there is, in fact no free lunch. After the crisis is over, the emergency expenditures will have to be paid for. This will occur in a context in which, having experienced the possibility of programs previously characterized as impractical, people’s expectations will have been raised. As Vijay Prashad defiantly expressed it, “We won’t go back to normal, because normal was the problem.” Once the economy is operating at full tilt again, meeting the new working-class expectations will no longer be possible through reviving the money presses. There is only so much labour and so many natural resources around and choices will have to be made over who gets what; the questions of inequality and redistribution will, given the history before and during the crisis, be intensified.
Second, as the crisis begins to fade this will happen unevenly. So, the flow of capital may restart, and if it flows out of the countries still suffering, this raises large questions about the morality of capital flows. And even when all countries have escaped the health pandemic, they will be eager to move on, and to the extent that financial ‘discipline’ returns, people may not take too kindly to their recovery and development being undermined by self-serving capital flows – not after a second bailout in a dozen years that was ultimately financed by the rest of us. The assumption that financial markets are untouchable may no longer hold; people may perhaps come to think, like Alice, that “very few things indeed were really impossible.” To the rebellion against the extent of inequality might be added a backlash calling for capital controls.
It’s true that the global status of the US dollar allows for a degree of American exceptionalism. In times of uncertainty – and even when, as with the US mortgage crisis of 2007-09, it is events in the US that are the source of that uncertainty – there is generally an increased clamor for the dollar. But, here too, there is a limit. For one, the consequent rise in the US exchange rate can make US goods less competitive and further suppress US manufacturing. But more importantly, the international confidence in the dollar has not only rested on the strength of US financial markets but has been conditional, as well, on the US as a safe haven with a working class that is economically and politically pliant. If that working class were to rebel, the dollar as safe haven would be less definitive. The size and direction of capital flows might become more problematic even for the US (and even if this did not lead to another currency replacing the dollar, it could contribute to a great deal of domestic and international financial chaos).
Openings to the Left?
We don’t know how long this crisis will last; much clearly depends on that contingency. Nor can we say with any confidence how this unpredictable and fluid moment will affect society and influence our notions of what was formerly ‘normal’. In such uncertain and anxious times, what most people likely crave is a quick return to normality, even if what was earlier normal included no shortage of great frustrations. Such inclinations come with a deference to authority to get us through the calamity, something that has some concerned about a new wave of state authoritarianism.
We should of course never underestimate the dangers from the right. And who knows what the dynamics of a crisis extending past the summer may bring. But the contours of this crisis suggest a different possibility: a predisposition, rather, for greater openings and opportunities for the political left. Underlying the examples noted above is that, at least for now, markets have been side-lined. The urgency over how we allocate labour, resources, and equipment has set aside considerations of competitiveness and maximizing private profits, and instead reoriented priorities to what is socially essential.
Moreover, as the financial system heads into uncharted territory again and looks to another boundless bail-out from central banks and the state, a population exasperatedly watching history repeat itself may, as raised above, not be as a passive as it was a dozen years ago. People will no doubt reluctantly again accept their immediate dependence on saving the banks, but politicians cannot help but worry about a popular backlash if this time there is no effective quid pro quo forced on the bankers.
And, as well, a cultural change – still too hard to assess – may be afoot. The nature of the crisis and the social restrictions essential to overcoming it have made mutuality and solidarity, against individualism and neoliberal greed, the order of the day. An indelible image of the crisis this time sees quarantined yet inventive Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese coming out on their balconies to collectively sing, cheer and clap tributes to the courage of the health workers, often low paid, doing the most essential work on the front lines of the global war against the coronavirus.
All this opens up the prospect – but only the prospect – of a reorientation in social outlooks as the crisis, and the state responses to it, unfold. What was once taken for granted as ‘natural’ may now be vulnerable to larger questions about how we should live and relate. For economic and political elites this clearly has its dangers. The trick, for them, is to make sure that actions that are currently unavoidable and whose eventual outcome is unpredictable are limited in scope and time bound. Once the crisis is comfortably over, uncomfortable ideas and chancy measures must be put back in their box and the lid firmly shut. For popular forces, on the other hand, the challenge lies in keeping that box open through taking advantage of the promising ideological prospects that have emerged, building on some of the positive – even radical – policy steps introduced, and exploring the varied creative actions that have been taken locally in so many places.
From each according to ability to pay, to each according to needs
The most obvious ideological shift brought on by the crisis has been in attitudes to healthcare. Opposition in the US to single-payer healthcare today looks all the more other-worldly. Elsewhere, those tolerating healthcare for all but determined to impose cuts that left the healthcare system far overstretched, and those seeing healthcare as another commodity to be administered by emulating business practices rooted in profitability, are in awkward retreat. Their frame has been exposed for how dangerously unprepared it left us for dealing with emergencies.
As we look to consolidate this new mood, we should not be content with the defensive game. This is a moment to think more ambitiously and insist on a far more comprehensive notion of what ‘healthcare’ encompasses. This ranges across long-standing demands for dental, drug, and eye-care programs. It highlights the adequacy of long-term care facilities, particularly those that are private but also those in public hands. It asks why personal care workers who take care of the sick, disabled and old aren’t part of the public health system and unionized and treated accordingly. And, especially given the shortages of essential equipment we now confront, it poses the question of whether the entire chain of healthcare provision, including the manufacture of health equipment, should be in the public domain where present and future needs could be properly planned.
Thinking bigger extends to the connection between food and health; to housing policy and the contradiction between insisting on social distancing and the persistence of crowded homeless shelters; to child care; and to making permanent the temporary sick days now on offer. It extends as well, to taking ‘universality’ seriously enough to extend it to the migrants who work our fields and the refugees who have been forced out of their communities (often as a result of international policies sanctioned by our governments). Most generally, if we win and consolidate the healthcare principle of “from each according to ability to pay, to each according to need” (with ability to pay determined through a progressive tax structure), that victory would be an inspirational and strategic boost to extending socialized medicine’s core principle throughout the economy.
The existential need for antidotes to avoid pandemics places a special responsibility on global drug companies. They have failed us. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and no stranger to making financial decisions, explained this failure in the accounting terms of pandemic products being “extraordinary high-risk investments” – a polite way of saying that corporations won’t adequately address the investments involved without massive government funding. The historian Adam Tooze put this more directly: when it comes to pharma companies prioritizing the social over the profitable, “obscure coronaviruses don’t get the same attention as erectile dysfunction.”
The point is that the provision of medicines and vaccines is too important to leave to private companies with their private priorities. If Big Pharma will only do the research on dangerous future vaccines if governments take the risk, fund the research, find themselves funding the accompanying manufacturing capacity, and coordinate the distribution of the drugs and vaccines to those who need them, the obvious question is why don’t we cut out the self-serving middle-man? Why not place all this directly in the hands of the public as part of an integrated healthcare system?
The Pandemic Next Time
The lack of preparedness for the coronavirus sends the clearest and scariest warning about not just the next possible pandemic, but the one already circling over and around us. The looming environmental crisis will not be solved by social distancing or a new vaccine. As with the coronavirus, the longer we wait to decisively address it, the more catastrophic it will be. But unlike the coronavirus, the environmental crisis is not only about ending a temporary health crisis, but also about fixing the damage already done. As such, it demands transforming everything about how we live, work, travel, play, and relate to each other. This requires maintaining and developing the productive capacities to carry out the necessary changes in our infrastructure, homes, factories, and offices.
As conventional as the idea of conversion is now becoming, it is in fact a radical idea. The well-meaning slogan of a ‘just transition’ sounds reassuring but falls short. Those it is intended to win over rightly ask ‘who will carry out such a guarantee?’ The point is that restructuring the economy and prioritizing the environment can’t happen without comprehensive planning. And planning implies a challenge to the private-property rights that corporations now enjoy.
At a minimum, a National Conversion Agency should be established with a mandate to ban the closing of facilities that could be converted to serve environmental (and health) needs and to oversee that conversion. Workers could call on that agency as whistleblowers if they think their workplace is moving to redundancy. The existence of such an institution would encourage workers to occupy closed workplaces as more than an act of protest; rather than appealing to a corporation that is no longer interested in the facility, their actions could focus on the conversion agency and push it to carry out its mandate.
Such a national agency would have to be twinned with a national labour board responsible for coordinating the training and reallocation of labour. It would also be supplemented with regional tech-conversion centers employing hundreds if not thousands of young engineers enthusiastic to use their skills to address the existential challenge of the environment. And locally-elected environmental boards would monitor community conditions while locally-elected job development boards would link community and environmental needs to jobs, workplace conversions and the development of worker and plant capacities – all funded federally as part of a national plan and all also rooted in active neighbourhood committees and workplace committees.
The Banks: Once Bitten Twice Shy
Everything we hope to do in the way of significant change will have to confront the dominance of private financial institutions over our lives. The financial system has all the earmarks of a public utility: it greases the wheels of the economy, both production and consumption, mediates government policy, and is treated as indispensable whenever it itself is in trouble. We do not, however, have either the political power or the technical capacity to take over finance today and use it for different purposes. The issue, therefore, is twofold: first, to place the question on the public agenda; if we do not discuss it now, the moment will never be ripe for raising it; second, we need to carve out specific spaces within the financial system as part of both achieving particular priorities and of developing the knowledge and skills for eventually running the financial system in our own interests.
A logical starting place is to establish two particular government owned banks: one to finance the infrastructural demands that have been so badly neglected; the other to finance the Green New Deal and conversion. If these banks have to compete to get funds and earn the returns to pay off those loans, little will change. The political decision to establish these banks would have to include, as Scott Aquanno argues in a forthcoming paper, the politically-determined infusions of cash to do what private banks have been doing so inadequately: investing in projects that have a high, if risky, social return and low profits by conventional measures. That initial funding could come from a levy on all financial institutions – payback for the massive bailouts they received from the state. (With a solid financial base in place, these public banks could also borrow in financial markets without being beholden to them.)
Democratic Planning: An Oxymoron?
When the left speaks of democratic planning it is referencing a new kind of state – one that expresses the public will, encourages the widest popular involvement, and actively develops the popular capacity to participate, as opposed to reducing people to commodified workers, data points, passive citizens. Skeptics will scoff, but the remarkable experience we’ve just been going through, indicating how suddenly what was so ‘obviously’ impossible yesterday can be so ‘obviously’ common-sense today, suggests reasons for not writing this off so cavalierly.
It is not so much ‘planning’ itself that scares people. After all, households plan, corporations plan, and even neoliberal states plan. What raises the familiar misgivings, fears, and antagonisms is talk of the kind of extensive planning we are raising here. The unease over this kind of planning cannot be dismissed by simply blaming the bias of corporations and the media and the legacy of cold-war propaganda. Suspicions of powerful states have a material basis not only in failed experiments elsewhere but in popular interactions with states that are indeed bureaucratic, arbitrary, often wasteful, and distant.
Adding the adjective ‘democratic’ doesn’t solve this dilemma. And though international examples may include suggestive policies and structures, the sober truth is that there are no fully convincing models on offer. This leaves us tirelessly repeating our critiques of capitalism; yet, as essential as this is, it is not enough. Skeptics may still fatalistically reply that all systems are inevitably unfair, insensitive to the ‘common man’, and run by and for elites. So why risk the uncertainties of paths that might at best only leave us in much the same place?
What we can do is start with an unambiguous commitment to assure others that we are not advocating an all-powerful state and that we value the liberal freedoms won historically: the expansion of the vote to working people, free speech, the right to assembly (including unionization), protection against arbitrary arrest, and state transparency. And we should insist that taking these principles seriously demands an extensive redistribution of income and wealth so everyone, in substance not just in formal status, has an equal chance to participate.
We should, as well, remind people how far we are from the characterization of capitalism as a world of small property owners. Amazon, to take just one example, was – true to the measures of success under capitalism – already running roughshod over tens of thousands of small businesses before the crisis, driving to maximize its profits and to “control and commodify everyday life.” In the wake of the crisis and the collapse of small retailers, this monopolization is about to become a tsunami. This outcome will be further reinforced by the Canadian government’s recent decision to contract Amazon to be the principal distributor of personal protective equipment across the country, coldly ignoring in the process Amazon’s lack of adequate attention to providing its own workforce with adequate protection against the virus.
The alternative to this mammoth corporation answerable only to itself is, as Mike Davis has suggested, taking it over and making it into a public utility, part of the social infrastructure of how goods get from here to there – an extension, for example, of the post office. It belonging to us, rather than to the richest man in the universe, holds the possibility of its operations being democratically planned to benefit the public.
To realize the democratic side of planning, it’s crucial to address specific mechanisms and institutions that could facilitate new levels of popular participation. In the case of the environment, where it is particularly clear that society-wide planning must be fundamental to addressing the ‘clear and present danger’, a new kind of state would have to include not only new central capacities, but also a range of decentralized planning capacities such as those we referenced earlier: regional research centers, sectoral councils across industries and services, locally elected environmental and job development boards, and workplace and neighbourhood committees.
Notably, the health crisis has highlighted the necessity and potentials of workplace control by those who do the work. This is most obviously so in maximizing their protections from the risks and sacrifices they make on our behalf. But it extends to workers, with their direct knowledge, also acting as guardians of the public interest – using the protection of their unions to act as whistleblowers to expose shortcuts and ‘savings’ that affect product and service safety and quality. Unions have of late come to more widely appreciate the priority of getting the public on side as support toward winning their collective-bargaining battles.
But something more is needed, a step toward more formally linking up with the public in broader political demands (as teachers and healthcare workers are doing informally to some extent). This could, for example, mean fighting within the state to establish joint worker-community councils to monitor and modify programs on an on-going basis. In the private sector, it could mean workplace conversion committees and workplace sectoral councils acting to present their own plans or acting as a counter to national plans addressing planned economic restructuring and conversion to the new environmental reality.
Three points are critical here. First, widespread worker participation demands the expansion of unionization to provide workers an institutional collective to counter employer power. Second, such local and sectoral participation cannot be developed and sustained without involving and transforming states to link national planning and local planning. Third, it is not only states that must be transformed but working-class organizations as well. The failure of unions over the past few decades both in organizing and in addressing their members’ needs is inseparable from their stubborn commitment to a fragmented, defensive unionism within society as it currently exists, as opposed to a class-struggle trade unionism based on broader solidarities and more ambitiously radical visions. This calls for not just ‘better’ unions, but for different and more politicized unions.
Conclusion: Organizing the Class
A particularly important development over the past decade has been the shift from protest to politics: the recognition on the part of popular movements of the limits of protest and the consequent need to address electoral power and the state. Yet we are still struggling with what kind of politics can then, in fact, transform society. In spite of the impressive space created by Corbynism and Sanders via working through established parties, both have run into the limits of these parties, with Corbyn gone and the Sanders ‘insurrection’ seemingly on the wane. The great political danger is that having come this far and been disappointed, and with no clear political home, the combination of individual exhaustion, collective demoralization, and divisions on where to go next may lead to the dissipation of what was so hopefully developing.
Bravado declarations of capitalism’s imminent collapse will not take us very far. They may be popular in some quarters, but in exaggerating the inevitability of capitalism’s approaching breakdown but also obscure what needs doing to engage in the long, hard, indefinite battle to change the world. It is one thing to draw hope from the profound crisis capitalism is experiencing and capitalism’s on-going insanities. But the telling crisis we must focus on is the internal one, the one faced by the left itself. In this particular moment, the following four elements seem fundamental to sustaining and building a relevant left politics.
Defend workers through the present crisisDirectly addressing the immediate needs of working people (broadly defined) is a basic starting point, especially given the present emergency. In the US, Bernie Sanders’ “Emergency Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic” is a valuable resource in this regard, even if it doesn’t go as far as Doug Henwood in a socialist direction (see: “Now Is the Time to Fundamentally Transform America”).
Build/sustain institutional capacitiesIn the absence of a left political party in the US, and with Sanders’ electoral possibilities fading, the issue for the left that has operated within the Democratic Party is how to maintain some institutional independence from the Democratic Party establishment. The only foreseeable way for the left to do so seems to be to strategically choose two or three national campaigns and focus on them. The environment might be one and the fight for universal healthcare health seems a logical second choice. The third might be labour law reform, this being important not only in itself after how much labour has been kicked around, but crucial to altering the balance of class power in America.
Make socialistsThe Sanders campaign demonstrated a surprising potential for raising funds and recruiting tens of thousands of committed activists. Jane McAlevey had argued after Sanders’ defeat in 2016 that this was the time to throw that enthusiasm into establishing regional organizing schools across the US. Building on that, we need to introduce schools that create socialist cadre that can link thinking analytically and strategically to learning how to talk to and organize unconvinced workers and play a role, as socialists did in the 1930s, in not just defending unions but transforming them. The campaigns, the schools, study groups, public forums and news magazines and journals (like Jacobin and Catalyst) would all be infrastructural elements of a possible future left party.
Organize the classAndrew Murray, chief of staff at the British/Irish union UNITE has noted the difference between a left that is ‘focused’ on the working class and one that is ‘rooted’ in it. The greatest weakness of the socialist left is its limited embeddedness in unions and working-class communities. Only if the left can overcome this gap – which is a cultural gap as much as it is a political one – is there any possibility of witnessing the development of a coherent, confident, and independently defiant working class with the capacity and capacity-inspired vision to fundamentally challenge capitalism.
When the 2008-09 financial crisis hit many of us saw this as a definitive discrediting of the financial sector, if not of capitalism itself. We were wrong. The state intervened to save the financial system and financial institutions emerged stronger than ever. Capitalism in its neoliberal form rolled on. This time, the crisis was triggered by a health pandemic, and the challenge to capitalism’s authority is coming out of how states have responded. As one capitalist shibboleth after another was swept aside – ceilings on fiscal deficits, the lack of funds for improving employment insurance, the impracticality of conversion of closing factories, the glorification of corporate pursuit of profits over all else, the devaluation of workers who clean our hospitals and care for the aged – surely we were ripe for radical change?
Maybe. But it has never served the left well to imagine substantive change happening out of objective conditions alone, without building the forces we need to take advantage of those conditions. Change rests on our developing the collective understandings, capacities, practices, strategic insights and above all democratic organizational institutions to do exactly that. We need to convince all those who should be with us but aren’t, elevate popular expectations, and ambitions, and stand up with confidence to those who would block us.
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Sam Gindin was research director of the Canadian Auto Workers from 1974–2000. He is co-author (with Leo Panitch) of The Making of Global Capitalism (Verso), and co-author with Leo Panitch and Steve Maher of The Socialist Challenge Today, the expanded and updated American edition (Haymarket).
The first measures taken against COVID-19 in the West Bank occurred in early March after the confirmation of seven cases in Bethlehem that were linked to a Greek tourist group. The Palestinian Authority (PA) declared a state of emergency and imposed a lockdown on the city, banning all entry and exit as well as enforcing a curfew on residents. The PA also announced restrictions across the West Bank, including prohibitions on travel between governorates and the shuttering of public spaces and education facilities. On March 22, following a steady increase in cases, the PA declared a curfew. 1
In the Gaza Strip, in mid-March Hamas authorities and UNRWA began converting schools into quarantine centers and clinics in preparation for a possible outbreak. On March 21, two Gazans returning from Pakistan tested positive for the virus and were immediately hospitalized. Twenty-nine people were identified to have come into contact with them and were placed in quarantine.
At the time of writing, the total number of confirmed cases in the West Bank is 247 and 12 in Gaza. Although the figures are relatively low, the worry is that the limited amount of testing available means that the number of infected people is in fact much higher.
COVID-19 Meets the Occupation
The West Bank and Gaza Strip are confronting COVID-19 from a reality of Israeli military occupation, which weakens the ability of the Palestinian authorities and the Palestinian people to respond effectively to the deadly virus. While many health care systems around the world are struggling to deal with the pandemic, the 53-year occupation has seriously depleted medical capabilities in the West Bank and Gaza. The donor-dependent system has shortages in equipment, medication, and staff due to such issues as military raids and restrictions on imports. In the Gaza Strip in particular – deemed unliveable by the UN as a result of over 13 years of blockade and multiple wars – the health care system already struggled to deal with medical cases before the pandemic. Indeed, Gaza currently has only 78 ICU beds and 63 ventilators for a population of two million.
Meanwhile, daily manifestations of the occupation persist, such as the continued demolition of Palestinian homes and military raids on Palestinian villages and towns. There have also been direct Israeli attacks on Palestinian attempts to confront the virus, such as the destruction of a COVID 19 clinic in the Jordan Valley and the arrest of Palestinian volunteers attempting to distribute supplies to impoverished communities in East Jerusalem. The Israeli occupation authorities are also failing to take any preventative measures to protect Palestinian political prisoners, who are being illegally incarcerated within a military prison system that fails to meet even basic health and sanitation standards.
Political Manipulations
The Israeli regime is using this global crisis not only to distract from its ongoing violations of human rights, but also as a political tool to gain diplomatic leverage. Indeed, international bodies have been commending Israel for its “cooperation” with the PA during this crisis; the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, called such coordination “excellent” during a recent speech. In reality, Israeli “cooperation” includes the Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) “allowing” a minimum of internationally-donated medical supplies to reach the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as was the case with a shipment of 3,000 tests and 50,000 masks from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the PA. This is far below the actual needs of the West Bank.
Those commending the cooperation also point to the issue of the thousands of Palestinian workers in Israel. In an attempt to prevent mass movement and the potential spread of the disease, Israel and the PA reached an agreement that, as of March 18, conditioned Palestinian workers’ continued employment on them staying in Israel for several months rather than returning to the West Bank. Yet the workers were not only deprived of proper protective equipment; Israeli authorities reportedly dumped workers who they suspected of having the virus at checkpoint entrances to the West Bank without informing the PA. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh reversed the decision on March 25, ordering the workers home. The worry is that the PA will not have the capacity to test people upon their return, and Israel has so far not offered to test them.
Shifting the Narrative
In effect, the Israeli regime, which maintains a violent military occupation and has depleted the capabilities of the Palestinian health care system, is being praised for allowing in tidbits of medical supplies from international actors, despite its responsibility under international law as an occupying power to provide the supplies itself. It is essential that international actors not only support vital humanitarian efforts for immediate medical relief in Palestine but that they also insist on Israel’s responsibility to finance Palestinian medical needs.
It is also imperative to shift the narrative from cooperation and to highlight the Israeli occupation as an instrument of comorbidity. In other words, not only does the occupation exacerbate the conditions that increase Palestinians’ susceptibility to infection, it is also directly responsible for those conditions. It is therefore disingenuous to argue that now is the time for cooperation and dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian authorities to confront the pandemic. Now is the time, as it was before, to demand the lifting of the blockade on Gaza and the end of the military occupation of the West Bank.
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Yara Hawari is the Senior Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is also a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Al Jazeera English.
Note
[1] This policy memo was produced with the support of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. The views expressed herein are those of the author and therefore do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) said Wednesday that 74 million people lack access to a basic handwashing facilities to prevent the spread of the coronavirus outbreak in Arab nations, EDNews.net reports citing Yeni Safak.
The Beirut-based agency acknowledged handwashing with soap and water is effective against the virus and said water demand for handwashing is set to increase between 9 to 12 liters per person per day, meaning an average daily increase of 4 to 5 million cubic meters in household water demand.
The situation is aggravated by inadequate piped water supply in 10 of 22 Arab nations, it added.
Highlighting that nearly 87 million people in the region also lack access to an improved drinking water source in homes, the agency said those obliged to provide water from a public source on a daily basis are subjected to greater risk of infection.
“An estimated 26 million refugees and internally displaced persons in the region are also at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 due to lack of adequate water, sanitation and hygiene services,” the statement said.
ESCWA said just 1 in 10 households has access to clean water in the Gaza Strip as it highlighted the difficult conditions Palestinians living under Israeli occupation face.
Since 2006, Israel has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, where nearly 2 million Palestinians live, and many sectors have been adversely affected including the economy, health, and education.
There are 329 COVID-19 cases in Palestine and the death toll is two.
Globally, the virus has infected more than 2 million patients and has claimed an excess of 132,200 lives, according to figures compiled by the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.
More than half a million have recovered.
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Judge them by their actions, never their rhetoric, a rule of thumb in evaluating others, notably politicians. They all lie with the rarest of rare exceptions.
Warren’s sellout to Dem party bosses followed Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders going the same way — abdicating to wealth and power interests over honor and principles, showing their lofty rhetoric was meaningless, their trustworthiness nil.
Dems falling all over themselves for Biden show they back his pro-war, pro-business, and anti-progressive agenda. The package goes with the man. You can’t have one without the other.
Biden is a Trump clone warmonger/corporatist/racist with a party label and style difference.
As things now stand, US voters in November with get to choose between death by firing squad or hanging — meaning no choice at all, how it always is for high executive or congressional offices when so-called elections are held.
They’re more exercises in mass deception than anything else, always turning out the same way.
In her betrayal message, Warren said the following:
“In this moment of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the next president restores Americans’ faith in good, effective government—and I’ve seen Joe Biden help our nation rebuild (sic).”
“Today, I’m proud to endorse @JoeBiden as president of the United States.”
“Joe Biden has spent nearly his entire life in public service (sic).”
“He knows that a government run with integrity, competence and heart will save lives and save livelihoods (sic).”
“And we can’t afford to let Donald Trump continue to endanger the lives and livelihoods of every American.”
Biden’s near-half century of public life reflects virtually everything disturbing about dirty politics as usual in Washington.
He never met a US war of aggression against an invented enemy he didn’t wholeheartedly endorse.
Nor a banker’s grand theft through fraud, grand theft, market manipulation, pumping and dumping, front-running and scamming investors he didn’t turn a blind eye to, Wall Street giants operating like shadowy Mafia dons, an interconnected crime family feigning respectability.
Nor has Biden been shy about supporting an enhanced US military, industrial, security, media complex and prison industrial complex while backing neoliberal war on social justice.
He’s hostile to all sovereign independent nations the US doesn’t control, his actions showing contempt for ordinary people everywhere.
His near half-century as US senator and vice president was all about serving wealth and powerful interests at the expense of public rights and welfare.
Warren is an Obama clone with a gender difference, an establishment figure throughout her public life.
Militantly hostile to nonbelligerent Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and other sovereign states on the US target list for regime change, she falsely considers them a threat to US national security.
They’re at peace with other nations, at war with none, polar opposite how the US, NATO and Israel operate — rogue states threatening everyone.
She backs illegally imposed US sanctions on targeted nations and individuals that’s the prerogative of Security Council members exclusively, never one state against others for any reasons.
Dismissive of Palestinian rights, she one-sidedly backs Israel, ignoring its history of high crimes.
In her own words, “capitalist to the bone” defines her, meaning corporate predation and exploitation for maximum unrestrained profit-making and market power.
Was endorsing Biden a sale pitch to join his ticket as running mate?
Do Sanders and Gabbard have something similar in mind — perhaps a cabinet post if not his number two?
There’s nary a dime’s worth of difference between Biden and Trump.
In November like most often earlier, options for US voters are none at all — dirty business as usual alone on the ballot for the nation’s highest office and key congressional posts.
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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.”
It is perhaps inevitable that a major health panic like the coronavirus will have political ramifications based on whether those most affected by the illness will perceive that the government performed well or poorly in the crisis. The government for its part will engage in a blame game which seeks to place responsibility for what did not go well on an outside party. It should surprise no one to learn, for example, that Hindus in India have been blaming a Muslim group for the proliferation of the virus in their country, an accusation that has led to rioting and other violence directed against Muslims in general and which has produced some deaths.
In the United States blame for the health crisis has been more diversified and has been largely construed along existing political fault lines. Democrats are reasonably enough blaming President Donald Trump for the delays and failures to supply medical equipment while Republicans are seeking to exonerate the poor performance by the president, chiefly by editing the existing record to expunge Trump’s initial dismissal of the virus as little more than a common cold and even as a “hoax.” That refusal to recognize the severity of the epidemic cost the country several weeks at a minimum, time that might have been employed to get on top of the disease before it had a chance to gain a foothold.
More interesting perhaps is the apparent desire to find a foreign enemy as the source of the virus. That the virus originated in Wuhan is the majority view of the “experts,” though it is not clear if its genetics were the result of laboratory manipulation or were a naturally occurring mutation. And for its part, the Chinese government at a minimum was not particularly forthcoming when the virus began to spread in Wuhan and the surrounding province, failing to send an appropriate signal to the international community that a potentially highly contagious and lethal new virus had made an appearance.
In the U.S., Republican politicians and pundits, as well as the president, have exploited the uncertainty by persisting in calling the coronavirus the “Wuhan virus” or the “China virus.” There has also been considerable chatter about how Beijing is “to blame” for it, which, of course, intentionally shifts the narrative away from the actions or lack thereof by the American president. And so as not to ignore the real conspiracy theorists, there are also the stories now circulating about how the U.S. government helped fund research at the Wuhan Institute that involved bats, one of the possible sources of the virus. Additional theories being promoted by Rush Limbaugh and others promote the belief that the Chinese communists deliberately created and unleashed the virus to destroy western capitalism.
It was perhaps inevitable that somehow Russia would eventually be brought into the preferred narrative to serve as a distraction that would derail the media’s 24/7 focus on the White House and its developing response to the virus. The Russian government’s shipment of a planeload of badly needed medical supplies to the United States several weeks ago notwithstanding, Moscow and President Vladimir Putin continue to be useful punching bags for both the national media and both parties in congress.
The latest tale from Yahoo news of Kremlin perfidy is also somewhat of a spy story, no doubt intended to enhance its appeal. It has not really caught on with the public yet because the panic over the virus has overwhelmed the news cycle, but there is still plenty of time to seek and find a foreign enemy who is wanting to do harm to the United States of America.
According to the news report, which is based on a paper prepared by analysts at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Russian intelligence officers are analyzing the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic to determine vulnerabilities in the American government’s procurement and emergency response system. The April 6th study, prepared by the DHS Counterintelligence Mission Center, states that the Russians are “likely are watching the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic” as “intelligence collection on medical supply chain vulnerabilities could inform future operations aimed at weakening key logistical elements in preparation for a wartime attack, or opportunistically during an emergency.”
In other words, Moscow is looking for vulnerabilities in what amounts to America’s civil defense response capability in case it has to go to war with Washington. Given the lack of evidence confirming any desire on Vladimir Putin’s part to engage in a nuclear conflict with the United States that would likely destroy most of the planet, it is difficult to imagine that Russia is war planning in any serious way. But, according to some sources, a different picture does plausibly emerge from the Kremlin’s activity, which is that Russia is working to portray itself as a competent player in the war against the coronavirus while Donald Trump and his European counterparts are being seen as irresponsible fumblers.
Moscow has indeed been extending a hand to Europeans even as the Germans have been complaining about the White House conniving to steal their medical supplies. Several plane loads of medical equipment and more than 100 personnel flew to Italy a month ago. According to Italian sources, some of the Russians were intelligence officers making independent assessments of how effectively the Italians have been able to respond to the medical crisis.
All of that should surprise no one, as that is what intelligence officers do, though it does not necessarily mean that anyone is necessarily preparing for war. And the DHS report speculates wildly when it suggests that the coronavirus operation is part and parcel of “Russia’s ongoing 2020 election interference,” a largely undemonstrated hot button designed to make the hawks in congress swoon with pleasure.
If anyone is looking for Russiagate 2, this is exactly how it begins. Blame China, and if that does not seem to be working, look for the perfidious hand of Vladimir Putin, who clearly spends all day in his office dreaming up schemes whereby providing medical supplies to the U.S. and Europe is all part of some master plan to subvert the 2020 presidential election. But wait a minute, the ballot will feature Trump against Joe Biden. Putin is too late. The election has already been subverted.
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Germany’s long history of wanting to rule the entirety of Europe extends back to both World Wars in the 20th Century, and perhaps even earlier. The German political structures believed that through war and conquest it could dominate the continent – this of course lacked any realism. Even with Germany’s defeat in World War II, it still did not abandon this ambition, albeit, it was not possible for many decades because of U.S. dominance on the continent and the Soviet counterweight.
However, Germany played the long game and with the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, Berlin signed the “4 + 2 Treaty” on October 3, 1990 to unify capitalist West Germany with communist East Germany. With unification achieved, then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl made the next steps for Germany to dominate Europe, the signing of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty that brought to life the European Union and opened the path for the Euro Dollar.
Eight years later, then-German Foreign Minister Joska Fischer during a speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin said that German and European unification were two sides of the same coin, openly admitting that the European Union is inseparable to Germany. With more than a quarter of the Eurozone’s wealth in German hands, there is little doubt that Berlin’s quest to dominate Europe is finding more success through the Western liberal model of open borders and a “shared” market rather than through military might and conquest. It is now appearing though that Germany is beginning to lose control of the dominance it once had over the continent though. France, Italy and Britain served as balance to West Germany, but that balance was tilted towards Germany after unification, and especially now since Brexit.
Britain of course first comes to mind when we think of the dissolvement of the European Union. Although Britain is a wealthy and powerful country to lose, and there is no doubt it caused a major blow to the pan-European project, Britain maintained some semblance of sovereignty by maintaining the Pound and not adopting the neo-Mark, the Euro Dollar. Germany’s economic power also correlates with its political strength, which one of its main drivers is the Euro Dollar.
The countries touted as potentials to follow Britain are the three Mediterranean countries of Spain, Portugal and Greece. This is of no surprise as these are the three countries most affected by the Global Financial Crisis in 2009 and onwards. Although they are economically and politically weaker than Germany, ironically enough they are the only countries capable of serving as a potential counterweight to German dominance of the European Union.
Northern and central Europe in one way or another are directly tied to Germany, while the Mediterranean countries have a separation in geography, culture and history. Although French initiatives to contain German dominance in the European Union led to the European Central Bank and the Common Agricultural Policy, it has not only failed, but allowed Germany to control these institutions as well. France is limited in its capabilities as it is the only major power to border Germany and has a history of direct conflict when German nationalism became out of control and extremified.
Therefore, cooperation between Mediterranean Europe can pose the biggest challenge to German hegemony in Europe. Of course, there is the challenge that the interests of Spain, Portugal and Greece are not identical, but each have suffered immensely by German-imposed austerity and economic policy. The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated that Germany is not willing to assist European Union member countries in times of crisis and that rather it serves its own interest first and foremost, just as it always has under the illusions of European unity.
Powerbrokers in Lisbon, Madrid and Athens must seriously consider methods on how best to achieve their own sovereignty to serve their own state interests instead of being under the domination of Berlin’s interests. The Mediterranean connects Europe, Asia and Africa together, meaning it occupies an extremely strategic space – far more strategic states than those who border Germany such as the Czech Republic or the Netherlands for example. By cooperating to achieve sovereignty, Mediterranean Europe will have far more leverage against Germany as it serves as a gateway to two other continents.
The coronavirus pandemic has shown that a divorce from Germany best serves the interest of Mediterranean Europe and has highlighted two facts; Spain was ignored and abandoned by Germany when the pandemic began, while Greece which was crippled by German and IMF-imposed austerity in the previous decade has shown that it can overcome challenges without European Union assistance with its impressive handling of the coronavirus.
Although Italy is a Mediterranean country, it is unlikely they will want to abandon the European Union project as it has the ambition to become “the Germany of the Mediterranean.” Portugal itself is also being devastated by the coronavirus but its present and future is always tied with that of Spain. Greece’s confidence in how it handled the pandemic and Spain’s disappointment with the German response for assistance should make these Mediterranean countries seriously consider their future in the European Union and whether a Mediterranean cooperation would better serve their interests.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
Dr. Annie Bukacek of Kalispell, Montana speaks with me about COVID19 death certificates.
How do doctors decide whether or not to attribute a death to COVID19 and are the COVID19 deaths being exaggerated?
We also discuss what care is not happening during this lockdown and we talk about whether or not the lockdown is good for our health as individuals and as a nation.
Listen to the interview below.
Full transcript of the interview
John Shuck [00:00:27] Hello, I’m John Shuck, my web site is www.johnshuck.com. I am on the phone with Dr. Annie Bukacek. She makes her residence in Kalispell, Montana, and she has made a video presentation actually that she gave at her church. I believe a few days ago. And we want to talk about that, about what is this testing and how these numbers come to be. And we have a lot of things that I wish to discuss with Dr. Bukacek. Dr. Bukacek. Welcome to my program, Progressive Spirit.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:01:08] Well, thank you. I appreciate being on your show and very grateful for the opportunity.
John Shuck [00:01:12] I really enjoyed the presentation that you made. Your pastor, Pastor Chuck Baldwin introduced you and you gave a presentation that was quite fascinating. And I believe it’s had a number of views, quite a few in the hundreds of thousands, I believe about your understanding of how these numbers are being attributed in regarding to COVID deaths. And so, first of all, I’d just like to ask you to introduce yourself to us. Tell me, what kind of practice you do, how long you’ve been a medical doctor and so forth?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:01:52] OK. So I’m a board certified internal medicine physician in Kalispell, Montana, and I’m also a council member and a fellow of the American College of Physicians Montana chapter. I’m a member of the Montana Medical Association legislative panel and also the president of Montana Pro-Life Coalitions since 2008. And think of what else. And I’m a part of the Montana Shooting Sports Association. I’m on the board of directors of that.
John Shuck [00:02:22] Well, what did you find in regards to doctors writing on their death certificates COVID 19? Are deaths attributed to COVID 19, really from COVID 19?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:02:37] And that’s the big question. Inquiring minds want to know the answer to that because it’s significant because they’re using that mortality data to basically lock down our entire nation so that the alleged very high risk and all these people are dying from it. They’re using that to shut down the nation. So what I talk about–and we’ve at this poin–as of as of five days after I posted it last, I spoke about it a week ago on Sunday, and then on Monday night it was posted. And within five days it had over a million and a half views.
John Shuck [00:03:11] A million and a half.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:03:13] Yeah, over a million and a half. And it’s been on Zero Hedge and it’s been on Infowars. It’s been on a lot. And people are picking up on it, taking splices of it, splicing it with Dr. Scott Jensen’s stuff. And so it’s been used quite a bit. So it’s over a million and a half in five days. And I think the reason for that, it’s not because I did such a brilliant job, but I laid the information out very well. It’s very easy to understand. I gave a lot of examples. And I think the biggest reason why this has gotten so many hits is because people are hungry to know the truth for one. And I think many, if not most people, they have this feeling in their gut. I call it the Holy Spirit, but that, you know, other people would say it’s like a gut feeling that the stylish popular narrative about how scary this virus is going to kill us all. They just have a feeling inside them that that is not true. It’s not ringing true to them. They’re looking at their neighbors. They’re saying, you know, they’re not seeing people, you know, drop dead from it. And so people just aren’t buying it. So I think the reason this is popular is that it’s coming from a physician and I’m a credentialed physician. I’m involved in a lot of things that have a long resume. And this is a doctor that’s saying things that they already have a hunch about. Some people had a hunch in their gut about these death statistics, like how did they know these people were really dying from that? They had that feeling inside of them. But because they don’t have an M.D. or a Ph. D, or they don’t have the confidence or the ability to stand up against the popular narrative. They just kept it to themselves. And then here is a person that has credentials, who is speaking to them about what the CDC itself says about death certificates, they’re saying, “I was right all along. I knew it. I knew something wasn’t right.” And so that’s why I think it has taken off.
John Shuck [00:05:02] And so tell me about you, about yourself, because I want to get into some of the meat of this. But beforehand, what started making you suspicious? When did you first start thinking, hey, something’s not right here?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:05:14] Well, I was suspicious from the start because I’ve followed all these so-called pandemics. You know, we had H1N1 back in 2008, 2009, we’re all going to die. Ended up passing. It didn’t have that high of a mortality and ended up passing. But then they forced it into the vaccines the next year. So that got my attention. And then the next one after that was Ebola. And so, you know, H1N1 didn’t sound very scary. So they had to come up with a scary sounding name. Ebola. And there was never a single documented case of Ebola in the United States. But they had everybody running around with gloves on and HAZMAT suits. So I look at the H1N1 hype. I look at the Ebola hype. And then the next one was the Zika virus, where they said, you know, all of our babies are going to be born with, you know, golf-ball sized heads and all this kind of stuff. I mean, it was not a single birth defect attributed to it in the United States, but that was the next scare. And then there was SARS and MERS. In SARS there were eight cases in the United States. MERS, there were two cases in the United States. So my background and the reason why I’m suspicious right from the start is that I’m following the history of the pandemics and how they’ve made a big deal out of nothing. And the outcome of it was usually, you know, either in this country or in other countries, you know, the innocent people in Africa or the Caribbean that are being experimented on with vaccines. So I watched all that. I already was aware of that history. And then they come up with this and at first, you know, the American College of Physicians, which I’m a fellow and a board member, a council member. And the MMA, you know, they were all saying, you know, basically it’s probably going to stay in China. Not a big deal. So I gave a talk on, you know, what they’re recommending. Just wash your hands, wash them 20 seconds. You know, that kind of the general standard things that we really should be following every flu season. Right. And then the numbers started inflating beyond anyone’s comprehension, I shouldn’t say, inflating, start being talked about–all the people that are going to die. And I kept in mind the previous pandemics and how they blew everything way out of proportion. And so I’m looking at this and I’m thinking, wait a minute. And then and then the films, the videos of citizen journalists are coming out that are showing that– you might be familiar with that– March 25th, it was CBC. It broadcasted what they said was a New York City hospital.
John Shuck [00:07:44] Yes, Elmhusrt in Queens.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:07:45] They showed the emergency room, the ICU, where they running all round. It actually had been aired as in a hospital in Italy three days prior. And so they took a hospital in Italy and made it look like that was a New York City hospital.
John Shuck [00:07:57] So they were there. CBS and ABC, one of the two who copied the other.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:08:01] It was CBC. And then they apologized. They said it was an editing error, but they had scared people so badly with that that their little apology later didn’t mean anything. And then they’re showing all these, you know, mass graves that they’re putting coffins in. I’m sorry. We don’t deal with our dead that way in this country. That just doesn’t happen. So none of this is really ringing true. And then because of my being a doctor who has filled out death certificates for over 30 years, I know how much leeway, how much power doctors have over the death certificates. And what’s put on there is the cause of death, because the vast majority of time and I go into it and I talk quite a bit. But, you know, the vast majority time, we really don’t know what people die from. It’s our best guesstimate. I mean, only God really knows. And if people die in the hospital, we have a lot of data. You know, we have the history and the physical. We have laboratory data, radiologic data. We have all of that to make a pretty good guesstimate and certain things. We could be pretty sure that’s what the person died from. But even the hospital, sometimes we don’t know even when their autopsy is done. Sometimes we don’t know. And then, you know, people that die peacefully in their sleep at home or in a nursing home or something like that. We were always making our best guesstimate. So that’s before COVID 19 enters the scene. It’s already a tremendous amount of leeway, a tremendous amount of what I would say inaccurate information, is being put into the databank. You know, I see somebody, I think that my best guess is they died from this. I put that on the death certificate. It goes unquestioned and it goes into a national databank. That’s a problem. But it’s not as big of a deal if it’s only affecting actuarial data that they use for insurance companies. I mean, that could still be a problem, you know. But it’s nothing like the big deal that it is if death certificates are inaccurate and they’re using that information to close down the world. That’s a whole different story. So if a cause of death was inaccurate before, it didn’t have that big of an impact. And we’re just doing the best we can. We’re not trying to falsify anything. We’re just giving it our best estimate. You know, maybe some doctors falsify it for whatever reason. But generally speaking, it’s probably our best guess. But now there’s a huge amount of financial incentive to say that a patient has COVID 19.
John Shuck [00:10:21] Financial incentives. Talk about that.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:10:24] Well, there’s an increased reimbursement. Doctor Scott Jensen, who is a state senator in Minnesota. You’ve probably seen that. And he talked about how just having the diagnosis of COVID 19, you know, when the person passes away or they’re discharged and they have COVID 19 as a diagnosis, they get an extra $13,000. The hospital does. If a patient with COVID 19 gets put on a ventilator, they get an extra thirty-nine thousand. Scott Jensen talks about that. I don’t have that data myself, but that’s you know, that’s being talked about by him. And, you know, other people have that data and their sharing and it looks like it’s probably true. So they get more reimbursement. And the other thing that has to do with your financial incentives for hospitals like our little hospital, Kalispell, Montana, for the whole region, is about a hundred thousand people. Okay, that’s not very big. And our hospital got nine million dollars out of the stimulus. And our hospital is virtually empty. The emergency room is empty. The ICU is operating at about half capacity. They’re not doing any elective surgeries. They’re not really taking care of people that are really, really sick with something and get a heart attack or something. And so they’re getting this nine million dollars for what? You know, it’s not justified, but that’s one of the financial incentives. And since, you know, I have my own private practice, but there are very few of us here that have that. The hospital owns almost all the medical practices. So there’s going to be a lot of pressure on those doctors to say this person had COVID 19. So there’s pressure from the CDC to do that as well.
John Shuck [00:12:02] Let’s talk about the CDC pressure. So nobody just now is running into the Kalispell, Montana hospital demanding a test for COVID?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:12:12] There are people demanding tests because people are scared out of their wits. So there are people that want to get tested, but we don’t have the, you know, the drive-by testing like they do in some of these places. We don’t have that available. In fact, it’s hard to get tested for COVID 19 here because you have to go by their algorithm, you have to have been in contact with somebody with COVID 19, either they’ve been tested and we’re waiting for the result or there or they confirm positive or you have to have been in Iran, Japan, Korea or China. So it’s hard to get testing here. And so some people say because we’re not testing everybody, that that means there’s actually more of the disease out there. But we’re not seeing people dropping dead. I mean, if people have no symptoms or minimal symptoms and they don’t have those risk factors, it’s not like they’re not getting over it. They’re getting over it. So I suspect if we tested more, people would actually show is that the vast majority, that it’s already greater than 80 percent of people that test positive for COVID 19 have little or no symptoms. So that’s that’s even just testing a skewed population. So if they tested everybody, I think it would probably be in a much, much higher rate of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic people that tested positive for COVID 19. But they’re not testing people.
John Shuck [00:13:33] My guest, if you’re just joining us, is Dr. Annie Bukacek from Kalispell, Montana. She’s a physician. She’s questioning the numbers. She had a video that has over a million and a half hits in terms of wondering about these death certificates. And so let’s go further on to that. The CDC, what is their role in these death certificates for COVID 19?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:13:59] Well, one of the things that I that I read on my video and I’m going to read it here so I give your audience the very exact information, the quotes. So the National Vital Statistics Symptom Memo went out March 24th, 2020. And here’s the language and this is a quote and this is out of the CDC’s COVID 19 tally, but it was the National Vital Statistics System Memo. And it says and this is a quote, it says, “The rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID 19 being the underlying cause more often than not.” End of quote. So that’s strange wording. It’s a strange way. It’s almost like we’re expecting more. Science requires reproducibility. You can make a hypothesis and say you think maybe it’s going to have a lot of cases, but you don’t make a statement without any kind of reproducibility that says we expect this. So that’s pretty suspicious right there, I think.
John Shuck [00:15:04] Uh-Huh. And they’re also for, for example, in Italy. And I understood that many of the cases there’s this distinction in terms of language that people dying with COVID 19 as opposed to those from COVID 19.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:15:17] That’s correct. And here’s the quote that goes along with exactly what you’re saying. And that’s, I think, the language that that people should be using and should be really grasping that just because somebody has a COVID positive test, it doesn’t mean that they have the disease. It just means that they tested positive for it. And if somebody dies and they had a test that was positive for COVID 19, it doesn’t mean they died from COVID 19. That means it suggests that they died with it. So your language is exactly, I think, the way people should be talking about it. The example that I use in my talk is somebody that comes in with, you know, pneumococcal sepsis. Pneumococcus is a bacteria and if it grew out in the sputum, in the blood, then the most reasonable thing to say would be that that patient died from pneumococcal sepsis if they pass away. But if they also are tested for COVID 19 and they happen to show up positive for COVID 19, that’s going to go on the death certificate, even though that’s not that’s not really what the immediate cause of death was. Because if you think about it, if a COVID 19 positive person can have no symptoms at all or have mild symptoms, then just testing that way in a hospital doesn’t mean you died from it or you’re sick from it.
John Shuck [00:16:37] So what do you think? Bottom line on this. How many people really have died from COVID 19? Is there any way to know?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:16:45] There’s no way to know. Only God knows. I have one more quote that I think is even more laden with meaning than the last one. And this is Steven Schwartz. He’s a Ph. D, National Director of the Division of Vital Statistics. And there was a question on this sheet. It’s called the COVID 19 Alert. And the question on it is, “Should COVID 19 be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test?” And I think somebody like you or me and your listeners, we should say, yeah, that it…
John Shuck [00:17:13] Makes sense.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:17:14] Yeah. Kind of intuitively or it’s self-evident, right? If you’re going to say it’s COVID 19, there should be a confirmed test. So that’s how you would answer it. This is how this is how he answers it. This is really important. It says, “COVID 19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory, etc.” So basically they’re saying it doesn’t have to test positive and the doctors just have to use their best judgment as to whether or not that person died of COVID 19. We already had a lot of leeway in power as far as what goes on the death certificate. And they’re actually encouraging them a certain way. And Scott Jensen, the physician from Minnesota who’s so upset about this, he says that he got a seven-page letter from the CDC guiding him how to fill out death certificates and he’s been a physician for 35 years. So a little more than I have. And he has never gotten anything from the CDC to guide him about how to fill out death certificates. This is the first time that he’s ever had that happen. And they encouraged him in the same way that I’m saying this is. So this is unprecedented.
John Shuck [00:18:41] So if you got the sniffles, You got COVID.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:18:44] Pardon me?
John Shuck [00:18:44] It could be that simple, if you got the sniffles, you got a sore throat, you got COVID.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:18:51] That’s right. That’s exactly right. And if they got the sniffles, we don’t even know if it’s really COVID 19. It could easily be another virus. And so we really don’t know. You know, I guess I give the example when I’m talking to people about this, of course, like staph aureus. You know, staph is all around us. People can have it in their nostrils as commonly on the skin. Things like the common cold virus or the common wart virus or toenail fungus. I mean, those kinds of things are really common and all around us. They’re ubiquitous. And so if you were to hospitalize somebody, again, we can use the pneumococcal sepsis case, they were hospitalized for that, but you checked their nostrils for staff. You know, chances are that staph could show up on a lot of these people, but that isn’t anything whatsoever because it’s because it’s common. So there’s COVID 19 virus might be as common as is the common wart virus. We don’t really know. And then that gets tagged on there. The way that the CDC is promoting and telling doctors how to fill it out, and then the financial incentive, most doctors work for the hospital. So the financial incentive to fill it out that way, the CDC is telling you to fill it out that way. I am fully confident that it’s being overestimated. There’s no doubt in my mind, just look at that mechanism.
John Shuck [00:20:16] Just a set up for corruption, isn’t it?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:20:18] Absolute, absolute setup.
John Shuck [00:20:20] So, OK. My guest, by the way, if you are just joining us, Annie Bukacek from Kalispell, Montana, just made a video, just a report really that’s got over a million and a half hits. What’s the title of that video? To have a title of it if people wanted to search that.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:20:37] Oh, golly. Maybe, maybe just death certificates is what I call it. And I think Pastor Baldwin said, “Dr. Bukacek blows the whistle on the CDC about death certificates.” I think that might be what he called it.
John Shuck [00:20:50] All right. You could search that and find that. Bukacek. B-U-K-A-C- E-K. Correct?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:20:57] Correct. And if any of your friends want if your listeners want a friend, me, because I’m putting something out every day on my Facebook about the COVID 19.
John Shuck [00:21:06] Excellent Facebook page, you just ask questions and you’ve got some great responses there. I’ve really appreciated looking at that. OK. So I don’t know anything. I took a biology course in high school. Right? This is just all way, way over my head. OK? And I think there’s something to that. First of all. But no expertise. I don’t even know anything really about viruses. And so do we automatically trust experts speaking through these mainstream media? Is that wise? That’s one question I have to you. But the other question is just really what is the coronavirus first, and what is COVID 19? What are we dealing with?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:21:47] The coronavirus, various strains of it were identified back in the in the 1960s. And it’s thought that the common cold is caused by a coronavirus 25 to 35 percent of the time. So it’s been it’s been around. It’s fairly ubiquitous. You know, people get sick on various strains of coronavirus. So supposedly, you know, this COVID nineteen is another strain of it. So that’s our best. Our best.
John Shuck [00:22:18] Supposedly, you don’t sound too confident that that is the case.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:22:22] Well, it could be I don’t think we’re ever going to even know because there isn’t going to be–I don’t think there’s going to be quality research to deny it. So it’s really hard to say. I think one of the important things is I just was looking this up with a brother and we were at church together that we were looking it up. It’s like in this flu season so far–2020 in the United States. Sixty-three thousand people have passed away allegedly from influenza. And that’s pretty normal for an influenza season. I mean, it’s horrible. That’s a lot of deaths, but that’s usual. And the COVID 19 is estimated at being 22,000, 23,000. So even, even with the bloated numbers that are not accurate, it’s still a third of the deaths of influenza. We’ve had, you know, twelve to sixty five thousand a year in the United States died from influenza. And we’ve never locked down the country over it. So that’s another piece of information that people need to understand that we never did this before. Should we shut down the nation six months out of the year during the flu season? You know, it just doesn’t–the logic doesn’t follow.
John Shuck [00:23:34] So of the 63,000 flu deaths, they could be, some of those could be, or was this last year’s numbers?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:23:42] This year.
John Shuck [00:23:44] This year. Those are this year’s numbers. So some of those could be COVID 19, right? This just could be the flu.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:23:50] Yeah, some of the COVID 19 could be the flu. If it was, if the flu cases were COVID 19, because of what we just talked about, you can be pretty sure they’d call it COVID19. So the influenza numbers might be deflated. The COVID 19 numbers certainly are inflated. But even if you take those numbers at face value, which I don’t believe, the COVID 19, even if you take it at face value, it’s still roughly a third of the deaths of influenza. And so then the next narrative with it is that, “Oh but the next two months, it’s going to continue to kill people.” So that’s the next narrative. “So it’s worse than the flu because it lasts longer.” Where did they get this? How do they–where do they pull that, you know, from?
John Shuck [00:24:34] Yeah. Well, I would ask you as a medical doctor, because I don’t know. I just have to trust them blindly.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:24:42] I think they’re pulling it out of their hat. They’re just coming up with it.
John Shuck [00:24:47] You had mentioned in your in the presentation that you gave a question that you asked on Facebook, because I get this all the time, people are telling me, well, I’ve got, you know, my cousin died of coronavirus or they’re all just dying in New York. You should go there and see what’s happening. And my question is, as you asked that question yourself, you asked if anybody knew anybody and you kind of evaluated those responses, could you summarize that discussion?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:25:16] Sure, I’d be happy to. So I asked a question, like you said, I ask anybody that you know personally. So the reason for me asking it in that way. If somebody knows somebody personally they might have an idea of their underlying health. Are they a healthy person? Then they might have an idea of the case. They might be following the case in the hospital if it’s somebody they personally know. And so I asked it that way specifically because we’re more likely to get accurate [responses]. They also required in answer to my question was, is it somebody that had no preexisting conditions and was hospitalized, you know, got severely ill from COVID 19 with no preexisting conditions, so got severely ill or died from it. And so I got about three hundred and fifty comments. And of those, the vast majority of people, I didn’t add them up, but the vast majority of people said no, they’d never had. They don’t know anybody personally that has it. And then there were some people that said yes. And then when I asked them to give me more details and I told them specifically, you know, if you don’t tell me the name or where the person’s from, then you’re not breaching any kind of confidentiality. You give me some more details. And most people that just said yes, or yeah, or yay or whatever, you know, they’d been give me any details. And there were three or four that gave me details that would qualify for answering my question. So three or four and I have three thousand plus friends and it was it was three or four. And if you take them, that they are telling the truth, and I have no reason to think they’re not, they’re answering me to the best of their knowledge. And so even if they knew the person really well, and they knew that they had no preexisting conditions, and if they knew the person tested COVID 19, positive and they were really sick or they died, that would answer the question properly. But that’s to the best of their knowledge. So, again, we go back to the language that you used, which is the language that I like to use. Did this person die from COVID 19? Were they put on a ventilator because of COVID 19, or did they just have it? Did they just test positive? So that’s the question that those three or four. So it wasn’t very many people that answered a legitimate yes anyway. And then of those, they’re probably answering to the best of their knowledge.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:27:34] And most people it was like a friend of a friend of a friend. And then that friend’s nephew in New York. Well, that doesn’t mean anything to me, because a lot of people, you know, they kind of get into being COVID 19 positive, you know, a melodrama about it or they might just be making it up. So I wanted to have some idea of the validity of it.
John Shuck [00:27:55] Well, I certainly know a whole lot more celebrities who have it than real people. I mean, if I’m looking around today where I live here in in Portland, I mean, I look around. I wouldn’t know that there was any pandemic except for the news telling me.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:28:14] There you go. There you go. And the ones that tested Corona positive, I think Tom Hanks, I mean, I don’t even know for sure. It was COVID 19.. I don’t watch the news. But, you know, you get these little flashes when you’re on the Internet and it said it’s a coronavirus and that could be the coronavirus strain that causes a cold. So that’s the other problem. I told you about the test kits. The first round of test kits from the CDC were…
John Shuck [00:28:38] Tell me that again. How is this COVID 19 tested?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:28:44] It’s a PCR test which looks at genetic material. It isn’t specific for a virus, it’s specific for a type of reaction. And I don’t consider myself expert on that. And I would I would recommend you refer people to that Dr. Kaufmann, that you and I talked about…
John Shuck [00:29:03] Dr. Andrew Kaufman.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:29:04] Correct. He’s studied it. And everything he says about it rings true. But the thing that I can say about PCR testing, we use it to test a lot of things. You know, if somebody is having diarrhea and we’re trying to find out bacteria in the stool, we use a PCR test. So these have been used for years. This one is specific for that genetic material. And it’s a very useful test because it usually has a pretty rapid turnaround. So you don’t have to wait as long as we used to have to wait for cultures. And so it’s been around a long time. Polyerase Chain Reaction, but it tests genetic material. So it’s not though they somehow isolated a virus. I mean, you can isolate bacteria because bacteria is alive. Viruses are not alive. So you can’t isolate it and say, yep, yep, that’s COVID 19. So it’s just some things that are suggestive of it. And so that’s a problem. And then the other problem is with testing that we consider, you know, at least the older doctors that have been practicing for the previous time where they used to have standards, want for a test to be considered a good quality test, if it’s something new, a new type of testing, then they compare it to the gold standard and they try to see is it as good as the gold standard? Because we have sensitivity, we have specificity of tests and we compare it to a gold standard. And in this case, everything was such a big emergency that there was no pressure to develop standards. There are there are no standards. There’s no gold standard test. We just know the first round was flawed. And now we’re assuming, you know, the second and third and fourth rounds are accurate. And I don’t think there’s a good basis for that. That’s a whole another topic. And again, I would refer to Dr. Kaufmann for that.
John Shuck [00:30:51] So if somebody came into your hospital and Kalispell and you thought to test them for COVID 19, you really wouldn’t be able to, would you?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:31:02] I do outpatient, I don’t do inpatient. We have hospitalists that do inpatient and so I only do outpatient and it was difficult. I haven’t been able to get any of my patients tested. Because you have to have the criteria–either they traveled to an endemic area, you know, Korea, China, Iran–or they had contact with somebody that you that we know is COVID positive or their test is pending, they think they have it. So none of my patients have qualified. I had one patient that I tried to get it for because my patients are very scared. People are frightened of this. And so I tried to get it for her. He she didn’t have the criteria, but she had just come back from Texas on a plane full of people. And, you know, and she has a underlying asthma. And she was sick. She had fever and cough. And they wouldn’t do it. If somebody’s sick enough to be in the hospital and this is what I talk about it in my death certificate talk, is that, in most cases, I suspect I can’t say for sure, but I suspect for most people, especially if they go in with something respiratory, that they probably get COVID 19 testing. And I did have I did have one patient. This patient did not have contact in any of those endemic countries, but she had been in Mexico the month prior, not two weeks prior, but the month prior. And so they kind of fudged a little bit and they tested her for COVID 19. And I think it’s appropriate because she went in basically with respiratory failure. She was very, very sick. And I think it was totally appropriate to check her. And she came up to be COVID 19 negative. Now, this is a patient that I’ve known for many years, and she gets hospitalized for this type of problem, usually two to three times a year. And sometimes they find the organism and sometimes they don’t. So if she had gone in and they in all they found was COVID 19, even in that case, does it mean that it was? She’s doing fine. She went home after three days anyway. So she was very sick at the time. She didn’t have to go on a ventilator, but she was you know, she was quite sick, like she usually is when she goes in and she was COVID negative. But even if she had been COVID positive does that necessarily mean, even somebody really sick like that, does it necessarily mean that they were sick from COVID 19? And I would say no. This woman has been in two or three times in the last year, and they sometimes they find her organism, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s just her COPD that’s gotten worse. You know, maybe the air quality isn’t as good or something like that. And so any of those times that she was in, if they had had this COVID 19 testing, maybe sometimes she’d come up positive. But that does not mean that that’s what’s causing her problem.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:33:39] My guest is Dr. Annie Bukacek. She’s from Kalispell, Montana. She’s recently put together a speech regarding death certificates that’s had over a million and a half, I believe a million and a half. I think you said views. So it’s touching a nerve and kind of touching that feeling that we have that something isn’t quite right. And Dr. Bukacek is bravely among a number of doctors being able to speak out against what this media is constantly telling us. I want to ask you a couple of other questions, but I want to make sure that we’ve covered your speech regarding the death certificate. Is there anything that I didn’t ask that is important to say?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:34:25] I don’t think so, because I think the most important thing is, again, that language that you use, they test positive and they’re sick doesn’t mean that they’re sick from it. They test positive and they pass away. It doesn’t mean they died from it. So I think that’s the most important thing. And then the quotes that I gave you from the CDC and what they’re telling doctors how to fill out death certificates, encouraging them to call it COVID 19, and then the increased reimbursement for coding it as 19 increased reimbursement for hospitals and most doctors work for the hospital.
John Shuck [00:35:01] All right.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:35:02] I do have I do have one more thing that I want to say. I think it’s because this person works for the hospital, I suspect, but I’m not I’m not a mind reader. But a week before our governor called for the state of emergency, it was a week before, almost to the day–this is a small town. We only have one infectious disease specialist. I like him very much. I called him up. I forgot to say I’m on the Flathead Health Board here. So I called him up just to see kind of what his take is on this. And he and I were on exactly the same page. He said, “You know, this is being blown out of proportion. People just need to wash their hands better. People need to, if they’re sick, or if they have a lot of co-morbidities, they need to quarantine.” So we were on exactly the same page almost a week from the day our Governor Bullock, he called the state of emergency. A week later, we had a meeting at our health board and the meeting was about shutting down restaurants. That was the first phase of the shutdown. And the same doctor came in and testified for the shutdown a week after state of emergency. What happened in that couple of weeks? Were there so many more people dying in Montana? What, was he seeing a whole lot more cases? No. The governor called a state of emergency. He works for the hospital. And they’re just going along with the program.
John Shuck [00:36:33] They are bureaucrats taking orders from above. Right?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:36:36] That’s right. That’s right. And it’s one of those things. And this is probably another topic in and of itself. But I think it’s an important piece of the puzzle is that hospitals, for the most part, they get most of their income from, they’re kind of a private sector or public sector combination. But even the private sector portion, if you want to call it that, and where they actually take money in form of insurance, it comes from Medicare and Medicaid. Somewhere around 90 percent of their funding comes from the government. And you can’t make it on what Medicare and Medicaid pays. So they have nonprofit status. You know, they get subsidies for being in a small town. And now they’re getting, you know, nine million dollars from the so-called stimulus. So there’s a lot of that, you know, government and hospital interface. And so the other CEO of the hospital and the CFO might be taking orders from the government. I don’t know, but it’s all–they’re dependent on government funds. They’re dependent on tax breaks that the regular small, the little docs like me that are solo practice, we don’t get those kind of breaks. The other businesses in town don’t get those tax breaks, but the hospital does. So there’s a lot of that kind of financial portion of it that I think is really important to understand how this has happened and how they’ve gotten such control over doctors.
John Shuck [00:37:58] Dr. Bukacek from Kalispell, Montana is my guest. Have a few minutes left. And I want to kind of go and take a different direction with you for a little bit.
Just look at this story that we’ve inherited here from face value, as best as I understand it, that in China at a seafood market in Wuhan, China, an open-air seafood market, somebody ate a wild bat and got this. What usually happens when people eat bad food in a seafood market? I mean, do we get a virus? Or do you just get sick?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:38:30] There was a movie, the movie about that called “Contagion.”
John Shuck [00:38:34] Yeah, I remember.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:38:34] And it was a terrible propaganda movie because at the end the vaccine is what saved the world. But it came from that. That kind of a theory where the pig got involved in the guy, you know, in a restaurant in China that the chefs, you know, touched the pig that touched the bat and then wiped his hands on his apron and then shook the hands of the woman. That was the case that brought it to the United States in that kind of thing. So those kind of those kind of theories are out there. But that’s kind of predicated on this really being a bad virus and a real deadly virus. So I question that. I question that whole theory. So I don’t go into the, you know, it is it is it bioterrorism? You know, in Wuhan, did somebody patent this? And I just don’t go into those things because I think they’re over-exaggerating the danger of the virus in the first place. And so that’s why I don’t spend time on that kind of thing. You know, I do want to say, if we only have a couple of minutes left, is that one of the things that they talk about, because we love our senior citizens. We love our older people. I mean, I’m an internist. Most of my patients are older people. And most people that have a heart have a heart for older people. Right? And so one of the parts of what I call the false narrative is that we’ve got to protect those old people that are the most vulnerable. They’re the ones that are by most risk and all that. They use that and they use that repeatedly over and over again. And what I see in my medical practice of my elderly patients is I can’t get them into their specialist. People that need knee replacements and hip replacements and cataract surgery. I can’t get them in for that. I can’t get mammograms ordered. I can’t get low-dose CAT scans of the lungs that are used to screen for cancer. And I talked to a surgeon two weeks ago. I had to beg this woman to call a patient of mine. Now, I’m sorry, there’s no transmission of anything over the phone. But I had to beg her to call my patient who she had seen before. And I went and he was having some worrisome symptoms for possibly recurrence of his cancer. And I wanted him to see her. And she wouldn’t. But she was willing to talk to me on the phone. I talked to the surgeon and I said, “How are you guys going to ever catch up on the backlog of these surgeries that you’re calling nonessential? How are you ever going to catch up? There aren’t going to be enough hours in the day.” And she said to me very nonchalantly, she said, “We aren’t going to ever catch up.” She said, “People are just going to have to get used to it, just like they do in other countries.” So that’s the other piece of the lockdown, is that it’s serving as a mechanism for rationing of health care to our senior citizens. So when they tell you we’re trying to protect the senior citizens with these lockdowns, that is absolutely…. it’s a lie. It’s a totally false narrative. It is these senior citizens that are being hurt by this lockdown more than anybody.
John Shuck [00:41:21] Well, that’s what I wanted to ask. I mean, even if this were a real thing and I think many people have brought up a lot of questions about that, are the procedures, locking down, taking away our rights? This social distancing stand six feet in front of another like little robots for healthy people. Is this the way that human beings should respond? I mean, I’m asking you as a medical doctor, does this make any sense?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:41:48] No, it does not make any sense and touch is very important, and that’s the other thing, these are elderly people that are in nursing homes and assisted living or they’re living at home alone and their family members can’t visit them. So they’re there totally without any touch or affection or familiar faces. So they’re languishing lonely in these nursing homes. And I had a patient who’s 92. She’s in assisted living and her daughter couldn’t get in. And she called me up and this woman’s doctor for many years and she said, could you go visit her, please? You know, and I said, of course, they wouldn’t even let me in because the patient’s not sick. So these people are being are being totally isolated. And you look at, you know, the scripture and what it says about Jesus and how often he touched people, you know, he hugged them or touched their head or, you know, he was touching people. I mean, then those studies about newborn infants that aren’t touched and what happens to their nervous system in their whole psyche when they’re not touched. I mean, we are people that are supposed to be looking at each other warmly, you know, hand on the shoulder, whatever we do, we’re supposed to be doing all that. That’s essential to our nervous system. So this is it. This is horrific on multiple levels.
John Shuck [00:42:55] I mean, we’ve been taking care of humans, have been taking care of each other for however long you think humans been around. Well, we’ve been doing it haven’t we?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:43:03] Yeah, that’s right.
John Shuck [00:43:04] Suddenly this top down. Boy, you’re shutting everything down. Just seems very odd at the best we can say. So there are many effects, you mentioned the effects on seniors. What are other effects that this new reality has on us in regards to health?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:43:24] The private sector is being completely destroyed. People are becoming totally dependent on the government for their livelihood. So that’s you know, that’s another very serious thing that’s happening. And that and the suicide rate, homicide rate, domestic violence, all those things. I mean, even prior to this lock down, those go up when unemployment goes up. So that’s a caller’s correlation. You can’t prove that it’s the cause. But it just kind of stands to reason people are around each other more. People have more time to think about devious things. You know, they’re not keeping you know, they’re not staying active. And so those kinds of things. And then you look at the food shortages that came not because of the virus, but because of people’s fear of the virus. You look at the hoarding of food and hygiene. All of that kind of stuff. These little old people, they don’t have the freezer capacity to store, you know, six months worth of food. So, again, it’s the elderly–senior citizens that are being hit hardest by this. Just in terms of food shortages.
John Shuck [00:44:29] We’re recording this conversation. My guest is Dr. Annie Bukacek from Kalispell, Montana on Easter Sunday, April 12th, 2020, Easter worship. I mean, churches have been shut down. You mentioned a little bit about Jesus, if you don’t mind, if I can talk from a faith perspective. You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to. But that aspect. I mean, bear witness. What does it mean? I mean, churches are places of healing, aren’t they not?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:44:59] That’s right. And that’s right. It’s been just. Yeah. Absolutely. And the Bible says forsake not the Assembly of the Saints. It says forsake not, forsake not. But that doesn’t mean looking at each other on a video camera. You know, it means being there together. And I know, you know, in my service, I mean, you could feel the Holy Spirit and pastor talks about, you know, when there’s division in the church, you know, there’s darker spirit. I mean, he could feel it from up there. So there’s those kinds of things. You know, we need to be there supporting each other. Our church is a very, you know, just affectionate, loving, you know, very affirming type of church. We look out for one another and we are still meeting, but we’re keeping, you know, our six feet apart and all that, because we don’t want to get shut down. We want to be able to continue to meet.
John Shuck [00:45:44] So you’ve been meeting. Tell me the Liberty Fellowship, is that it?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:45:48] Liberty Fellowship, OK. And he has an online service. So it’s Kalispell and it starts at 2:30.
John Shuck [00:45:55] So you’ve come from that service to just before you talked with me.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:46:00] Correct. Yes, we had and we kind of extended–took out the center wall so that we could invite more people and still keep the social distancing. Because if they’re going to shut us down, we don’t want to give them any cause or anything that, you know, in the media they could make it look like it was justified to shut us down. So we kept everything straight. And I haven’t heard that there been any problems from it. So, you know, he asked us to bring our sanitizer. And just in case the police came and there was no incident that went perfect. There were no problems. So there are ways to continue to meet and people need to come up with those. And we didn’t push the envelope. We didn’t break any rules other than more than 10 people, but we kept our distance. And so far, so good.
John Shuck [00:46:46] What a world, isn’t it, when worship becomes a crime?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:46:50] Yes. Yes, it is. It’s really, it’s horrific. And it needs to stop. And I think that the medical education piece is part of it. And so I feel so, so blessed to be a part of shedding the light on the medical portion, because the whole so-called I mean, I put it in quotes, “justification” for the lockdown is this terrible virus is going to kill us all. So the more and more, you know, doctors that come out and speak about this being false, the more people are going to be able to relax a little bit and maybe be less willing to give up their freedoms and question it. And I think this this whole thing could–as long as it happens fairly soon, you know, we can we can get by with less damage. The longer this goes on, the more especially older people, you know, are going to suffer in the private sector. Businesses are going to suffer.
John Shuck [00:47:45] You mentioned doctors. Is there any kind of organization in terms of medical doctors searching out the truth of this?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:47:58] Well, we started a week ago, a group it’s called Doctors Unmasking COVID 19 and we have a Web site and we already in one week’s time we have 500 likes. And what we’ve done is we’ve taken and they’re not all medical doctors. Some of them are Ph. Ds Like Dr. Shiva, who has four degrees from M.I.T. and he’s excellent. So we’ve taken various doctors, probably three quarters of our medical, the other doctors that have other degrees. And we started an organization a week ago. So we already have 500 followers, not 500 likes, but 500 followers. And so when we get Scott Jensens, you know, his videos, we get those we put those on there. Anything that the people that are managing it, you know, I’m managing it. And a couple other people are. And we find these articles, we put him on there and it just encourages people. And the more, you know, more doctors are joining it. So it’s pretty it’s exciting. And so that gives kind of a central location where people can go and they can they can cut and paste the articles and use it, you know, on their own Facebook or whatever they use for social media. They can they can use it to talk to the sheriff or the chief of police, because we’ve got to turn this around quickly for the sake of the economy. We need to get people back to work.
John Shuck [00:49:20] The sake of the economy, which is not just numbers. Economy is the managing of one’s house. It’s our health. It’s life.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:49:28] That’s right.
John Shuck [00:49:31] So Doctors Unmasking COVID 19? Is that it?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:49:36] Doctors Unmasking COVID 19. If you’re a physician, you know, let us know that. And then, you know, you could be anybody, can make comments on any of the things that we post. And then if someone’s a physician, they can get on there and they could be one of the managers and find articles and put them on or put their own opinions on their own experiences, because there are many, many hospitals like mine here in Kalispell that are virtually empty. And yet they’re getting nine million dollars of the stimulus money. And the little guy is only getting seven to eight percent of that stimulus money. It’s mostly it’s going to large corporations and bankers. It’s not really helping us.
John Shuck [00:50:18] And then, of course, what you just said is that these important other surgeries that are now considered non-essential are not being done for anyone’s health.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:50:26] Yeah. And they’re never going to be able to catch up. And once a person needs a hip replacement or a knee replacement, they’re in agonizing pain. We don’t take those surgeries lightly. They’re already disabled by the pain. And then they’re going to be told they have to wait six months or a year like they do up in Canada or maybe never. Maybe they’ll never have it done. That’s very serious impact on public health.
John Shuck [00:50:48] Dr. Annie Bukacek what do you think about–I catch these stories– I don’t know how reliable they are, but Bill Gates is in the news a lot in terms of a vaccine that’s coming and a mandatory vaccine. What do you make of these stories? What do you make of that possibility?
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:51:07] Some of it is. You can watch his lips move. It’s coming right out of his mouth. Same thing with Dr. Anthony Fauci. They’re both talking that way that we’re not going to be able to get people back to work until there’s a vaccine or there’s a treatment for this. And they’re talking about how everyone is going to have to be checked to see if they’re immune. And if you’re not immune, you’re not going to go back to work. I mean, this is really serious. So it’s out of their own mouth. You could see their lips moving and them saying that. So it’s actually true for Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci. They’re talking about that.
John Shuck [00:51:40] I don’t think I want one. I’d rather just catch the thing and whatever.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:51:47] That’s right. That’s right. But if you don’t get it, then you’ll be limited probably in where you can go and what you can do and you’ll still have to stay home. So that’s what they’re indicating. If you want to get out and have a normal life, you’re going to have to be tested. And if you if you don’t test that, you’re immune to it, then you’re going to have to get the vaccine. And if you don’t test the right way and you don’t take the vaccine, then you just need to stay home for the rest of your life. Except for grocery shopping. I guess so. So that’s what that’s what they’re proposing. And again, that’s why the critical piece is more and more doctors coming out and speaking out about this. They they’ve just got to do that.
John Shuck [00:52:29] Can you give me, as a person of faith, your kind of overall picture of this? If you’d like to. I mean, I’m thinking for me. I had to have really an understanding and I’m putting it out there. I’m not putting words in your mouth, I had to have an understanding of evil that was big enough.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:52:48] Right. That’s right. All right. Yeah. And I think what’s happening with you on the same page and I’m only talking to you this way because you’re a brother and probably most your listeners are, because for nonbelievers, this would sound really far-fetched. But anybody that knows their Bible knows that the devil from the start, I mean, back from the Tower of Babel. But even before that, you know, his plan has always been to subject everyone in the world. It’ll be under his dominion. You know, it’ll be a be all one world under his dominion. That’s always been his plan. And here we have the whole world is shut down based on a virus that isn’t really. I mean, it’s just like a scary story. I’m not saying the virus itself is made up, but the fear factor has been blown completely out of proportion. And because we’ve been so dumbed down and we’ve become so glued to our televisions and, you know, and glued to trusting the government and all that, it’s been it’s been pretty easy go for them. They’ve been able to basically shut down the world based on what I call a scary story. And people are just asking for the government to come and take over their lives. And so it’s something that has been brewing since, like I said before, the Tower of Babel. And it just it took it took a long time, because there have always been people that have said, no, you know, our liberty, these rights come, especially in this country, you know, our rights come from God. They don’t come from the government. They come from God. And that was the foundation of our nation. And so we’ve preserved that to an extent. But over time, it’s just been chipped away, chipped away at our educational system, chips away at that. A lot of people don’t even believe in the devil. And so to me, it’s scriptural that this would happen. And it’s just it’s embarrassing that we would let it happen so easily. You know, it’s not 300 million Chinese troops that come in and take us over, which we deserve to be taken over. We did. We killed, you know, it’s way beyond 60 million. You know, the number of unborn babies we’ve killed here. And so we deserve to be taken over. But it’s not–we’re not being taken over by 300 million troops–foreign troops. We’re being taken over by a scary story. And that’s pathetic.
John Shuck [00:55:02] Hmm. Yeah. Well said, we’ve been taken over by a scary story.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:55:10] Out of fear, not out of something real. Even we relinquished our freedoms voluntarily because of fear.
John Shuck [00:55:18] Well, thank you, Dr. Annie Bukacek for being a warrior and a truth teller.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:55:23] And you are the best moderator and talk show host I think I’ve ever spoken to. It is such a pleasure. You ask the best questions. And I know sometimes I talk fast. And you’re such a gracious host.
John Shuck [00:55:36] Well, well, thank you for that. And I hope we’ll be able to talk again. So. Well, God bless you and all the best to you and to Pastor Chuck and all your church there in Kalispell.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:55:45] And well, say one more thing really quickly, and that is that fear never comes from God. We know that.
John Shuck [00:55:51] That’s right.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:55:53] So that’s something people need to keep in mind. Pestilence can come from God. He can do that if he wishes. But fear never comes from God. So that’s it.
John Shuck [00:56:02] We’re going to leave it there. Doctor Annie Bukacek.
Dr. Annie Bukacek [00:56:04] All right, John, you’re terrific. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
John Shuck [00:56:09] You’ve been listening to John Shuck, John Shuck Dot Com is my website. www.johnshuck.com. I will have links to Dr. Annie Bukacek’s page as well as her Facebook page and her video and the Doctors Unmasking COVID 19 website as well. Find all my interviews, essays, everything at John Shuck dot com. Be well, be safe. Be attentive.
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Thanks to its Brexit planning, the UK should have been better positioned to help its small businesses through the coronavirus crisis than most of its European peers. In early 2019, the UK treasury, together with the business department and the state-owned British Business Bank, laid the groundwork for a loan guarantee system for small businesses in the event of a chaotic Brexit. This meant that when the Covid-19 lockdown began, all the government needed to do was dust off those plans and put them into action. It should have been smooth sailing. Instead, it’s been an unmitigated disaster.
On March 19, the day the economy went into lockdown, the government unveiled £330 billion of emergency measures to help shuttered businesses weather the storm. Those measures included the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), which the Chancellor of Exchequer Rishi Sunaksaid would be made available to “any good business in financial difficulty who needs access to cash to pay their rent, the salaries of their employees, pay suppliers, or purchase stock”. Yet almost four weeks later, just 4,000 of the 300,000 companies that have applied for the funds have actually received them.
“Something has gone wrong,” warned former Bank of England governor Mervyn King on Sunday. Due to a combination of voluminous government red tape, complex eligibility criteria, massive roadblocks erected by the participating banks and the temporary closure of a large number of bank branches, the amount of money so far lent out by UK lenders to small or mid-sized businesses is just £800 million pounds. That’s less than 0.25% of the total £330 billion pledged in loans for businesses, small and large.
In Switzerland, with a population roughly one eighth the size as the UK’s, 76,000 small businesses had received emergency loans worth more than CHF15 billion ($15 billion) as of April 6. Since then, the Swiss government has doubled the facility from CHF20 billion ($20.8 billion) to CHF40 billion ($41.6 billion). The much-lauded loan scheme’s success appears to rest on two basic pillars:
One, simplicity and speed. To qualify for a loan of up half a million francs, small business owners merely have to fill in a one-page form containing six basic questions, which they must answer honestly. Once the form is sent to the bank, the application is approved or rejected within no more than 24 hours. If approved, the loan is interest free, does not include penalties and is repayable in five years.
Two, zero risks for banks. All loans of up to CHF500,000 are 100% guaranteed by the state, meaning the banks have nothing to lose and are therefore less worried about the risk of providing financial lifelines to businesses whose future is far from certain, even with the loans.
In the UK, by contrast, 80% of each loan is guaranteed by the state, which means banks must assume 20% of the risk of non-payment. Even before this crisis began, large UK banks were already reticent about lending to small businesses. Worse still, many of the small firms they have lent to ended up being lumbered with dodgy financial products such as payment protection insurance (PPI) or interest rate swaps, which had an annoying tendency to harm or destroy the business’ financial health while making the bank bucket loads of money,
A large part of the problem is cultural: most big banks in the UK just don’t like lending to small businesses anymore, especially if the interest rate they stand to earn on the loan is as low as 1.5%. Yet in other European countries where emergency business loans are not fully backed by government and the interest on loans is also pretty low, large amounts of funding are already flowing to businesses.
Even in Spain, which is not exactly famed for the speed of its bureaucracy and where the government is also guaranteeing up to 80% of emergency loans and loan renewals, some €30 billion has been disbursed by the banks in the past month, many of them to SMEs. Just one lender, Caixabank, says it has so far granted €8 billion to businesses — ten times more than the whole of the UK banking sector. It’s not all wines and roses, of course. Some banks are breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of Spain’s emergency loan legislation by green-lighting loans only if a borrower agrees to take out another financial product such as life insurance.
Other countries have also had their share of problems. In Germany the emergency loans system got so overloaded at its launch that it bogged down, while in France many companies are buried under mountains of paperwork.
But nowhere has the approach been so poorly designed and implemented than in the UK. The system has already been through one major overhaul in which banks were banned from demanding personal guarantees from borrowers of loans of less than £250,000. The banks were also prevented from requiring small firms to apply for a commercial product before being considered for an emergency loan. Despite these changes, the system is still failing to get anywhere near enough money to the millions of businesses that need it.
Many business owners have said that without an emergency loan they will not be able to pay staff at the end of this month. A network of accountants serving more than 12,000 SMEs called the Corporate Finance Network recently warned that as many as a fifth of small businesses in the UK will go out of business in the next three weeks if they don’t receive the emergency cash.
“The economy will recover quickly only if we can keep the businesses that existed at the beginning of it still functioning and still able to pick up the reins when the epidemic is over,” Mervyn King said in his interview with Sky on Sunday. For that to happen, both the UK government and UK banks will have to get their act together and their priorities straight pretty quickly.
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Comments Off on “Something Has Gone Wrong”: UK Government, Banks Screw Up Coronavirus Loans, Small Firms Near Collapse. Better Results in Other Countries
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As well as enforcing quarantine measures, the law also allows the authorities to force people to be vaccinated, even though there is currently no vaccination for the virus.” Denmark rushes through emergency coronavirus law, (The Local, 13/3/20)
During the state of emergency, people will only be allowed out on to public streets for the following reasons: to buy food, basic or pharmaceutical items; to attend medical centres; to go to and from work …” Spain orders nationwide lockdown to battle coronavirus (The Guardian, 14/3/20)
Police are patrolling the streets to ensure we only leave our homes for work and health-related reasons … we must fill and carry certificates stating our reasons. If caught out without a certificate, we will be fined and face up to three months in jail.” LIFE UNDER ITALY’S CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN, (Newsweek, 13/3/20)
Israel has authorized the country’s internal security agency to tap into a vast and previously undisclosed trove of cellphone data to retrace the movements of people who have contracted the coronavirus and identify others who should be quarantined…” To Track Coronavirus, Israel Moves to Tap Secret Trove of Cellphone Data, (NYT, 16/3/20)
“We are at war – a public health war, certainly but we are at war, against an invisible and elusive enemy,” Macron said, outlawing all journeys outside the home … anyone flouting the new regulations would be punished, he said.” Coronavirus: France imposes lockdown as EU calls for 30-day travel ban, (The Guardian, 16/3/20)
“The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said 100,000 police officers would be deployed to enforce the lockdown … Macron said that if necessary, the government would legislate by decree …” France ‘at war’: how Parisians are coping with life under lockdown, (The Guardian, 17/3/20)
The Ministry of Defence is to double the size of the military’s civil contingency unit to create a 20,000-strong Covid support force … the armed forces need to be prepared for the threat of a breakdown in civil order.” 10,000 extra troops to join British army’s Covid support force (The Guardian, 18/3/20)
“The new force — made up of 10,000 military personnel who are regularly deployed to civilian activities, plus an extra 10,000 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic — has been placed at ‘high readiness’.” UK armed forces prepare 20,000 troops to help in crisis (Financial Times)
Twitter will remove tweets that run the risk of causing harm by spreading dangerous misinformation about Covid-19 … it will be applying a new broader definition of harm to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources.” Twitter to remove harmful fake news about coronavirus (The Guardian, 19/3/20)
“Some 100,000 police have fanned out across France to enforce the lockdown, with people allowed out of their homes only to buy groceries, go to work, exercise alone or seek medical help.” Woman bundled to ground by police for breaking lockdown in Paris (Metro, 19/3/20)
He is in a specially cleaned area designated for those who should be self-isolating.” Minister Quayle said, “we cannot allow our critical health services to become overwhelmed and must have the means to prosecute those who choose to act irresponsibly.” Coronavirus: No prosecution for man who ‘failed to self-isolate’, (BBC, 20/3/20)
These [social restrictions] would need to be in place for at least most of a year. Under such as policy, at least half of the year would be spent under the stricter social distancing measures.” Social distancing may need to go on for almost 12 months (Independent, 20/3/20)
As of Wednesday, the camps have been locked down from 7pm to 7am. In the daytime, only one person is allowed out per family, and the police control their movements.” Fears of catastrophe as Greece puts migrant camps into lockdown, (The Guardian, 21/3/20)
These provisions will be enforced … the violation of any provision of [the] order constitutes an imminent threat and creates an immediate menace to public health.” Here’s what a ‘stay home’ order means for New York, (The Guardian, 21/3/20)
“A final option: ‘Permanent changes in our behavior that allow us to keep transmission rates low’ … that could include strict policies of testing and quarantine for anyone who comes down with COVID-19 — or even long-term bans on large gatherings.” Coronavirus ‘exit strategy’ could be months — or years — away, (New York Post, 21/3/20)
The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the coronavirus spreads through the United States.” DOJ seeks new emergency powers amid coronavirus pandemic, (Politico, 21/3/20)
Germany has issued a “contact ban, limiting interactions of more than 2 people … there will be fines of up to €25,000 for those not keeping a 2 meter distance between people. The measures will be enforced by police and stay in place until April 19.” Coronavirus latest: Angela Merkel to quarantine after meeting infected doctor, (DW, 21/3/20)
Quebec City police have arrested a woman, who has tested positive for the coronavirus, for being out in the city’s Limoilou neighbourhood despite being under a quarantine order.” Quebec City police arrest COVID-19 patient for defying quarantine, (CBC, 20/3/20)
From a technological perspective, the coronavirus pandemic is one massive testbed for surveillance capitalism … governments are rolling out surveillance measures, all in the effort to ensure that policies of mass behaviour modification are successful.” Coronavirus Could Infect Privacy And Civil Liberties Forever, (Forbes, 23/3/20)
Counter-terrorism troops have been redeployed across Italy to beef up police … patrol cars are circulating in every major city with a voice warning citizens over a loudspeaker not to leave their residences … “Go back into your homes,” the voice warns. Lock the F*ck Down or End Up Like Italy, (Daily Beast, 22/3/20)
Prime Minister Édouard Philippe gave a national address to give details of the new rules … [French citizens] must have their ‘justification’ paper – signed, dated and with the time they have left home – to show if stopped by the police or gendarmes.” Global confirmed Covid-19 cases top 400,000 – as it happened. (The Guardian, 25/3/20)
“The UK government has sent a mass text message to as many phones as possible, urging citizens to stay at home during the coronavirus lockdown: “CORONAVIRUS ALERT. New rules in force now: you must stay at home. Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.” GOVERNMENT SENDS MASS TEXT MESSAGE URGING PEOPLE TO STAY AT HOME, (Independent, 24/3/20)
The Government is set to publish its coronavirus bill in Parliament this week. It gives officers from the police and immigration powers to detain people in appropriate isolation centres if they are a risk to public health.” Coronavirus: New powers to detain those refusing to isolate, (The Argus, 19/3/20)
“Security officers in several African countries have been beating, harassing and, in some cases, killing people as they enforce measures aimed at preventing the spread of Covid-19.” Coronavirus in Africa: Emergency laws v individual rights, (BBC, 9/4/20)
“World Health Organization executive director Dr. Michael Ryan said surveillance is part of what’s required for life to return to normal in a world without a vaccine.” After coronavirus, AI could be central to our new normal, (Venture Beat, 8/4/20)
“White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s task force has reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system …” Kushner’s team seeks national coronavirus surveillance system, (Politico, 7/4/20)
East Asian countries have demonstrated that a robust regime of surveillance is essential to fighting a pandemic. Western democracies must rise to meet the need for ‘democratic surveillance’ to protect their own populations.” Coronavirus and the Future of Surveillance, (Foreign Affairs, 6/4/20)
Australia will deploy helicopters, set up police checkpoints and hand out hefty fines to deter people from breaking an Easter travel ban … Police said they will block roads and use number plate recognition technology to catch those infringing the bans.” Confirmed worldwide Covid-19 death toll passes 100,000 (The Guardian, 11/4/20)
Officers say they responded to a synagogue in Monsey after receiving complaints. They found 30-50 men praying together. Eight were arrested for disorderly conduct. Police say they will arrest more people if the gatherings continue.” 8 Arrested In Monsey For Violating Social Distancing Emergency Orders, (CBS, 9/4/20)
‘These drones will be around the City with an automated message from the Mayor telling you to STOP gathering, disperse and go home,’ the police department said.” Coronavirus Surveillance Is Entering Dystopian Territory, (Vanity Fair, 9/4/20)
Our law-enforcement agencies, politicians and corporate overlords are working hard, night and day, to protect us from this terrible disease. Consider sparing a thought for our brave boys in black this evening during your allotted compulsory appreciation window.
REPORT ALL NON-APPRECIATORS TO YOUR NEAREST SURVEILLANCE DRONE. Those guilty of virus denial or other forms of sedition weaken our morale and can cause outbreaks.
Remember, good citizenship will earn you a higher place on the vaccination schedule.
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Orwellian control over the lives and welfare of ordinary people would pose the greatest threat to free and open societies.
They’d no longer exist if the worst of it was imposed, notably by manipulating the public mind to accept the unacceptable for our own good.
Its modus operandi would include mass deception, mass surveillance, tracking our movements, controlling the message, tolerating no dissent, mass subjection to toxic vaxxing, and instituting draconian totalitarian control as the new normal.
Truth-telling would become a criminal offensive, only state approved views permitted. Life as it once was no longer would exist.
Is all of the above where the US, the West overall, and other nations are heading?
Are so-called COVID-19 immunity certificates part of the scheme? Will they be mandated to travel and interact with others in public?
Will schools, airports, rail and bus terminals, stores, theaters, stadiums, other public places where people gather, even doctors’ offices, refuse entry to individuals without them?
Will harmful to human health toxic vaccinations, along with antibody testing be required to get one?
With the rarest of rare exceptions, no one elected or appointed to public office should be trusted as a guardian of our rights and welfare, notably not in the West.
Instead of serving public health and welfare, along with fostering free and open societies, policies of US-led Western officials are polar opposite — exploiting and otherwise harming ordinary people so privileged ones can benefit, no matter the human toll.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Anthony Fauci is a front man for steering the US public to mass toxic vaccinations.
Last week he said the Trump regime is considering issuance of COVID-19 immunity certificates for individuals infected by and recovered from the virus.
“The proposal is contingent upon the widespread deployment of antibody tests which the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration are in the process of validating in the US,” he said, adding:
“Although coronavirus testing thus far has been able to determine if an individual has an active infection, antibody tests report whether an asymptomatic person was previously infected but has since recovered (and immune), potentially allowing them to return to their jobs.”
One problem with this scheme is that positive antibody tests would not be able to distinguish between infected individuals and others who recovered from the virus.
A second related problem is the accuracy of tests. COVID-19 PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and antibody tests are producing false positives and negatives — why accurate numbers of infected individuals in the US and elsewhere are unclear.
Does a positive antibody test mean an individual is ill or recovered from illness? It could be either so tests are meaningless.
According to microbiologist Edward Wright, a PCR test aims to “detect the genetic information of the virus, the RNA. That’s only possible if the virus is there and someone is actively infected.”
The problem with the test’s accuracy is that it takes a tiny amount of human tissue, expands it for analysis, but fails to tell how much virus is in a human body, if any.
The most serious issue is the prospect of mandating immunity certificates to force-feed mass toxic vaccinations on unsuspecting people to reenter society freely — unaware that they may be sorry, not safe by injection.
Will we be given a choice between vaccination or loss of personal freedom, unaware that both choices are harmful to human health and welfare?
Mandatory vaccinations to obtain immunity certificates pose serious ethical and scientific problems.
The former relates to the Hippocratic oath of doing no harm. There’s more potential harm than good from vaccines, known to contain a laundry list of toxic ingredients that are harmful to human health.
The latter relates to how long positive antibodies in recovered individuals protect from them from possible reinfection. It’s unknown.
According to Experimental Medicine Professor Peter Openshaw, “(m)y guess is that the protective immunity will last at least three months. That’s the worst-case scenario,” adding:
More likely it’ll “last between one and five years, but until that time has passed, we won’t know for sure.”
Britain is considering large-scale antibody testing. Scientists who evaluated test kits found them unreliable.
Professor of Medicine John Bell said they “have not performed well. This is not a good result for test suppliers or for us.”
Medical and scientific officials in other countries also reported test failures.
Bell: “We clearly want to avoid telling people they are immune when they are not, and we want all people who are immune to know accurately so they can get back to work.”
The US FDA has a Cellex Inc. developed finger-prick blood sample rapid antibody test.
The company cautioned that it should not be used as the sole basis for diagnosis — meaning it can produce inaccurate results.
Without symptoms, there’s no way to know if someone is ill or well. No scientifically proved tests exist so far to tell if someone is infected with COVID-19. Reported numbers are guesswork.
Are things headed toward a two-tiered US society? Will low-risk young people wish to contract COVID-19 to have antibodies to the virus on recovery, a passport to reenter the workplace?
Bioethics Professor I. Glenn Cohen said “(t)hat sounds crazy, but if having the antibodies becomes the cost of entering the job market and thus feeding your family, there may be workers who feel pressured into it.”
Will parents feel the same way about young children, wanting them exposed to the virus at a young age when symptoms are likely to be milder and recovery sooner?
Years ago, positive antibody tests meant infection was present. So how can the opposite be true now — namely that they show immunity to COVID-19?
A brave new world 2.0 is unfolding. It follows what happened to our detriment post-9/11.
Ahead our choices may be either be to get tested and vaccinated to reenter society publicly or be denied the right to function normally.
Both options are none at all, neither acceptable.
What’s coming remains to unfold. What’s known suggests things will likely be more unacceptable than already.
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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.”
The Russia-Saudi oil-price war is a fabrication concocted by the media. There’s not a word of truth to any of it. Yes, there was a dust up at an OPEC meeting in early March that led to production increases and plunging prices. That part is true. But Saudi Arabia’s oil-dumping strategy wasn’t aimed at Russia, it was aimed at US shale oil producers. But not for the reasons you’ve read about in the media.
The Saudis aren’t trying to destroy the US shale oil business. That’s another fiction. They just want US producers to play by the rules and pitch in when prices need support. That might seem like a stretch, but it’s true.
You see, US oil producers are not what-you’d-call “team players”. They don’t cooperate with foreign producers, they’re not willing to share the costs of flagging demand, and they never lift a finger to support prices. US oil producers are the next-door-neighbor that parks his beat-up Plymouth on the front lawn and then surrounds it with rusty appliances. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.
What Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman want is for US producers to share the pain of oil production cuts in order to stabilize prices. It’s an entirely reasonable request. Here’s a clip from an article at oilprice.com that helps to explain what’s really going on:
“… there was a sliver of hope that oil prices may rebound after Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia, Russia and allied oil producers will agree to deep cuts to their crude output at talks this week but only if the United States and several others join in with curbs to help prop up prices that have been hammered by the coronavirus crisis. However, in an attempt to have its cake and eat it too, the U.S. DOE said on Tuesday that U.S. output is already falling without government action, in line with the White House’s insistence that it would not intervene in the private markets….
… OPEC+ will require the United States to make cuts in order to come to an agreement: The EIA report today demonstrates that there are already projected cuts of 2 (million bpd), without any intervention from the federal government,” the U.S. Energy Department said.
That is not enough for OPEC+ however, and certainly not Russia, which on Wednesday made clear that market-driven declines in oil production shouldn’t be considered as cuts intended to stabilize the market, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells reporters on conference call.
“These are completely different cuts. You are comparing the overall demand drop with cuts to stabilize global markets. It’s like comparing length and width,” Peskov said…..Moscow’s participation is highly contingent on the US, and is unlikely to agree to output cuts if the US does not join the effort.” (“Historic Oil Deal On The Verge Of Collapse As Russia Balks At U.S. ‘Cuts’”, oilprice.com)
Putin is being reasonable and fair. If everyone else is forced to cut supply, then US oil producers should have to cut supply too. But they don’t want to share the pain, so they’ve settled on a strategy for weaseling out of it. They want their reductions in output (from weak demand during the pandemic) to count as “production cuts”. They even have a name for this swindle, they call it “organic production cuts”, which means no cuts at all. This is the way hucksters do business not responsible adults.
What does Putin want from this deal?
Price stability. Yes, he’d like to see prices settle somewhere north of $45 per barrel but that’s not going to happen for a while. The combination of a weaker demand (due to the coronavirus) and oversupply (from the Saudis flooding the market) have ensured that prices will remain low for the foreseeable future. Even so, Putin understood what the Saudis were doing by flooding the market, and he knew it wasn’t directed at Russia. The Saudis were trying to persuade US oil producers to stop freeloading and cut production like everyone else. That’s the long and short of it. Check out this excerpt from an article by oil expert, Simon Watkins at oilprice.com:
“Saudi Arabia was continually peeved …(because) its efforts to keep oil prices up through various OPEC and OPEC+ agreements were allowing these very shale producers to make a lot more money than the Saudis, relatively speaking. The reason for this was that U.S. shale producers…. were not bound in to the OPEC/OPEC+ production quotas so could fill the output gaps created by OPEC producers.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, oilprice.com)
This is what the media fails to tell their readers, that US oil producers– who don’t participate in any collective effort to stabilize prices– have been exploiting OPEC production quotas in order to fatten the bottom line at the expense of others. US producers figured out how to game the system and make a bundle in the process. Is it any wonder why the Saudis were pissed?? Here’s more from the same article:
“This allowed the U.S. a rolling 3-4 million bpd advantage over Saudi in the oil exports game, meaning that it quickly became the world’s number one oil producer…. Hence, Saudi Arabia decided initially to unilaterally announce its intention for the last OPEC+ deal to be much bigger than that which it had pre-agreed with Russia, hoping to ambush the Russians into agreeing. Russia, however, turned around and told Saudi Arabia to figuratively go and reproduce with itself. MbS,… then decided to launch an all-out price war.” (oilprice.com)
So you can see that this really had nothing to do with Russian at all. The Crown Prince was simply frustrated at the way US oil producers were gaming the system, which is why he felt like he had to respond by flooding the market. The obvious target was the US shale oil industry that was taking advantage of the quotas, refusing to cooperate with fellow oil producers and generally freeloading off the existing quota system.
And what’s funny, is that as soon as the Saudis started putting the screws to the US fracking gang, they all scampered off to Washington en masse to beg for help from Papa Trump. Which is why Trump decided to make emergency calls to Moscow and Riyadh to see if he could hash out a deal.
It’s worth noting that domestic oil producers have been involved in other dodgy activities in the past. Check out this excerpt from an article in the Guardian in 2014, the last time oil prices crashed:
“After standing at well over $110 a barrel in the summer, the cost of crude has collapsed. Prices are down by a quarter in the past three months….
Think about how the Obama administration sees the state of the world. It wants Tehran to come to heel over its nuclear programme. It wants Vladimir Putin to back off in eastern Ukraine. But after recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has no desire to put American boots on the ground. Instead, with the help of its Saudi ally, Washington is trying to drive down the oil price by flooding an already weak market with crude. As the Russians and the Iranians are heavily dependent on oil exports, the assumption is that they will become easier to deal with…
The Saudis did something similar in the mid-1980s. Then, the geopolitical motivation for a move that sent the oil price to below $10 a barrel was to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime….
Washington’s willingness to play the oil card stems from the belief that domestic supplies of energy from fracking make it possible for the US to become the world’s biggest oil producer. In a speech last year, Tom Donilon, then Barack Obama’s national security adviser, said the US was now less vulnerable to global oil shocks. The cushion provided by shale oil and gas “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our national security goals”. (“Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia”, The Guardian)
This excerpt shows that Washington is more than willing to use the “oil card” if it helps to achieve its geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, good buddy, Saudi Arabia, has historically played a key role in helping to promote those goals. The current incident, however, is the exact opposite. The Saudis aren’t helping the US achieve its objectives, quite the contrary, they’re lashing out in frustration. They feel like they’re being squeezed by Washington (and US producers) and they want to prove that they have the means to fight back. Flooding the market was just MBS’s way of “letting off steam”.
Trump understands this, but he also understands who ultimately calls the shots, which is why he took the unusual step of explicitly warning the Saudis that they’d better shape up and step in line or there’d be hell to pay. Here’s a little background that will help to connect the dots:
“..the deal made in 1945 between the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Saudi King at the time, Abdulaziz, that has defined the relationship between the two countries ever since… the deal that was struck between the two men on board the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy… was that the U.S. would receive all of the oil supplies it needed for as long as Saudi Arabia had oil in place, in return for which the U.S. would guarantee the security of the ruling House of Saud.The deal has altered slightly ever since the rise of the U.S. shale oil industry and Saudi Arabia’s attempt to destroy it from 2014 to 2016, in that the U.S. still guarantees the security of the House of Saud but it also expects Saudi Arabia not only to supply the U.S. with whatever oil it needs for as long as it can but also – and this is key to everything that has followed – it also allows the U.S. shale industry to continue to function and to grow.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, if t his means that the Saudis lose out to U.S. shale producers by keeping oil prices up but losing out on export opportunities to these U.S. firms then tough..
As U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear whenever he has sensed a lack of understanding on the part of Saudi Arabia for the huge benefit that the U.S. is doing the ruling family: “He [Saudi King Salman] would not last in power for two weeks without the backing of the U.S. military.” (“The Sad Truth About The OPEC+ Production Cut”, Simon Watkins, Oil Price)
Trump felt like he had to remind the Saudis how the system actually works: Washington gives the orders and the Saudi’s obey. Simple, right? In fact, the Crown Prince has already slashed oil production dramatically and is fully complying with Trump’s directives, because he knows if he doesn’t, he’s going to wind up like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.
Meanwhile, US shale oil producers won’t be required to make any cuts at all or, as the New York Times puts it: “It was not immediately clear if the Trump administration made a formal commitment to cut production in the United States.”
Got that? So everyone else cuts production, everyone else sees their revenues shrink, and everyone else pitches-in to put a floor under prices. Everyone except the “exceptional” American oil producers from the exceptional United States. They don’t have to do a damn thing.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
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Senator Scott Jensen represents Minnesota. He’s also a doctor. He appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingram where he revealed a very disturbing piece of information.
Dr. Scott Jensen says the American Medical Association is now “encouraging” doctors to overcount coronavirus deaths across the country.
“Unfortunately this guy Fauci has been in this environment for nearly 4 decades across multiple presidents and is essentially embedded in this scientific establishment which has created an unfortunate lie about the immune system and an unfortunate lie about the solution to this coronavirus or more importantly infectious disease without any real emphasis which is a real issue about the fact that it is an overactive dysfunctional weakened immune system that overreacts and that’s what causes damage to the body. And unfortunately Fauci has not talked about that because the truth of that leads to a solution which has nothing to do with mandating vaccines and shutting down the country.” –Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai
At least eight coronavirus strains exist. Infection rates worldwide differ markedly, some countries more successful in containing outbreaks than others — the US notably unsuccessful, China very successful with four times the population.
Is its healthcare system more advanced than America’s or other Western countries?
Is it because of increasing US indifference toward public health, its infrastructure unprepared to deal with a widespread outbreak of any infectious disease — including healthcare professionals lacking personal protective equipment (PPE) when most needed?
The truth lies in the common threads that run through the Coronavirus story, which include Big Money, the billionaire foundations (1), and Big Pharma. These forces, allied with neoliberal ideologies of privatization, deregulation, and the emaciation of the public sphere, have formed toxic alliances that are destroying global economies, as well as the health and welfare of impacted populations.
Minnesota State Senator Scott Jensen appeared on a local news show to report that doctors were receiving instructions from the Minnesota Department of Health to report Covid19 as a cause of death, even if the patient was never tested.
Senator Jensen, who is also a practising physician, said he had never before in his thirty-five-year career received specific instructions on how to fill out a death certificate
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.
This is the true picture of what is happening. “Planet Lockdown” is an encroachment on civil liberties and the “Right to Life”. Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.
We are currently not measuring the incidence of coronavirus diseases, but the activity of the specialists searching for them.
Wherever such the new tests are carried out – there about 9000 tests per week available in 38 laboratories throughout Europe on 13 February 2020 – there are at least single cases detected and every case becomes a self-sustaining media event. The fact alone that the discovery of a coronavirus infection is accompanied by a particularly intensive search in its vicinity explains many regional clustersi.
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A humble Boris Johnson addressed the nation last weekend after his release from hospital. The British Prime Minister had been admitted the week before after succumbing to coronavirus. In his emotional address, he spoke of the ‘love’ which he had received from the care workers – several of whom he named – that had enabled him to recover from his period in intensive care. He described that two nurses were at his bedside night and day, monitoring him every minute in a situation which was very much touch and go.
This dramatic episode may have boosted Boris Johnson’s popularity, as the nation for a brief time stood shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister, but it hasn’t prevented growing criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic to date. Indeed the very fact that the Prime Minister and his team have not been adequately protected from the virus has caused widespread concern. And the situation at the top pretty much reflects that across society, as hospital staff, care workers and other front line public service workers have not been given the necessary Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to shield them from the virus. Like lambs to the slaughter, these essential workers have soldiered on, some tragically falling victim to Covid-19. Britain’s renowned Royal College of Nursing has said that staff may have to refuse to treat patients if they are not given adequate PPE. The pressure is mounting on the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, to deliver, and deliver fast.
The initial surge of patriotism and unity felt across Britain when lockdown began is starting to wane. People are getting tired of the restrictions, questioning more and more when it will end as the novelty of staying at home is beginning to wear off. Initially the restrictions were to be for a period of three weeks – that time is now up and no more has been said as to when it could end. With signs that the ‘curve’ of the epidemic in the UK is beginning to ‘flatten’, opposition leader Keir Starmer is demanding the publication of the government’s exit strategy i.e. how can we end the lockdown without triggering another rise in cases? It is expected that on Thursday Dominic Raab will announce a further three weeks of lockdown.
But more problematic for the government is, that as time goes on, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the country was completely unprepared for a pandemic and that when the first warning signs of such a public health crisis appeared, they were not heeded. Further still, some argue that there are matters that are still being mismanaged. Take the issue of care homes, for example. Patients moving from hospitals into care homes are still not being tested for coronavirus; an extraordinary situation when this is one of the main ways in which the disease enters the home. I myself know of a particular case where a patient was admitted to hospital from a care home, contracted the virus undetected, before returning to the home where she passed the virus on to a number of patients and staff. In England we do not in fact know the number of elderly who have died from coronavirus – it is not included in the daily death toll announcements. But Scotland has released its figures, showing that a quarter of its total deaths were elderly people in care homes – 237 to date. As a result, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced that every patient now returning from a hospital into a care home would be tested. This of course does not completely exclude the possibility of an individual carrying the virus from spreading it in the home, as the test only identifies Covid-19 if someone is exhibiting symptoms, but it is a start. The Health Secretary will now be under increased pressure to follow suit, despite confirming on Wednesday that patients would continue to be transferred from hospital to care home without testing. Charities and local authorities have said the policy is ‘madness’ and that it is effectively ‘importing death into care homes’ as one care home owner in Devon put it.
The issue of testing is one of the main points of contention in the coronavirus debate. Early on the WHO issued advice to all countries to ‘test, test, test’ but the UK government initially took a different stance. According to Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet medical journal, the government ignored the basic public health interventions needed at the time – testing, isolation and quarantine – which were so effectively implemented by China. Boris Johnson then downplayed the necessity of testing, arguing that Covid-19 could be spread by asymptomatic carriers and not all tests could be relied upon. Indeed, back in early March Boris Johnson himself had said that coronavirus was a ‘mild to moderate illness’ for the vast majority, whose spread could be prevented by simply washing your hands. He then prided himself in continuing to shake hands with people. One month later the Prime Minister was in intensive care, fighting for his life.
Now the UK is having to play catch-up by trying to obtain coronavirus tests at a time when they are most sought after. It is struggling to meet 25,000 tests a day for hospital staff and patients and far off the target of 100,000 tests a day previously announced by Boris Johnson. The curve may be beginning to flatten, but Britain is certainly not out of the woods yet.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
As the entire world grapples with the most devastating pandemic of the modern era, the United States is pouring kerosene on the fire in Iran and Venezuela. The U.S. government has maintained punishing sanctions against the people of Iran and Venezuela to engineer regime change. But instead of ending the sanctions to help Iranians and Venezuelans fight the coronavirus, the Trump administration has expanded them and exacerbated the danger they pose.
“The world is facing the risk of an unprecedented humanitarian disaster,” the International Association of Democratic Lawyers wrote in a statement calling on the U.S. government to immediately lift all sanctions against Iran and Venezuela.
Sanctions (unilateral coercive measures), collective punishment and forcible regime change are illegal under U.S. and international law. Donald Trump’s intensification of sanctions against Venezuela and Iran during the pandemic constitutes a crime against humanity.
U.S. Sanctions Against Iran Add to the Death Toll
Iran “has emerged as an epicenter of the virus globally and regionally,” 34 members of Congress wrote in a March 31 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging them to “substantially suspend” sanctions against Iran during this worldwide health emergency. The letter was endorsed by 13 groups.
As of April 13, Iran had suffered 73,303 cases of COVID-19 and 4,585 deaths. Trump’s sanctions are a primary cause of these extremely high casualties.
“There can also be no question that the sanctions have affected Iran’s ability to contain the outbreak, leading in turn to more infections, and possibly to the virus’ spread beyond Iran’s borders,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said in a statement.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the sanctions “economic terrorism.”
Congress members who signed the March 31 letter called Trump’s March 18 sanctions “callous and short-sighted,” warning that the virus is reportedly spreading from Iran to Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are stationed.
The United States had already maintained “an effective economic blockade” of Iran’s energy, banking and finance sectors, as well as its foreign investment and the targeting of basic foodstuffs and medicines, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi wrote in December 2019.
In 2018, after Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, which was working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he reimposed heavy economic sanctions. The U.S. government’s stated goal was to eliminate all Iranian oil exportation. It blacklisted 50 Iranian banks, individuals and ships, and Iran’s national airline and fleet of aircraft. Pompeo said the United States would “crush” Iran with new sanctions so severe they could lead to regime change.
As a result of the reimposition of sanctions, oil exports plummeted, Iran’s currency has been substantially devalued and the country is in a severe recession.
In October 2018, the International Court of Justice ordered the United States to lift its sanctions against Iran on food, medicine, humanitarian trade and civil aviation. The U.S. government refused to abide by the court’s decision.
An October 2019 Human Rights Watch report concluded that the U.S.’s “maximum pressure” campaign “drastically constrained the ability of Iranian entities to finance humanitarian imports, including vital medicines and medical equipment.”
Foreign Minister Zarif referred to the U.S. refusal to lift the sanctions during the pandemic as “medical terrorism.”
The United States has escalated the sanctions during the pandemic while blocking Iran’s request for a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund for its fight against the coronavirus.
In their March 31 letter, the congress members noted that “by targeting an entire economy that supports more than 80 million people, U.S. sanctions make it harder for ordinary Iranians to obtain basic necessities like food and hygienic supplies essential to stemming the pandemic and that are basic to survival.”
U.S. Sanctions Against Venezuela
As of January 22, the United States had leveled sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company, government and central bank and at least 144 Venezuelans or individuals connected to Venezuela.
U.S. sanctions against Venezuela caused 40,000 deaths in 2017 and 2018, CEPR reported. In April 2019, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Human Rights Watch issued a 71-page report detailing shortages of food and medicine and sharp increases in disease. They called the situation a humanitarian emergency.
In mid-February, the U.S. government imposed additional sanctions on Venezuela. The Trump administration continues to attack the Nicolas Maduro government, indicting him for a narco-terrorism conspiracy, with the Trump administration planning to deploy Navy destroyers to the Caribbean on the pretext of an anti-narcotics operation.
On April 6, dozens of legal organizations worldwide issued a letter to Pompeo and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging that U.S. intervention in Latin America be ended, especially in light of the escalation of U.S. threats against Venezuela.
The sanctions against Venezuela have contributed to “the largest economic collapse in a country outside of war since at least the 1970s,” The New York Times reported. In February, Venezuela filed a complaint against the United States in the International Criminal Court, calling the sanctions crimes against humanity.
Although Venezuelans are not yet contracting COVID-19 in large numbers, the pandemic could prove catastrophic to the country.
But when Venezuela asked the International Monetary Fund for a $5 billion loan to help it cope with the pandemic, the U.S.-controlled IMF denied its request.
Unilateral Coercive Measures Violate the UN and OAS Charters
By imposing unilateral coercive measures for collective punishment leading to forcible regime change, the United States has violated several ratified treaties.
When the United States ratifies a treaty, it becomes part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says treaties constitute “the supreme law of the land.”
The protection of health is a stated purpose of the United Nations Charter and all member countries are required to take actions that promote health. Yet the United States is doing just the opposite, magnifying the suffering of the Iranian and Venezuelan people in the midst of the pandemic.
Under the UN Charter, member countries must refrain from the threat or use of force against the political independence of any other country. Only the UN Security Council has the authority to order the use of sanctions. That means the United States cannot unilaterally impose sanctions against other countries without the approval of the Council.
Meanwhile, the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) prohibits any country from directly or indirectly intervening in the internal or external affairs of another country. That includes any type of interference against its “political, economic and cultural elements.” No state can use coercive economic or political measures “to force the sovereign will of another State.” The United States’s imposition of sanctions against Venezuela violates the OAS Charter.
Collective Punishment Violates the Fourth Geneva Convention
U.S. sanctions against Iran constitute “the collective punishment of over 81 million Iranians through and by means of one of the most comprehensive and unrelenting sanctions regimes in modern history,” writes Sadeghi-Boroujerdi.
The Trump administration is also trying to coerce regime change in Venezuela by punishing the people with sanctions.
“No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. . . . Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”
The United States is punishing the people of Iran and Venezuela for the actions of their governments. This constitutes illegal collective punishment.
Forcible Regime Change Violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
After Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed harsh sanctions, Pompeo said, “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.”
That strategy hasn’t worked in Cuba. The U.S. blockade was imposed in 1960 pursuant to a secret State Department memorandum that advocated “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” But the Cuban people have not overthrown their government.
No country has the right to forcibly change the regime of another country. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes self-determination as a human right and guarantees all peoples the right to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of sanctions, stated,
“Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state.”
More than 200 legal professionals and organizations, including the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, wrote in a letter to Trump, Mnuchin and Pompeo,
“Your administration’s disapproval of the government of a foreign state provides no legal justification for policies and actions intended to deprive residents of the targeted state of necessaries as a means of forcing a change to a regime more to the liking of the United States.”
The letter’s signatories called on the U.S. government to cancel the sanctions against Venezuela and Iran “at the very least,” because they violate the International Executive Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The IEEPA empowers the president to impose sanctions only after he makes “a good faith declaration that the targeted country presents an ‘unusual and extraordinary’ threat to the U.S.” As the letter says, “Neither Venezuela nor Iran presents such a threat to the U.S.”
In fact, the Trump administration’s intensification of sanctions against Iran and Venezuela rises to the level of “a crime against humanity against the people of Iran and Venezuela,” the signatories wrote.
Congressional Oversight of Sanctions
Congress members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill in the House titled “Congressional Oversight of Sanctions Act.” H.R.5879 would require a report on why sanctions were chosen rather than another tool to address the emergency; whether the sanctions are unilateral and if so, why no other country has imposed them; and the requirements for lifting the sanctions.
Grassroots peace group CODEPINK is circulating a letter to Pompeo urging the lifting of sanctions on Iran, and a letter to Congress opposing military intervention in Venezuela and urging the lifting of sanctions against that country. Both letters have garnered thousands of signatures.
Meanwhile, constituents should pressure their congressional representatives to end the sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. Economic and medical warfare during the pandemic amounts to a crime against humanity perpetrated by the United States.
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Marjorie Cohnis 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.
Ukraine recently announced that it will start building a military base in the Sea of Azov, just 67 km away from the Russian coast. The news was confirmed on the last visit of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski to Berdiansk, where the naval base will be installed. According to official sources, it aims to protect commercial vessels transiting the region. The local commercial port will have its infrastructure transferred to the Ukrainian Navy later this year. In 2021 reforms will be carried out, with the arrival of new ships, the repair of administrative buildings and the construction of residential buildings for people involved in the activities of the base. It is estimated that the works will cost around 20 million dollars.
As an auxiliary project for the installation of the base, there is a plan to create a military teaching department at the State Pedagogical University of Berdiansk, which will be ready in a few years and will train the officers who will work at the new base. These are the words of President Volodimir Zelenski:
“It is very important to have ships in this place. After all, this way we will protect our ports, our trade. This is a direct aid to the economy”.
It has been reported that the resources of the Vostok naval base, currently located in Nikolaev, will be deployed at the Berdiansk base. This is, in fact, an old Ukrainian project, which integrates a wide range of aggressive policies on the part of Kiev in the Azov Sea region. Kiev showed interest in building a base in the region for the first time in 2017. In 2018, part of the Black Sea fleet was transferred to Azov. At the end of last year, Zelenski, continuing the policies of his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, announced the creation of a ship division for the Azov, with a base to be installed between Berdiansk and Mariupol. Now, finally, Azov’s militarization projects seem to be materialized.
“The main objective of the base should be to guarantee the security of the city and the region. However, the military base will not interfere with the commercial port and will not reduce its capacity,” said the statement from the port administration. The Ukrainian reason for ratifying these projects is an alleged Russian threat to the country’s maritime trade route. However, it is public knowledge that these acts constitute nothing more than the simple continuation of the conflicts that started in 2014, as a result of the total alignment with Washington and the European Union by the new Ukrainian political elite, which rose with the Euromaidan.
The myth of Russia as an enemy of Ukraine has become increasingly widespread in the country, causing regrettable episodes such as the persecution of Russian and pro-Russian minorities within Ukrainian national territory. The greatest example of this is the civil war in the Donbass region, which has lasted for more than six years, having been interrupted indefinitely by the Minsk Protocol, which imposed an immediate ceasefire.
Ukraine has interrupted the ceasefire on several occasions, sometimes openly violating it through military attacks, sometimes sneakily sabotaging it through illegal arrests and terrorist attacks. In recent times, sneak attacks have become increasingly frequent. On April 9, a young 25 years-old woman was brutally murdered by Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitaries. Miroslava Voronkova died in a terrorist attack with bombs, where Mikhail A., 59 years-old, was also wounded.
The unfounded fear of a Russian threat in Azov becomes even less credible when we look at data such as this from the terrorist attacks perpetrated by pro-Kiev paramilitary groups. The existence of a Navy of the Donetsk People’s Republic is also supposedly one of the reasons why Ukraine is so afraid for the security of the region. But it is neither Moscow nor Donetsk who are committing crimes and attacks in Donbass. Kiev seems to be clear in its political and geopolitical praxis: it causes tensions with clandestine activities, from which it awaits answers (which often do not appear) to respond with the recrudescence of its defense policies under the pretext of having a certain “threat”.
Last year, Ukraine called on several countries to debate on the imposition of international sanctions against Russia due to its policy on the Sea of Azov. The reason for such Ukrainian indisposition in relation to Russian naval policy was the fact that Russia vetoed the entry of NATO ships into the Azov and seized Ukrainian ships that crossed the Russian maritime border. In fact, these acts only have to strengthen a policy of good neighborliness in the region, maintaining the dominance of the sea between the both States, under strict respect for territorial limits, and canceling out the interference of foreign nations. But, it seems Ukraine is not interested in maintaining good relations with Moscow and insists on further militarizing the region.
Certainly, Kiev will take advantage of the construction of the naval base to try again to deploy NATO vessels in the Sea of Azov, in clear affront to Russia. It will also take the opportunity to impose reprisals on the Donbass people’s republics. The commercial port protection speech is just a facade, a lie told as an official version. The most curious thing is that Kiev is so concerned with such policies of hostility against Russia at a time as what we are currently experiencing, where concerns about the new coronavirus are taking place over the world. Now, if NATO cancelled its biggest military exercises in 30 years (the Defender Europe 2020 project) due to the pandemic, would the Western military alliance be really interested in subsidizing a project as bold and unnecessary as the creation of a naval base in the Azov at a time like this? Kiev is betting on its ties to the West and appears to be making a big mistake.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The findings of a leaked, 860-page report compiled by the British Labour Party on its handling of antisemitism complaints is both deeply shocking and entirely predictable all at once.
For the first time, extensive internal correspondence between senior party officials has been revealed, proving a years-long plot to destroy Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader who recently stepped down.
The report confirms long-held suspicions that suspected cases of antisemitism were exploited by head office staff to try to undermine Corbyn. Anyone who was paying close attention to events in the party over the past five years already had a sense of that.
But the depth of hostility from party managers towards Corbyn – to the extent that they actively sought to engineer his defeat in the 2017 general election – comes as a bombshell even to most veteran Labour watchers.
Hankering for Blair
As the report reveals, party managers and a substantial section of the Labour parliamentary party barely hid their contempt for Corbyn after he won the leadership election in 2015. They claimed he was incapable of winning power.
These officials and MPs hankered for a return to a supposed golden era of Labour 20 years earlier, when Tony Blair had reinvented the party as New Labour – embracing Thatcherite economics, but presented with a more caring face. At the time, it proved a winning formula, earning Blair three terms in office.
Many of the officials and MPs most hostile to Corbyn had been selected or prospered under Blair. Because Corbyn sought to reverse the concessions made by New Labour to the political right, his democratic socialism was reviled by the Blairites.
In 2017, one of the architects of New Labour, Peter Mandelson, unabashedly declared:
“I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his [Corbyn’s] tenure in office. Something, however small it may be – an email, a phone call or a meeting I convene – every day I try to do something to save the Labour Party from his leadership.”
That sentiment, the report makes clear, was widely shared at the highest levels of the party bureaucracy. Senior officials actively sought to sabotage Corbyn as leader at every turn.
Bid to rig leadership contest
The Blairites found a plethora of self-serving reasons – aggressively shared by the media – for arguing that Corbyn was unfit for office. Those ranged from his unkempt appearance to his opposition to Britain’s recent wars of aggression, resource grabs repackaged as “humanitarian interventions” that had been a staple of the Blair years.
Corbyn was falsely presented as having a treasonous past as a Soviet spy, and of being at the very least indulgent of antisemitism.
While members of Corbyn’s inner circle were busy putting out these endless fires, the leaked report shows that Labour officials were dedicating their time and energy to unseating him. Within a year, they had foisted upon him a rerun leadership election.
Corbyn won again with the overwhelming backing of members, even after party officials tried to rig the contest, as the report notes, by expelling thousands of members they feared would vote for him.
Even this second victory failed to disarm the Blairites. They argued that what members found appealing in Corbyn would alienate the wider electorate. And so, the covert campaign against the Labour leader intensified from within, as the extensive correspondence between party officials cited in the report makes clear.
Blue Labour
In fact, senior officials frantically tried to engineer a third leadership challenge, in early 2017, on the back of what they expected to be a poor showing in two spring byelections. The plan was to install one of their own, Tom Watson (image on the right), Corbyn’s hostile deputy, as interim leader.
To their horror, Labour did well in the byelections. Soon afterwards, a general election was called. It is in the sections dealing with the June 2017 election that the report’s most shocking revelations emerge.
Again assuming Labour would perform badly, senior staff drew up plans to stage yet another leadership challenge immediately after the election. Hoping to improve their odds, they proposed that an electoral college replace the one-member, one-vote system to ensure no leftwing candidates could win.
These same staff had boasted of “political fixing” and interfering in constituency parties to ensure Blairites were selected as parliamentary candidates, rather than those sympathetic to Corbyn.
It was already well known that Labour was beset by factionalism at head office. At the time, some observers even referred to “Blue Labour” and “Red Labour” – with the implication that the “blue” faction were really closet Tories. Few probably understood how close to the truth such remarks were.
‘Sick’ over positive polls
The dossier reveals that the Blairites in charge of the party machine continued undermining Corbyn, even as it became clear they were wrong and that he could win the 2017 election.
According to the report, correspondence between senior staff – including Labour’s then-general secretary, Iain McNicol – show there was no let-up in efforts to subvert Corbyn’s campaign, even as the electoral tide turned in his favour.
Rather than celebrating the fact that the electorate appeared to be warming to Corbyn when he finally had a chance to get his message out – during the short period when the broadcast media were forced to provide more balance – Labour officials frantically sent messages to each other hoping he would still lose.
When a poll showed the party surging, one official commented to a colleague: “I actually felt quite sick when I saw that YouGov poll last night.” The colleague replied that “with a bit of luck” there would soon be “a clear polling decline”.
Excitedly, senior staff cited any outlier poll that suggested support for Corbyn was dropping. And they derided party figures, including shadow cabinet ministers such as Emily Thornberry, who offered anything more than formulaic support to Corbyn during the campaign.
‘Doing nothing’ during election
But this was not just sniping from the sidelines. Top staff actively worked to sabotage the campaign.
Party bosses set up a secret operation – the “key seats team” – in one of Labour’s offices, from which, according to the report, “a parallel general election campaign was run to support MPs associated with the right wing of the party”. A senior official pointed to the “need to throw cash” at the seat of Watson, Corbyn’s deputy and major opponent.
Corbyn’s inner team found they were refused key information they needed to direct the campaign effectively. They were denied contact details for candidates. And many staff in HQ boasted that they spent the campaign “doing nothing” or pretending to “tap tap busily” at their computers while they plotted against Corbyn online.
Writing this week, two left-wing Labour MPs, John Trickett and Ian Lavery, confirmed that efforts to undermine the 2017 election campaign were palpable at the time.
Party officials, they said, denied both of them information and feedback they needed from doorstep activists to decide where resources would be best allocated and what messaging to use. It was, they wrote, suggested “that we pour resources into seats with large Labour majorities which were never under threat”.
The report, and Trickett and Lavery’s own description, make clear that party managers wanted to ensure the party’s defeat, while also shoring up the majorities of Labour’s right-wing candidates to suggest that voters had preferred them.
The aim of party managers was to ensure a Blairite takeover of the party immediately after the election was lost.
‘Stunned and reeling’
It is therefore hardly surprising that, when Corbyn overturned the Conservative majority and came within a hair’s breadth of forming a government himself, there was an outpouring of anger and grief from senior staff.
The message from one official cited in the report called the election result the “opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years”. She added that she and her colleagues were “silent and grey-faced” and in “need of counselling”.
Others said that they were “stunned and reeling”, and that they needed “a safe space”. They lamented that they would have to pretend to smile in front of the cameras. One observed: “We will have to suck this up. The people have spoken. Bastards.”
Another tried to look on the bright side: “At least we have loads of money now” – a reference to the dues from hundreds of thousands of new members Corbyn had attracted to the party as leader.
Investigated for antisemitism
In short, Labour’s own party bosses not only secretly preferred a Conservative government, but actually worked hard to bring one about.
The efforts to destroy Corbyn from 2015 through 2018 are the context for understanding the evolution of a widely accepted narrative about Labour becoming “institutionally antisemitic” under Corbyn’s leadership.
The chief purpose of the report is to survey this period and its relation to the antisemitism claims. As far as is known, the report was an effort to assess allegations that Labour had an identifiable “antisemitism problem” under Corbyn, currently the subject of an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
In a highly unusual move, the commission launched an investigation of Labour last year. The only other political party ever to be investigated is the neo-Nazi British National Party a decade ago.
The Labour report shows that party officials who helped the Tories to victory in 2017 were also the same people making sure antisemitism became a dark stain on Corbyn for most of his leadership.
No antisemitic intent
Confusingly, the report’s authors hedge their bets on the antisemitism claims.
One the one hand, they argue that antisemitism complaints were handled no differently from other complaints in Labour, and could find no evidence that current or former staff were “motivated by antisemitic intent”.
But at the same time, the report accepts that Labour had an antisemitism problem beyond the presence of a few “bad apples”, despite the known statistical evidence refuting this.
A Home Affairs Select Committee – a forum that was entirely unsympathetic to Corbyn – found in late 2016 that there was “no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party”.
Even that assessment was unfair to Labour. Various surveys have suggested that Labour and the left have less of a problem with all forms of racism than the ruling Conservative Party.
For those reasons alone, it was highly improper for the equalities commission to agree to investigate Labour. It smacks of the organisation’s politicisation.
Nonetheless, the decision of the report’s authors to work within the parameters of the equalities watchdog’s investigation is perhaps understandable. One of the successes of Corbyn’s opponents has been to label any effort to challenge the claim that Labour has an antisemitism problem as “denialism” – and then cite this purported denialism as proof of antisemitism.
Such self-rationalising proofs are highly effective, and a technique familiar from witch-hunts and the McCarthy trials of the 1950s in the United States.
‘Litany of mistakes’
The report highlights correspondence between senior staff showing that, insofar as Labour had an “antisemitism problem”, it actually came from the Blairites in head office, not Corbyn or his team. It was party officials deeply hostile to Corbyn, after all, who were responsible for handling antisemitism complaints.
These officials, the report notes, oversaw “a litany of errors” and delays in the handling of complaints – not because they were antisemitic, but because they knew this was an effective way to further damage Corbyn.
They intentionally expanded the scope of antisemitism investigations to catch out not only real antisemites in the party, but also members, including Jews, who shared Corbyn’s support for Palestinian rights and were harshly critical of Israel.
Later, this approach would be formalised with the party’s adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), that shifted the focus from hatred of Jews to criticism of Israel.
The complaints system was quickly overwhelmed, and delays worsened as officials hostile to Corbyn cynically dragged their heels to avoid resolving outstanding cases. Or, as the report stiffly describes it, there was “abundant evidence of a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in Party HQ” against Corbyn that “affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints”.
The report accuses McNicol of intentionally misleading Corbyn about the number of cases so that “the scale of the problem was not appreciated” by his team – though the scale of the problem had, in fact, also been inflated by party officials.
The report concludes that Sam Matthews, who oversaw the complaints procedure under McNicol, “rarely replied or took any action, and the vast majority of times where action did occur, it was prompted by other Labour staff directly chasing this themselves”.
Amplified by the media
Both McNicol and Matthews have denied the claims to Sky News. McNicol called it a “petty attempt to divert attention away from the real issue”. Matthews said the report was “a highly selective, retrospective review of the party’s poor record” and that a “proper examination of the full evidence will show that as Head of Disputes and Acting Director, I did my level best to tackle the poison of anti-Jewish racism which was growing under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.”
But there is too much detail in the report to be so easily dismissed and there remain very serious questions to be answered. For example, once Matthews and McNicol had departed, Labour rapidly increased the resolution of antisemitism cases, dramatically stepping up the suspension and expulsion of accused party members.
The earlier delays appear to have had one purpose only: to embarrass Corbyn, creating an impression the party – and by implication, Corbyn himself – was not taking the issue of antisemitism seriously. Anyone who tried to point out what was really going on – such as, for example, MP Chris Williamson – was denounced as an antisemitism “denier” and suspended or expelled.
The media happily amplified whatever messages party officials disseminated against Corbyn. That included even the media’s liberal elements, such as the Guardian, whose political sympathies lay firmly with the Blairite faction.
That was all too evident during a special hour-length edition of Panorama, the BBC’s flagship news investigations programme, on Labour and antisemitism last year. It gave an uncritical platform to ex-staff turned supposed “whistleblowers” who claimed that Corbyn and his team had stymied efforts to root out antisemitism.
But as the report shows, it was actually these very “whistleblowers” who were the culpable ones.
‘Set up left, right and centre’
The media’s drumbeat against Corbyn progressively frightened wider sections of the Jewish community, who assumed there could be no smoke without fire.
It was a perfect, manufactured, moral panic. And once it was unleashed, it could survive the clear-out in 2018 of the Blairite ringleaders of the campaign against Corbyn.
Ever since, the antisemitism furore has continued to be regularly stoked into life by the media, by conservative Jewish organisations such as the Board of Deputies, and by Israel partisans inside the Labour Party.
“We were being sabotaged and set up left, right and centre by McNicol’s team, and we didn’t even know. It’s so important that the truth comes out,” one party source told Sky News.
Stench of cover-up
The question now for Labour’s new leader, Keir Starmer, is what is he going to do with these revelations? Will he use them to clean out Labour’s stables, or quietly sweep the ordure under the carpet?
The signs so far are not encouraging.
The intention of current party managers was to bury the revelations – until someone foiled them by leaking the report. Predictably, most of the media have so far shown very little interest in giving these explosive findings anything more than the most perfunctory coverage.
Unconvincingly, Starmer has claimed he knew nothing about the report until the leak, and that he now intends to conduct an “urgent independent investigation” into the findings of the earlier inquiry.
Such an investigation, he says, will re-examine “the contents and wider culture and practices referred to in the report”. That implies that Starmer refuses to accept the report’s findings. A reasonable concern is that he will seek to whitewash them with a second investigation.
He has also promised to investigate “the circumstances in which the report was put into the public domain”. That sounds ominously like an attempt to hound those who have tried to bring to light the party’s betrayal of its previous leader.
The stench of cover-up is already in the air.
Fear of reviving smears
More likely, Starmer is desperate to put the antisemitism episode behind him and the party. Recent history is his warning.
Just as Williamson found himself reviled as an antisemite for questioning whether Labour actually had an antisemitism problem, Starmer knows that any effort by the party to defend Corbyn’s record will simply revive the campaign of smears. And this time, he will be the target.
Starmer has hurriedly sought to placate Israel lobbyists within and without his own party, distancing himself as much as possible from Corbyn. That has included declaring himself a staunch Zionist and promising a purge of antisemites under the IHRA rules that include harsh critics of Israel.
Starmer has also made himself and his party hostage to the conservative Board of Deputies and Labour’s Israel partisans by signing up to their 10 pledges, a document that effectively takes meaningful criticism of Israel off the table.
There is very little reason to believe that Labour’s new leadership is ready to confront the antisemitism smears that did so much to damage the party under Corbyn and will continue harming it for the foreseeable future.
The biggest casualties will be truth and transparency. Labour needs to come clean and admit that its most senior officials defrauded hundreds of thousands of party members, and millions more supporters, who voted for a fairer, kinder Britain.
Jonathan Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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This is the fourth newsletter in our series on the 2020s as a decade of transformation See Remaking International Relations, Remaking the Economy for the People, and Remaking Healthcare. In addition to COVID-19 and the economic collapse, multiple crises are reaching a peak and the world is changing as a result. How the world changes will be determined in some part by our actions. This week, we look at what can be done to bring our societies into balance with nature.
Biologist Elisabet Sahtouris describes an alternative theory of evolution to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” in her book, “Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution.” Sahtouris finds that evolution is cyclical, a spiral instead of linear. She describes how when a new species arises, it upsets the ecological equilibrium as it comes into competition with other species over habitat. The task of that species in the adolescent phase of its evolution is to find its niche in a way that is cooperative with other species. If it fails, it goes extinct.
The human species is in its adolescent phase, and now it is time to recognize our mistakes and change our behaviors. Sahtouris writes:
“Like any adolescent who is suddenly aware of having created a very real life crisis, our species faces a choice — the choice between pursuing our dangerous course to disaster or stopping and trying to find mature solutions to our crises. This choice point is the brink of maturity — the point at which we must decide whether to continue our suicidal course or turn from it to responsible maturity. Are we going to continue our disastrously competitive economics, our ravaging conversion of our natural supply base into things, our pollution of basic soils, waters and atmosphere in the process? Or will we change the way we see life — our worldview, our self-image, our goals, and our behavior — in accord with our new knowledge of living nature in evolution?”
We’re in for a rough patch
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred quickly. The first documented cases occurred in Wuhan, China in late December. The first reported case outside of China occurred two weeks later in Thailand. At that point, it was also discovered that human-to-human transmission of the virus could occur. One week later, the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the United States. Within a month, 18 countries besides China had infections. By early March, there were 500 cases in the United States impacting 30 states plus the District of Columbia. And within another month, the number of cases in the US grew one thousand-fold to 500,000, with 20,000 deaths. These are only the ones we know about. It is certain that the number of cases in the US is being undercounted, perhaps by a factor of ten, as are deaths.
Within a matter of months, the pandemic has had wide-ranging and devastating impacts. There are nearly two million cases in 210 countries. Over 100,000 people have died. Health care systems are being overwhelmed. The pandemic triggered a global recession, which the world was on course to experience at some point soon, and this was before the economy started shutting down.
Nearly 17 million people in the US became unemployed in the last three weeks. This is also likely an underestimate as unemployment offices are overwhelmed. And a majority of workers in the fields of construction, manufacturing, and transportation, and in the service sectors are unable to meet their basic needs. Millions are losing their health insurance when they need it most.
As abruptly as the pandemic and global economic collapse have changed our lives, scientists predict another rapid disruption in our lives is on the horizon. A new study published in Naturepredicts ecosystem collapse could start occurring within the next decade. Researchers found that many species are already living near the limits of the conditions they require to survive. As the planet heats up, many species will reach their limit simultaneously and there will be mass die-offs.
Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News explains: “As global warming heats their habitat to the point that it is intolerable, many species have no place to go. Some will go extinct, with a domino effect that affects scores of other species. If it gets too hot for bumblebees, for example, it affects the reproduction of plants. If it gets too warm for insects and reptiles, it affects food supplies for birds and mammals.”
When ecosystems start collapsing abruptly, we will face similar situations as we are facing today with the twin COVID-19 pandemic and global recession. We will be forced to adapt to a new reality, but this time it will be a reality that threatens the food supply in addition to increasing the risk of disease. Just as health professionals warned us for years that we were unprepared for an inevitable pandemic, climate scientists are warning us of ecosystem collapse. We can mitigate the crisis, but that is only going to happen if we take the initiative to make it happen.
Image on the right is from News Karnataka.
We’re all connected and it’s all connected
Before we start looking at solutions, we must understand the roots of the crises we face. It is by changing systems at the root level that we will bring about the transformation we need. Of course, this won’t be an in-depth examination. That is beyond the scope of a newsletter.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that we are a connected global community. Diseases, greenhouse gases, and capital are not restricted by borders. What we do in one place, impacts another. To stop the pandemic, we must control the infection everywhere or there will always be a repository perpetuating it and putting any of us at risk. International cooperation and solidarity are required to make the transition we need.
The same is true with the climate crisis and the globalized neoliberal economy. They are connected to each other and to our health. It is the globalized neoliberal financial system that has driven the race to the bottom. Capital moves freely about the world in search of the cheapest labor and resources. Many governments, especially those in the global south, compete with each other to loosen regulations that protect workers and the environment to attract capital to their countries. Corporate trade agreements make transnational corporate profits more important than protecting the planet. Humans have created multiple environmental crises from polluting the Earth, as Robert J. Burrowes writes, turning it into a junk planet.
Capitalism knows no limits when it comes to profits. People are being displaced from their land as corporations gobble it up for mining, energy production or industrial agriculture. This forces people deeper into wild habitats where they come in contact with wildlife and also pushes wildlife into human communities. It increases the chances of transmission of disease.
As Keishia Taylor explains, “…human activity disrupts ecosystems and damages biodiversity, shaking loose viruses, which then need a new host.” As the barriers between humans and wildlife break down, the greater the risk for zoonoses, diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans. COVID-19 “is the sixth major epidemic in the last 26 years that originated in bats, mediated by a range of farmed, domesticated or hunted animals.” Factory farming is a great culprit driving these epidemics. Large numbers of animals live in crowded and unnatural environments, which weaken their immune systems and make disease transmission more likely.
Biodiversity is key to healthy ecosystems, writes Eric Roston in TIME. He adds, “Almost half of the new diseases that jumped from animals to humans… after 1940 can be traced to changes in land use, agriculture, or wildlife hunting. …There may be 10,000 mammalian viruses potentially dangerous to people.” The climate crisis is another threat to biodiversity as described above, for which governments are not responding.
Capitalism drives the exploitation of people and resources for profit without regard for the consequences. The burning of cheap, dirty fossil fuels for transportation required to connect disparate parts of the global supply chain as well as the oil and gas industry’s history of pushing dirty forms of transit drives greenhouse gas emissions along with large polluting industries and factory farms. Destruction of the land, including our forests, has lowered the capacity for natural carbon sequestration. This has led to the high levels of carbon in the atmosphere that cause climate chaos; record high temperatures are heating the oceans and storms, fires and droughts are causing more damage.
Vijay Prashad describes the many ways neoliberal capitalism has also driven privatization of state institutions, such as healthcare, and has created precarious livelihoods in his newsletter “We Won’t Go Back to Normal, Because Normal Was the Problem.” And that is our task: to make sure that out of these crises come major changes, the maturation of our species to cooperate with the ecosystems in which we live.
Opportunities for change
Life has changed drastically for many people as we are suddenly required to stay in our homes. Education has moved online. People are doing more of their own food preparation. Conferences and other large gatherings have been canceled, and some have moved online. We’ve had to change our habits quickly to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 cases.
One positive side effect of our reduced activity is that greenhouse gas emissions have dropped significantly. Charles Komanoff and Christopher Ketcham of the Carbon Tax Institute estimate that the drop could be as much as 50% this year. They identify four positive lessons from the pandemic: greater reliance on science, the recognition that government action is required to confront crises, the knowledge that we can change our behavior quickly, and the necessity of social solidarity.
We can take rapid action to “flatten the curve” of greenhouse gas emissions just as we are for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here is a list of ten basic steps we can take to reduce greenhouse gases and support the health of all living beings and the planet:
Decentralize agriculture – End monopolized industrial agriculture and return to small and medium-sized farms owned by farmers who will manage the land in ways that support biodiversity, rebuild the soil and sequester carbon. This means organic farming methods and includes urban agriculture to produce food locally.
End land grabs – Stop the land grabs that drive people off their land and allow them to return. Smaller landowners tend to be better stewards of the land.
Sequester carbon naturally – Do this through regenerative farming methods, and by restoring wetlands which has the added benefit of buffering sea level rise, and protecting forests, especially mature forests.
Restore wildlife habitat – Protect wildlife areas and plan our communities in ways that do not encroach upon them. This includes rethinking tourism. There are some areas humans ought to avoid out of respect for wildlife habitat.
End fossil fuel and nuclear use – Move rapidly to a carbon-free and nuclear-free energy economy. To make this a just transition, areas that overuse energy will need to reduce consumption and areas that do not have enough energy to meet basic needs will need to increase energy use. This also means finding ways to reduce travel until we can reduce the carbon output. Many businesses and organizations are changing to online meetings and conferences instead of doing them in-person.
Decentralize energy production – Massive solar and wind farms can be disruptive through displacement of communities and the destruction of wildlife areas. Energy production can be integrated into the infrastructure, e.g. on rooftops, parking lots and community solar. Decentralized production ends energy monopolies and allows many people to benefit from the energy they produce.
Remake transportation – Reduce energy use significantly through investment in mass public transit and shared ownership of vehicles as cars are parked 95% of the time. Many cities already have fleets of cars for short-term rental. Fewer cars mean fewer resources being used. And we can increase bike and pedestrian areas to encourage less driving.
Rebuild the rail system – Electrify our railroads and increase their use for moving goods and people. Decentralized energy production can feed into the rail line to power it. This is a concept called Solutionary Rail.
Become zero waste communities – Rethink our consumption and reduce it to what is necessary and then find ways to meet our necessities through closed-loop production cycles, reuse of materials, sharing of items and more.
Cooperate more – In this pandemic, people around the world are organizing mutual aid to provide food and other basic needs. Let’s build on this spirit to look out for each other and connect human-to-human. We may find that building our communities will increase sharing and reduce our desire for so much stuff.
There are more steps we could add to this list that include socializing sectors of the economy so that human rights and protection of the planet supersede corporate profits, remaking trade along the same lines and strengthening localized, worker or community-owned enterprises.
We are truly at a crossroads. The pandemic has taught us to act in solidarity and that we can alter our lifestyles drastically when necessary. The climate crisis requires us to flatten the curve of our greenhouse gas emissions and toxic, polluting society. We can’t go back to normal because normal is killing us. The time is now to create a new world in balance with nature.
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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.
Featured image: Save Our Planet Save Our Future, Belgium, January 31, 2019. Photo: EuroNews/Twitter.
More than 40 companies and institutions in China have prepared donations of medical supplies to help Cuba strengthen its capacity to confront the Covid-19 pandemic, official sources reported today.
The ambassador of Havana in Beijing, Carlos Miguel Pereira, explained that some of these entities have already sent their contributions and others are waiting for the necessary spaces for air shipments.
He mentioned among the donors to the Chinese diplomatic mission in Cuba, various ministries, government and Communist Party agencies, the Henan Foreign Office, as well as the firms SKN, Xiamen Carisol, Geely, Beijing Rosa, BPL, Changheber, Shanghai Suncuba and Beya Time, among others.
He also highlighted the initiatives with a similar purpose of former Chinese fellows on the island, the community of Cuban residents here, the La Casa de David cultural project and the Returned Students from the West, the National Medicines and Friendship of Zhongshan associations.
On this day, Pereira symbolically received the contribution of the Hebei Province University of Foreign Studies, whose rector, Sun Jianzhong, reiterated the desire to deepen bilateral cooperation in educational and health matters, in the context of the celebrations for the 60 years of diplomatic relations.
The Consul General in Shanghai, Néstor Torres, also received this Wednesday the contribution of the Foreign Affairs offices of said municipality and the Minhang district for the provinces of Havana and Santiago de Cuba.
On the other hand, Pereira highlighted in a newspaper article that solidarity prevails and makes its way amid the hard and decisive battle against pneumonia, and despite the United States’ attempts to persecute and criminalize it.
He referred, among other issues, to the unease among many Chinese friends and those from other parts of the world over Washington’s efforts to tighten the economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba and hinder the arrival of medical aid, such as that of the electronic commerce giant. Alibaba.
After that incident, several local media outlets dedicate space to reflecting on the negative effects of the hostile policies of the White House, and even some such as the Global Times and China.org interviewed the diplomat on the subject and the Cuban reality.
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Members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party have four times shelled positions of the Syrian Army in the provinces of Lattakia and Hama over the past 24 hours, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria reported. At the same time, according to the Russian side, Turkish-controlled armed groups did not violate the ceasefire regime.
Despite this, the situation on the contact line between government forces and militants remains tense. The M4 highway is still blocked by supporters and members of radical militant groups.
On April 14, the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces kicked off a security operation against ISIS in the countryside of the town of al-Sukhna on the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor road. The operation came as a response to recent ISIS attacks on army positions in the Homs desert, which resulted in several days of intense fighting between government troops and terrorists.
However, according to pro-government sources, it is unlikely that the efforts of the government forces will change the security situation in eastern Syria in any significant manner. To carry out attacks, ISIS is using small mobile groups that enjoy freedom of movement through the US-occupied area of al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border, where the US-led coalition and its proxies are fiercely opposing any anti-terrorism efforts by the Syrian Army. On several occasions in previous years, US-led coalition aircraft even struck Syrian convoys, which had allegedly moved too close to the US-controlled zone. ISIS terrorists moving through al-Tanf, however, do not seem to be causing such deep security concern to the US military and political leadership.
A day earlier, Iraqi government forces launched their own security operation against ISIS cells in the province of Anbar on the border with Syria. According to official statements, the operation is ongoing in the areas of Wadi al-Ghari, Wadi al-Awja and Wadi al-Malisi.
Another anti-ISIS operation is currently ongoing in the province of Diyala. It was launched on April 11 and involves the 20th, 23rd and 110th Brigades of the Popular Mobilization Forces as well as several units of the Iraqi Army. The main efforts are focused on the countryside of Sherk Zur.
According to ISIS’ newspaper al-Naba, the terrorist group killed 66 government fighters and civilians in Iraq in the first week of April alone. While this number could be overestimated, regular ISIS attacks on military and civilian targets in western Iraq are an open secret.
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Detroit is one of the epicenters for the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic where the city in southeast Michigan has the highest death rate from the infection in the United States. (See this)
This majority African American municipality (79 percent) has all of the risk factors for the spread of the virus and the concomitant health and social impacts.
Figures commonly referred to are the nearly 40 percent rate of poverty and the continuing crises related to the declining educational system and a lack of quality healthcare coverage among key sectors of the population. Since the 1970s, the corporate entities and financial institutions have drained the working class through insurance redlining, restructuring within the labor market, environmental degradation, predatory lending, utility and water shutoffs and property tax foreclosures.
Consequently, the rapid spread of illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 infections since the second week in March, has created economic problems which are monumental. Tens of thousands have been thrown out of work in the industrial, service, construction, hospitality and educational employment categories placing many households under a greater threat of eviction and hunger.
Under such a situation what is needed is a program for sustaining the people and reconstructing the economic and social life of the majority. However, the corporate-oriented Mayor Mike Duggan held a press conference on April 14 to unilaterally announce what is tantamount to an attack on the poor and working class people in Detroit.
Duggan raised the specter of layoffs, furlough days, service cuts and other draconian measures to ostensibly make up for the potential of a $348 million deficit by the next fiscal year. Such a course of action, which requires the approval of the City Council, will only further aggravate the plight of people who both live and work in Detroit.
Over the last decade there have been substantial cuts in the number of civil servants and educational employees. Although the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) system is governed through a separate entity from the City, the education sector has been subjected to emergency management, corporate orientation, the closing of buildings and the reduction in teachers and other employees.
In those areas where the municipality is in charge, there has been a dislodging of control by the City to quasi-governmental agencies which have far less oversight than other departments. The budget outlined by Duggan will inevitably continue this trajectory.
In an article published by the Detroit affiliate of ABC News (WXYZ)), it says that:
“[T]hey (the city) will have to lay off 200 part-time, temporary and seasonal employees. He (Duggan) says the city will file unemployment claims for them. That leaves $44 million and the 8,000 city employees will fall into 4 groups. 10% workers will work 10% of the time and will still receive their health care. 80% workers will work 80% of the time and will still receive their health care.
95% workers will work 100% of the time and take a 5% pay cut, while receiving their health care. 100% workers will work 100% of the time and will receive all of their pay. No one will get a scheduled pay raise as of July 1.” (See this)
Duggan suggested that the State of Michigan required the City of Detroit to balance its budget every year since the imposition of Emergency Management and Bankruptcy during 2013-2014. Yet this project engineered by the banks and corporations resulted in the seizure of $5.5 billion in municipal retiree pension funds and the further weakening of public ownership in Detroit.
The reality is that Duggan is a manifestation of the process of disenfranchisement and exploitation initiated by a series of state governments led and directed by the ruling financial and industrial interests still dominating the city. It will inevitably be up to the working class and oppressed to build a resistance movement to oppose the program being forced upon the workers and residents of the city.
Crisis in Healthcare System Leads to Lay-offs and Worsening Conditions
Hospitals in the Detroit metropolitan area have been overwhelmed with the large numbers of COVID-19 cases in the city. Statewide some 28,059 cases have been reported as of April 15 with 1,921 deaths.
In the city of Detroit, which is nearly 80% African American, over 58% of cases are among this group while 75% percent of the deaths occur in this demographic. In general, African Americans are 14% of the state population in the state of Michigan yet they represent 40% of the deaths reported.
Of course these figures could very well be undercounted considering the dearth of testing and access to doctors, nurses and hospital care. Many within the city do not have health insurance as a result of the failure of the existing medical system prevailing in the U.S.
Despite this critical situation, the largest hospitals and medical centers announced lay-offs during the week of April 13. The spokespersons for the corporations are saying that as a result of the cancellations of elective surgeries many of the nurses and other workers are not needed since the primary focus has been on treating COVID-19 patients.
The Detroit CBS Radio affiliate (WWJ 950 am) reported on April 15 saying:
“The DMC announced furloughs for some employees Wednesday morning (April 15). How is that possible at a time when Sinai Grace workers posted pictures of packed hospital corridors and a 1,000-bed field hospital was built just down the street to handle a projected overflow of patients? DMC explains: ‘With stay-at-home orders and government restrictions on elective procedures, some hospital units – which are not related to the COVID-19 crisis or other critical patient care needs – have been temporarily closed or ramped down. We have taken steps to divert additional resources to COVID-19 care and other urgent medical procedures that cannot be deferred. This includes reducing costs, and hours worked, and implementing furloughs of certain jobs, where needed. This furlough impacts approximately 480 workers.’” (See this)
Similar personnel decisions have been made at Beaumont Hospital which is providing drive through testing and treatments for COVID-19 patients. At a time when the social problems resulting from the absence of universal guaranteed healthcare have been exposed in the U.S. for the world to observe, the principal providers of treatment during the pandemic are downsizing their workforce in consideration of financial profitability.
Therefore, the advent of municipal furloughs, lay-offs and public service curtailments combined with downsizing in the healthcare sector provides a social context for a volatile situation in the city of Detroit and state of Michigan. Right-wing groups on April 15 engaged in a demonstration at the State Capitol in Lansing protesting the “shelter-in-place” order by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer saying it infringed upon their rights to engage in business activity and various associations.
Of course this action took place in the middle of a week where there appears to be a lessening of the growth of COVID-19 cases in the state. The closing down of what are deemed to be non-essential businesses and services along with the ending of the educational year for teachers and students, were declared by Whitmer during the conclusion of the second week in March.
A Response from the Workers and Community Required
Members of the Detroit City Council will take up the question of the austerity budget in the coming days. Community organizations, labor unions, religious organizations and progressive politicians have no other choice than to oppose the bank-engineered budget plans announced by Duggan.
Residents of the city have turned over billions of dollars to the largest corporations in Detroit over the last few years through tax abatements and revenue captures. Dan Gilbert, the Illitch family, the Fords, General Motors, the leading banks, among others, owe the people of the city for the resources expropriated at an even more vociferous rate since 2012 with the illegal imposition of a failed Financial Stability Agreement (FSA) which led to Emergency Management and Bankruptcy.
These corporate interests and their financiers such as Chase, Bank of America, Quicken Loans, etc., should be called upon to provide the $348 million and more needed to maintain the workforce within the municipal and healthcare sectors. Amid such a social and healthcare crisis, no workers should be laid-off or face salary and benefit cuts.
In fact there is a need for more civil servants, educational and healthcare workers. When the rate of illnesses and deaths begin to decline significantly, in its wake there will be enormous dislocation and instability. The role of the state structures in such a situation should be designed to provide the assistance much needed by the majority of the people in Detroit and the state of Michigan.
The Moratorium NOW! Coalition based in Detroit has in its programmatic response to the crisis called for the indefinite halt to all evictions, rent and mortgage payments, tax payments and the maintenance of full municipal services. The organization held a special meeting on April 13 to build a campaign aimed at securing Cuban medical assistance for the people of Detroit in light of the economic downturn taking place in Michigan and across the U.S.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Detroit healthcare workers protest health and safety dangers amid COVID-19, Detroit News photo
Pushing workers back to work and attempting to “normalize” the economy was the growing consensus among the capitalist class, not just Trump.
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” (Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights — emphasis added)
“We have to make the world see that the problem that we’re confronted with is a problem for humanity. It’s not a Negro problem; it’s not an American problem. You and I have to make it a world problem, make the world aware that there’ll be no peace on this earth as long as our human rights are being violated in America. (Malcolm X)
With the overwhelming evidence that the capitalist system is fundamentally antithetical to the realization of human rights, including what should be an elementary right — access to healthcare — the presidency of Donald J. Trump has been a godsend for the capitalist rulers.
The obsessive focus on Trump the person, his style, his theatrics, the idea that he represents an aberration, an existential threat, allows for the ongoing structural violence embedded in the DNA of racialized capitalism to hide in plain sight.
But for the Black working class and poor it is suicidal to embrace this illusion. Maintaining a clear understanding of our situation, unimpeded by illusions and ideological mystifications, has always been a tool we used to ensure our survival before the ideological swing to the right over the last decade and a half.
White “America” pretends once again to be surprised by the emerging facts that African Americans are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the coronavirus assault. But why should anyone be surprised? African Americans make up a disproportionate number of the 87 million people in the U.S. who are under-insured or lack health insurance, who occupy the lowest paid jobs, jobs today deemed “essential.” It is in our communities where the toxic waste dumps are located, the petroleum processing companies, the hog farms, garbage dumps, the buildings with lead paint and asbestos, and the highways pumping out millions of tons of pollution every day.
And it is in our communities that, before gentrification, over the last 40 years, governments under the pressure of neoliberal austerity cut budgets and services. It was in our communities, both urban and rural, where the hospitals and clinics were closed, the sewer and sanitation deteriorated and something as basic to life as water was commodified, contaminated and often cut off.
Trump didn’t create these conditions. The higher rates of hypertension, asthma, and diabetes that ravage the health of our people, and almost ensure a death sentence if Black people contract coronavirus, were not created by Trump over the last three years. These conditions are the result of the cold, hard logic of environmental racism fueled by the profit motive that creates disposable people and communities.
The denial of the human right to health to African Americans, particularly to African workers and the poor, has been a permanent feature of the gross human rights violations that our people have experienced over the decades and centuries in this white supremacist settler-colonial state.
The human right to health is not the right to be healthy or the right to health care, but a more complex and nuanced understanding of the right to health. The enjoyment of this human right is determinate on the availability of all of the other human rights and collective services necessary to create and protect the conditions in which people can lead a healthy life — the right to housing, education, food, a clean environment, paid sick leave, parental leave, leisure and water, to name a few.
Basic goods and rights are denied by capitalism.
It is, therefore, a reactionary, indeed counterrevolutionary position to engage in the politics of diversion by focusing on Donald Trump. When Trump floated the trial balloon of pushing workers back to work by Easter, leftists who should have known better reduced this decision to the heartless agenda of Trump when the fact was that pushing workers back to work and attempting to “normalize” the economic situation was the growing consensus among the capitalist class represented by opinions published in the Wall Street Journaland New York Times, and by positions taken by members of the banking industry.
Trump and capitalist rulers want to return to “normal,” but for the African working class and poor who have not even “recovered” from the collapse of economy in 2007-2008, normal is a one-sided race and class war that degrades, dehumanizes and destroys Black life.
The systemic conditions of poverty, unemployment and underemployment, mass incarceration, police killings, gentrification, infant and maternal mortality have always been comparable to those of nations in the global South, but now, the pre-mature death from coronavirus should reveal to all, except to the most dishonest, that the real enemy is this racist, capitalist/imperialist system. — what we refer to as the Pan-European colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchy.
If Black lives really matter, it is obvious that we are the ones that must make them matter. It must have been made clear by now that this system of racialized capitalist domination and imperialist aggression against non-European people, from the African continent to Venezuela, will not be defeated by online petitions, webinars and polite appeals to the neoliberal criminals who run the Democratic Party.
We are at war.
We did ask for this war. We want peace. We want our human rights. But we are not pathological. We know that the very way in which this system is organized, that is, its essence, is organized to ensure our spiritual, psychological and physical death. Therefore, we have no other choice but to fight for our human rights.
That realization and understanding tmust inform our strategies and the tactics we employ, from participating in the electoral system and strike actions in response to the coronavirus to building dual power structures that allow us to exercise community self-determination and power that is grounded in our class interests and independence.
The enemy will come to understand that we will not quietly die. We will not beg their system to recognize its unfairness, nor will we call for the enemy system to somehow “repair” us – its’ victims.
No, we must come to the painful, and for some scary, conclusion that the system that destroys us and the majority of humanity but be fought and defeated.This is what distinguishes the People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) tradition that emerges from the Black radical human rights tradition, from the system’s state-centered, legalistic, liberal counterpart.
PCHRs rejects the liberal colonial/capitalist conception of human rights. It asserts that oppressed peoples cannot afford the fiction of a non-political, objective concept of human rights, which, beneath the surface of universality, reaffirms individualism, and rationalizes market capitalism and white supremacist patriarchy. For the African working class and poor, the fight for human rights is a life-or-death struggle, with the future of our communities and peoples at stake.
We again turn to Malcolm and the radical Black human rights tradition. Malcolm counsels us that one must be ready to pay the price required to experience full dignity as a person and as members of a self-determining people.
And what is that price?
“The price to make others respect your human rights is death. You have to be ready to die.… It’s time for you and me now to let the world know how peaceful we are, how well-meaning we are, how law-abiding we wish to be. But at the same time, we have to let the same world know we’ll blow their world sky-high if we’re not respected and recognized and treated the same as other human beings are treated.”
There was never a social contract that involved Africans in the U.S. — only a racial contract among the white rulers to maintain white minority ruling class power. That commitment translated into the systematic, brutal violations of the human rights of Africans.
We are clear. Trump is a useful idiot for the neoliberal forces who are in power. Our job is to de-mystify the structure of the capitalist dictatorship so that are our targets are clear and we can aim true.
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Preparing for a pandemic requires understanding that a change in the relationship between people is primary and the production of things is secondary and flows from social factors. Investors in profit-based medicine cannot comprehend this concept. Nothing could exemplify it more clearly than Cuba’s response to the corona virus (COVID-19).
The US dawdled for months before reacting. Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, over sixty years before the pandemic, Cuba laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad.
For twenty years before the 1959 revolution, Cuban doctors were divided between those who saw medicine as a way to make money and those who grasped the necessity of bringing medical care to the country’s poor, rural, and black populations. An understanding of the failings of disconnected social systems led the revolutionary government to build hospitals and clinics in under-served parts of the island at the same time it began addressing crises of literacy, racism, poverty, and housing.
By 1964, Cuba began creating policlínicos integrales, which were recreated as policlínicos comunitarios in 1974 to better link communities and patients. By 1984, Cuba had introduced the first doctor-nurse teams who lived in the neighborhoods they served. This continuing redesign of Cuban primary and preventive health has lasted through today as a model, allowing it to surpass the US in life expectancy and infant mortality.
It had an overarching concern with health care, even though it had never escaped from poverty. This resulted in Cuba’s eliminating polio in 1962, malaria in 1967, neonatal tetanus in 1972, diphtheria in 1979, congenital rubella syndrome in 1989, post-mumps meningitis in 1989, measles in 1993, rubella in 1995, and tuberculosis meningitis in 1997.
The Committees for Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) became a key part of mobilization for healthcare. Organized in 1960 to defend the country, block by block if necessary, from a possible US invasion, the CDRs took on more community care tasks as foreign intervention seemed less likely. They became prepared to move the elderly, disabled, sick, and mentally ill to higher ground if a hurricane approached. They currently help in removal of mosquito breeding places during episodes of dengue fever, participate in health education programs, ensure distribution of children’s vaccination cards, and help train auxiliary staff in oral vaccination campaigns.
AIDS in a time of disaster
Two whammies pounded Cuba in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The first victim of AIDS died in 1986, and Cuba isolated soldiers returning from war in Angola who tested positive for HIV. A hate campaign against Cuba claimed that the quarantine reflected prejudice against homosexuals. But the facts showed that (1) soldiers returning from Africa were overwhelmingly heterosexual (as were most African AIDS victims), (2) Cuba had quarantined dengue patients with no outcry, and (3) the US itself had a history of quarantining patients with tuberculosis, polio, and even AIDS.
The second blow landed quickly. In December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, ending its $5 billion annual subsidy, disrupting international commerce, and sending the Cuban economy into a free fall that exacerbated AIDS problems. A perfect storm for AIDS infection appeared to be brewing. The HIV infection rate for the Caribbean region was second only to southern Africa. The embargo simultaneously reduced the availability of drugs (including those for HIV/AIDS), as it made existing pharmaceuticals outrageously expensive and disrupted the financial infrastructures used for drug purchases. If these were not enough, Cuba opened the floodgate of tourism to cope with lack of funds. As predicted, tourism brought an increase in prostitution. There was a definite possibility that the island would succumb to a massive epidemic that would rival the effects of measles and smallpox which had arrived with European invaders to the New World.
The government response was immediate and strong. It drastically reduced services in all areas except two which had been enshrined as human rights: education and health care. Its medical research institutes developed Cuba’s own diagnostic test by 1987. Testing for HIV/AIDS went into high gear, with completion of over 12 million tests by 1993. Since the population was about 10.5 million, that meant that persons at high risk were tested multiple times.
Education about AIDS was massive for sick and healthy, for children as well as adults. By 1990, when homosexuals had become the island’s primary HIV victims, anti-gay prejudice was officially challenged as schools taught that homosexuality was a fact of life. Condoms were provided free at doctor’s offices. I witnessed the survival of the education program during a 2009 trip to Cuba; the first poster I saw on the wall when entering a doctor’s office had two men with the message to use condoms.
Despite high costs, Cuba provided antiretroviral (ART) drugs free to patients. One of the great ironies of the period was that those who screeched most noisily about Cuba’s “anti-homosexual” quarantines remained silent as the Torricelli Bill of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, designed to “wreak havoc” on the island, seriously hindered the government’s efforts to bring ART drugs to HIV victims.
Cuba’s united and well-planned effort to cope with HIV/AIDS paid off. At the same time Cuba had 200 AIDS, cases New York City (with about the same population) had 43,000 cases. NYC residents were far less likely to have recently visited sub-Saharan Africa, where a third of a million Cubans had just returned from fighting in the Angolan war. When the HIV infection rate in Cuba was 0.5 percent, it was 2.3 percent in the Caribbean region and 9.0 percent in southern Africa. During the period 1991–2006, Cuba had a total of 1,300 AIDS-related deaths. By contrast, the less populous Dominican Republic had 6,000 to 7,000 deaths annually. In 1997, Chandler Burr wrote in The Lancet that Cuba had “the most successful national AIDS programme in the world.” Despite having only a small fraction of wealth and resources of the United States, Cuba had implemented an AIDS program superior to that of the country seeking to destroy it.
Dengue and interferon alpha 2B
The mosquito-borne dengue fever hits Cuba every few years. Its doctors and medical students check for fever, joint pain, muscle pain, abdominal pain, headache behind the eye sockets, purple splotches, and bleeding gums. What is unique about Cuba is that its medical students leave school and go door-to-door making home evaluations.
Students from ELAM (Spanish acronym for the Latin American School of Medicine) come from over 100 countries and speak with a huge number of accents. They have no trouble walking through homes, looking for mosquito-attracting plants, and peering onto roofs to see if there is standing water.
During a 1981 outbreak of dengue, expanded surveillance techniques included inspections, vector control education, spraying, and “mobile field hospitals during the crisis with a liberal policy of admissions.” Cuba also increased testing for potential cases during a 1997 dengue outbreak. Increased testing of hospital patients was combined with surveillance data to produce predictions concerning secondary infections related to death rates. These campaigns, which combined citizen involvement with health care professionals and researchers, have resulted in reduced incidence of dengue and decreased mortality.
In 1981, Cuba’s research institutes created Interferon Alpha 2B to successfully treat dengue. The same drug became vitally important decades later as a potential cure for COVID-19. According to Helen Yaffe, “Interferons are ‘signaling’ proteins produced and released by cells in response to infections that alert nearby cells to heighten their anti-viral defenses.” Cuban biotech specialist Dr. Luis Herrera Martinez adds that, “its use prevents aggravation and complications in patients, reaching that stage that ultimately can result in death.”
Since 2003, Interferon Alpha 2B has been produced in China by the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture. “Cuba’s interferon has shown its efficacy and safety in the therapy of viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles, HIV-AIDS, and dengue.” Cuba has researched multiple drugs, “despite the U.S. blockadeobstructing access to technologies, equipment, materials, finance, and even knowledge exchange.”
Ebola and international aid
AIDS and dengue were problems that affected the Cuban population; but Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was quite different. Viruses that cause EVD are mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area that Cubans had not frequented for several decades.
When the Ebola virus increased dramatically in fall 2014, much of the world panicked. Soon, over 20,000 people were infected, more than 8,000 had died, and worries mounted that the death toll could reach into hundreds of thousands. The United States provided military support; other countries promised money.
Cuba was the first nation to respond with what was most needed: it sent 103 nurse and 62 doctor volunteers to Sierra Leone. With 4,000 medical staff (including 2,400 doctors) already in Africa, Cuba was prepared for the crisis before it began.
Since many governments did not know how to respond to Ebola, Cuba trained volunteers from other nations at Havana’s Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine. In total, Cuba taught 13,000 Africans, 66,000 thousand Latin Americans, and 620 Caribbeans how to treat Ebola without themselves becoming infected.
This was hardly the first time that Cuba had responded to medical crises in poor countries. Only fifteen months after the revolution, in March 1960, Cuba sent doctors to Chile after an earthquake. Much better known is Cuba’s 1963 medical brigade to Algeria, which was fighting for independence from France.
In the very first days of the revolution, there were insufficient medical staff and facilities in rural parts of Cuba that were predominantly black. It was perfectly natural for those who learned of lack of treatment and disasters that plagued other parts of the world to go abroad to assist those in need.
Revolutionary solidarity was often a collective family choice. Dr. Sara Perelló had just graduated from medical school when her mother heard Fidel say that Algerians were even worse off than Cubans and called on doctors to join a brigade to assist them. Dr. Perelló wanted to volunteer but was worried that her elderly mother suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Her mother responded that Sara’s sister and husband would help her as would the government: “Now the thing to do is go forward and don’t worry about your mother, who will be well taken care of.”
Cuban solidarity missions show a genuine concern that often seems to be lacking in health care providers from other countries. Medical associations in Venezeula and Brazil could not find enough of their own doctors to go to dangerous communities or travel to rural areas by donkey or canoe as Cuba doctors do. When Cuban doctors went to Bolivia, they visited 101 communities that were so remote that they did not appear on a map.
A devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010. Cuba sent medical staff who lived among Haitians and stayed months or years after the earthquake was out of the news. US doctors did not sleep where Haitian victims huddled, returned to luxury hotels at night, and departed after a few weeks. The term “disaster tourism” describes the way that many rich countries respond to medical crises in poor countries.
The commitment that Cuban medical staff show internationally is a continuation of the effort that the country’s health care system made in spending three decades to find the best way to strengthen bonds between care-giving professionals and those they serve. Kirk and Erisman provide statistics demonstrating the breadth that Cuba’s international medical work had reached by 2008: it had sent over 120,000 health care professionals to 154 countries; Cuban doctors had cared for over 70 million people in the world; and, almost 2 million people owed their lives to Cuban medical services in their country.
There is a noteworthy disaster when a country refused an offer of Cuban aid. After the 2005 Katrina Hurricane, 1,586 Cuban health care professionals were prepared to go to New Orleans. President George W. Bush rejected the offer, acting as if it would be better for American citizens to die than to admit the quality of Cuban aid. This decision foreshadowed the 2020 behavior of Donald Trump, who searched for a treatment for COVID-19 while pretending that Interferon Alpha 2B does not exist.
Contrasts: Cuba and the United States
These bits of history are background for contrasts between Cuba and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those of us old enough to remember that in the 1960s, we could still have a relationship with a doctor without an insurance company interceding can appreciate that social bonds between physicians and patients were eroding in the United States at the same time they were being strengthened in Cuba.
Testing. Since Cuba brought both AIDS and dengue under control with massive increases and modifications of testing, it was well prepared to develop a national testing program for COVID-19. Similarly, China was able to quickly halt the epidemic, not simply from lockdowns, but also because it quickly tested suspected victims, took necessary steps for isolation and treatment of those found to be positive, and tested case contacts who were asymptomatic.
It is no accident that the United States is a global leader in neoliberal efforts to reduce or privatize public services, proved incapable of mounting an effective testing campaign, and, by the end of March 2020 was on the way to leading the world in COVID-19 cases. In mid-March, the United States had been able to test 5 per million people, though South Korea had tested more than 3,500 per million.
Symptomatic of governmental incompetence in the United States was Trump’s putting vice-president Pence in charge of COVID-19 control. It was Pence, who as Indiana governor, had drastically cut funds for HIV testing (urging people to pray), thereby contributing to an increase in infections.
Costs of care and medication. Medical care in Cuba is a human right with no costs for treatment and only very small charges for prescriptions. Pharmaceutical companies were some of the first industries nationalized after the revolution. US policies routinely hand over billions of tax dollars to Big Pharma, which routinely gets away with gouging citizens mercilessly.
There are no insurance companies in Cuba to add to medical expenses and dictate patient care decisions to doctors. Even if testing becomes free in the United States, people must still decide if they can afford treatment for COVID-19. Those who think that their insurance will cover their COVID-19 bills, “may receive a large out-of-network bill if the ER has been outsourced to a physician staffing firm that is not covered by the insurance.”
Protecting workers. When natural disasters halt work, Cuban workers receive their entire salaries for one month and 60 percent of salaries after that. Cuban citizens receive food allotments and education at no cost, and utilities are extremely low. Cuba was able to shift production in nationalized factories so quickly and was able to churn out so much personal protective equipment (PPE) that it could send it to accompany the medical staff going to Italy when it was the pandemic’s center.
In the United States, there were nearly 10 million unemployment compensation claims by the end of the first week in April, and the country is not well-known for helping the unemployed by increasing taxes on the rich or reducing the military budget. There could be over 56 million “informal workers” in the United States who are not entitled to unemployment benefits. Forcing many US citizens to go to work because they cannot afford to go without basic necessities threatens the entire population with further spread of the pandemic. US health care workers have been short of PPE, including masks, gowns, gloves and test kits. Yet, President Trump is allowed to hold ventilators as “rewards” for states whose governors write that they appreciate him.
Comprehensiveness of health care. The Cuban revolution immediately reorganized the country’s disconnected health services and today has an integrated system beginning with neighborhood doctor-nurse offices tied into community clinics linked to area hospitals, all of which are supported by research institutes. The health system is connected to citizens’ organizations that have decades of experience protecting the country. This “inter-sectoral cooperation” is a keystone of health care. In Cuba, it would be inconceivable to have fifty different state policies that may or may not be consistent with national policies and may allow counties and cities within them to have their own procedures.
Instead of integrating plans for an effective approach to combating disease, the United States dismantles and/or privatizes whenever it can. Trump disbanded the pandemic response team, tried to underfund the pandemic prevention work of the World Health Organization, and sought to weaken nursing home regulations, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.
Lest anyone think that this is peculiar to Republicans, please remember that Democrats have long been in the forefront of neoliberalism and utilization of the “shock doctrine” approach that Naomi Klein described. Both parties have contributed to dismantling environmental rules so desperately needed.
Rebecca Beitsch reported on March 26 that “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak.” Not wanting to be left out, “the oil and gas industry began asking the federal government to loosen enforcement of federal regulations on public lands in response to the coronavirus pandemic.” They sought an extension of two-year permits and the ability to hold onto unused leases. If pandemics such as COVID-19 recur in the future, will added pollution and climate-related diseases weaken human immune systems, making them more vulnerable to infections?
If so, universal medical coverage would be essential to protection for tens of millions of Americans. A recipient of huge donations from medical and pharmaceutical companies, Joe Biden has supported efforts to undermine social security and “suggested he would veto any Medicare for All bill that the House of Representatives passed.”
The reality of preparing to deal with medical crises. Pascual Serrano noted that Cuba had already instituted the Novel Coronavirus Plan for Prevention and Control by March 2, 2020. Four days later it updated the Plan by adding “epidemiological observation,” which included specific measures like temperature taking and potential isolation, to infected incoming travelers. These occurred before Cuba’s first confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis on March 11. By March 12, after three Italian tourists were identified as having symptoms, the government announced that 3,100 beds at military hospitals would be available. Vulnerable groups such as seniors receive special attention. Cuba put a cohesive plan into motion that provides citizens with straightforward information, mobilizes workers to protect themselves and the country, and shifts production to necessary supplies.
At the same time, Donald Trump precautioned Americans to be wary of “fake news” about the virus. Then he said, “It will go away.” On February 26, he falsely said the number of U.S. COVID-19 cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” He claimed, “It’s going to disappear thanks to what I did… ” Then he told everyone they should go to church on Easter Sunday and that Americans should go to work even if they had the virus. Unquestionably, Trump’s behavior contributed to the spreading of the disease. His statements were consistent with the desires of industry to resume business as usual.
While the United States produces a surplus of unnecessary junk, Cuba produces a surplus of health care professionals. Consequently, Cuba has 8.2 doctors per 1,000 people while the United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000. While I was on a 2019 trip there, a recently graduated Cuban doctor told me that he only works about 20-25 hours per week. But during medical disasters, it could easily be 80-100 hours per week.
Education. Cuba has used mass education to effectively change behavior during epidemics. In 2003, Dr. Byron Barksdale pointed out how Cuba’s six-week program for AIDS patients was “certainly a longer time than is given to people in the United States who receive such a diagnosis. They may get about five minutes of education.” During dengue outbreaks, medical professionals who go to homes explain in detail why water must be drained or covered and what plants augment mosquito breeding.
The United States confronts health crises with “campaigns” that are grossly inadequate. TV ads run for a few weeks or months, and physicians may receive brochures to give to patients. There is nothing even approaching visits to every home to inspect how families can be contributing to their own illness and how to adopt behaviors to counter the disease.
Donald Trump’s inconsistent rantings about COVID-19 are the epitome of miseducation campaigns. Climate denial has served as a dress rehearsal for COVID-19 denial. The Trump reign has been a practice session in stupefying millions into believing anything a Great Leader says no matter how ridiculous it is. His tweets have a pathological similarity to the intensely anti-intellectual perspective that is dismissive of education, philosophy, art, and literature and insists that scientific investigation should never be trusted.
The day before yesterday, they insisted that the world was flat. Yesterday, they believed that evolution was a theory from Satan. This morning, they insisted that heating of the globe is a fantasy designed to choke corporate expansion. How close must it get to midnight before those drunk with Trump’s Kool-Aid are willing to see the facts of COVID-19 growth unfolding before their eyes?
International solidarity. Cuba made international headlines the third week in March 2020 when it allowed the British cruise ship MS Braemar to dock with COVID-19 patients aboard. It had been turned away by several other Caribbean countries, including Barbados and the Bahamas, which are both part of the British Commonwealth. There were over 1,000 passengers on board, mainly British, who had been stranded for over a week. Braemar crew members displayed a banner reading “I love you Cuba!” Undoubtedly, Cuban officials felt okay letting the ship dock because its doctors had gained so much experience being exposed to deadly viruses like Ebola while knowing how to protect themselves.
The same week in March, a medical brigade of 53 Cubans left to Lombardy, one of the worst hit areas of Italy, the European country most affected by COVID-19. Soon they were joined by 300 Chinese doctors. A smaller and poorer Caribbean nation was one of the few aiding a major European power. Cuba had also sent medical staff to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Suriname, Grenada, and Jamaica.
Meanwhile, the US administration was refusing to lift sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, sanctions that interfered with these countries receiving PPE, medical equipment, and drugs. Yet, it continued sending thousands of personnel to Europe for military maneuvers. It manufactured a smear campaign against President Maduro of Venezuela, portraying him as a drug trafficker. Trump disgraced America by pandering to his most racist supporters by referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”
As Cuba shared anti-virus technologies with other countries, reports surfaced that the Trump administration offered the German company CureVac $1 billion if it could find a remedy for COVID-19 and hand over exclusive rights “only for the USA.” This meant endangering the lives of Americans in two ways. By trying to monopolize a drug that had not yet been developed, Trump was trying to distract attention from the existing Interferon Alpha 2B which China was already including among thirty treatment drugs for the disease. By continuing the sixty-year-old blockade, Trump hampered Cuba from receiving supplies for the development of new anti-COVID-19 medications.
What do researchers look for? When Cuban labs created Interferon Alpha 2B to treat dengue, it was just one of many drugs researched to investigate treatments, especially those that would help people in poor countries. Its use of Heberprot B to treat diabetes has reduced amputations by 80 percent.
Cuba is the only country to create an effective vaccine against type-B bacterial meningitis. It developed the first synthetic vaccine for Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib), as well as the vaccine Racotumomab against advanced lung cancer. Cuba’s second focus has been to manufacture drugs cheaply enough for poor counties to be able to afford them. Third, Cuba has sought to work cooperatively, with countries such as China, Venezuela, and Brazil, in drug development. Collaboration with Brazil resulted in meningitis vaccines at a cost of 95¢ rather than $15 to $20 per dose. Finally, Cuba teaches other countries to produce medications themselves, so they do not have to rely on purchasing them from rich countries.
In virtually every way, corporate research has been the opposite of that in Cuba. Big Pharma spends millions investigating male pattern baldness, restless legs, and erectile dysfunction because these could reap billions in profits. The COVID-19 pandemic promises to bring in super-profits, and governments are acting to make sure that happens. At the same time Trump was making promises to the German CureVac company, his administration was looking into giving exclusive status to Gilead Sciences for developing its drug remdesivir as a potential treatment for COVID-19. US taxpayers would dole out millions to create a medication that could be too expensive for them to buy.
Though Donald Trump is the nadir of national chauvinism countering global cooperation, it is important to remember that it is the market system that pushes research into investigations that yield the greatest profit instead of where it will do the most good.
Future pandemics. Cuba’s dengue epidemic in early 2012 seemed odd because outbreaks usually happen in the fall and are over by December. It is rare for them to last into January and February. Climate change is making local conditions more suitable for the mosquitoes that are vectors for dengue. During the last half-century, Cuban health officials have calculated a thirty-fold increase of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the main vector.
Corporate media regularly tells us that COVID-19 is “unprecedented,” as if nothing like it will happen when it subsides because, after all, nothing like it has happened before. Not really. Claiming that COVID-19 is the “worst pandemic” to ever hit this continent is either saying that smallpox had no effect on Native Americans or that Native American deaths are irrelevant to medical history.
Many Americans may be receiving a one-time “stimulus check,” which will not recur every time bills need to be paid and will be infinitesimally smaller than sums bestowed upon corporations. But people don’t need a “stimulus” to pay $100-$1,000 for a test. They don’t need a one-time cash payment to cover $200-$2,000 for vaccination. They don’t need $1,200 for partial reimbursement of a $30,000 COVID-19 bill. They don’t need dribbling financial “aid” to pay for bills that go on without end. People need medical testing, treatment, and vaccination for all as a collective human right.
Though creating tests, treatments, and vaccines are essential parts of fighting disease, they will not be sufficient in a society suffering from a pandemic of profit-gouging. The restructuring of social relationships is critical not only to unleash the creative power to invent new things such as necessary medicines, but also to ensure those things benefit all who need them.
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According to financial watchdog Truth in Accounting’s 2020 Financial State of the Cities report, numerous American cities are in dire fiscal straits. Out of the 75 most populated cities observed in the report, 63 do not have the means to pay their bills. The total municipal debt for these cities is at $323 billion.
The rankings used in the report detailed the cities’ taxpayer burden or surplus. In other words, this is the amount each taxpayer would have to cough up for “municipal debt with nothing, such as benefits and services, in exchange.” For example, New York City only had $62.7 billion in order to pay for $249.4 billion in expenses. In turn, it has a $186.7 billion shortfall, which totals to a burden of $63,100 per taxpayer.
In Chicago, which is in second place as far as tax burden is concerned, each taxpayer would have to pay $37,100 in future taxes without receiving any service in return. Similarly, Honolulu found itself in third place at $26,400. On the other hand, some cities like Irvine, California, and Washington, D.C., were much better at keeping their finances straight. The former netted a surplus of $4,100 per taxpayer while D.C. has a surplus of $3,500.
From the looks of it, America is starting to become cash-strapped at all levels. Just look at the federal government. It finished 2019 with a $984 billion deficit and $23 trillion in debt. The fiscal profligacy that D.C. has immersed itself in is being emulated by many states and cities across the nation. Americans are already getting themselves into record levels of personal debt as well. What we’re witnessing is a generalized trend that is indicative of a culture that has lost financial restraint. Obviously, there needs to be policy solutions, but most of these changes start at home.
Cities ultimately have the choice to pursue policies as they please. I have long argued that most federal programs should be devolved to the state and local level. That’s where America can find federalist solutions to many of its problems. However, cities must take ownership of the problems they have generated through their fiscal recklessness. Public education has played a significant role in putting cities and states on the brink of fiscal collapse. Teacher union interest groups have become parasitically attached to public education, accumulating much wealth at the taxpayer’s expense. Now, these cities will have to confront the economic reality of bankruptcy thanks to these interest groups holding them hostage.
Reformers will have to dispense with sacred cows such as public education and consider cuts and privatization schemes for public services corrupted by graft and rent-seeking. If America is serious about fiscal discipline, it must be willing to get its finances straightened out at the local level. From there, it can build enough momentum to make fiscal prudence a reality at the state and federal level.
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The Al-Monitor portal has left many extremely surprised with news that was not expected in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. With over 600,000 cases and 25,000 deaths in the U.S., President Donald Trump has made a bold geopolitical move and instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to determine whether Cyprus should have its arms embargo against it lifted, according to Al-Monitor’s congressional correspondent, Bryant Harris.
“Trump tasked Pompeo with the decision [yesterday] via a presidential memorandum after signing two separate bills to lift the embargo in December — legislation that Turkey had unsuccessfully sought to forestall,” explained Harris.
In 1987, the U.S. embargoed arms sales to Cyprus under the pretext of preventing an arms build-up on the island. However, this was not a problem for Cyprus as Russia became one of the biggest weapon suppliers instead. If the U.S. were trying to have balance on Cyprus, it certainly did not achieve this as the country only became closer with Russia and to this day still have close ties.
In 1974, Turkey invaded the northern parts of the island to prevent Cyprus from uniting with Greece and to this day continues an illegal occupation. The occupation is to maintain the quasi “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” that is recognized by no other state in the world bar Turkey and is recognized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 541 and UN Security Council Resolution 550 as illegal.
The U.S. has never taken an interest in protecting Cypriot interests despite the illegalities of the occupied northern Cyprus – up until recent times. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan going rogue against U.S. and NATO interests by strengthening relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including the sale of the S-400 missile defense system that are not compatible with NATO doctrine.
The irony is that Turkey bought the S-400 system despite the fact that in 1997 Cyprus bought the S-300 air defense missiles from Russia, but had to trade it with Greece for other weapons under a Turkish threat of blockade and/or war. The S-300 is now located on the Greek island of Crete. As Greece in recent years has been a loyal subject to NATO without much independent foreign policy, Washington is now willing to give the country more concessions. In previous years, Washington would only appease Turkey as it controlled the Bosporus Straits that connects Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to the rest of the world.
However, these concessions and attempts to strengthen relations between Cyprus and the U.S. come at a price. Harris explains that the U.S. Congress laid out specific criteria that Cyprus needs to fulfill before it is allowed to procure arms from the U.S., if it ever choose to.
“Specifically, the law requires Cyprus to deny Russian military vessels to its ports despite a 2015 agreement with Moscow to do so. It also requires Cyprus — a financial heaven for wealthy Russians to evade US sanctions — to comply with anti-money laundering regulations,” he said.
It is very unlikely that Cyprus will meet these demands made as it is not a NATO member, nor does it have the incentive to abandon a partner that supplied it weapons when the U.S. turned its back. Knowing this fact, Harris explained that “even if Cyprus fails to comply with these conditions, the law gives Pompeo the freedom to lift the embargo anyway via a national security waiver.”
This therefore means that the true target of this arms embargo lift is not necessarily Russia, but rather Turkey. It is effectively in Cypriot hands on whether they want to take on these U.S. conditions. Cyprus is being ‘rewarded’ by Washington as in recent years it has formed a strategic partnership with Israel in the economic, energy and military sector. Because of this, pro-Israel groups in the U.S. lobbied to lift the arms embargo last year, especially as Erdoğan frequently antagonizes Tel Aviv.
Although it is in Pompeo’s hands to decide whether to lift the embargo or not, it is more likely he will choose to do this even if Cyprus decides not to conform to the anti-Russian measures demanded. Not only is Trump and Pompeo receiving pressure from the Israeli lobby, but they are also receiving pressure from the extremely influential think-tanks.
In an article from June 2019, titled “Lift the Arms Embargo on Cyprus,” that was first published by The Center for the National Interest, and then republished by the CATO Institute, the author explains “The current arms embargo on Cyprus is unbalanced and unfair. Favoring Turkey never was likely to help keep the peace. Today, given the Erdogan’s transformation into a frenemy of America at best, and confrontational policy toward Cyprus and Greece, the embargo rewards an essentially rogue government. The United States should see Turkey plain and stop tolerating the latter’s unfriendly conduct.”
However, there is no guarantee that just because Cyprus is now being noticed and recognized by Washington that it will quickly abandon Russia, especially because of decades of limited relations and the important role the U.S. played in supporting the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus. Rather, the lifting of the arms embargo is just one small gesture that Washington might make to antagonize a rogue Erdoğan, and if this is the aim, it will certainly work as the Turkish president believes the island to be a part of his domain.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
“I am searching for medicine for my mother; I’ve no money to repair my car; I have my sister asking me to help her son; I have come to the end of our food ration for this week.”
A reply Americans, Italians, Indians, Brazilians, or Iranians—everyone across the globe– might offer a curious (or naïve) journalist covering the crisis. (Not to exclude testimonies from exhausted healthcare and other service workers.)
However, the respondent I quote here lived his uncertainty in a different era:—a quarter of a century ago, in Iraq. He’s Ali Al-Amiri, erstwhile poultry inspector for Nineveh’s provincial department of agriculture. We met in 2001, in Mosul, at the height of an epidemic there, namely the 13-year embargo imposed on his nation.
I’d been covering the devastation created by that global blockade since 1990. So my question was indelicate, if not guileless.
I knew conditions there well.
During a decade of assignments to that besieged, forlorn place, I’d witnessed deaths resulting from a scarcity of medicines and stress-related diseases; I’d been recording burn victims scarred by fires from makeshift stoves, rising cancer infections, low-birth-weight newborns, unchecked spread of infectious diseases, the collapse of industry and the flight of desperate young people. (All well documented for anyone caring to investigate (including my account from Iraq joined early field reports from the International Action Center and a belated Harvard Study based on secondary sources.)
Yes, my question to this and other besieged Iraqis may have been misplaced. Nevertheless Al-Amiri’s reply was instructive to those with a limited perception of war. It pointed to a frightfully blank tomorrow.
If Americans (and others who complied with Washington’s policy to force Iraq to its knees) did not grasp the concept then, today we know it: “What are your plans for the weekend? Your graduation prom? Your annual colonoscopy? Your son’s wedding? Grandfather’s 80th birthday?” They’re all on hold; we’re just trying to keep the children entertained, get through another day with a testy partner, stock up on non-perishables, learn to connect by Zoom, gather papers for an insurance claim or patch a cracked windshield.
This blank calendar is as intimate for us as it was for Iraqis. Of course it’s not the same; Iraq was completely cut off through a media blackout, a ban on flights, and by diplomatic and economic blockades. By contrast, in the midst of COVID-19, we have teleconferences and phone networking apps; we have sympathizers around the country and across the world; we can learn from others’ experiences; we can share resources and expertise.
My point here is not to assign blame or compare sufferings. It’s to question the war model invoked by media commentators and politicians to interpret our dilemma; this hinders our understanding of what we’re experiencing. That embargo on Iraq was a fierce assault but it wasn’t interpreted by outsiders as war; embargo-deaths were largely unseen and uncounted by western historians. Just as 20 years of sanctions imposed on Vietnam after the U.S. defeat there, just as decades of embargo against Cuba, Iran and Syriacontinue, just as the crippling of Venezuela intensifies. Those sieges, like the current pandemic raise deeper moral questions.
It would help to drop our concept of war in this crisis where media commentators and politicians invoke ‘911’ and the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks. The military model (including the commander-in-chief criterion for president) is the U.S. default solution to a problem, whether drugs or a pandemic or a perceived threat to national interests. ‘Smash it to bits. Hit them with all we have.’
Let’s see if Americans can emerge from today’s dilemma with a newly defined compassionate model of responsibility and leadership?
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Anthropologist and journalist BNimri Aziz covered Iraq during the 13-year sanction period. The author of Swimming up The Tigris, 2007, U. Press Florida, she also hosted a radio program on Pacifica- WBAI, NYC. See www.RadioTahrir.org
Trump is the latest in a long line of US leaders and other key officials who time and again blame others for their own harmful actions and failings.
On Tuesday, Trump directed his blame game at the World Health Organization (WHO), saying the following:
“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”
“The reality is the WHO failed to obtain, vet and share information in a timely fashion.”
“The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable.”
The WHO states that its main objective is ensuring “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”
Its guidelines state that commercial enterprises that work with the organization must adhere to its policies — including the ethical promotion of medicinal drugs, adding:
“In establishing such relationships, it should be borne in mind that WHO’s activities affect the commercial sector in broader ways, through for example, its public health guidance, its recommendations on regulatory standards, or other work that might influence product costs, market demand, or profitability of specific goods and services.”
Does the relationship between the WHO and Big Pharma operate this way?
Time and again, various drug companies violated stated WHO guidelines, regarding the promotion and safety of their products in deference to their bottom line priorities.
Big Pharma companies contribute financially to the WHO, compromising the organization’s guidelines that state:
“Funds may not be sought or accepted from enterprises that have a direct commercial interest in the outcome of the project toward which they would be contributing, unless approved in conformity with the provisions on clinical trials or product development…”
By accepting Big Pharma financial contributions, the WHO compromised its professed independence.
It’s funded by the UN that, in turn, is funded by its member states. Its experts have ties to profit-making organizations and nation-states.
Initially the WHO only was supposed to receive public funding. It now gets it from public and private sources.
Do its operations mainly serve its donors’ interests over its stated mission? Is its credibility unacceptably compromised?
The Lancet medical journal denounced what it called “the open secret of…corruption in global health” — equating it to a disease.
Its forms include “high-level national, or…multinational bribery, extortion, theft, embezzlement, nepotism, and undue influence” between the public and private sectors.
Healthcare is public and/or private business like operations involving other products and services.
According to Research and Markets.com, the 2018 dollar volume of global healthcare was around $8.5 trillion.
Since 2014, the market has been growing at a 7.3% compound annual rate.
Going forward, it’s projected to increase at 8.9% annually to a near-$12 trillion global market by 2022.
In 2019, US national healthcare expenditures comprised about 18% of GDP — the highest percentage for developed countries, the figure expected to be 20% by 2027 (around $6 trillion).
In 2000, US spending on healthcare was 13.3% of GDP, in 1990 12.1%, in 1980 8.9%, in 1970 6.9%, in 1960 5%.
Increased percentages are attributed to higher healthcare inflation than in other segments of the US economy, as well as advanced technologies costing more, including high-cost drugs.
Another key factor is lack of universal healthcare. The US is the only developed country without it in some form. Government purchasing power constrains rising costs
Economist Uwe Reinhardt once explained why healthcare costs in the US are the world’s highest, saying: “It’s the prices, stupid.”
Healthcare costs in the US are double or more their amount in other developed countries. The industry in cahoots with government wants things kept this way at the expense of affordability and state-sponsored universal coverage.
On Tuesday, Trump blamed the WHO for his own dismissiveness toward COVID-19 outbreaks for weeks and his regime’s lack of preparedness to deal with them — despite foreknowledge of the threat at least since early 2017, discussed in an earlier article.
First and foremost, accountability lies with him, hardliners surrounding him, and their congressional counterparts.
He falsely calls COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus,” despite no evidence linking its origin to China.
Most likely it originated in the US last year, unreported at the time. Claims about outbreaks possibly reaching a peak in US cities may be way overblown.
According to Chinese coronavirus expert Dr. Zhang Wenhong and other scientific experts in the country, a second more widespread wave of outbreaks may follow the initial one.
Zhang believes it’s gradually emerging, adding:
“Although China has made some achievements in the earlier stages, there is an urgent need to remain prudent and determined to fight the pandemic for an extended time.”
He’s head of infectious diseases at Shanghai’s Huashan Hospital. He accused the US and Europe of failing to institute effective controls, the situation much worse in less developed or undeveloped countries with limited resources for public health.
Zhang believes COVID-19 outbreaks won’t end this year, saying they’ll continue until or into next year.
Once initial outbreaks are largely contained in a few months, a second international wave will follow, he said.
In early April, Chinese health authorities said controlling outbreaks is complicated. They’re braced for a longer-term struggle.
Zhang added the following warning:
Once US and other Western outbreaks are largely “under initial control, it is expected that global aviation will be gradually opened up again.”
“But the spread has already begun in India, Africa and South America, where the rise of new cases has been the fastest, posing great risks to the world” — compounded by a second wave he sees coming in China.
Its challenge is to begin reopening the economy with great care not to let further outbreaks spin out of control.
Asymptomatic domestic and imported cases are a big problem, and not just in China. These infected individuals can spread contagion to others unwittingly.
Dem Senators Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal, along with Dem Rep. Anna Eshoo accused the Trump regime of lacking transparency and compromising privacy protections in its handling of COVID-19 outbreaks.
On Tuesday, GOP senators began probing the origins and global response to COVID-19 outbreaks in what appears to be an attempt to shift blame for initial Trump regime inaction and denial, along with its current failures, onto others — mainly China, typical of how the US operates.
China denied Trump regime accusations of a cover-up. GOP Senators Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, and others accused the WHO of “fail(ing) and delay(ing) (its) response to the coronavirus.”
On Tuesday, Trump again blamed China for what’s going on, threatening “consequences.”
According to US Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley, claims that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab are “inconclusive,” adding:
“We’ve had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that,” nothing “certain” determined.
Delay, failure, lack of preparedness, and inaction begins at home.
A US self-examination should be conducted to lay blame where it largely belongs.
With advance knowledge of the threat that’s now reality, the Trump regime slept — blaming others for its own failings.
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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.”
On April 13, the Turkish Army and its proxies from the so-called Free Syrian Police clashed with supporters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical Idlib groups east of the town of Nayrab on the M4 highway.
According to sources loyal to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham a few hundred members of the Free Syrian Police and a few dozen Turkish troops were involved in the operation. After a series of clashes with radicals, they removed an improvised protest camp set up east of Nayrab. At some moment, Turkish forces even appeared to be engaged in a firefight with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants, but the situation quickly de-escalated and the protest camp blocking the highway re-appeared a few km to the west of its previous location.
Pro-Turkish media immediately branded the April 13 developments as a heroic attempt to de-block the M4 highway and finally launch joint Russian-Turkish patrols along the entire pre-agreed to M4 security zone. This explanation is far from reality. The de-escalation deal remains far from any kind of real implementation. The area of the supposed security zone is still in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Ankara had no opportunity to ignore the radicals’ nest east of Nayrab because it could put an end to even the current ‘limited’ format of the joint Russian-Turkish patrols. All 3 previous joint patrols took place in the limited area between Saraqib and Nayrab because of security reasons. If the camp east of Nayrab was not removed, even such patrols would be no longer possible.
However, even this limited move caused a new wave of tensions between Turkish-controlled armed groups and their more independent allies. A firefight erupted between members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Turkish proxies from Faylaq Sham near the village of Msibin on the M4 highway.
Earlier, tensions between members of Turkey’s Syrian National Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led forces were reported north of Daraat Izzah in western Aleppo.
Any Turkish attempts to de-block the M4 highway west of Nayrab will likely lead to a larger escalation in the area and may lead to more attacks on Turkish forces in Greater Idlib. The previous two IED attacks happened just after joint Turkish-Russian patrols west of Saraqib. The situation in Greater Idlib is in stalemate.
On the one hand, Ankara cannot continue ignoring attempts of groups that it funds to undermine its own attempts to implement the de-escalation deal with Russia at least formally. On the other hand, it does not want to use force to neutralize radicals in southern Idlib because the very same militants are the core of its influence in this part of Syria.
An explosion erupted on a natural gas pipeline in the area of al-Shadadi in the province of al-Hasakah. The incident happened just near the al-Jisba oil field controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US-led coalition. According to Kurdish sources, it remains unclear what group was behind the attack. Nonetheless, it is no secret that ISIS cells have recently increased their activities within the SDF-held area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.
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Ron Paul, in a Monday interview with host Dan Dicks at Press for Truth, warns that people “should be leery about” coronavirus vaccines that may come out. Further, says Paul, a doctor and former United States House of Representatives member, “right now I wouldn’t think there is any indication for anybody to take them,” noting that “scare tactics” are being used to pressure people into thinking they should take such potential vaccines to protect against coronavirus.
Paul supports this conclusion by stressing in the interview the potential danger of a vaccine as well as the overstated threat from coronavirus.
Regarding the potential danger from a coronavirus vaccine, Paul discusses at the beginning of the interview how, in 1976 in his first week as a House member, Paul was one of only two members, both doctors, who voted against legislation that helped rush through a vaccine in response to swine flu. Paul describes the results of the push for people to take the swine flu vaccine as follows:
They rushed the vaccine through. The vaccine was not properly made. It had nothing to do with the virus that was out there, so it saved nobody’s life from it. It caused a lot of harm. More people ended up dying from the inoculation than died from the flu that year. And that sort of was a lesson, like that’s a little bit too extreme. But, that’s about what happens when governments get involved and you do things for political reasons.
There was also, because a lot of people ended up getting the vaccine, I think there were like 50 people or more who got Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is temporary total paralysis and you can die from it but most of them did get better. But, it was a very, very serious complication of a viral injection, you know, a vaccine.
Paul also discusses in the interview the overstated danger from coronavirus that is being used to scare people to take actions including to potentially take a coronavirus vaccine.
Paul notes that many of the people whose deaths have been blamed on coronavirus are elderly people, including people living in nursing homes, who have multiple other diseases. Further, explains Paul, doctors have “been instructed by [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and other politicians that, when the doctors sign the death certificate, if [patients] have four different things but they happen to have a positive test for the virus that is to be put down as the major cause of death.” “The numbers mean nothing,” concludes Paul regarding the daily tabulation of coronavirus deaths.
In addition, Paul explains that many more people than officially recorded have contracted coronavirus. Some of these individuals never became sick. Others got better without any treatment, says Paul, pointing to his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as an example. While Rand Paul was given a test that confirmed he had coronavirus, most people who have had coronavirus and suffered no to minor medical problems have not been tested. With “probably millions of people” having contracted coronavirus, Paul concludes that the percentage of people who have contracted coronavirus and have died as a result “is probably very, very small.”
While Paul says he would choose not to take a vaccine for the coronavirus should one appear next week even if people claim it is 99 percent effective, he says that the decision to take or not take a vaccine is one that should be made by each individual, who can discuss the vaccine alternative with a doctor. Absolutely, Paul concludes, that decision should not be made by government.
Watch here Paul’s complete interview, in which he also discusses how government actions taken in the name of fighting coronavirus are harming the economy and his support for people speaking out for ending coronavirus-justified encroachments on freedom:
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Like others, I have thought from the first day of the Covid-19 pandemic that it was forcing us to awake from exponential life-system destruction by ‘business as usual’ to our common life-ground.
In the words of the formerly neo-liberal Governor Cuomo of New York,
“It is a test of our humanity over the economy – – – Health must come first. There is no other option.”
Yet what has been invading organic, social and ecological life organization for decades at every level remains unseen – the ultimate pandemic of the carcinomic Wall-Street money system whose countless global victims are continually sacrificed to grow it further.
The multi-trillion dollar state financing of Wall Street and company with no public notice or oversight now continues with the Covid-19 crisis into another spike of public wealth into its math-manipulating mechanisms to multiply its life-blind global demand, debt and futures control further: see this and this.
What is ‘the System’?
The Mamos [spiritual leaders] of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia may inspire us here. They “see a message, a guardian, a teacher, a counselor, who offer us the opportunity to – – – dialogue with – – Mother Nature and with Mother Earth. – – Today, one single tiny entity is producing a huge disturbance forcing all of us to make a stop on our sacred pathway of life.”
But, the Mamos continue, “very few have acted with a consciousness of transformation wanting to change the system”. See this.
‘The system’ is, as usual, not defined. But the Mamos are right that few think of transforming it. The Covid-19 crisis has drawn all public attention to stopping its spread, but the conditions giving rise to its epicenter outbreak in the US itself are kept out of the discussion. These conditions feature the absence of a working public health system in a privatized-for-profit disorder in which 80 million citizens are inadequately insured or not at all, at twice the expense of a public one-payer system, to deliver the lowest life expectancy in the developed world.
Yet the Democrat establishment as well as the Trump Republicans still repudiate a universal public system which spectacularly outperforms the for-profit black holes of the US corporate HMO’s which help finance US show elections. Trump goes further. His office silently abolished the Pandemic Disease Office of the White House before Covid-19 struck, and cut the funding of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) by 25%.
All this was to help pay for the “huge tax cut, I mean huge” that President Trump won the Republican Party with: “You are all going to be a lot richer”, he smiled to a smirking gaggle of high-end politicos as he signed the bill for an over trillion-dollar expropriation of public wealth to them.
The system is clearly rotten to the core. Yet in the weeks of world-wide lock-down to protect the lives of all from disease, suffocation and death by the uncontrolled Covid-19 virus growth, only this new and narrow invader of life is recognised. The sequences of the private money-multiplying system that pollutes and pillages all that supports life on the planet remains unseen.
Back to Business as Usual as Fast as Possible
US rulers seek only to restore the free feeding cycle of ‘business as usual’ as fast as Trump can get away with it. He is demonized, but he represents all the corporate rich who loot the world for ever more multiplying billions in obscene private take. He also ensures that his own multi-billion luxury enterprises are publicly subsidized during the lock-down with no Congressional oversight as cities and states are left to manage on their own, “we are not a delivery service”, he retorts to their pleas. It is “in the constitution”.
Meanwhile within the Covid-19 crisis itself, the president’s billionaire cronies in the fossil-fuel and resource-extraction businesses are deregulated further by his office while ever more US public lands and parks are laid open to their looting, again as fast as they can all get away with. This is disaster capitalism that feeds on the catastrophes it causes – the death spiral of the system.
While Trump leads the greatest expropriation in history of environmental protections, public wealth, and national resources for the plundering rich, he calls this ruling disorder “the greatest country that has ever existed” while it serves a fraction of one percent of the people. In the living world, it is an increasing hell. The majority are insecure beyond their last paycheque, most are malnourished, and their children have no future or vocation to serve.
The American Dream goes to US Nightmare led by psychopath self-worship and militant ignorance. But the objections by the legacy press and the opposition leaders to Trump dwell only on ad hominem issues. They remain silent on the deep-system disorder that Trump merely exemplifies on stage.
Trump is America come round to meet itself – a life-blind bully greed of armed-force money and propaganda in control of the ‘free world’ where any dared alternative is attacked to death.
You Can’t Change What You Can’t See
Humanity and the living earth itself, say the first-people spiritual leaders, “are being destroyed, violated, by what is called development, civilization, modernity and which we, the Mamos, call UNCONSCIOUSNESS”.
Yes, but concepts need to be more exact. “What is called development, civilization”, is in fact neither. It is the polar opposite of each – a self-multiplying private money system which depredates life development and civil organization wherever it invades. But since no public record is kept of its life-destructive effects, they remain unconscious. Daily published records are only kept of private money-values like stock-markets and trades. No funded research goes to ongoing curves of morbidities, deaths and deprivations of life means. They do not exist to the ruling market modellers. Only money-values do.
The a-priori life-blind system thus remains unconscious. But it can be defined. It is an omnivorous life dispossession system engineered to multiply the private money-demand control of the richest with no upper or limit, and no life-coordinates of ‘goods’ and ‘growth’.
This system disorder is most deadly, as a virus is, when it is not sequenced in its exponential self-multiplication through its life hosts. Everywhere liquidating, dismantling and polluting for private profit the life carrying capacities of organic, social and ecological life, its morbidity trends and deaths are not connected, tracked or responded to by any public knowledge base or academic research funding. The system has destroyed their witness too in its feeding cycles.
The tidal money-sequence drivers multiply market money and demand to the top as the ruling constant of the system. No lives or life conditions lost are connected in graphs or reports. The upward curves of life capacity loss and destruction cannot be flattened because they are not seen.
The Unconsciousness of the System Disorder is Built into its Modelling
Unconnected by any science and unregulated by public life standards, cumulative global destabilization, degeneration and collapse of natural and civil life support systems become overwhelming. Dominant private money sequencing in ever more assaultive and derivative forms is so deregulated, de-taxed and subsidized out of any control that there is no collective life carrying capacity in society or on the planet now not at risk.
Yet even now the common cause, the system disease itself, is taboo to name – the guarantee of system omnicide spiking ever higher. From biodiversity and species in spasm extinction, to global climate and hydrological cycles in growing chaos, to oceans poisoned and coral reefs bleaching, to the forests and life resources of the world looted without stop, the common causeremains unseen.
The social immune systems of societies’ long-evolved public and independent research sectors have been cumulatively hollowed out. Systemic defunding and corporate privatization of public goods and life-support systems have increasingly stripped civil commons across the world before Covid-19 emerged (perhaps from US bio-warfare labs). Yet the system disease remains unthinkable to its victims as well as its drivers, and spiritual intuition provides no resolution beyond personal states of mind.
Unconsciousness is at the roots of the world disorder plaguing us, as the first peoples know. And the rising global chorus and scientific finding today is that “protecting people’s lives is worth the lockdown”. Yet this life principle of public authority and life-coherent government has yet to awake us to the wider system disorder predating the common life-ground at every level.
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John McMurtry is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The G20 met in virtual session on April 10, ostensibly to address the crippling one-two punch brought on by the economic impact of coronavirus and the simultaneous collapse of the price of oil resulting from Russia and Saudi Arabia flooding an already depressed market.
In the end, the world’s leading oil producers finalized an agreement on sweeping oil production cuts, building on a previous agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to stop their price war. The United States is taking credit for this breakthrough, however, citing the role it played in helping bring Mexico to closure.
But the U.S. contribution was, and is, illusory—President Trump is in no position to promise cuts in U.S. oil production, and as such remains unable to meaningfully contribute to the global oil production reduction scheme. Void of any substantive final agreement, global energy markets will continue to suffer as production far outstrips demand. For U.S. oil producers, who have already seen a 2.5-3 million barrel per day decrease in production, the results will be catastrophic, driving many into bankruptcy and helping push the U.S. economy into a tailspin that will lead to a depression potentially worse than that of the 1930’s.
Trump’s only recourse may be to turn to Russia for help in offsetting needed U.S. oil production quotas, which appears to have been the Russian plan all along.
On Monday March 30, President Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The suppressed price of oil, and Russia’s role in facilitating that vis-à-vis its refusal to cut its oil production, thereby triggering a price war with Saudi Arabia, was the dominant topic. A Kremlin read-out of the call noted that “opinions on the current state of global oil markets were exchanged. It was agreed there would be Russo-American consultations about this through the ministers of energy.”
During the call, Trump mentioned America’s need for life-saving medical supplies, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. Putin asked if Russia could be of assistance, and Trump said yes.
The decision to allow Russian aid (purchased by the U.S.) into the country, however, directly contradicted guidance that had been issued by the U.S. State Department a full week before Trump’s phone call with Putin. On March 22, the State Department sent out an internal email to all U.S. Embassies with guidance on how to proceed with seeking out critical support. “Depending on critical needs, the United States could seek to purchase many of these items in the hundreds of millions with purchases of higher end equipment such as ventilators in the hundreds of thousands,” the email stated. The email noted that the request applies to all countries “minus Moscow,” indicating the United States would not ask Russia for support.
While the two leaders, according to the White House, “agreed to work closely together through the G20 to drive the international campaign to defeat the virus and reinvigorate the global economy,” the March 30 phone call apparently did not directly touch upon U.S. sanctions on Russia. In fact, Trump told Fox News prior to the leaders’ exchangethat he fully expected Putin to bring it up. He did not say how he might respond if Putin did.
Trump’s confidence in a Putin sanction request most likely stemmed from a statement made by the Russian President to a virtual meeting of G20 leaders on March 22, where he noted that “ideally we should introduce a…joint moratorium on restrictions on essential goods as well as on financial transactions for their purchase.” Putin’s comments were more pointed toward the lifting of sanctions for humanitarian purposes on nations like Iran and Venezuela, but his conclusion hinted at a larger purpose: “These matters should be freed of any politics.”
Russia has been operating under U.S. and European sanctions following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its role in the Ukraine crisis. But the sanctions that have angered Russia the most—and which have contributed to Russia’s price war with Saudi Arabia targeting U.S. oil producers—were those levied against NordStream 2, the Russian pipeline intended to supply Germany, and Europe, with natural gas. Trump signed a bill authorizing these sanctions in December 2019. Russia immediately condemned this action.
Instead of asking Trump outright to lift sanctions, Putin got Trump to help underscore Russia’s position that sanctions were an unnecessary impediment to relations between the U.S. and Russia during the coronavirus pandemic. In agreeing to allow the Russian AN-124 aircraft to deliver medical supplies to the U.S., Trump unwittingly played into a carefully laid bit of Russian propaganda.
Among the aid Russia delivered were boxes of Aventa-M ventilators, produced by the Ural Instrument Engineering Plant (UPZ). UPZ is a subsidiary of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET) which, along with its parent holding company ROSTEC, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2014. According to the State Department, which payed for 50 percent of the equipment on the flight, the sanctions do not apply to the purchase of medical equipment. But by purchasing critical medical equipment from sanctioned companies, the State Department simultaneously violated its own guidance against buying Russian equipment while underscoring Putin’s point—sanctions should be waived for humanitarian purposes.
But Putin’s trap had one more twist. According to the Russians, half of the aid shipment was paid for by the U.S. State Department, and the other half by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a Russian sovereign wealth fund which, like ROSTEC, was placed on the U.S. lending blacklist in 2014 following Russia’s intervention in Crimea. The arrival of an airplane full of critical medical equipment ostensibly paid in part by a sanctioned Russian sovereign wealth fund provided a window of opportunity for Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of RDIF, to gain access to the U.S. mainstream media to push the Russian line.
On April 5, Dmitriev published an OpEd on the CNBC web page titled “The US and Russia should work together to defeat the coronavirus.” Dmitriev likened the current global struggle against the coronavirus pandemic to the fight against Nazi Germany. “During World War II, American and Russian soldiers fought side by side against a common enemy,” he wrote. “We achieved victory together. Just as our grandfathers stood shoulder to shoulder to defend our values and secure peace for future generations, now our countries must show unity and leadership to win the war against the coronavirus.”
But Dmitriev’s true target was oil, and by extension, sanctions. “In times like this,” he noted, “new approaches to explore close collaboration between the U.S., Russia and other countries are needed to stabilize energy and other markets, to coordinate policy responses and to revitalize economic activity. For example, Russia proposed to jointly undertake significant oil output cuts with the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other countries to stabilize markets and secure employment in the oil industry.”
Getting the U.S. to lift sanctions was a big ask, something Dmitriev acknowledged. “To change the views on Russia in an election year may be an insurmountable challenge. But so it also seemed in 1941, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union put behind the differences of the past to fight the common enemy.”
While the “common enemy” referred to by Dmitriev was clearly the coronavirus pandemic, he could also have been speaking about Senator Ted Cruz, and others of his ilk, who led the charge to sanction NordStream 2. The current oil crisis has hit Texas particularly hard. In an indication of things to come, Whiting Petroleum, a major player in the shale oil industry,filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Whiting specialized in North Dakota fracking, which required oil prices of $60 per barrel to be economically viable. The current price of sub-$25 doomed the company. Texas fracking is slightly cheaper, with a profitability margin of around $49. With oil prices depressed, Texas companies are feeling the pinch, and are on the verge of collapse.
Trump agreed to participate in the G20 meeting because of the promise of a Russian-Saudi production cut; on this, Putin delivered. But the Russians made any final agreement contingent upon Trump agreeing to significant reduction in U.S. oil production. This was never a possibility—whereas both Russia and Saudi Arabia have national oil companies whose operations are a matter of national policy, the U.S. oil industry is privately owned in its entirety, and dependent on supply and demand equations derived from a free market to determine profitability.
While the G20 meeting resulted in collective cuts of close to 10 million barrels a day, the drop in demand for oil brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has created a glut in which the world produces some 27.4 million barrels per day in excess of global needs. The bottom line is the G20 cuts won’t solve the problem of too much oil, and without additional cuts, the bottom will continue to fall out of the oil market, dooming U.S. producers.
Trump cannot turn on or off the U.S. oil-producing spigot, a fact Russia knows only too well. When Trump attempted to gain credit for a 2.5-million-barrel reduction in production brought on by bankruptcy, Russia refused to allow it. Likewise, when Trump promised cuts in oil production to help Mexico meet G20 targets, it was a promise the American president is unable to deliver on. In getting the U.S. to agree to attend a G20 summit on oil production, the Russians lured the U.S. into a policy trap from which there is no escape.
Void of any final agreement, the U.S. oil industry will inevitably collapse. Trump claims that the G20 virtual summit came up with cuts totaling up to 20 million barrels per day, without explaining how he came up with this number. This number is fictional; the U.S. production crisis is not. Trump’s only hope is for a further softening of the Russian position on production. But this will not come without a price, and that price will be the lifting of energy-sector sanctions targeting Russia.
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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, including his forthcoming, Scorpion King: America’s Embrace of Nuclear Weapons From FDR to Trump (2020).
Featured image: President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
The coronavirus pandemic is one of the biggest and unprecedented seismic shifts in the global economy that we’ve ever seen in modern history, and it’s just getting started.
Already, economies around the world are shutting down. The federal reserve has pumped trillions into the United States economy in just a matter of days. Global supply chains have collapsed as entire Chinese industries went dark. And this is just the first stage. We’re heading into a year’s long recession that will have far-reaching consequences, some of which we can predict with near certainty, and some of which will be entirely unpredictable.
Of course, the global economic system has seen major shakeups before. The timespan known as modern history, in official terms, begins with the onset of the industrial revolution. The globalized market economy that we live in today is all thanks to the revolution that started in Great Britain in the late 18th century, which mechanized manufacturing and made mass production possible. Likewise, in only slightly lesser terms, our current political economy wouldn’t be what it is now without World Wars I and II, the Green Revolution, and the invention of the internet.
So no, market shocks and economic recalibration are nothing new. But with each passing year, the world’s economy becomes increasingly intertwined and interdependent. Globalization grows stronger and more widespread all the time, meaning that every economic shakeup anywhere on earth will only have more and more far-reaching consequences as we move forward. The evidence is overwhelming.
For those of us that have grown up against the backdrop of the 2008 recession, Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, to name just a few economic shakeups, crises, and movements, not to mention the looming omnipresent dread of the existential hyperobject that is climate change, it seems that, in many ways, the neoliberal economic trajectory that we are on has reached its limits and dropped us off at the doorway to Armageddon.
Hyperbole? Maybe. But spend five minutes on the internet and you’ll see that it’s a common sentiment.
In October of last year, protests, riots, and uprisings were fomenting and blooming like so many fireworks across the globe. “In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an aging president and decades of military rule,” the Guardian wrote at the time. “The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.” And now? Well, a global pandemic certainly isn’t improving the mood. And there’s likely more to come in the not so distant future.
Scientific American reports that we can expect a lot more pandemics in our future, as urbanization, suburban sprawl, deforestation, and overpopulation have worn down the spatial barriers between humans and wild animals.
“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and plants—and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, wrote in the New York Times back in January.
“I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak,” disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, associate professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, told Scientific American. “The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.”
“We made the coronavirus pandemic,” reads a New York Times headline from January. “It may have started with a bat in a cave, but human activity set it loose.” When logging, mining, drilling, shopping malls, and apartment buildings have set us up for not just one apocalypse but an accelerating series of worsening apocalypses, it’s time for a change. And a new generation of investors, innovators, scientists, and scholars, are ready for it.
The coronavirus crisis has paved the way for one of the biggest shifts in capital reallocation that the world has ever seen. This new generation of investors is working with an urgency never felt before, because they believe that they’re the last line of defense to save the world.
Hyperbole? Probably not.
Look no further than the starry-eyed, revolutionary ideas of Elon Musk and the geniuses of Silicon Valley, and then consider that these are the old guys. Going forward, green energy, decarbonization, social justice, appropriate governance, sustainability, resilience, climate-smart investment, and equal rights won’t just be buzzwords, they will actually be on the corporate agenda. Continuing to pour money into Big Oil and Big Pharma will no longer be marketable.
Investors are already using their money as a voice for change. The ESG or Environment, Sustainability, and Governance investment niche already has over $30 trillion in assets under management. It’s now more than a trend. It’s the future.
And a small Canadian company with big ambitions knows this all too well. Facedrive is looking to take on some of the biggest names in transportation with a simple, but important philosophy: “take something as simple as hailing a ride and turn it into a collective force for change.” The company is actively taking control of its place in this movement and helping shape a better world. More importantly, it’s marketable. A key feature that has been missing from the adoption of greener alternatives.
Facedrive is a local company bringing its values to the main stage. Its message has traction. It’s already partnering with major international names and capturing investor attention in a way that other companies dream they could.
This is not about politics. It’s about logic and a healthy dose of realism. And that’s exactly what makes Facedrive so genuine and accessible. Sure, business, as usual has made a lot of money for a lot of people and has driven incredible innovation and some of the best quality of life in human history. Yes, an oil-powered industrial complex has paved the way for modern medicine that have saved untold millions if not billions of lives, food systems that have staved off widespread famine, and we now live with the comforts of electricity, heat and air-conditioning, air travel, and thousands of other nearly objective improvements to our daily lives. (In the first world, that is.) But now we must reckon with the unintended externalities of all of this economic growth. Our soil is degraded, our oceans are polluted and acidifying, we’re losing biodiversity at breakneck speed, and the earth is getting warmer. Investors, if they are smart, will start investing in the future, not in the cash cows of the past.
Few can attempt to deny that this is the direction that the global political economy is heading. Consumers are savvier, the stakes are higher, and business simply can’t go on as usual. It’s just a matter of time before a fossil-fuel based economy peters out, whether we reach peak oil by exploiting the global reserves or whether demand simply fades away as renewable energies become more efficient and more cost-effective. Solar and wind power are already cheaper than coal in most of the world, and they’re getting cheaper all the time.
Much of the developed world, with Canada, in particular, leading the charge, are already taking major strides towards decarbonizing their energy industries. Even cleaning up transportation with efforts like Toronto’s electric bus initiative, or even local companies like Facedrive making waves with greener solutions to some of our biggest challenges. And let’s not discount the researchers around the world racing to improve green energies and find a solution to unlock the solution to the green energy holy grail that is nuclear fusion. These efforts are all finally starting to be taken seriously, getting the attention, and maybe more importantly, the investments they need to push their visions further by the day.
Heck, even Saudi Aramco had to admit that peak oil is due by midcentury in documents shared as part of their initial public offering last year. Yes, to be sure, their IPO was the biggest in history, and fossil fuels continue to make big money for their investors–but for how much longer? And what of all those in the middle and lower classes that are not only not reaping any significant economic benefits from the current investment agenda, but are often actively suffering from it, either directly by market squeezes and a widening wealth gap, or indirectly by environmental and health externalities that the global poor routinely bear the burden of.
Last year’s protesters in Chile, Hong Kong, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon may not have known exactly what kind of change they wanted, but there are people that do. And a good number of those people are the new class of investors who give a damn.
Clean energy and climate-friendly technologies have long been bottlenecked at the research and development level because there simply wasn’t enough investment money. But that’s changing, and it’s changing rapidly. Some of the deepest pockets in the world are diving into renewable energies in a way that would have sounded like a fairy tale even five to ten years ago. The big four of Silicon Valley and the tech industry as a whole have been pouring money into the renewables sector.
Take Google (GOOGL), for example. Despite being one of the largest companies on the planet, in many ways it has lived up to its original “Don’t Be Evil” slogan. Not only is Google powering its data centers with renewable energy, it is also on the cutting edge of innovation in the industry, investing in new technology and green solutions to build a more sustainable tomorrow. It’s bid to reduce its carbon footprint has been well received by both younger and older investors. And as the need to slow down climate change becomes increasingly dire, it’s easy to see why.
Social media giant Facebook (FB) is doing its part, as well. Not only have they made dramatic progress towards their goal to run on 100% renewable energy by the end of 2020, they’re working to build more water-efficient data centers. In fact, their data centers use 80 percent less water than typical data centers.
Not to be outdone, Apple (AAPL) has made significant moves towards renewables, as well. All of Apple’s operations run on 100% renewable energy. “We proved that 100 percent renewable is 100 percent doable. All our facilities worldwide—including Apple offices, retail stores, and data centers—are now powered entirely by clean energy. But this is just the beginning of how we’re reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. We’re continuing to go further than most companies in measuring our carbon footprint, including manufacturing and product use. And we’re making great progress in those areas too,” CEO Tim Cook explained.
Amazon (AMZN), for its part, is not carbon neutral quiet yet, but it is making massive moves to clean up its act. It pledges to be fully carbon neutral by 2040, and it is buying up 100,000 electric delivery vehicles to get there. Not only that, but it has also built a 253 MW wind farm in Scurry County, Texas, generating over one million megawatt-hours of electricity annually.
Even Big Oil supermajors have been dipping their toes into the sector to diversify their portfolios and hedge their bets in the rapidly changing cultural and economic zeitgeist. Total (TOT) maintains a ‘big picture’ outlook across all of its endeavors. It is not only aware of the needs that are not being met by a significant portion of the world’s growing population, it is also hyper-aware of the looming climate crisis if changes are not made. In its push to create a better world for all, it has committed to contributing to each of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. From workplace safety and diversity to societal progression and reducing its carbon footprint, Total is checking all of the boxes that the next generation of investors hold close to their hearts.
A greener future is not a political statement. Improving dirty business practices is not bipartisan. No matter who you are and what you believe in, it only makes sense to invest in the future. And there is no future without a serious reallocation of capital. Don’t bother trying to fight it. The investment revolution is now.
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Michael Kern is a newswriter and editor at Safehaven.com, Oilprice.com, and a writer at Macro-Investing.com.
A leaked 850-page report provides a wealth of information about how senior officials undermined Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. Titled ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019’, it particularly documents systematic sabotage by the party apparatus between Corbyn’s election in September 2015 and Jennie Formby taking over as general secretary in April 2018.
The report was compiled by party staff in the context of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigation into how Corbyn-led Labour handled complaints of antisemitism. The EHRC findings are expected soon. Party lawyers have, for reasons that are not yet entirely clear, decided not to submit the report to the EHRC.
Exposing the truth
The report blows apart the myth that Corbyn’s LOTO – Leader of the Opposition’s Office – was responsible for undermining efforts to deal effectively with antisemitism in the party. It instead shows that Blairite officials, motivated by hostility to Corbyn’s left-wing politics, made a concerted effort to scupper the handling of complaints.
The report exonerates Corbyn personally, and those close to him in LOTO, of failing to take antisemitism seriously. It instead demonstrates that hostile senior officials operated in a highly factional manner to turn the issue into a crisis for the party. The media normally amplify any story to do with Labour and antisemitism, yet they have so far remained mostly silent on this report.
The focus of the report is largely on the behaviour of senior staff in Labour Party headquarters – led by Iain McNicol, the right winger who was general secretary until being replaced by Formby in 2018 – and the Governance and Legal Unit (GLU), responsible for disciplinary matters, in particular. The report finds that ‘in this period, before Jennie Formby became General Secretary in spring 2018, GLU failed to act on the vast majority of complaints received, including the vast majority of complaints regarding anti-Semitic conduct’.
This allowed a massive backlog to develop. It was used, entirely without justification, to suggest that Corbyn and the left were responsible for failures to investigate and deal with complaints about antisemitic conduct.
The main evidence base is a mass of communications between senior staff, especially message exchanges on two WhatsApp groups used by senior managers. One group was for six top officials including McNicol and Emilie Oldknow, who was then a highly influential party official and is now assistant general secretary of Unison. The other group included the same six key officials, but also other senior managers at party HQ.
I have divided this overview into three sections, followed by a concluding section suggesting some lessons to take from the investigation. The first part is concerned with the material on how antisemitism claims were dealt with.
The second section is about the devastating revelations of how officials undermined the Labour Party’s electoral chances, above all in the historic general election of June 2017. Officials were appalled by the better-than-expected results for the party, following a campaign during which they frequently expressed contempt for their own party and its prospects.
The third section is about the culture of routine abusive language about party colleagues, especially those on the left, which existed at Labour Party HQ. The unremitting hostility was often expressed in sexist, unpleasant and highly personalised terms.
Antisemitism claims
The central conclusion of the report is that the old Blairite apparatus systematically failed to investigate complaints about antisemitism for factional and political reasons. It dismantles the claim, popularised by a Panorama programme last year and amplified by the press, that the Leader’s Office was responsible for these failures.
There was no proper logging of complaints, many of which were simply treated as ‘spam’ for months. The report states: “By the time a new general secretary took over Party HQ in April 2018 there was a backlog of cases that had been ongoing, often for years, with little to no progress.” There is an example from October 2017 of a member who had shared Holocaust denial material online, but was not suspended.
Examples are cited of officials at HQ giving the Leader’s Office inaccurate information or outright lying about the progress being made with investigations or the handling of complaints. The recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report were routinely ignored. Indeed there is even an exchange where officials discuss not posting the report on the party’s website, with Oldknow expressing the “strong view” that it shouldn’t appear on the site.
The report does a thorough job of putting the record straight on who was responsible for failures to deal adequately with antisemitism complaints. However, the narrow focus and underlying assumptions in relation to the antisemitism issue led to some difficulties too. The narrow focus on how complaints were dealt with obviously precludes any discussion of the politics of what’s often been referred to as ‘Labour’s antisemitism crisis’.
There is no acknowledgement that antisemitism has been cynically weaponised to attack the left, still less any discussion of what might have motivated that or the wider political context in which it took place. Instead the report introduces the concept of “denialism”, a word used 17 times in the report – mostly in the context of ‘a culture of denialism’ or ‘denialism narratives’.
It is valid to criticise someone for suggesting that antisemitism is never a problem in the Labour Party – and indeed to label that a kind of denial. But this concept is deployed more broadly to delegitimise any discussion of the weaponising of antisemitism. In fact it is clear from the report that a high proportion of complaints were spurious, often relating to people who were not even party members.
The media obsession with this alleged crisis has been totally out of proportion to the extent to which antisemitism has been a real problem among Labour members. Questioning the dominant framing of ‘Labour’s antisemitism crisis’ is entirely proper, not ‘denialism’. Labour made things far harder for itself than was necessary precisely because it failed to challenge this framing. Its adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, including examples that risk conflating antisemitism with criticisms of Israel, was especially damaging.
Hoping for defeat at the polls
Senior party officials were plunged into gloom by the exit poll at 10pm on Thursday 8 June 2017, which showed Labour set to do considerably better than expected. An extraordinary WhatsApp exchange followed. There are references to being ‘in need of counselling’, to being ‘stunned and reeling’ and an ‘awful’ atmosphere in response to the news that Labour were set to actually gain seats.
One official refers to a room where people, including Leader’s Office staff, are celebrating as the ‘room of death’. Iain McNicol complains that ‘it is going to be a long night’. Another senior figure contrasts Corbyn allies (‘They are cheering’) to HQ workers (‘we are silent and grey faced’), adding ‘Opposite to what I had been working towards for the last couple of years’.
What a revealing comment that is. This is someone employed full-time to work for the Labour Party. She responds to the party achieving very good election results by declaring it the opposite to what she had been trying to achieve for the last two years. The desire to end the Corbyn project, to regain control of the Labour Party for the Blairites, ran so deep that these party officials were rooting for electoral failure.
The previous pages in the report outline plenty of evidence that these election night reactions were part of a pattern. During the campaign any positive polling is greeted with mockery or horror, while Corbyn’s speeches are derided and ridiculed. There are also examples of conspiring to secretly funnel money into seats where MPs on the hard right of the party were standing. Ludicrously, this even included Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, who went on to win his seat with a massive majority.
There is a moment when Nia Griffith, shadow defence secretary, is lauded among the group for making comments that undermined Corbyn on foreign policy. One official calls her ‘a bloody hero’ and writes: ‘shes just stabbed corbyn and thornberry’. Corbyn’s anti-war speech after the Manchester Arena bombing prompted special venom. Pro-Corbyn members are referred to as ‘vile, opportunistic morons’, but it is hoped that the electorate will turn against Labour following Corbyn’s speech as ordinary voters ‘do not blame foreign intervention they blame immigration’.
They then discuss how the election will be a serious rout for Labour and that this will ‘shock a lot of them… including JC’. The Right should capitalise on that shock to drive Corbyn out – ‘it has to be clean and brutal’, writes one. The only obstacle will be the membership who are ‘communists and green supporters’. Elsewhere there are examples of the officials plotting how to destabilise and ultimately remove the leadership.
Abusive language, sexism and paranoia
Many people have reacted to the report by observing that they already knew how vicious and hostile some elements of the party apparatus had been, but it is still shocking to discover exactly what they said among themselves.
There are literally scores of references to ‘Trots’ among the quoted evidence in the report. It is evidently an obsession to the point of paranoia: anyone even slightly to the left of Ed Miliband is characterised this way. At one point there is even the audacious characterisation of ‘most of the PLP’ as ‘Trots’. It is revealing, too, that even such moderate figures as Miliband, Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan are on the receiving end of derogatory comments, so fanatical is their centrism.
Seumas Milne, director of communications, is referred to as a “nutter” (not the only time that word is used) and a “total mentalist”. Emily Oldknow is among those who mock black MP Dawn Butler for raising the issue of racism in the party. There is discussion of ‘hanging and burning’ Corbyn, while those MPs who nominated him should be ‘taken out and shot’. And, apparently, ‘death by fire is too kind for LOTO’.
In February 2017 there is an exchange about Diane Abbott, Labour’s best-known black female politician. One claims that Abbott has ‘been found crying in the loos’ and another suggests they tip off Michael Crick, the Channel 4 journalist, about Abbott’s whereabouts. On another occasion Abbott is described as ‘a very angry woman’ with another official adding that she is ‘truly repulsive’.
Left-wing women are particularly likely to have deeply unpleasant language used about them. A discussion about Katy Clark, Corbyn’s political secretary, includes Oldknow writing ‘Fuck off pube head’. On another occasion, Oldknow calls Clark a ‘smelly cow’ and seems aggrieved that she had ‘the exact same clothes on yesterday’.
Oldknow’s preoccupation with judging women negatively on their appearance is a recurring theme. Of Laura Murray, a young party worker, she wrote: ‘You’d think with all that money she could afford to buy a jacket and a bra’. She also castigates Karie Murphy from LOTO as ‘fat’. Murphy is the subject of another exchange, involving several people, during which she is referred to as ‘a fuckwit’, ‘Crazy woman’, ‘crazy snake head lady’, ‘Bitch face cow’, ‘a good dartboard’ and ‘Medusa Monster’.
Lessons from the report
Three key things stand out.
Firstly, the report offers an enormously powerful rebuttal to the dominant narrative about ‘Labour antisemitism’. Despite the report’s limitations on this matter, it demonstrates – with tremendous detail – that failures to address antisemitism in the Labour Party were the responsibility of Blairite officials hostile to the left-wing leadership, not the responsibility of the left.
The report ought to be the starting point for kicking back against the remorseless attacks on Corbyn and Labour over the antisemitism issue. There should be more forthright opposition to the EHRC over its tendentious investigation, especially if it produces unjustifiably harsh findings. More widely, it is time to confront the cynical weaponising of antisemitism that has simultaneously tarnished the left, stigmatised the cause of Palestine solidarity and undermined the struggle against racism.
Secondly, it shows how unwaveringly hostile the Labour Party right wing is to the left and what extremes it will go to in seeking to defeat the left. The Blairite senior managers who sabotaged disciplinary processes, electoral campaigning and the party’s work more generally went as far as wishing for electoral defeat because it would weaken the left. They should be dealt with firmly.
For example, Unison members should be demanding the removal of Oldknow from her role as the union’s assistant general secretary. Diane Abbott has already tweeted that it’s unthinkable for Oldknow to be considered as the party’s next general secretary. Dave Ward, CWU general secretary, has called for the former party employees exposed by the report to have their party membership suspended.
This isn’t merely a matter of dealing with Blairite rogue elements either. They have been defended by politicians across the Labour spectrum. At a leadership hustings in February all four of the candidates then involved in the contest – Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Emily Thornberry and Lisa Nandy – spoke up in favour of the former staff featured in the new report, characterising them as hard-working, loyal and politically neutral party workers who had been treated badly and were owed an apology. Starmer’s front bench appointments signal a sharp shift to the right and include figures from the same right-wing factions as the disgraced former senior managers.
Thirdly, this tells us a great deal about the limits of the Labour Party as a vehicle for socialist advance. The left around Corbyn was reluctant to confront McNicol and his colleagues because they feared the Right splitting the party. The striving for ‘party unity’ overrode everything. But, as Ken Loach once put it in relation to the constant attacks on Corbyn, ‘a broad church doesn’t work when the choir is trying to stab the vicar in the back’.
These revelations indicate that the problems go way beyond individual or even group behaviour, obnoxious as that has been. It is a deep structural and institutional problem to do with the nature of the Labour Party itself.
Labour’s right wing is ultimately more loyal to the establishment and the state than it is to the labour movement and, through that, the interests of the working class. The Labour Right will wreck the Left even if it means profoundly damaging the aspirations of the party as a whole, as seen most vividly in the sabotage ahead of the June 2017 election.
The left’s severe reluctance to firmly deal with the problem stemmed from conviction that the Right would split the party. This could not be countenanced because of the commitment to maintaining the existing ‘broad church’. The Right, however, has never shown similar tolerance or forgiveness. It is prepared to be ruthless and will enforce the left’s subordination to its dominance.
We must therefore resist any pressure to not make a fuss, to keep quiet and carry on regardless, in the name of a spurious ‘unity’. That only emboldens the Right, demobilises the Left and consequently weakens the opposition to a Tory government that is failing terribly over its handling of the coronavirus crisis. A fighting unity, which presupposes independent left-wing politics, is required.
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Alex Snowdon is a Counterfire activist in Newcastle. He is active in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and the National Education Union.
Featured image: Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson at Labour Party Conference in 2016. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The U.S. military flew their new F-35 stealth jet over Syria’s skies this past week, as they display their strength in front of the Russian Armed Forces who are only a few kilometers away from the American troops in the eastern Euphrates region.
In a tweet on Monday, the Special Ops Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) in Syria and Iraq released three photos showing the F-35 above Syria, likely in the Al-Hasakah or Deir Ezzor governorates.
“A USAF F-35A Lightning II fighter jet flies near the $ATG in Syria, April 10, 2020. Coalition and partner forces continue to strike at extremist organizations in Syria despite COVID-19, reflecting the world-wide unity to see an enduring defeat delivered against Daesh,” the U.S. military account posted.
The three photos would show up close and far away shots of the F-35A as it flew over the skies of eastern Syria.
A USAF F-35A Lightning II fighter jet flies near the #ATG in Syria, April 10, 2020. Coalition and partner forces continue to strike at extremist organizations in Syria despite COVID-19, reflecting the world-wide unity to see an enduring defeat delivered against Daesh #DefeatDaeshpic.twitter.com/z474lPHpuB
— Special Ops Joint Task Force-OIR (Iraq/Syria) (@SOJTFOIR) April 13, 2020
While the U.S. conducted this flight, the Russian military was likely watching from afar, as they have headquartered their forces in eastern Syria at the Qamishli Airport in the northern region of the Al-Hasakah Governorate.
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According to data compiled through April 11, Venezuela had carried out 181,335 COVID-19 tests, which allowed this South American country to detect patients in time and become the Latin American nation with the lowest infection rate.
“The recovery rate is the highest in the region with 53 percent, above Colombia that only reaches seven percent and Brazil with 0.8 percent,” he added.
Additionally, while Brazil has an average of 104 infected persons per million, Venezuela has only 6 infected patients per million inhabitants, a successful result that would not be possible if the Bolivarian government had not performed COVID-19 tests free of charge.
As of Tuesday morning, Venezuela, a country with over 28 million inhabitants, had reported 189 COVID-19 cases and 9 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins data base.
— #FreeJulianAssangeNOW #EndWastefulWars (@aerwaves_) April 12, 2020
To control the return of some 15,000 Venezuelans from Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, the Bolivarian government established sanitary barriers at its country’s land borders through which each person entering the national territory will be examined.
Health authorities also installed a mobile bioanalysis lab in the state of Tachira, on the border with Colombia. By doing so, the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests results can be got at the border instead of waiting for them to arrive about 4 hours from Caracas city.
The state of Zulia also announced the installation of a field hospital in the municipality of Mara with the capacity to care for 4,000 people returning from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
In the state of Carabobo, one of the four Venezuelan regions that did not register COVID-19 cases, 18 returnees were isolated in the Olympic Village of Naguanagua, which was adapted as a field hospital with the capacity to serve 400 people.
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Featured image: Red Cross delivers 46 tons of medical supplies in Caracas, Venezuela, April 13, 2020. | Photo: EFE
The Palestinians of Gaza know all about lockdowns. For the past 13 years, some two million of them have endured a closure by Israel more extreme than anything experienced by almost any other society – including even now, as the world hunkers down to try to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
Israel has been carrying out an unprecedented experiment in Gaza, using the latest military hardware and surveillance technology to blockade this tiny coastal enclave by land, air and sea.
Nothing moves in or out without Israel’s say-so – until three weeks ago, when the virus smuggled itself into Gaza inside two Palestinians returning from Pakistan. It is known to have spread to more than a dozen people so far, though doctors have no idea of the true extent. Testing equipment ran out days ago.
Unless Gaza enjoys a miraculous escape, an epidemic is only a matter of time. The consequences hardly bear contemplating.
Countries around the world are wondering what to do with their prison populations, aware that, once it takes hold, Covid-19 is certain to spread rapidly in crowded, enclosed spaces, leaving havoc in its wake.
Gaza is often compared to an open-air prison. But even this analogy is not quite right. This is a prison that the United Nations has warned is on the brink of being “uninhabitable”.
In the prison of Gaza, many inmates are undernourished, and physically and emotionally scarred by a decade of military assaults. They lack essentials such as clean water and electricity after repeated Israeli attacks on basic infrastructure. And the 13-year blockade means there is only rudimentary medical care if they get sick.
Social distancing is impossible in one of the most crowded places on earth. In Jabaliya, one of eight refugee camps in the enclave, there are 115,000 people packed together in little more than a square kilometre. Comparable population density nearby in Israel is typically measured in the hundreds.
There are few clinics and hospitals to cope. According to human rights groups, Gaza has approximately 60 ventilators – most of them already in use. Israel has 15 times as many ventilators per head of population.
There is little in the way of protective gear. And medicines are already in short supply or unavailable, even before the virus hits. Gaza’s infant mortality – an important measure of medical and social conditions – is more than seven times higher than Israel’s. Life expectancy is 10 years lower.
Unlike a normal prison, Gaza’s warden – Israel – denies responsibility for the inmates’ welfare. Since it carried out a so-called “disengagement” 15 years ago, dismantling illegal settlements there, Israel has argued – against all evidence – that it is no longer the occupying power.
That should have been proved an obvious lie when Palestinians, choking on their isolation and deprivation, began rallying in protest two years ago at the perimeter fence that acts as a cage locking them in. Demonstrators were greeted with live fire from Israeli snipers.
Around 200 people were killed, and many thousands left with horrific injuries, mostly to their legs. Medical services are still overwhelmed by the need for long-term surgery, amputations and rehabilitation for the disabled protesters.
What is already a crisis barely needs a nudge from the coronavirus to be tipped into a health disaster.
And with most of the population already below the poverty line, after Israel’s blockade destroyed Gaza’s textile, construction and agricultural industries, the economy is no shape to withstand an epidemic either.
Most governments, including Israel’s, maintain a degree of control even in the face of this most unexpected emergency. They could prepare for it, even if many were slow to do so. They can marshall factories to produce ventilators and protective equipment. And they have the resources to rebuild their health services and economies afterwards.
If they fail in these tasks, it will be their failure.
But Gaza is entirely dependent on Israel and an international community preoccupied with its own troubles. Even if health authorities can secure ventilators and protective equipment in the current, highly competitive global market, Israel will decide whether to let them in. Equally, it could choose to seize them for its own use, in order to placate growing domestic criticism that it is short of vital equipment.
The blame for Gaza’s plight – now and in the future – lands squarely at Israel’s door.
Israel should be helping Gaza, but it is doing the precise opposite. Last week, Israeli planes sprayed herbicide to destroy the crops of Gaza’s farmers – part of a policy to keep clear sight-lines for Israeli military forces.
Moreover, in this time of crisis, Gaza’s food insecurity is only set to deepen. For the past year, Israel has been starving both Gaza and the rival Palestinian Authority in the West Bank of the taxes and duties it collects on their behalf and that rightfully belong to the Palestinian people. Many families have no money for food.
The US has aggravated this financial crisis by cutting funds to the United Nations refugee agency, UNRWA, which cares for many of Gaza’s families expelled by Israel from their homes decades ago and forcibly crowded into the enclave.
The little influence retained by Hamas relates to the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held illegally in Israel. Hamas wants them out, especially the most vulnerable, aware of the danger the virus poses to them in Israel, where the contagion is more advanced.
It is reported to be trying to negotiate a release of prisoners, offering to return the corpses of two soldiers it seized during Israel’s infamous attack on Gaza in 2014 that killed more than 500 Palestinian children.
If Israel refuses to trade, as seems likely, or denies entry to much-needed medical supplies, Gaza’s only other practical leverage will be to fire missiles into Israel, as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has threatened. That is the one time western states can be expected to notice Gaza and voice their condemnation – though not of Israel.
But if plague does overwhelm Gaza, the truth about who is really responsible will be hard to conceal.
Modelling the horrifying conditions in Gaza, Israeli experts warned last year of an epidemic like cholera sweeping the enclave. They predicted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians storming the fence to escape contagion and death.
It is the Israeli army’s nightmare scenario. It admits it has no response other than – as with the fence protests – to gun down those pleading for help.
For decades Israel has pursued a policy of treating Palestinians as less than human. It has minutely controlled their lives while denying any meaningful responsibility for their welfare. That deeply unethical and inhumane stance could soon face the ultimate test.
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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.
While reporting from Israel/Palestine has focused on Israel’s difficulties in forming a new government and on measures being taken by Israelis to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic, the story behind the story is the role anti-Arab racism has played in these developments. Anti-Arab racism, which defined Israel’s founding and shaped its seven decades of existence, is now presenting the country with a challenge that will determine its future.
Racism is the reason why the Blue and White bloc led by Benny Gantz was ultimately unable to form a government, thereby giving Benjamin Netanyahu yet another term as Prime Minister. While the Gantz-led anti-Netanyahu forces won a majority of seats in the Knesset, 15 of those 61 seats were held by the Arab-led Joint List. After Gantz was given the nod to form a government, Netanyahu intensified his campaign of anti-Arab incitement against Gantz, claiming that partnering with the Arabs was akin to making an alliance with “terrorist supporters.” In doing this, he was taking a page from the playbook he and the late Ariel Sharon used in the mid-1990s to incite against then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They called Rabin’s government an illegitimate “minority government” because he relied on Arab Knesset Members to reach a majority. They also called Rabin a terrorist supporter and denounced the peace accords he reached with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
It soon became clear that Gantz did not have the votes he would need to form a government since 10 of the Jewish members of his putative coalition refused to consider forming a government that relied on Arab support. Seven of this group were from the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which has called for “transferring” Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens to the West Bank, while the other objectors were from Gantz’ own party.
After still more twists and turns, Gantz surrendered to Netanyahu, agreeing to form a coalition government with Netanyahu as Prime Minister. While all the terms of the coalition have not yet been nailed down, one early concession made by Gantz has been to accept Netanyahu’s demand for Israel to formally annex the Palestinian territories’ Jordan Valley and the settlement blocs that Israel has built on occupied Palestinian lands.
There are two new arguments being made by pro-annexation Israelis. The first is that because Donald Trump may not be reelected in November, Israel must act by summer’s end to insure US support for the move. The second is that with coronavirus wreaking havoc across the Middle East, fortifying the West Bank’s Jordan Valley is important to protect Israel from disease and chaos.
This latter argument is both explicitly and implicitly racist, in that it makes the case that to ward off complications that come from next door, Israel must annex the West Bank thereby consolidating its repressive Apartheid-like hold over a Palestinian Arab population that is roughly equal in numbers to Israel’s Jewish population.
To understand the future being envisioned by Israel’s right-wingers, one need only look at the recent policies being pursued by Netanyahu’s interim government toward Israel’s Arab citizens, who are 20 per cent of its population, and the more than 4.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
At the end of March, Israel opened drive-through coronavirus testing stations throughout the country. None, however, were initially placed in Arab communities. When Israel finally established lock-downs to control the spread of the virus, the lock-downs did not include Arab population centres. So while Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens are on the front lines fighting the pandemic, about one-fifth of all Israeli doctors and one-quarter of all nurses are Arab, their communities are horribly underserved. Experts, therefore, dismiss reports indicating low infection rates among the Arab population since these most likely are the result of a lack of testing. According to an Israeli press account, as of early April, only 6,500 Arab citizens of Israel had been tested as opposed to over 80,000 Israeli Jews.
The situation confronting Palestinians in occupied territories is, of course, significantly worse owing to the persistence of the occupation. The Israeli military continues violent nightly raids on Palestinian towns and villages, more than 200 in the last month alone. These raids are accompanied by beatings, shootings and arrests of scores of Palestinians. Added to this are the unchecked incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. These have also accelerated in recent weeks, with 20 especially violent attacks occurring last month. There are also reports from Israeli human rights groups of Israeli troops confiscating medical supplies and materials that were intended to build a needed field hospital in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority, which is already reeling from economic shortages, will now face the additional hardship of the tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers who have been forced to give up their jobs in Israel and return to their West Bank homes. The conditions to which they were subjected while in Israel had become deplorable as a result of the coronavirus lockdowns. They were denied wages, food, and medical care. And, as they have returned to the West Bank, the number of cases of individuals infected by the virus has risen in the territories.
All of this has placed an unbearable burden on cash-strapped Palestinian medical services. Early on, when Israel imported 100,000 Coronavirus testing kits, the Israeli press reported that they sent a few thousand to the West Bank and only a few hundred to Gaza! The result, of course, is that while the virus will spread, and probably already has in the occupied lands, the reported numbers will be low because of a lack of testing. And then there is the problem of capacity. The entire West Bank has about 200 ventilators and Gaza has around 80 ICU beds, 72 per cent of which are already in use.
The Trump Administration has only added insult to this injury. This week, they rejected an appeal from Congress to send emergency medical support to the Palestinian Authority, while at the same time they found the funds to purchase one million surgical masks and other supplies for the Israel military.
In the end, the confluence of anti-Arab racism and the coronavirus pandemic will have consequences. The pandemic knows no boundaries. While the Israeli right-wing imagines that annexing and fortifying the Jordan Valley will seal off Israel from disease and chaos, in reality they are sealing their own fate. They are serving to hasten Israel’s march to becoming a full-fledged apartheid state and because coronavirus does not discriminate, Israel’s callous disregard for Arab human life will only ensure that the disease will continue to spread and take and ever-increasing toll on both Arabs and Jews alike.
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The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.
The International Monetary Fund projects that the global economy will fall by three percent in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The IMF chief economist branded the widespread restrictions around the world as the Great Lockdown. Gita Gopinath said the projected cut in the global economy will be the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s. She said the eurozone economy would crash by a staggering 7-point-5 percent this year. Gopinath noted that some of the coronavirus economic damage in the US will spill over into second half 2020 and 2021. The IMF called for a coordinated stimulus to help the global economy rebound. It called on the official creditors to provide debt relief to poor countries.
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PressTV: What is your view on this prediction?
Peter Koenig: It looks to me rather like the IMF missed a zero in its projections – 30% rather than 3% seems more like reality. What planet are they on? – Making the world believe it’s nothing special, just a little deeper dip than in other recessions – and with a hefty infusion of IMF balance of payment and budget support loans -mind you maybe at low interest, but with the usual strings attached of privatization and natural resources exploitation concessions for multinationals – all will be getting back to normal.
Yes, the IMF’s call for debt relief is certainly a good thing. But it’s precisely the IMF and the World Bank, who have to start forgiving debt in poor countries, instead of waiting for others to go first. Well, we are seeing that not even in Greece the IMF is capable of writing off the -literally – deadly debt.
Simply back to normal is this time not the case. And its maybe a good thing. All the misery that this – and let me emphasize – this planned destruction of the global economy – will bring to particularly the poorer nations and their people, is barely the tip of the iceberg. – This literal collapse of the global economy is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to break loose from the predatory and fraudulent dollar-economy – deglobalize and get out from the fangs of the IMF, World Bank and alike.
Let’s face it – this pandemic which by most serious medical doctors, including Dr. Fauci (Director NIAID / NIH), when he talks with his academic colleagues and mentions COVID19 as a stronger form of flu, and other micro-biologists, and virologists, did in no way justify a total planet lockdown. This COVID19 pandemic, declared as such by the coopted WHO- created – and still creates so much socioeconomic desolation and human misery, as did nothing else in the last 100 years, actually in modern history.
The FED, Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg — and more, have predicted next quarter unemployment in the US alone may reach 32% to 40%; bankruptcies are spiraling out of control – triggering a domino of further lay-offs. And the picture is similar in Europe. Let’s not even mention the Global South, where the informal sector already today accounts for at least 30% of the economy – it’s gone. With a crisis, informality will increase. Most so-called development countries have none or only flimsy safety nets to help these people who have lost everything, their jobs, pensions, can’t pay their rent any more, nor buy food, nor pay medical bills….
Suicides may become rampant, as they have been in Greece after the 2008 – also man-made- crisis – and suicides are still one of the highest causes of death in Greece.
And yet, the IMF is talking about worldwide contraction of a mere 3% ? -Whom are they trying to fool?
The countries of the Global South also have little reserves and much debt. And the corona crisis- and I have to repeat -man-made corona crisis – is making the situation for the Third World countries and their people much worse than for the global industrialized north. Poverty will skyrocket. – And more so, if the IMF comes in with their privatization programs.
PressTV: So, what do you think countries have to do to restart their economies under new parameters?
PK: By now it is clear to most people and most governments, Globalization has helped only a few national and international oligarchs and international and globalized private banks and corporations. The big losers were the people at large.
I think now is the time for countries to regroup. To abandon globalized structures, like the European Union, and especially the euro that deprives member countries of their financial sovereignty – detach themselves from IMF, WB, WTO and Regional Development Banks and similar globalized structures that increase their dependence and debt burden.
They may consider going back to their roots, economically, financially and culturally and start rebuilding their economy foremost with their own production for their own consumption with their own currency and their own publicly owned central bank, plus a public banking system that works for the needs of the local economy.
International trading and dealings may be best started only with neighboring or culturally and ideologically alike nations.
China is a prime example. China has worked towards and practically achieved self-sufficiency until about the 1980s, when they started opening up their borders for international trade and investments. And look where China is today – the second economic world power, and by many accounts already the first.
There is a need for rethinking the entire economic paradigm – not to get back into the same fraudulent debt trap of before corona.
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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.
The coronavirus pandemic is on the verge of destroying Donald Trump’s presidency, with momentous consequences not just for the United States but also the world.
Mercifully, Trump himself has tested negative for the virus. But his leadership has proved catastrophic, and public opinion is turning on him.
A recent CNN poll showed his Democratic challengerJoe Biden leading Trump 53 percent to 42 percent among registered voters. In fact Biden has led in every head-to-head poll taken in the last six weeks.
Recent polling of all voters has also awarded Biden a powerful advantage; a Real Clear Politics general election poll tracker has the former vice president up 6.4 points over Trump.
Admittedly, in the 2016 elections, Trump showed that he doesn’t need a majority of the popular vote to win. But Biden is already ahead of the president in swing states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He’s neck and neck with Trump in Michigan, one of the rustbelt states that gave Trump victory in 2016 – a state the Republicans must win to have any chance this year.
Biden beats Trump in Florida by 6 points, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of North Florida. If results like these are duplicated in November, Biden will win by a landslide.
The clearest sign yet that the pressure was getting to Trump came at his White House briefing on Tuesday.
The briefing collapsed into near chaos as the president clashed with journalists, and bizarrely claimed that he had “total authority” when it came to public health rules over the virus.
And remember this. In the United States, unlike Europe, the worst effects of the coronavirus pandemic are yet to come.
Worst yet to come
There have been more than 23,000 deaths so far. While each is an awful tragedy, statistically this number is a pinprick for a population of 330 million.
The projection is that it is going to get much worse, though it’s guesswork exactly how bad. And it stands to reason that those hardest hit will include Trump’s heartland supporters, who have so far stayed loyal.
Working-class people without access to decent healthcare – or any healthcare – will remember Trump’s campaign slogan and decide whether he has made life great for them.
Those who were attracted by Trump’s promise of strength and success will have noted the frightened, confused figure at his briefings, a commander-in-chief who can no longer command himself, let alone preserve and protect the United States.
The president has already been dreadfully complacent at dealing with the problem. According to the latest polls from CBS, only 47 percent believe Trump is handling the crisis well – for the first time the majority of Americans believe he is doing a bad job. The main concerns are a lack of testing and medical equipment and being too slow to act on preventing the virus’ spread.
That’s before we get onto Trump’s irresponsible touting of an unproven malaria drug in fighting coronavirus in the face of scepticism from his own medical expert Dr Anthony Fauci.
No wonder Trump’s sinking in the polls. A symbolic moment came on 23 March when three major networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – turned off the president’s briefing, never to return. What a turnaround!
Political penalties
Until just a few weeks ago, he was a nailed-on, stone-cold certainty to win this November’s presidential election. Against him a divided Democratic Party whose likely candidate, Biden, carried serious liabilities: age, apparent confusion, identification with the old-style politics rejected by angry older voters and idealistic new ones.
In Trump’s favour were a booming economy, record employment numbers and hundreds of millions of campaign funding from big billionaire financial backers. Add in Fox News and Trump’s proven campaigning exuberance and this year’s election looked like a walkover for the Republicans.
Not anymore it seems.
#TrumpPresser@msnbc back to the reporter Q & A. #Trump having a major temper tantrum as his feet are held to the fire.
In one purely practical way, the coronavirus crisis could help Trump. Every American state will have to make hasty new arrangements to allow voters postal or online ballots. For those states controlled by Republicans this will give new opportunities for voter suppression – denying likely Democrat voters the chance to vote at all.
This was a factor in the victories of George W Bush in 2000 and 2004.
But the political penalties of the crisis vastly outweigh this. The coronavirus is about to hit Trump where it hurts him most. The wallet.
It’s the economy
The economic statistics are not just horrific. They’re terrifying. Worst of all is the job market. Many are Trump’s own people. They believed in him because he gave them prosperity and secured them jobs.
In 1932 the incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin Roosevelt in a depression. A more recent incumbent Republican, George H W Bush, was fatally damaged by a much milder recession in 1992, losing to a scarcely known challenger, Bill Clinton. It looks like Trump will have both a depression and a pandemic on his hands.
Many intelligent commentators have argued that coronavirus plays to Trump’s strengths – above all his hostility to globalisation and hatred of China. Trump is already playing the Chinese card and will go on doing so. No wonder, blaming China is Trump’s last hope.
It helped him win the presidency but this low, dishonest tactic won’t enable him to save it.
As the coronavirus hits Republican supporters harder over the coming weeks, life will get more difficult for Trump. He will soon find that even his friends will turn on him.
Trump will soon look like a president on his way out. Meanwhile his state of political health will be monitored closely by his allies in the Middle East, leaders with whom the Trump clan established personal connections.
The Middle East impact
Paradoxically, the US’s closest ally in the region is so well embedded in US politics and Congress that Trump’s disappearance would have least effect. Israel can seamlessly jump ship and move over to Israel-supporting Biden now that the threat posed by former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been eradicated.
Biden’s imminent arrival might however hasten the project to annex the Jordan Valley on which both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the Blue and White party Benny Gantz agree. But the prospect of Trump as a one-term president would have a galvanising effect on Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s carefully laid plans to capture the throne of Saudi Arabia.
He has already conducted two purges of his family to clear out all remaining obstacles to becoming king. The latest was launched last month with the arrest of his uncle Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, who had plans to block his nephew’s path to power through the constitutional mechanism of the Allegiance Council.
But as Middle East Eye reported, Mohammed bin Salman plans to be king by the time of the G20 summit in November, which Saudi Arabia is hosting. The plan was to force his father, King Salman, to abdicate.
What better preparation could have been made than sending his father out to live on a secluded island to protect him from coronavirus?
Trump’s disappearance would also threaten the power that bin Salman’s mentor, Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, wields across the region.
The Trump clan have been especially welcome in the Gulf because they conduct themselves like fellow princes with contracts and policies in their pockets.
A return to Biden will mean a return of the US deep state in the shape of the CIA and the State Department – wounded beasts with a sackful of beans to spill about Trump’s allies around the region.
Who knows – we may even get the truth about who ordered the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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Peter Oborne won best commentary/blogging in 2017 and was named freelancer of the year in 2016 at the Online Media Awards for articles he wrote for Middle East Eye. He also was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.
O Primeiro Ministro Conte anunciou aos italianos, em directo na televisão, em 10 de Abril, que a Itália não assinou nenhum compromisso com o MES (1), o fundo europeu “salva-Estados”, e que o seu Governo discutirá apenas “um MES não condicionado”, ou seja, que não imponha condições que sejam prejudiciais aos interesses nacionais e à soberania do país. Posição correcta.
No entanto, o Primeiro Ministro não anunciou aos italianos que, em 10 de Abril, o Presidente Trump emitiu, a pedido do governo Conte, um “Memorando sobre a Prestação de Assistência ao Covid-19 à República Italiana” (2) que contém, de facto, fortes restrições para o nosso país.
Trump anuncia que “o Governo da Itália solicitou a assistência dos Estados Unidos”. Assim, com base na autoridade que lhe foi conferida pela Constituição e pelas leis, “ordena o seguinte” para ajudar “um dos nossos aliados mais antigos e mais próximos”.
As ordens, emitidas aos Secretários dos Departamentos e às Agências dos Estados Unidos, estabelecem dois tipos de intervenção:
A primeira, de natureza médica, para ajudar a Itália a combater o Covid-19, “demonstrando ao mesmo tempo a liderança dos Estados Unidos diante das campanhas de desinformação da China e da Rússia”. Ao Secretário da Defesa, o Presidente ordena que disponibilize, para assistência, “os mais de 30.000 militares e funcionários dos EUA, em Itália” com as suas “estruturas”.
A segunda e mais consistente intervenção consiste em “apoiar a recuperação da economia italiana”, que corre o risco de acabar “numa profunda recessão”. O Presidente Trump ordena aos Secretários do Tesouro e do Comércio, ao Presidente do Banco de Exportação e Importação, ao Administrador da Agência dos EUA para o Desenvolvimento Internacional, ao Director da Corporação Internacional Americana de Finanças para o Desenvolvimento (agência governamental que financia projectos de desenvolvimento privados) para usarem as suas ferramentas, a fim de “apoiar as empresas italianas”.
Ainda não se sabe quais ferramentas serão usadas pelos Estados Unidos para “apoiar a recuperação da economia italiana”, nem quais serão as condições concedidas para a “ajuda”. Mas o plano de Washington é claro: explorar a crise e as fracturas na União Europeia para reforçar a influência USA em Itália, enfraquecendo, ao mesmo tempo, as relações da Itália com a China e com a Rússia.
Confirma-o, a autoridade com que foi lançado o plano de “Assistência à República Italiana”: uma série de ordens presidenciais dadas não apenas aos Secretários dos Departamentos acima mencionados, mas ao Secretário de Estado (3) e ao Assistente do Presidente para Assuntos de Segurança Nacional. (4)
Um dos objetivos do plano certamente enquadra-se no que o New York Times define como “uma corrida armamentista global para obter uma vacina contra o coronavírus, que está a desenvolver-se entre os Estados Unidos, China e Europa”. (5)Os primeiros que forem capazes de produzir a vacina – escreve o NYT – “podem ter a oportunidade não só de favorecer a sua população, mas de ter vantagem ao enfrentar as repercussões económicas e geoestratégicas da crise”.
A companhia farmacêutica americana Johnson & Johnson (6) anunciou, em 30 de Março, que havia seleccionado uma possível vacina contra o Covid-19, na qual trabalha desde Janeiro, em conjunto com o Departamento da Saúde, com um investimento conjunto de mais de um bilião de dólares. A empresa anuncia que, após os ensaios clínicos programados para Setembro, a produção de vacinas poderá começar nos primeiros meses de 2021 em “tempos substancialmente mais acelerados do que o normal”, atingindo rapidamente a capacidade de produção de mais de um bilião de doses.
O plano de “assistência” à Itália, ordenado pelo Presidente Trump, também poderá incluir o fornecimento da vacina que, provavelmente, será usada (talvez tornando-a obrigatória) sem se preocupar com os tempos de teste e produção “substancialmente mais acelerados do que o normal”, nem o custo económico e político dessa generosa “assistência”.
Il premier Conte ha annunciato agli italiani, in diretta televisiva il 10 aprile, che l’Italia non ha firmato alcun impegno per il Mes (1) , il fondo europeo «salva-Stati», e che il suo governo discuterà solo su «un Mes non condizionato», ossia che non imponga condizioni lesive per gli interessi nazionali e la sovranità del paese. Giusta posizione.
Il premier non ha però annunciato agli italiani che in quello stesso momento, il 10 aprile, il presidente Trump emetteva, su richiesta del Governo Conte, un «Memorandum sulla fornitura di assistenza per il Covid-19 alla Repubblica Italiana»,(2) che contiene di fatto pesanti condizionamenti per il nostro paese.
Trump annuncia che «il Governo dell’Italia ha richiesto l’assistenza degli Stati uniti». Quindi, in base all’autorità conferitagli dalla Costituzione e dalle leggi, «ordina quanto segue» per aiutare «uno dei nostri più vecchi e stretti alleati».
Gli ordini, impartiti ai segretari dei dipartimenti e delle agenzie degli Stati uniti, stabiliscono due tipi di intervento.
Il primo di carattere sanitario per aiutare l’Italia a combattere il Covid-19, «dimostrando allo stesso tempo la leadership degli Stati uniti di fronte alle campagne di disinformazione cinese e russa». Al segretario della Difesa il presidente ordina di rendere disponibili, per l’assistenza, «gli oltre 30.000 militari e dipendenti statunitensi in Italia» con le loro «strutture».
Il secondo e più consistente tipo di intervento è quello di «sostenere la ripresa dell’economia italiana», che rischia di finire «in una profonda recessione». Il presidente Trump ordina ai segretari del Tesoro e del Commercio, al presidente della Banca di Export-Import, all’amministratore dell’Agenzia Usa per lo sviluppo internazionale, al direttore della United States International Development Finance Corporation (agenzia governativa che finanzia progetti di sviluppo privati) di usare i loro strumenti per «sostenere le imprese italiane».
Ancora non si sa quali strumenti verranno usati dagli Stati uniti per «sostenere la ripresa dell’economia italiana», né quali saranno le condizioni a cui verranno concessi gli «aiuti». È però chiaro il piano di Washington: sfruttare la crisi e le fratture nella Ue per rafforzare l’influenza Usa in Italia, indebolendo allo stesso tempo i rapporti dell’Italia con Cina e Russia.
Lo conferma l’autorevolezza con cui è stato varato il piano di «assistenza alla Repubblica Italiana»: una serie di ordini presidenziali impartiti non solo ai segretari dei dipartimenti sopracitati, ma al Segretario di Stato(3) e all’Assistente del Presidente per gli Affari di sicurezza nazionale.(4) Uno degli obiettivi del piano rientra sicuramente in quella che il New York Times definisce «corsa agli armamenti globale per un vaccino anti-coronavirus, che si sta svolgendo fra Stati uniti, Cina ed Europa». (5)Il primo che riuscirà a produrre il vaccino – scrive il NYT – «può avere la possibilità non solo di favorire la propria popolazione, ma di avere il sopravvento nell’affrontare le ricadute economiche e geostrategiche della crisi».
La compagnia farmaceutica statunitense Johnson & Johnson (6) ha annunciato il 30 marzo di aver selezionato un possibile vaccino contro il Covid-19, a cui sta lavorando da gennaio assieme al Dipartimento della Sanità, con un investimento congiunto di oltre un miliardo di dollari. La compagnia annuncia che, dopo i test clinici previsti per settembre, la produzione del vaccino potrebbe iniziare nei primi mesi del 2021 in «tempi sostanzialmente accelerati rispetto a quelli usuali», raggiungendo rapidamente la capacità produttiva di oltre un miliardo di dosi.
Il piano di «assistenza» all’Italia, ordinato dal presidente Trump, potrebbe includere anche la fornitura del vaccino, che probabilmente verrebbe usato (magari rendendolo obbligatorio) senza preoccuparsi dei tempi di test e produzione «sostanzialmente accelerati rispetto a quelli usuali», né del costo economico e politico di questa generosa «assistenza».
„Die Internationale“ ist das weltbekannte Kampflied der sozialistischen Arbeiterbewegung. Die deutsche Version des ursprünglich französischen Textes von Emil Luckhard (1910) lautet: „Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde, die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt! (…) Heer der Sklaven, wache auf! (…) Völker, höret die Signale! Auf zum letzten Gefecht! (…) Es rettet uns kein höh’res Wesen, kein Gott, kein Kaiser noch Tribun! Uns aus dem Elend zu erlösen, das können wir nur selber tun!“
Diese Aufforderung erging nach der gewaltsamen Niederschlagung der Pariser Kommune im Mai 1871 an die internationale Arbeiterbewegung. Sie erging nicht an die herrschende „Elite“ der Ausbeuter und Bedränger. Doch gerade diese sogenannte Elite scheint heute zum letzten Gefecht zu blasen, indem sie durch eine verpflichtende „Massen-Schutz-Impfung“ einen Bevölkerungsrückgang (Depopulation) anstrebt. Die krankmachende oder gar tödliche Zusammensetzung dieses Impfstoffes, der auch Nano-Chips zur Kontrolle der Menschheit enthalten wird, wurde in den Geheim-Laboren der Welt sicher schon gemischt. Auch die aktive Sterbehilfe älterer und kranker Mitbürger mittels starker Schlafmittel und Opiate haben diese dunklen Gestalten bereits auf den Weg gebracht. Ebenso eine weltweite Umverteilung der allgemeinen Reichtümer von unten nach oben, von den Armen zu den Superreichen. Sollten wir Bürger dieser Welt uns eingedenk dieser Pläne der Kabale nicht wieder daran erinnern, an wen der Aufruf zum letzten Gefecht in Wahrheit erging?
Zwei dieser „Weltbürger“, die solche finsteren Pläne mit verfolgen, sind der ehemalige US-Außenminister und Friedensnobelpreisträger Henry Kissinger und der schwerreiche US-Unternehmer und Mäzen Bill Gates.
Vor über 50 Jahren war Kissinger Außenminister und Chef des Nationalen Sicherheitsrats der USA sowie Verfasser des „National Strategic Security Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200)“. Demnach sollte die Depopularisierung „die höchste Priorität in der US-Außenpolitik gegenüber der Dritten Welt sein“, (…) weil“die US-Wirtschaft große und wachsende Mengen von Rohstoffen aus Übersee braucht, vor allem aus den weniger entwickelten Staaten.“(Eggert, W. (2003). Die geplanten Seuchen AIDS – SARS und die militärische Genforschung. München, S. 64)
RT Deutsch schrieb am 7. April 2020, dassKissinger in einem Meinungsartikel für das „Wall Street Journal“ forderte, „in einem ersten Schritt ‚neue Techniken und Technologien zur Infektionskontrolle und entsprechende Impfstoffe für große Bevölkerungsgruppen‘ zu entwickeln. (…)In einem zweiten Schritt gelte es, das Augenmerk jetzt darauf zu richten, die ‚Wunden der Weltwirtschaft zu heilen‘.“ (https://de.rt.com/25kn) Die Bürger der Welt sollten also – ob sie wollen oder nicht – geimpft und darüber hinaus kontrolliert werden, ob sie dieser Impfpflicht auch nachgekommen sind.
Im gerade erwähnten RT-Artikel wird Friedensnobelpreisträger Kissinger auch als Kriegsverbrecher bezeichnet, weil er als Architekt der US-Aggression gegen Vietnam und anderer verdeckter CIA-Geheimoperationen für den Tod von Millionen Menschen verantwortlich sei. Über die inzwischen unzensierte Internet-Suchmaschine „Google“ kann sich jeder seine eigene Meinung bilden.
In der Frage der „Massen-Schutz-Impfung“ scheinen sich Kissinger und der US-amerikanische Unternehmer und Mäzen William „Bill“ Henry Gates III einig zu sein. Am 1. April 2020 veröffentlichte die „Washington Post“ einen Artikel von ihm, in dem er seine Vision beschreibt, die Menschen auf der ganzen Welt impfen zu lassen: “…die Entwicklung eines Impfstoffs ist nur die halbe Miete. Um die Amerikaner und die Menschen auf der ganzen Welt zu schützen, müssen wir Milliarden von Dosen herstellen.”Es solle bereits jetzt mit dem Bau von verschiedenartigen Anlagen zur Herstellung von Impfstoffen begonnen werden. (www.welt.de„Bill Gates: Massenproduktion von Corona-Impfung vorbereiten“)
Welche heimliche Agenda verfolgt Bill Gates? Auf mehreren Webseiten wird behauptet, dass der ehemalige Microsoft-Chef Impfungen für einen guten Weg zur Verringerung der Weltbevölkerung halte. Als Beleg wird eine Rede aus dem Jahre 2010 angeführt (unter anderem Webseitewww.basel-express.ch). Erinnern wir uns in diesem Zusammenhang an Kants Wahlspruch der Aufklärung „Sapere aude!“: „Habe den Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!“
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the most immediate objective is to slow its spread, minimise the death toll and help people through the crisis. But, despite government promises to support citizens who are now losing their jobs and income, the underlying establishment concern will be as it always has been: to preserve the global inequitable system of wealth and power.
Private interests, including airlines, fossil fuel industries and sinister-sounding ‘businesses crucial to national security’, have been busy lobbying governments for taxfunder-paid bailouts. Notoriously, Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic even asked its employees to take eight weeks of unpaid leave, while hundreds of thousands in the UK are struggling to access benefits after becoming unemployed.
Governments are now channelling money into the economy in amounts that have not been seen since the Second World War. However, there have been calls to ensure that public rescue packages should only be agreed if major changes are made to the economy, including significant public ownership of business. There should also be legal and financial consequences for socially irresponsible or criminal corporate behaviour. Surely this all makes sense and would have massive public approval?
So far, the omens are not good. Last week, the US approved a $2 trillion ‘financial stimulus package’ largely intended to prop up the corporate economy. Zach Carter, a senior reporter at HuffPost, warned that:
‘It is not an economic rescue package, but a sentence of unprecedented economic inequality and corporate control over our politics that will resonate for a generation.
‘It represents a transfer of wealth and power to the super rich from the rest of us, with the support of both political parties ― a damning statement about the condition of American democracy.’
In particular, as we will see below, many voices are rightly urging political leaders around the world not to abuse public funds by bailing out corporations that are complicit in climate breakdown. Instead, the priority should be to stimulate the vitally-needed transition to a truly green economy.
‘An Unraveling Of Our Planet’s Entire Life Support Systems’
The previous global economic crisis and financial meltdown of 2007-2009 only led to a temporary dip in carbon emissions. Vested interests moved quickly at that time to ensure that there would be no long-term shift to a low-carbon future. In the US alone, $700 billionin public money was given as an initial bailout in 2008 to the very banks who were responsible for the crisis. But public funds were funnelled into the financial system for years afterwards, rising to almost $5 trillion by 2015.
Kyla Tienhaara, an environment and economy researcher at Queen’s University, Ontario, notes of oil, gas and coal corporations after the 2008 crash:
‘the fossil fuel lobby ensured that carbon capture and storage projects sucked up a significant amount of green stimulus funds, but not a lot of carbon dioxide.’
With academic understatement, she warns now that:
‘bailouts to the fossil fuel industry and airlines would be monumentally counterproductive.’
Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California at Berkeley, uses stronger wording:
‘it would be insane to reflate the fossil economy as it was.’
Basav Sen, who directs the Climate Policy Project at the US-based Institute for Policy Studies, is clear:
‘A healthy future for oil and gas inevitably means a bleak future for most humans and for ecosystems. At precisely the time that scientists say we should be phasing out oil and gas production, a bailout to this destructive industry is a giant step backwards.’
Mary Robinson, the former Irish president who served twice as UN climate envoy, warns:
‘Money has poured into the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement [of 2015]. That can’t continue.’
The figures involved are almost beyond comprehension. A new study by an alliance of US-based environmental groups reveals that the world’s largest investment banks have pumped more than £2.2 trillion into climate-wrecking fossil fuels. US bank JP Morgan has been the biggest offender, responsible for over £220 billion in oil, gas and coal projects.
It was economists at JP Morgan who issued a stark warning last month that the climate crisis threatens the very survival of humanity. Inevitably, there was no sign from the investment bank that it would respond with the only obvious sane move: the immediate cessation of all its fossil fuel funding. Instead, the bank was at pains to point out that the alarming study came from a team that was ‘wholly independent from the company as a whole’.
Does anything more clearly sum up the madness of a global economy fuelled by climate-wrecking industry and Big Money? Not even the imminent threat of human extinction is enough to divert the current profit-driven course towards the abyss.
Civilisation’s demise would be the ultimate crash resulting from a deeply unjust corporate-driven global system of finance and economics. Even now, at this terminally late stage of human existence, BBC News can only tangentially hint at the grim reality, with bland headlines such as:
‘Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds’.
Roger Harrabin, the grandly-titled BBC ‘environment analyst’, wrote that:
‘The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims.’
Note the BBC newspeak: ‘claims’; not ‘reports’ or ‘concludes’. The BBC article continued in typically anodyne fashion:
‘The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live.’
The researchers warn that:
‘unless there’s a significant policy change, household energy consumption could double from 2011 levels by 2050.’
2050? Three decades away? We simply do not have that much time. The United Nations insisted two years ago that humanity has only until2030 to make the radical and drastic carbon cuts necessary to prevent merely the worst impacts of global warming.
For obvious reasons, there is no sustained critical reporting in ‘mainstream’ media about the destructive nature of the global system of profit maximisation and endless ‘economic growth’. As we have long observed, you simply cannot expect the corporate media to report the truth about the corporate world.
Battered By Propaganda
A core problem for society is that we have been battered by a system of propaganda that tells us repeatedly – or simply takes as a given – that capitalism, despite a few ‘failures’ or ‘flaws’, has been primarily responsible for huge progress in the human condition since the Industrial Revolution. However, as economic anthropologist Jason Hickel correctly observes, we should reject this ‘fairytale’ promulgated by big business, political leaders and state-corporate media.
In reality, it has been people at the bottom of the pile – working for centuries to extend the voting franchise, setting up trade unions, improving healthcare and education – who have been primarily responsible for advancements in living standards. These grassroots factors, says Hickel, ‘are the forces that matter’.
Even Noam Chomsky, the world’s most renowned dissident, only ever appears rarely in the ‘mainstream’ to critique the ruling inequitable economic system and the charade that passes for ‘democracy’. Ideologically correct-thinking editors and journalists in the major news media, selected by a system that rewards obedience to power, are unlikely to offend their employers by promoting ‘extreme’ views like Chomsky’s:
‘What our leaders are good at, and have been very good at for the last 40 years, is pouring money into the pockets of the rich and the corporate executives while everything else crashes.’
Meanwhile, climate scientists continue to wave their arms frantically about climate breakdown, trying in vain to make governments and business divert from their disastrous course towards human extinction. A new study of human-caused emissions of methane from the extraction and use of fossil fuels may have been ‘severely underestimated’. Emissions are likely 25-40 per cent even higher than previously thought.
Inevitably, climate records continue to tumble. Researchers are now warning that the polar ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s:
‘The ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is tracking the worst-case climate warming scenario set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).’
Is it any wonder, after decades of ignored ‘wake-up calls’, that climate scientists are venting their feelings of powerlessness and despair? Joe Duggan, a science communicator at Australian National University, has been running a six-year project collating such responses from climate researchers.
One scientist, Professor Katrin Meissner of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, told Duggan that:
‘I feel powerless and, to a certain extent, guilty. I feel like I have failed my duty as a citizen and as a mother because I was not able to communicate the urgency of the situation well enough to trigger meaningful action in time.
‘What we are doing right now is an uncontrolled, risky experiment with the planet we live on.’
Dr Jennie Mallela, of Australian National University, commented:
‘So how do I feel? Frustrated, angry that our science is ignored by politicians, scared for my husband [a bushfire fighter] and all the others who are on the frontline fighting these fires and trying to help.
‘But mostly I feel devastated for my son, and his generation, who will have to heal this planet and live with the mass environmental destruction we have caused.’
Environmental scientist Alexandra Jellicoe recently published a beautiful and heartfelt open letter to her young children:
‘Can I keep you safe? Your future is uncertain. Can I prepare you for that? […] I am brokenhearted. What is a mother if she cannot keep her child safe?’
She continued:
‘I imagine sometimes what I would like to do to keep you safe in this terrifying world we have created. I imagine an army of compassionate people fully informed of the risks who live freely enough to disrupt the fossil fuel economy. We would hijack the media and create urgent public awareness campaigns…
‘The hardest work, I imagine, would be to create a world that is kinder, less competitive and more equal. Philanthropy and aid are not solutions for the world’s poorest but the symptoms of a broken global economy. My army and I would rage at the injustice of it all, driven forward in the knowledge that these things must be addressed to keep you safe.’
In short:
‘We are at a cross-roads now. You have two futures and I am powerless to influence which finds you.’
As individuals, it may sometimes feel that we are powerless. But the brighter, safer, saner future can still be attained, if we remember that together we have more power than the destructive forces driving us towards extinction.
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The onset of the coronavirus has had a number of consequences in the health and livelihoods of millions of people. There has however, been another consequence that is little remarked upon, and that is the almost total disappearance from the news cycle of the ongoing wars in Syria and Iraq.
The western media have long ignored their presumed obligation to report fairly and accurately on matters of significant importance. This is nowhere more obvious than in the ongoing Middle East conflicts.
In 2003, fresh from the illegal invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 (now a war in its 20th year and still the subject of sustained misinformation and outright lying) the United States and its allies manufactured a crisis regarding Iraq. This time it was Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that allegedly threatened the lives and safety of all of the democracy loving west.
Iraq was invaded by the United States, supported inter alia, by its loyal Australian acolyte who has never seen an example of United States aggression, invasions and sanctions since 1945 of which it disapproved.
Iraq of course had no “weapons of mass destruction”. That should have been the occasion for heartfelt apologies, reparation for the death and destruction caused, and a rapid withdrawal. In a different world perhaps.
Five years ago the United States and its allies decided that President Assad of Syria’s time was up and yet another invasion of a sovereign nation was undertaken. This time the pretext was varied. Assad had “lost control of his country”, was “incapable of defeating the terrorists” ravaging his country, and “killing his own citizens”.
The pretext here was a little known and highly dubious legal concept of “right to protect”. It was to be invoked, solely by western nations, to protect the citizens of countries where their own governments were allegedly incapable of doing so.
That the terrorists concerned were armed and financed by the same western powers (together with their hangers on like Saudi Arabia and Israel) was not to be mentioned in polite company. Five years later the Syrian terrorists are on the verge of defeat, thanks in no small part to the intervention of Syria’s real friends, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah from the Lebanon.
The Americans initially set up a number of military bases in Syria (as they had done in Iraq) and militarily opposed any attempts by the legitimate Syrian government to exercise any form of control over these bases. Such was the utter contempt shown by the western forces under United States control for Syria’s sovereignty they did not even bother to try and justify their intervention in legal terms. Such a justification would in any case have no foundation in law.
Also of significance was the fact that one of the areas of Syria that the United States forces controlled was Syria’s oil producing region. United States actions went beyond mere control and exclusion of the rightful sovereign government. They produced oil from those oilfields and exported it, retaining the income thereby produced.
There could be few examples of more blatant and illegal theft of a country’s resources. If there is one good thing to emerge from this fiasco it is that we are no longer inflicted with the claim that this is all done in the name of a “duty to protect”.
In fact, as far as the Australian parliament and the Australian media are concerned, it is difficult to detect anything at all. That country’s ongoing involvement in three wars, the longest now approaching two decades in total, rarely rates a mention in the national parliament. As for debate? It is now 10 years since Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war was last the subject of a Parliamentary debate. The Labor Opposition initially objected to the country’s involvement in the Iraq invasion and occupation but in their six years of government between 2008 and 2014 did absolutely nothing to withdraw Australian troops from that country.
As for Syria, it remains the great unmentionable. Were the Australian parliament to actually manifest some degree of principle and integrity and withdraw their troops from United States initiated wars, who knows what terrible retribution might follow. The memory of Prime Minister Whitlam’s’ fate in 1975 when he planned to close the United States spy base at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory still holds successive Australian governments in thrall.
Then, in early 2020 a newly quasi-independent Iraqi government recovered a degree of courage and integrity and unanimously passed a resolution demanding the exit of uninvited foreign troops. This was clearly directed at the United States and its hangers on like Australia.
The Australian government’s response was a stunned silence. The Defence and Foreign Ministries both stalled for time, clearly waiting for guidance from their United States masters. When the American government announced that it had no intention of leaving Iraq, the Australian government regained its voice and indicated that it too would remain for the foreseeable future. We are still awaiting an explanation from the Australian government how they reconcile this decision with their professed adherence to the international rule of law they are so fond of quoting.
There was also a deafening silence from the mainstream media and the battery of political commentators whose adherence to the United States view of the world was cruelly exposed for the umpteenth time. Whatever happened to the rule of law? Here was a sovereign government, duly elected, asserting that it made the rules for its own country and being studiously ignored and its wishes disregarded.
The Iraqis did not accept the rebuttal of their legitimate demands. A number of significant events have occurred in recent weeks, but as noted above, the morbidity and mortality figures for the coronavirus have vastly reduced the reporting of competing headlines for matters like war, peace, and the rights of sovereign governments.
The United States has been forced to close, at last count, eight of their Iraqi military bases. This does not equate with a withdrawal, but rather a consolidation in a fewer number of heavily guarded bases. Even those are not immune from attack by a variety of local groups that have mounted increasingly sophisticated and well-armed attacks upon these fortresses.
The United States response has been an increase in aerial attacks with resulting civilian casualties, as well as the military forces of the Iraqi government whom they profess to be there to support. The Americans have almost entirely ceased non-aerial military operations, recognising that local hostility to their continued presence has reached such a level that it is unsafe for them to venture beyond their remaining heavily fortified bases.
The propaganda war continues unabated. The problems the United States and its allies are facing in Iraq are all the fault, it is alleged, of the Iranians. That the Iranian forces are in Iraq at the specific invitation of, and with the support of, the legitimate Iraqi government, is not recognised by the western media who continue to unfailingly portray Iran in a negative light.
Those same western media outlets actually fail to comprehend the illogicality and stupidity of railing against foreign forces in Iraq when the fundamental cause of the fighting is the continuing aftermath of an illegal invasion 17 years ago; the theft of the country’s natural resources by the unwelcome and unwanted invaders; and the blatant refusal of those invaders to obey the legitimate demands of the sovereign Iraqi government.
The message from the Iraqi government could not be clearer. You are not welcome. Pack up and leave.
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James O’Neill is an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Autonomie ist der Zustand und das Lebensgefühl der Selbstbestimmung, Unabhängigkeit (Souveränität) und Selbstverwaltung. Philosophisch gesehen ist es die Fähigkeit, sich als Wesen der Freiheit zu sehen und aus dieser Freiheit heraus zu handeln. Sie ist auch die Kraft zum Nicht-Mitmachen (Adorno). Das Naturrecht sagt, dass es etwas gibt, was von Natur aus recht ist. Es unterscheidet sich vom durch Menschen gesetztes, sogenanntes positives Recht dadurch, dass es dem Menschen allein schon deshalb zusteht, weil er Mensch ist. Da es durch keinen Machthaber oder wie auch immer gearteten Mehrheitsbeschluss geschaffen wird, ist es vorstaatliches Recht. Das heißt, die Gesetze eines Staates müssen sich kritisch am Naturrecht messen lassen. (1) Das Wissen darüber, was von Natur aus recht ist, ermöglicht uns, totalitären Ideologien und Diktaturen von einem festen mitmenschlichen Standpunkt aus entgegenzutreten, ein Gefühl der Empörung gegen Unrecht und Unmenschlichkeit zu empfinden, auch wenn eventuell die ganze Gesellschaft einem Diktator zujubelt.
Was ist Naturrecht?
Das naturrechtliche Denken nimmt seinen Anfang in der antiken griechischen Philosophie, vor allem in der Auseinandersetzung Platons mit den Sophisten. Ihnen hielt Platon entgegen, dass es objektive, absolut gültige Normen, Werte und Gesetze gibt, die nicht von den wechselnden Meinungen der Menschen abhängig sind. An diesen objektiven Ideen dessen, was Recht ist, muß sich der Staat und die Staatsführung zu allen Zeiten messen lassen. Platon hat hinter dem Recht die objektive Idee der Gerechtigkeit gesehen.
Das höchste Ziel im menschlichen Leben ist das vernunftbestimmte Leben und dazu kann der Mensch nur gelangen, wenn er in Kindheit und Jugend lernt, seine Begierden und Affekte zu mäßigen. Er muss das goldene Maß der Mitte einhalten lernen (Gerechtigkeit, Tapferkeit und Besonnenheit). Wenn das nicht schon im Kindes- und Jugendalter zur Lebensgewohnheit wird, dann wird er später von extremen Affekten hin- und hergerissen und wird nie zu einer tugendhaften, besonnenen, vernunftbestimmten Lebensführung (Klugheit) gelangen.
Der große Kirchenlehrer Thomas von Aquin hat die Philosophie des Aristoteles mit der von Augustinus herkommenden christlichen Philosophie und Theologie verbunden. Er hat damit überragende Bedeutung für die Herausbildung des christlichen Naturrechts, der christlichen Anthropologie und Theologie, in deren Zentrum der Mensch als Person steht. Die von Gott erschaffene Seins-Ordnung sei vollkommen gut. In ihr wirke das „ewige Gesetz“, lex aeterna. Das ist die göttliche Weisheit, als oberstes Gesetz. Von diesem ewigen Gesetz könne der Mensch durch seine Vernunft einen Teil erkennen. (2)
Der Mensch hat eine natürliche Neigung zum Guten, die ihm durch das ewige Gesetz „ins Herz geschrieben“ ist. Sie hilft ihm, das Naturrichtige besser zu erkennen. Die wesentlichen natürlichen Neigungen des Menschen sind diejenigen zur Wahrheitserkenntnis und zum Gemeinschaftsleben. Mit seiner Vernunft kann der Mensch die Gesetze der Natur erkennen und erfasst damit die von Gott geschaffene Ordnung.
Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar
Artikel 1 des deutschen Grundgesetzes (GG) lautet: „Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.“Absatz 1 von Artikel 1 ergänzt: „Die Würde des Menschen stellt den obersten Verfassungsgundsatz dar, an dem folglich alle staatliche Gewalt ihr Handeln auszurichten hat. Sie ist daher Maßstab für Legislative, Exekutive und Judikative. Der Staat hat alles zu unterlassen, was die Menschenwürde beeinträchtigen könnte.“(3) Und diese Menschwürde ist überpositives Recht (Naturrecht).
Was sich jedoch gerade nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern weltweit abspielt, ist das Gegenteil von dem, was das deutsche Grundgesetz fordert. Die Würde des Menschen wird mit Füssen getreten – und das erinnert an das Deutschland der 30er Jahre, den aufkommenden Faschismus. Jeder denkende und fühlende Mitbürger kann es „am eigenen Leib spüren“.
Wir sind nicht mehr frei und können unser Leben nicht mehr selbstbestimmt und unabhängig führen. Die Regierungen lassen uns keinerlei Handlungsspielraum und verweigern uns das verbriefte Recht, diesen Wahnsinn nicht mitzumachen, den totalitären Machenschaften entschieden und mit aller Willenskraft entgegenzutreten. Der Rechtsstaat ist gestorben.
Doch unsere Gedanken sind frei (Cicero) und niemand kann uns unsere Würde nehmen. Auch können wir den Mut aufbringen, uns unseres eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen (Kant). Und wir wissen, was von Natur aus recht ist. Deshalb werden wir uns dem Diktat korrupter Politiker, Wissenschaftler, Mediziner, Journalisten oder fragwürdiger Mäzene wie Bill Gates nicht unterwerfen. (4)
Bereits vor über 100 Jahren gab der große russische Schriftsteller Leo N. Tolstoi seine Einschätzung von Regierenden zu Protokoll: „Man könnte die Unterordnung eines ganzen Volkes unter wenige Leute noch rechtfertigen, wenn die Regierenden die besten Menschen wären; aber das ist nicht der Fall, war niemals der Fall und kann es nie sein. Es herrschen häufig die schlechtesten, unbedeutendsten, grausamsten, sittenlosesten und besonders die verlogensten Menschen. Und dass dem so ist, ist kein Zufall.“(5)
Von der Wissenschaft – auch der Medizin – erwartet die menschliche Gemeinschaft zu Recht, dass sie die Not der Menschen lindert und dem Schutz des Lebens dient. Aber immer mehr Wissenschaftler verhökern ihr Wissen und Können und oft auch ihre Seele dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex. Sie entfernen sich sogar so weit von ihrem Menschsein, dass sie die Mittel für die allgemeine Vernichtung der Menschheit vervollkommnen helfen.
Einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Aufklärung und Ermutigung der Menschen könnten die Massenmedien leisten, da sie gemäß nationaler und internationaler Vereinbarungen der wahrheitsgemäßen Information von uns Bürgern und dem Frieden verpflichtet sind. Doch das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Sie stehen „im Dienst der Kriegshetze und Hasspropaganda“ und „im Dienst der Verdummung der Massen“ (Bertha von Suttner).
Erhalten wir uns also das Lebensgefühl der Selbstbestimmung, Unabhängigkeit (Souveränität) und Selbstverwaltung und die Fähigkeit, uns als Wesen der Freiheit zu sehen und aus dieser Freiheit heraus zu handeln.
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.
Noten
(1) Messner, J. (1984, 7. unveränderte Auflage). Das Naturrecht. Handbuch der Gesellschaftsethik, Staatsethik und Wirtschaftsethik. Berlin
(2) de.wikipedia.org. Stichwort „Naturrecht“
(3) Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
(4) Siehe NRhZ Nr. 741 vom 8.04.2020: „Auf zum letzten Gefecht!“
(5) Tolstoi, Leo N. (1983). Rede gegen den Krieg. Frankfurt am Main, S. 74
There never was any doubt. In 2016, Sanders capitulated to unfit to serve Hillary.
History repeated on Monday as expected. Biden’s agenda since the 1970s matches Hillary’s with a gender difference.
It’s much the same as Trump’s with a party label difference.
Both expected standard bearers for each right wing of the one-party state are dismissive toward public health and welfare, the rule of law, government of, by, and for everyone equitably, and world peace.
Both are unfit to serve in any public office at any level, clearly not the highest in the land.
When Americans most need responsible leadership at a time of national duress that risks long-lasting economic hardships on the nation’s working class and erosion of remaining personal freedoms, their choice for president in November is none at all.
Both presumptive party nominees are on the same disturbing page on vital issues mattering most to most people.
Sanders pretends otherwise, betraying his supporters, fooling no one following accurate independent sources of news, information and analysis — largely online, reliable sources everyone should follow exclusively.
As president and commander-in-chief, Biden, like Trump, will serve America’s privileged class exclusively — what he’s done throughout his political career, his disturbing voting record showing what he stands for.
He’ll wage endless wars of aggression and by other means on invented enemies like his predecessor(s).
In 2016, Sanders actively campaigned for Hillary, the same likely ahead for Biden, ignoring his public record as US senator and vice president.
In 2016, Sanders touted Hillary as a presidential candidate who’s “ready to transform America” — ignoring her dirty business as usual agenda as co-president with husband Bill, US senator, and secretary of state.
Saying it’s “imperative (to) elect Hillary Clinton as our next president” destroyed Sanders’ phony populism and revolutionary change rhetoric.
Backing her and now Biden revealed his unstated support for monied interests and the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex that’s at war on humanity at home and abroad.
Live-streamed Monday from their respective Vermont and Delaware home states, Sanders formally capitulated to Biden on national television in a carefully choreographed event, saying:
“We need you in the White House. I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” adding:
“I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every (Dem), I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse…”
“I have been very pleased that your staff and my staff have been working together over the last several weeks to come up with a number of task forces.”
I “look forward to working with you and bringing some great people into those task forces.”
Sanders pretended that “a more just and fair society” will emerge when “this crisis ends.” Polar opposite looms as planned.
Sanders: “I know you are the kind of guy who is going to be inclusive…It’s called democracy (sic). You believe in democracy (sic). So do I…Joe, I very much look forward to working with you.”
Sanders, Biden, and vast majority of America’s political class knows that democracy in the natio has been pure fantasy from inception.
No rule of the people ever existed. American exceptionalism, the indispensable state, and moral superiority don’t exist, never did.
Hypocrisy, not democracy, defines how Americans are governed – the nation an increasingly totalitarian plutocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy.
Elections when held are farcical. Dirty business as usual always wins.
Republicans and undemocratic Dems are two sides of the same coin on issues mattering most — notably corporate and high-net-worth favoritism, endless imperial warmaking, and harsh crackdowns on resisters for positive change.
Powerful monied interests never had things better. On the other side of the economic storm, they’ll likely emerge stronger than ever, ordinary Americans worse off than before it emerged.
Protracted main street Depression conditions have affected most Americans for years— deepened under high unemployment and lockdowns.
Fundamental freedoms and social justice are at risk of disappearing altogether on the phony pretext of protecting national security.
The world’s richest nation is uncaring about its most disadvantaged people. It’s dismissive toward ordinary people everywhere.
America’s rage to dominate threatens escalated wars and full-blown homeland tyranny at a time when the nation’s only threats are invented.
Whether Trump, Biden, or a dark horse is chosen president by the US ruling class in November, governance of, by, and for the nation’s privileged class exclusively will continue like always.
A hardened censorship new normal may equate truth-telling journalism the way it should be with incitement, hate speech, and terrorism.
Dark forces in America want views opposed to the official narrative suppressed.
They want digital democracy undermined, thought control instituted as the law of the land, social and conventional media giants serving as gatekeepers, sanitizing news, information and opinions, suppressing what’s most important for everyone to know – the hallmark of totalitarian rule.
America already is unfit and unsafe to live in. The worst may lie ahead, COVID-19 restrictions serving as gateway for likely draconian times to come.
Public health concerns will pass. Its likely disturbing aftermath will become reality — the triumph of disaster capitalism, social injustice, and totalitarian control over a free and open society.
Trump, Biden, or another frontman for powerful interests will enforce all of the above — state and media propaganda convincing people it’s for our own good.
That’s the most likely draconian aftermath to what’s unfolding now in real time.
What’s unacceptable is heading toward becoming the new normal, a brainwashed public convinced to go along — mass resistance the only option against a worst-case outcome.
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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.”
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Seoul went for fast mobilization of scientific expertise, immediate massive testing, extensive contact tracing, and social distancing, as well. But, crucially, most of it voluntary, not imposed by the central power. Because these moves were organically integrated, South Korea did not need to restrict movement drastically or to close down airports.
Hong Kong’s success is due in large part to a superb health care system. People in the frontline, with institutional memory of recent epidemics such as SARS, were willing to go on strike if serious measures were not adopted. Success was also due in large part to myriad professional links between Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s healthcare and public health systems.
Brave and cool-handed doctor that he is, he must be sweating now, wondering if getting so far out in front will result in unfair attacks on his feeling for flesh and blood human beings. Hand shaking has been around a while, and like hugs and kisses, people seem to like it, so the doctor is entering dangerous territory.
The triple “ever” in his statement seems to have raised some eyebrows with those who believe three is a magic number. Some say that you can never be too careful with such statements from public officials and you must read them as if they were entrails and you were a haruspex. I doubt it.
The root problem seems to be that coronavirus is a relatively new phenomenon and the methods for treating it are still in their early phases. Nothing is set in stone, not yet at least. Even so, you might have noticed that, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson contracted the infection and was bundled off to ICU, the medical team did NOT put him on a ventilator, but put him on oxygen instead. And the difference couldn’t be more striking, because today, after 3 days in ICU, Johnson is alive, whereas he probably would be dead if he was intubated. Yes, I am making a judgment about something of which I cannot be entirely certain, but I think I’m probably right. If Johnson had been put on a ventilator, he probably would have died.
As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.
Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).
The global lockdowns and forced hibernations should not just be seen as measures of imposed isolation. The Pandemic State has done much to kill off that delicate creature of solitude, the routine of tranquil space essential to life. Privacy does not merely die before the wizardry of heat sensors, drones and state surveillance; it also vanishes in spaces crowded and crammed, even with your intimates.
The US military and National Guard are today’s “militia.”
Martial law suspends civil rule, replacing it with military authority under the president as commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces — including the National Guard when activated.
During the Civil War, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers.
He suspended the Constitution and habeas corpus, forcefully closed courts, arbitrarily ordered arrests, conscripted US citizens without congressional consent, and closed newspapers opposing his policies.
This view has impacted our world, with the current Covid-19 crisis further highlighting Margaret Thatcher’s words, commonly referred to as the Iron Lady. She was one of the apostles of privatization and the shrinking of the state. She also preached by example and countless have followed. The state has shrunk in most Western countries, and, a few years after she uttered those words, her gospel found true believers in the former socialist countries. On both sides of the demolished Berlin Wall one saw massive transfers of wealth from the public sector to private hands. Tax cuts and privatization resulted in considerably weakened states, poorer financially and logistically than major companies.
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Following the news regarding coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) we’d be led to believe humanity faces an unprecedented crisis – and judging by the socioeconomic damage being done – it is not that difficult to believe some sort of unprecedented crisis is indeed unfolding.
Yet the sense of urgency imposed upon the general public – prompting lockdowns around the globe and unprecedented measures being put in place – all centered around fighting a supposedly dangerous pathogen and avoiding overburdening global healthcare infrastructure – is entirely artificial.
If Covid-19 was truly a pandemic worthy of such hysteria – a pandemic the West has claimed over the years was all but inevitable – why has the current international order dominated by the West failed so utterly in dealing with Covid-19?
Trillions for Endless War, Nothing for Pandemic Preparations?
Literally trillions of dollars have been dumped into the US-led war in Afghanistan alone – saying nothing of the trillions more spent on occupying Iraq, waging war in Libya and Syria, aiding Saudi Arabia in the destruction of Yemen, and the myriad of “soft-power” interventions unfolding across the rest of the globe.
These are trillions of dollars that could have instead filled hospitals with top-of-the-line ventilators as well as filled warehouses with much cheaper and portable ventilators that could be deployed when and where needed.
While there are enough ventilators for regular use, there is a lack of preparedness for cases of mass casualty such as influenza pandemics, natural disasters and massive toxic chemical releases. The costs of stockpiling and deployment of state-of-the-art mechanical ventilators for mass casualty settings in developed countries are prohibitive. According to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November 2005, the United States would need as many as 742,500 ventilators in a worst-case pandemic. When compared to the 100,000 presently in use, it is clear that the system is lacking.
And in a full decade’s time, nothing was done to address this shortage leading to hysteria across the West amid the Covid-19 outbreak where governments claim to be pressing private business into making ventilators on production lines usually used for producing automobiles and appliances.
If the problem was well known a full decade ago and those in power – particularly in the US from US President George Bush to President Barack Obama to current US President Donald Trump – did nothing about it electing instead to spend US tax dollars on wars and banker bailouts – should the public trust American or Western leadership during this supposed crisis?
Should the hysteria these interests are fostering among the public be entertained?
If Covid-19 is such a threat to the globe – grinding everyday life to a standstill in ways two decades of America’s “War on Terror” have failed to do – why wasn’t more done to prepare for it? Especially when shortages were well-known even to MIT students working on class projects?
If Anything we are Told About Covid-19 Were True…
Lockdowns and rushes to build ventilators constitute just one dimension of this current crisis.
Another is the rush to make vaccines.
Already – the notion of getting your vaccines – including “flu shots” – are imposed upon the general population as absolutely critical for public health. Yet if this were as critical as the public is led to believe – why are vaccines entrusted to some of the most corrupt and untrustworthy corporations on Earth?
Even the US’ own Department of Justice has repeatedly convicted big-pharma corporations for everything from falsifying safety and efficacy reports to bribing doctors, regulators, and politicians. Yet the same US government that repeatedly investigates and convicts these corporations also grants them approval via the FDA to make things we are told are absolutely critical for public health – including vaccines.
If vaccines were truly as important as we are told they are – their research, development, production, and distribution should be absolutely transparent, open source, and nationalized.
Corrupt corporations – not suspected of, but repeatedly convicted for putting profits before public health – should be shuttered, their assets seized and nationalized, and their work placed in the public domain for maximum oversight and transparency.
But that’s only if anything we are told about vaccines in general or the upcoming Covid-19 vaccine were true. Apparently it isn’t true – thus the lack of genuine urgency to match the mere sense of urgency the government and the corporations that influence their policy try to impose upon the general public.
This sense of urgency isn’t being imposed upon the public for the nation’s best interests, but for the special interests that drive US policy forward and their best interests. Hysteria and the urgency it prompts makes for a malleable public ready to accept virtually anything as an “answer” to the dangers they’ve been told to fear.
Vaccine research, development, and distribution will make pharmaceutical corporations billions of dollars whether they actually work or not. For example, consider how pharmaceutical corporations made billions during the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak when World Health Organization “experts” in the pay of big-pharma declared it a “pandemic” prompting Western governments to stockpile big-pharma drugs that later turned out to be absolutely useless in combating the virus.
Political Games of Hegemony During a “Pandemic?”
And if anything we are being told about the urgency of Covid-19 were true, the United States amid these “trying times” would recognize fighting Covid-19 globally is in its own best interest as well – helping to fight it regardless of whose borders it turns up within. Yet crippling economic sanctions remain in place against nations like Iran who have been particularly hit by the virus.
Nations like Russia also remain under US sanctions – and ironically have sent aid to the US – aid coming from companies under US sanctions.
A subsidiary of a Russian company that has been sanctioned by the U.S. manufactured ventilators that were transported from Moscow to New York this week to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic, according to pictures of the delivery.
Obviously if Covid-19 was such a deadly threat, the US would temporarily put its hegemonic foreign policy aside – and work to combat the outbreak – if only to save itself. It isn’t – because Covid-19 the pathogen doesn’t live up to Covid-19 hysteria.
Little we are being told about Covid-19 is true – what little grain of truth exists amid what the public is being told is overshadowed by the unwarranted hysteria deliberately spread about the virus. That hysteria isn’t leading to measures to actually stop the outbreak – but to prime the public for profit-making schemes that will fill the coffers of pharmaceutical corporations and legislation that will strengthen the grip of governments over their respective populations.
Massive corporations will survive and will profit not only from false solutions offered to “fight” Covid-19 but also from assets sold by broken small and medium businesses and property owners selling assets at bargain prices after lockdowns and economic crisis.
“Post-Covid-19″ – the same corrupt and incompetent interests that left the world either unprepared for a real pandemic – or panicked the public over a deliberately over-hyped virus – now stand to profit from and prosper in the wake of it.
If anything we were told about Covid-19 were true, the people who told us about it, panicked us over it, and demanded action from us in the face of it – but left us entirely unprepared for it in the first place – should be the final causalities of the virus – uprooted socially, economically, and politically from society and replaced by leaders, economic systems, and healthcare infrastructure capable of weathering not only viral pandemics, but socioeconomic and psychological pandemics as well.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
As the Raging Twenties unleash a radical reconfiguration of the planet, coronavirus (literally “crowned poison”) has for all practical purposes served a poisoned chalice of fear and panic to myriad, mostly Western, latitudes.
Berlin-based, South Korean-born philosopher Byung-Chul Han has forcefully argued the victors are the
“Asian states like Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore that have an authoritarian mentality which comes from their cultural tradition [of] Confucianism.”
Han added:
“People are less rebellious and more obedient than in Europe. They trust the state more. Daily life is much more organized. Above all, to confront the virus Asians are strongly committed to digital surveillance. The epidemics in Asia are fought not only by virologists and epidemiologists, but also by computer scientists and big data specialists.”
That’s a reductionist view and plenty of nuances should apply. Take South Korea, which is not “authoritarian.” It’s as democratic as top Western liberal powers. What we had in a nutshell was the civic-mindedness of the overwhelming majority of the population reacting to sound, competent government policies.
Seoul went for fast mobilization of scientific expertise, immediate massive testing, extensive contact tracing, and social distancing, as well. But, crucially, most of it voluntary, not imposed by the central power. Because these moves were organically integrated, South Korea did not need to restrict movement drastically or to close down airports.
Hong Kong’s success is due in large part to a superb health care system. People in the frontline, with institutional memory of recent epidemics such as SARS, were willing to go on strike if serious measures were not adopted. Success was also due in large part to myriad professional links between Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s healthcare and public health systems.
Barbarism with human face
Then there’s Big Data. Han argues that in neither China nor other East Asian nations is there enough critical analysis in relation to digital vigilance and Big Data. But that also has to do with culture, because East Asia is about collectivism, and individualism is not on the forefront.
Well, that’s way more nuanced. Across the region, digital progress is pragmatically evaluated in terms of effectiveness. Wuhan deployed Big Data via thousands of investigative teams, searching for possibly infected individuals, choosing who had to be under observation and who had to be quarantined. Borrowing from Foucault, we can call it digital biopolitics.
Where Han is correct is when he says that the pandemic may redefine the concept of sovereignty: “The sovereign is the one who resorts to data. When Europe proclaims a state of alarm or closes borders, it’s still chained to old models of sovereignty.”
The response across the EU, including especially the European Commission in Brussels, has been appalling. Glaring evidence of powerlessness and lack of any serious preparations have appeared even though the EU had a head start.
The first instinct was to close borders; hoard whatever puny equipment was available; and, then, social Darwinist-style, it was every nation for itself, with battered Italy left totally to itself.
The severity of the crisis especially in Italy and Spain, with elders left to die to the “benefit” of the young, was due to a very specific EU political economy choice: the austerity diktat imposed across the eurozone. It’s as if, in a macabre way, Italy and Spain are paying literally in blood to remain part of a currency, the euro, which they should never have adopted in the first place.
As for France, read here for a relatively decent summary of the disaster in the EU’s second-largest economy.
Going forward, Slavoj Zizek gloomily predicts for the West “a new barbarism with a human face, ruthless survivalist measures enforced with regret and even sympathy, but legitimized by expert opinions.”
In contrast, Han predicts China will now be able to sell its digital police state as a model of success against the pandemic.
“China will display the superiority of its system even more proudly.”
Alexander Dugin ventures way beyond anyone else. He’s already conceptualizing the notion of a state in mutation (like the virus) turning into a “military-medical dictatorship,” just as we’re witnessing the collapse of the global liberal world in real time.
Enter the triad
I offer, as a working hypothesis, that the Asia triad of Confucius, Buddha and Lao Tzu has been absolutely essential in shaping the perception and serene response of hundreds of millions of people across various Asian nations to Covid-19. Compare this with the prevalent fear, panic and hysteria mostly fed by the corporate media across the West.
The Tao (“the way”) as configured by Lao Tzu is about how to live in harmony with the world. Being confined necessarily leads to delving into yin instead of yang, slowing down and embarking on a great deal of reflection.
Yes, it’s all about culture, but culture rooted in ancient philosophy, and practiced in everyday life. That’s how we can see wu wei – “action of non-action” – applied to how to deal with a quarantine. “Action of non-action” means action without intent. Rather than fighting against the vicissitudes of life, as in confronting a pandemic, we should allow things to take their natural course.
That’s much easier when we know this teaching of the Tao: “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.”
It also helps to know that “life is a series of natural and spontaneous choices. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
Buddhism runs in parallel to the Tao:
“All conditioned things are impermanent. When one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”
And to keep our vicissitudes in perspective, it helps to know:
“Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.”
As far as keeping much-needed perspective, nothing beats, “the root of suffering is attachment.”
And then, there’s the ultimate perspective:
“Some do not understand that we must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.”
Confucius has been an overarching presence across the Covid-19 frontline, as an astonishing 700 million Chinese citizens were kept for weeks under different forms of quarantine.
We can easily imagine them clinging to a few pearls of wisdom, such as:
“Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.” Or “he who learns, but does not think, is lost. He who thinks, but does not learn, is in great danger.”
Most of all, in an hour of extreme turbulence, it brings comfort to know that, “the strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.”
And in terms of fighting a dangerous and invisible enemy on the ground, it helps to know this rule of thumb:
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
So what would be the ultimate insight a serene East can offer to the West in such hard times? It’s so simple, and it’s all in the Tao: “From caring comes courage.”
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
‘Once the pandemic subsides, vital conclusions must be drawn and implemented. Many citizens have become painfully aware that the invisible hand of the market is no more than a useless extremity, as the sacrosanct laws of supply and demand have failed them. So did profit-driven globalization’.
The pandemic, which engendered a planetary panic, and the ensuing financial and economic crisis have shown that many governments, including those of ‘developed countries’, were unprepared to handle the emergency. Our Republican movement offered a rational and timely solution by creating the Civil Solidarity Headquarters and proposed a range of necessary and operational measures.
The planet has a chance to change for the better, argue insightful intellectuals and conscientious citizens. We present the opinion of Professor Yakov M. Rabkin of the University of Montreal (Canada), expert of the Studrespublika Final-2015 who is often invited to share his thoughts with us.
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This view has impacted our world, with the current Covid-19 crisis further highlighting Margaret Thatcher’s words, commonly referred to as the Iron Lady. She was one of the apostles of privatization and the shrinking of the state. She also preached by example and countless have followed. The state has shrunk in most Western countries, and, a few years after she uttered those words, her gospel found true believers in the former socialist countries. On both sides of the demolished Berlin Wall one saw massive transfers of wealth from the public sector to private hands. Tax cuts and privatization resulted in considerably weakened states, poorer financially and logistically than major companies.
When forest fires were raging around Moscow in the summer of 2010, causing thousands of deaths from suffocation, some people recalled that a specialized Federal forestry service had been disbanded under Yeltsin. It used to employ 70 000 forest rangers who identified and put out fires. In the United States, the Global Health Security and Biodefense team on the National Security Council staff was disbanded under Trump.
But the problem is more serious than the personalities involved. The state used to protect the citizens from abuses of the private sector. This is how anti-trust legislation came about over a century ago. Labour laws, unemployment insurance, and consumer protection followed. These social rights, stronger in Europe, and weaker in the United States, were part of the defense of capitalism in the context of the Cold War. When the Soviet Union began to wilt, powerful private interests realized that they no longer needed ‘a capitalism with a human face’. They embarked on massive dismantling of social rights in capitalist countries.
One of these rights is health. A cursory look at the number of beds per capita reveals four leaders: Japan, South Korea, Russia and Germany. Italy is 25th, Spain 27th, the United States 31st. This ominously correlates with the dynamics of the current pandemic. The four leading countries not only have more beds but they were fast to recognize and react to the oncoming peril.
Contrary to Thatcher’s belief, people cannot look after themselves when Covid-19 strikes. They turn to their respective states in search of protection from the pandemic. Some states rose up to the task and some clearly failed. It matters little whether the state is democratic or authoritarian. What does matter is its ability to protect its citizens in case of emergency.
Some states turned out to be unprepared for emergencies, experiencing tragic shortages of medical supplies. In imitation of the private sector, they came to depend on long supply lines for most essential products, becoming a pale replica of a private enterprise.
Once the pandemic subsides, vital conclusions must be drawn and implemented. Many citizens have become painfully aware that the invisible hand of the market is no more than a useless extremity, as the sacrosanct laws of supply and demand have failed them. So did profit-driven globalization.
Citizens should reclaim their status of citizens after being reduced to that of ‘customers’. This ubiquitous term borrowed from the world of business has merged citizens, passengers, students, patients and many others into an amorphous mass of ‘customers’. We all know that words have power.
But words can also take power away. This power must be returned to the citizens, the only ones capable of freeing the state from the control of the private sector. The state must resume its primary function of protector of the citizen and acquire adequate means to do so.
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Professor Yakov M. Rabkin is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Montreal, co-editor of Demodernization: A Future in the Past (Columbia University Press)
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America’s Daily Report’s Christina Aguayo interviews Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai on the discourse surrounding Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US and the role of Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Bill Gates, the Clintons and the WHO.
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“Unfortunately this guy Fauci has been in this environment for nearly 4 decades across multiple presidents and is essentially embedded in this scientific establishment which has created an unfortunate lie about the immune system and an unfortunate lie about the solution to this coronavirus or more importantly infectious disease without any real emphasis which is a real issue about the fact that it is an overactive dysfunctional weakened immune system that overreacts and that’s what causes damage to the body. And unfortunately Fauci has not talked about that because the truth of that leads to a solution which has nothing to do with mandating vaccines and shutting down the country.” –Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai
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