Hungry Americans

April 22nd, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

In more normal times than now, tens of millions of Americans face hunger and food insecurity in the world’s richest country.

It’s because of widespread poverty, unemployment, underemployment, overall deprivation, and eroding social justice even though vital services are widely needed for the nation’s most disadvantaged.

It’s also because both right wings of the one-party state serve privileged interests exclusively at the expense of public health and welfare gone begging.

The so-called land of opportunity lacks it for its tired…poor…huddled masses…wretched refuse…yearning to breathe free.

America is separate and unequal. The privileged few benefit hugely, including by generous government handouts in good and hard times.

Ordinary Americans get unfulfilled promises in the United States of I don’t care.

Trump, hardliners surrounding him, and most congressional members are indifferent to the rights, safety and welfare of ordinary people at home and abroad.

Tens of millions of Americans are out of work, many more heading to join them, breadwinners with little or no savings — unable to pay rent, service mortgages, cover medical expenses, many dependent on aid to feed family members.

In more normal 2017, over 40 million Americans were food insecure — unable  to provide what’s needed for their families.

Around one in six US children don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Millions rely on free or low-cost school lunches that aren’t available because education in America is shut down.

People of color in the US are disproportionately affected. At times now, public need is greater than ever.

On April 8, the ACLU asked the following:

“If COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, then why are Blacks (in the US) dying at higher rates?”

Why are Black communities hit hardest by the effects of COVID-19 outbreaks?

In Chicago, data show around 70% of COVID-19 related deaths are Black city residents.

In Milwaukee County, it’s 81%, in Louisiana 70%. Clearly what’s happening is from poverty, unemployment, and related issues that affect health and well-being.

Black Americans have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, asthma, and other diseases than their white counterparts.

While most Americans shelter in place, Blacks and Latinos disproportionately hold jobs in food stores, distribution warehouses, as home health aides, and other positions where social distancing isn’t practiced.

Since Trump took office, his regime presided over the repeal or flouting of anti-discrimination, social and economic justice policies.

For weeks, he dismissively ignored the need for widespread testing. He’s done nothing to aid hard-pressed/low income communities throughout the US.

Meager federal COVID-19 related aid may withhold it from individuals based on prior convictions or arrests.

In US urban areas nationwide, most Blacks are segregated in low-income communities.

Blacks and Latinos comprise about two-thirds of the US prison population, the world’s largest by far — including countless numbers of wrongfully convicted individuals, many others for misdemeanors too minor to matter.

All of the above outside of prison walls relates to widespread hunger in the US during more normal times that’s greatly exacerbated at times like now.

When the nation’s most vulnerable needs federal, state and local help, what’s provided is meager at best, not forthcoming at worst.

Long lines of cars and people on foot beyond what the eyes can see are queued at food banks nationwide for help when it’s the only recourse for poor unemployed Americans with little or no savings.

For them, it’s a perfect storm with no idea of how long their personal crisis will last.

America’s debt-fueled bubble economy burst, COVID-19 the trigger, not the cause. Deprivation for countless millions in the US is likely to be long-lasting.

Many lost jobs are gone because countless numbers of small businesses won’t survive.

Stores, restaurants, theaters, other recreational facilities, and other public places won’t likely see large numbers of people interacting in close quarters for some time, fear of contagion restraining them.

Food banks are overwhelmed by demand and too little supply for the hungry and food insecure. They lack enough volunteers to pitch in and help.

With hotels, restaurants, and schools closed, farmers are destroying crops and other fresh foods for lack of customers, dairy farmers dumping millions of gallons of fresh milk daily because they don’t have the manpower and/or can’t bear the cost of transporting it to food banks.

In hardest hit parts of the US, food pantries and distribution centers are struggling from over-demand and lack of ability to serve it.

National Guard forces are helping in some areas, but it’s way short of manpower needed, along with enough supply to feed the hungry.

Images of what’s going on in the world’s richest country nationwide are heart-rendering.

Large-scale food aid needed in more normal times is greatly overwhelmed by the highest US unemployment heading higher since the Great Depression that could continue for some time.

Its underlying cause is the same at all times — widespread poverty with inadequate resources and government help for essentials to life and welfare.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Video: A Letter to the Future

April 22nd, 2020 by James Corbett

I do not write these words for my contemporaries.

We are the damned.

It is our lot now to watch as the lamp of liberty is extinguished, our burden to bear witness to the final flickering of the flame of freedom. …

Read the letter here.

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The war is on. A crucial weapon in the attack is Roundup (glyphosate), a herbicide that’s being used for something for which it was never intended[1]: the forced ripening of crops, called desiccation, all but guaranteeing it will wind up in our food.

Roundup hinders biosynthesis by poisoning the shikimate pathway in plants. Humans don’t rely on the same chemistry as plants, but we were never supposed to actually eat this herbicide in food. It turns out our bodies rely on trillions of microorganisms integral to our immune systems that do employ the shikimate pathway, which means Roundup contributes directly to the suppression of our immune systems.[2]

Ignoring this, Bayer execs seek to dominate the fast-growing desiccation market, and have purchased Monsanto and, along with it, thousands of lawsuits filed by people who claim to have contracted cancer while applying Roundup. None of these lawsuits are from consumers who have inadvertently consumed Roundup in their food because it will forever remain impossible to clinically prove one’s immune system may have been impacted so long as conventional medicine fails to help us boost overall health, pushing patented, pharmaceutical vaccinations instead. In fact, the government has never required any long-term research into the possible immunological impact of Roundup, and shows no interest in doing so.

Don’t bother looking, and you won’t find any bad news, is the maxim being applied. And it’s working marvelously.

Strangely, none of the settlements to date against Bayer have been for farmers. Wouldn’t farmers be the first to succumb to illness if Roundup (glyphosate) was a carcinogen and applying it was the problem? Does this mean the Roundup lawsuits are just a diversionary tactic in a much larger battle?

Shareholders are certainly worried. But Bayer executives have everything to gain from a protracted legal battle, replete with dire headlines warning that Roundup is dangerous, so long as no one figures out that the real problem isn’t with people applying Roundup; it’s with people eating it.

Anyone who believes Werner Baumann, the CEO of Bayer, made a big mistake when he signed the deal to buy Monsanto, doesn’t understand his role in the globalist agenda. To say nothing of the crucial role Roundup is potentially playing in the Covid-19 “pandemic” through immune suppression, and how Covid-19 is itself playing into the larger globalist agenda, and may even be an integral part of it.[3]

Desiccation is the target market for Bayer execs. But first, they have to become indemnified against any future claims of injury, whether by those who apply or consume Roundup,

  • just as vaccine companies were indemnified by President Reagan in the 1980s,
  • just as Big Tobacco was indemnified in the 1990s by President Clinton.

In both cases, all future liabilities were passed on to We the People, while the mounting cost of regulatory compliance, a direct consequence of that protracted legal process, resulted in monopoly control.

In short, Bayer plans to swallow up all of the off-brand makers of glyphosate (generic Roundup) as a thicket of new “safety” regulations are implemented surrounding the manufacture and use of Roundup, leaving only Bayer standing as the sole global supplier of this herbicide that corporate farmers can’t live without; that consumers can’t live with. In fact, Baumann’s “people” will already be working with regulators to make sure everything is worded just right, with the allowable “safe” limits for ingesting Roundup remaining based on outdated LD50 testing (Lethal Dose 50% in lab animals).

These were toxicological tests, not immunological. To repeat again, no one has ever tested how Roundup impacts the immune system that teams with microorganisms that ARE adversely impacted by Roundup through interruption of the shikimate pathway. And if Bayer execs gets their way, no one ever will.

Have you noticed no one argues any longer about whether smoking causes cancer? Admitting the problem only grants license to perpetuate the problem. It’s what happened in the meat industry in 1906, with the repeal of Prohibition of alcohol in 1933, GMOs in the 1990s, cellphone towers in 1996, cellphones thereafter, and it’s happening right now with 5G.

All of which begs the following two questions:

  • Does Roundup cause cancer as is being claimed in the Roundup application lawsuits? It doesn’t even matter in this scheme.
  • Should Roundup be banned outright? No my friend; that’s just one side of a false dichotomy. It’s certainly dangerous when misused. But even if it was always dangerous, both sides already agree Roundup will never be banned. If it was, how would all the lawyers get paid?

The overuse and misuse of Roundup is also contributing to the final destruction of the family farm by allowing for fewer, low-skilled laborers to harvest large tracts of land, leading to total corporate control over food production. Remember what Kissinger said about controlling food?

It’s madness. But so far, no one in Washington cares, with the exception of JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, God bless him for his principled stand against Bill Gates and vaccines,[4] doesn’t hold office.

Whatever this Covid-19 “pandemic” turns out to be, and whatever the NEXT one turns out to be, can anyone deny we’re LESS healthy than our ancestors were? Since when did harvesting a crop become impossible without the aid of a toxic substance? Remember the “failure of imagination” we were told prevented intelligence agencies from foreseeing 9-11? Don’t fall for it again.

Baumann, his phalanx of lawyers, accountants, right alongside his creditors, their phalanx of lawyers and accountants, AND their ratings agencies and insurers… all knew exactly what they were getting into when Bayer bought Monsanto. He’s playing the role of the victim… but would better be described as the cat who ate the canary.

Meanwhile, if you can contract Covid-19 more than once, can someone please tell me what good a vaccine will be? Never let a crisis go to waste. And when you can’t find one, make one up.

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Mischa Popoff grew up on a grain farm and worked as a USDA, CFIA and EU organic farm and process inspector. He’s written about the selling-out of the American organic industry to China for such outlets as The Daily Caller, Breitbart, Consumer Affairs and The Capital Research Center, and is the author of a self-published book titled Is it Organic? Three-quarters of the organic food you see on the store shelf is imported, and almost half tests positive for prohibited pesticides. He now writes on occasion for Dr. E. Michael Jones’ Culture Wars magazine where a more detailed version of this article will appear in June.

Notes

[1] “Glyphosate is not a true desiccant.” Ian Schemenauer, “Desiccation and pre-harvest glyphosate” Government of Saskatchewan, Ministry of Agriculture, 22 October 2016.

[2] Roundup is also widely used on many GMO crops during the growing season, which certainly contributes to this problem. But the application immediately prior to harvest all-but guarantees this herbicide will be present in our food.

[3] Henry A. Kissinger, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order; The U.S. must protect its citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch.” The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, April 3, 2020.

[4] “Robert F Kennedy Jr. Exposes Bill Gates’ Vaccine Dictatorship Plan – Cites Gates’ Twisted ‘Messiah Complex’” on Fort Russ News, April 10, 2020.

Featured image is from Mike Mozart/Flickr/CC

Il distanziamento sociale è molto di più di una semplice misura contingente alla pandemia, stravolgerà il nostro modo di vivere. A dirlo è il Massachusetts Institute of Technology. L’Istituto è al centro di numerosi progetti di ricerca, molti dei quali finanziati dalla Fondazione di Bill Gates. Insieme alle Rice University, il MIT sta mettendo a punto dei “certificati digitali”, serviranno, tra le altre cose, per controllare chi è guarito e chi ha ricevuto il vaccino. I dubbi sul certificato digitale nascono dal fatto che esso non è una semplice tessera sanitaria, ma verrà implementato con dei punti quantici a base di rame, iniettati nel corpo insieme al vaccino. Questi punti diventano una specie di tatuaggio, un codice a barre. La Fondazione Bill Gates dichiara di voler utilizzare questa tecnologia in Africa, insieme a quella dei microchip per regolare la fertilità delle donne. Per scoprire di più su questi temi abbiamo parlato con il geografo e giornalista Manlio Dinucci. #Byoblu24

Ci stiamo organizzando per la difesa della libertà di espressione. Hanno già firmato 50mila persone la campagna #CogitoErgoParlo. Firma e fai firmare tutti i tuoi conoscenti: https://go.byoblu.com/patto

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The major reason for Cuba’s travel restrictions-­‐-­‐ always used as grounds for slandering the Cuban state-­‐ is the extreme difficulty Cuba has maintaining foreign exchange reserves essential for international trade-­‐-­‐ esp. since the end of trade-­‐in-­‐kind with the COMECON. Every traveller from Cuba spends pesos that have to be covered by Cuba’s USD or EUR reserves. Since there are already more than enough obstacles imposed by the US embargo, every forex transaction is critical for Cuba’s balance of payments-­‐ -­‐ for its ability to buy what it cannot produce. In fact those who can still recall crossing from West Berlin to East Berlin will also remember that it was necessary to exchange DM 30 for M30 for every day one spent in the GDR. This was heavily criticised in the West, especially by travellers who would complain that it was impossible to spend the M 30 in a day since everything was so inexpensive. Of course the GDR was trying to compensate for the discriminatory exchange rates that made trade with the West a drain on its foreign currency reserves.

While many ordinary visitors complained and the Western media encouraged Germans in the East to complain about the buying power of the GDR mark, the fact is that throughout the world national economies only survived the Bretton Woods regime as long as they maintained currency controls. A major element in the economic warfare waged by the US Empire since 1945 has been to abolish fixed exchange rates. Having rigged the post-­‐war international monetary regime to replace the British pound with the US dollar as the benchmark currency, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were deployed to stabilise the US dollar with advantage over the old European currencies.

Although officially these were international institutions, they were organised like private corporations. The decisions were to be made by the majority of shares held in the IMF or World Bank. Since the US held the majority of capital in both, it was endowed with the most votes over any Fund or Bank decision. The quasi-­‐currency of the Fund and the Bank was called special drawing rights (SDR). These units of account were based on a weighted value of the underlying “reserve” currencies, mainlythe USD. SDRs could be used to resolve balance of payments discrepancies. Members of the IMF were extended SDRs according to the relative strengths of their economy. Based on the SDRs allocated to a country it could draw dollars or another reserve currencyin amounts sufficient to pay temporary imbalances between imports and exports, transactions that after WWII were almost all USD business.

As the late Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley once pointed out-­‐-­‐ when the Bretton Woods agreements were signed most of the countries, like Jamaica, were still colonies or protectorates of some European or North American power. Hence no provision was made for them to even have independent economies or national currencies. As a result most of the world’s population and any of the newly independent countries that did not adopt a version of a Euro-­‐American currency had no way to monetize their economic activity in international trade. They were left entirely dependent upon the USD, GBP, and for foreign trade of any kind. In order to limit USD hegemony in Africa, the French invented the CFA-­‐ Franc. This African franc tied its former African colonies to France by giving the CFA-­‐franc a favourable exchange rate with French franc, although not parity. Overall however the post-­‐war independence movements were all faced with the inherent dependence of their currency systems from the machinations of US and European banks with their control over the two major foreign exchange markets, the City and Wall Street. The exceptions to this regime were the Soviet Union and COMECON as and after 1959 Cuba.

When the US economy faced possible financial collapse toward the end of its war in Vietnam (it had been fairly successful in transferring the costs of the Korean War to the “United Nations”), secret negotiations by the Nixon administration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ad through their offices

within OPEC, saved the USD by abolishing the gold fixing and establishing the USD as the sole currency for the world oil trade. At one fell swoop any country that did not have domestic oil supplies or had to trade oil on the world market was forced to use US dollars. To prove the point the US regime has never hesitated to wage war against any OPEC member that does not comply with this iron rule.Of course the US is the only country which can issue US dollars and its banks are the only ones who can sell USD denominated debt, directly or indirectly, hence the central role of the Federal Reserve System-­‐-­‐ the private banking cartel chartered to issuedollars and control US monetary policy. The US regime has also pursued rigorous policies-­‐-­‐ even if not always entirely successful-­‐-­‐ to draw all those dollars back into US assets or to permit US entities to acquire foreign assets through the unlimited capacity to generate USD and to monetize private business (while on the other hand prohibiting the monetizing of public debt for social services, infrastructure etc.)

This is the context in which the current economic war with China and to a lesser extent with Russia has to be seen. This economic war entered a new phase with the Wuhan attack.

Fast-­‐forward: European and US authorities order various degrees of “lockdown” and international travel, even within the EU itself, comes to a virtual halt. Airlines, hotels, and the rest of the travel sector have practically no more than essential business. The transport sector is also substantially restricted. The everyday economy is almost in coronary arrest.

What are the benefits of the general lockdown in the West? I sit really possible that the corona virus was so shocking that the economy as a whole was only an afterthought? Are we to believe that it was merely an oversight on the part of government to contemplate contingencies for epidemics but not for economics? It would be nice to think that Western governments care so much about the health of their citizens but that is rubbish. What is really very important-­‐-­‐ in fact, it is the only important issue for those who own our governments is MONEY and of course the powerthat goes with it.

What are the immediate consequences of the lockdown in economic terms?

  • restriction of travel by masses of a generally mobile and consuming population (at least in the EU)
  • restriction-­‐-­‐ soon to reach extinction of a substantial percentage of SMEs
  • obstruction of supply chain transactions, not least of which with China
  • increased unemployment beyond the already deliberately understated figures.
  • inevitable price increases, whether scarcity induced or because of added “safety”costs
  • the creation of potential for a layer of corruption and contraband traffic that will not only raise the prices of everyday life but partly criminalise it.

At the same time we have heard more than a few reports of new QE aka (giving trillions to so-­‐called banks). [1]

In the Western media one finds accusations that China caused the “corona crisis” to benefit from a fall in asset prices (not only stock markets but also for businesses damaged by the lockdown) to buy them up on the cheap. Personally I follow a golden rule when reading Western official statements, whether directly from regime mouthpieces or through their Great Wurlitzer: what they accuse is what they are hiding. It is like that classic scene in many a classroom: the bully slaps another pupil. Pupil slaps back and bully screams. The teacher only sees the return slap and never the first strike. The slapped pupil is punished and the bully rewarded.

If we ask critically what the new QE is supposed to do-­‐-­‐ is it to protect all these banks from another 2008 failure? No, not really. Instead it is to fill the “banks” with cash for pre-­‐emptive buying following the price crashes so that China can be blocked out of any further investment in the West’s critical sectors.

It is also survival money so that all the defaults and bankruptcies in the SME sector can be written off without damaging the overall profit line.

In other words a) and b) can be directly linked not only to strategic population control objectives, linked also to the now infamous universal vaccination programme, but also to the imposition of currency controls. In Europe, fewer euros will flow to China and in the US obviously the USD flows will be reduced. c) The disruption of supply chains is mainly an organisational measure. This will reduce the number of channels by which China can trade in the West. In the first stage it will also facilitate the consolidation of the economy in fewer hands so that those supply chains can be better managed from the top.

d) As argued elsewhere, purchasing power has declined steadily over the past thirty to forty years for most of the working population on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a need for a fundamental demographic adjustment. Germany for instance has used imported labour since its reestablishment in 1949. First it was a substitution for labour shortages immediately after its defeat by the Soviet Union. The so-­‐called Economic Miracle-­‐-­‐ the reconstruction period-­‐-­‐ in large part funded by orders from the US war machine in Korea-­‐-­‐ quickly absorbed its available German labour force. Hence it started to suck workers from impoverished Italy and Greece. If the German government is to be believed, then the domestic labour force is too old or too small to meet current demands, hence while domestic workers are under house arrest, the flow of persons displaced by NATO wars, e.g. in Syria, continues uninterrupted. Thus the new generation of industrial and technical labourers at the bottom of the German social hierarchy will not be Turkish but Arabic speaking. There is no reason that they will be able to return to their homes any time soon since NATO is not finished destroying them.

At the same time the crushing of the domestic small and medium sized sector will-­‐-­‐ as it always has-­‐-­‐ have a positive effect by forcing wages down even more. If the virus is really as effective as some claim at killing people aged 60 and above, then the state pension funds will be able to declare surpluses soon, net revenues from immigrants and a sudden decline in beneficiaries.This sounds cynical but the insurance model for social security installed under Bismarck anticipated much shorter lifespans and fewer eligible retirees than today. The government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 70 cannot solve the problem because there are no jobs for these 65+ citizens. Hence they have to live from savings or the dole. Better just let them die.

If there is an economic meltdown in the West, then these assets have to remain denominated in USD/ EUR denominated in order to prop up these currencies and preserve the fortunes of dollar/ euro/ or sterling billionaires.

Now add to this the lockdown and recall the case of CUBA.

The lockdown makes good economic sense from the commanding heights of the Western economy! By more or less crushing the SME sector with its increasing exposure to China, e.g. import of components and finished goods for resale, a substantial foreign exchange gap is closed. China is deprived of these payments. Thus foreign trade with China becomes ever more concentratedin the few cartels that share control over the monetary policies of the FED, Band of England and ECB.

For normal mortals this is insane, why would the West want to crush the lower third of its economy? For years people have been whining about the 1% butotherwise not doing very much about it. In fact, the 1% can live very well without most of the normal economy as long as they have currency stability for their stores of wealth in the world.

Not only travellers, like for Cuba, but much of the real economy, constitute a genuine risk to the monetary system the great Western private banks created in the BoE, in 1913 with the FED, and later with the ECB. The ECB and the euro can be sacrificed as long as the USD and GBP remain world standards.

e) One of the virtues of the system which could emerge as a short-­‐term or medium-­‐term result of the lockdown and its associated policies and practices is the creation of a new class of criminal activity-­‐-­‐ the real economy. Since it is unlikely that the West can suborn China and together with Russia impossible, the West has an obvious potential as far as I can see has hardly been mentioned. Perhaps it is worth recalling from mainstream history the narrative of feudalism: the peasants were tied to the land. The aristocracy and royalty fought over land plus the chattel (the people occupying and working the land). Movement from the land was forbidden without permission by the feudal lord (a prohibition also enforced by the Church, e.g. through the Inquisition). Pursuing a craft or trade was almost only possible in cities, which may or may not have been “free”. The details can be found in most standard history books about this period.

However we have almost no peasantry left-­‐-­‐ something that can be detected in the abysmal quality of food found in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain. Instead there are only “free labourers” some of whom imagine they own their homes. Immediately after the collapse of the GDR any traveller could see an explosion in the number of hairdressers and small restaurants or similar personal service enterprises. Much of this business was the desperate attempt to recover earning capacity after West German government and business closed GDR factories and other employing institutions causing an explosion in unemployment that is still vastly understated and concealed by half-­‐ hearted social policies. These businesses are vulnerable to taxation and other cost-­‐intensive regulations that are characteristic of modern bureaucratic states like Germany. It is also no wonder that they offer little more than a marginal income that often has to be compensated by some other job or social benefit.

At present that is all very exhausting and frustrating for the vast majority of people in this low-­‐income sector. Yet it is still legal. The first step toward terrorizing the bulk of the soon to be even more under-­‐ or unemployed is to restrict or effectively prohibit the personal service sector-­‐-­‐ for health reasons. Now it is almost impossible to get a haircut or a manicure anywhere because these businesses have been forced to close as part of the policy of “social distancing”. Reality however knows no such prohibitions. Those people who have no other means of earning a living except personal services and hoset who need those services will find a way to meet and transact business.

This is where the spirit of Mr Gates is especially pernicious-­‐-­‐ but not simply because of some billions more that he may steal. What Mr Gates, as the poster boy, and the whole public health paramilitary/ civil affairs regime that is nascent as I write offer us-­‐-­‐ or may well force upon us-­‐-­‐ is spiritually and socially akin to the Prohibition regime created by the Volstead Act in the US. Prohibition was introduced ostensibly to control alcohol abuse. However it failed to get substantial legislative support until people like Henry Ford-­‐-­‐ then along with Rockefeller one of the world’s richest men-­‐-­‐ insisted that Prohibition would give them the power to destroy the meeting places of immigrants, especially those from Eastern and Southern Europe where beer and wine were integral to social life. Forbidding alcohol to people who for centuries considered wine and beer part of their diets was a serious attack on their private and family lives. However since this was a “health” issue the Volstead Act did not violate any constitutional rights. Any place could be closed for serving alcohol of any kind. The meeting venues for almost all immigrants could be shut by armed police wholly within the law.

Although this was a draconian law, it was not really enforceable. In fact, the famous Kennedy political dynasty was only one family whose wealth came from breaking the law. At no time during the period of Prohibition in the US was the ruling class deprived of intoxicating drink. Moreover the covert sale of alcohol, the bribery of police and other officials, the payment of protection money to gangsters, created an entire corporate structure, which survives today although its product range is based mainlyon opiates. The illegal and legal drug businesses constitute one of the main pillars of USD supremacy, along with oil and weapons, but that is just a detail here.

The important point here is that the culture of prohibition has clearly mutated into the field of “communicable disease”, i.e. highly infectious viruses. Whether or not Mr Gates and his friends will succeed in their ID2020 scheme-­‐-­‐ vaccine or subcutaneous identity chips-­‐ is certainly a very serious question. But even if this particular model doesnot get forced under our skin, the struggle in the lower half or third of the population to survive through personal services and hospitality will become a target for the same kind of parasitical class that developed and enriched itself under the Prohibition regime, and in the environment of permanent war (which was what1984most nauseatingly described) scarcity and corruption are designer processes-­‐-­‐ intended to punish and discipline the majority of the population while extracting every bit of surplus from their already meagre incomes. This artificially created illegality will empower a class of people who profit from serving it and have no interest whatsoever in return to normal human relations. The already immanent price increases and due to increased unemployment parallel decline in wages-­‐-­‐ with the risk that one can be excluded from work or income for “health” reasons-­‐-­‐ will further enrich those at the top while undermining solidarity downward as people become caught in the net of this policing regime.

Therefore it is absolutely essential to resist any further imposition of this state of siege. In this matter, I cannot help paraphrasing some otherwise noxious colonial from the 18th century: we must all be sick together, or each of us will be sick separately-­‐-­‐ in isolation.

There are some people who read George Orwell’s books as prescriptions; after all he spent his last years working for an office in the British “Ministry of Truth”. Then there are those who completely misread his books as attacks on the Soviet Union and communism. However those who read his books carefully will see that he understood the spirit and actions of his employers very well. Orwell’s fiction is ambivalent, like his entire career and his nonfiction works as well. Perhaps the best way to understand them is as the diaries of a colonial police officer, who knew his duty and no matter how disagreeable did it.That duty was to hold down the hands and feet of the ruled while the rulers emptied their pockets. Orwell knew he was working for gangsters, but he needed the job. That was the price he paid.

AND yes, if Madeleine Albright was ready to see half a million Iraqi children dead for the policies she was appointed to represent, you can bet that some 60 million, dead or enslaved, is also a price the 1% find worth paying to keep their privilege on this planet in tact.

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Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa

Note

[1] QE = quantitative easing: a term of financial jargon used by the US Federal Reserve System to denote privileged financial support to the top tier “banks” to prevent them from suffering (or collapsing) under the weight of their own elaborate extractive operations, e.g. debt siphons and gambling rackets. The mechanism involves the quasi-­‐governmental (but actually privately owned and managed) Federal Reserve System purchasing the “bad” or uncollectible debts or gambling chits of these top tier “banks” by issuing Treasury obligations (e.g. so-­‐called T-­‐notes), basically certified claims that these “banks” may then assert against the US government to siphon tax receipts and other public income into their coffers. These claims are negotiable too, meaning they are traded on financial markets and can be used like money to buy non-­‐financial assets.

Closedown vs. No Closedown

April 21st, 2020 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Every country with the exception of Sweden found it necessary to close down at least part of the economy in order to prevent the highly infectious virus from overwhelming their medical care systems.  The exponential rate of infection together with a lack of sufficient health resources obviously meant an overwhelmed system that would be unable to provide care for those suffering from other illnesses and deadly conditions, such as heart attacks.

The need to reduce the caseload was also influenced by the uncertainty of treatment.  It has been only through experimentation that health care professionals have found some successful treatments and learned that ventilators were causing deaths.  Knowledge about the virus and its attack on vital organs is still emerging. The long incubation period and the fact that people can spread the virus without themselves having symptoms makes the virus far more challenging than flu, with which it is often mistakenly compared.  The fact that people of all ages and health conditions have died from the virus, or from inappropriate treatment and prior conditions, and the impossibility of knowing in advance the severity of any person’s case produces a situation that can easily explode out of control.

The policy of isolation and social distancing has worked.  It has reduced the infection rate to a manageable one in most places.  One consequence of this success is to increase the sense of safety and the belief that the virus is a hoax being used to take away civil liberties.  There is no doubt that the deep state and other agendas will make use of the virus for their purposes.  But the virus is definitely real and not a hoax.

The success of social isolation has produced a belief that the virus was over-hyped, causing some people to call the policy into question.  Crowds in violation of the social distancing policy are protesting against the policy, with some marching around with weapons.  

No doubt that the policy has costs that offset in part its benefits. But the question remains whether protest is an intelligent response or selfishness and a paranoia of its own. 

In Chinese and Japanese cities where the spread of the virus was successfully controlled and the cities reopened, the result has been a second wave of infections (see this). 

In contrast in North Florida, the closing of beaches and vacation rentals has resulted in the area being essentially free of virus cases.  Based on the Chinese and Japanese experience, we should expect a reopening provoked by impatience to reignite the infection rate.

Possibly health care providers have learned better how to treat the disease and perhaps the supply of protective gear for health care providers has improved and masks have become available for a reopened work place.  If not, impatience will stampede us again into crisis.

If we had been prepared with protective gear, with an adequate supply of tests that work, with an understanding of the virus and its treatment, closedowns, other than perhaps in congested cities heavily dependent on public transportation such as New York city, could have been avoided.

The protesters are wrong in thinking that a low death rate of the virus makes it a non-threat.  It is certainly possible that many more people have the virus than is known (see this) and that many of the deaths attributed to the virus are results of other causes.  The virus is nevertheless dangerous because it is highly contagious, because the severity of cases widely differs without the ability to know in advance the severity of any case, because treatments are uncertain, because people without symptoms spread the virus, and because some recovered people have insufficient antibodies to prevent reinfection.

Business and political interests want the economy reopened, but if we are careless about the process the outcome can be a worse economic and health crisis.

Belief that the best policy is to let the virus spread in order to develop “herd immunity” is undercut by reinfection.  There is no herd immunity to common colds or flu. I know people whose winter colds are followed by summer colds and people who get flu every year, flu shot or not.  

There are many lessons that we should learn from the virus challenge. One is that a profit-driven health care system results in inadequate structure to deal with a pandemic.  We need to break the hold of Big Pharma on our health care and medical education and substitute public health motivated medical professionals in place of profit.  Another is that we must prevent selfish agendas from using disease to the disadvantage of the health and rights of the public. Politically weaponizing the virus, as has been done, is irresponsible in the extreme.

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

A weeks earlier agreement between them collapsed, a new unity deal struck.

Netanyahu prevailed. Gantz’s surrender to his demands split his Blue and White (B &W) party.

It may have ended his chance to become prime minister, his political career perhaps ruined by reportedly agreeing to most Netanyahu demands — a Gantz Versailles as things now stand.

On Monday night, capitulation was formalized, a “national emergency government” formed, ending over a year of political stalemate.

Gantz tweeted the following:

“We prevented fourth elections. We’ll safeguard democracy” (that’s nonexistent under apartheid rule).

“We’ll fight the coronavirus and look out for all Israeli citizens. We have a national emergency government.”

Netanyahu remains prime minister at least for the next 18 months, Gantz to serve as deputy PM and war minister with veto power over who’ll serve as Knesset speaker, Gantz ally Gabi Ashkenazi (another former IDF chief) to be foreign minister.

Terms of the deal give Netanyahu veto power over appointments of Israel’s next attorney general and state prosecutor.

In other words, he’ll have say over who’ll prosecute him for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in trial proceedings scheduled to begin on May 24 — unless postponed again, a real possibility.

Netanyahu and Gantz will share power on appointment of new judges, along with other members of Likud and remnants of the Blue and White party.

Given how Netanyahu got Gantz to capitulate on key terms of their deal, the PM will likely have most say on who’ll become appointed judges, ones favoring his interests likely to be chosen.

Should coalition government unravel during the next 18 months, Gantz would take over as prime minister.

If Netanyahu retains the post over this time period and remains free from imprisonment for serious offenses, it’s unclear if he’ll relinquish his portfolio to Gantz as terms of their deal stipulate.

All along from early last year to now, he manipulated things to get his way, his tactics likely to continue as long as he remains in power.

Yet Israel’s High Court could disrupt his best laid plans by disqualifying him from serving as prime minister if convicted of charges against him.

If this occurs, new elections would be held, returning things to an unsettled status quo.

Many Gantz supporters feel betrayed by his capitulation to most Netanyahu demands.

While Gantz and remnants of his Blue and White party have some degree of checks and balances power under the deal agreed on, Netanyahu showed he’s wily enough to get his way most often.

A founding Blue and White party source said the Netanyahu/Gantz deal agreed on breached B & W’s “founding vision” while retaining some power over Netanyahu’s Likud.

Since COVID-19 outbreaks began in Israel on February 21, Netanyahu used the situation to his advantage, including postponement of his trial scheduled to begin on March 17.

Gantz agreed to let him proceed with annexation of whatever Palestinian land was signed off on by the Trump regime, including the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea that comprise about 30% of the West Bank.

Israeli plans for the area include further urban, agricultural, and energy development — Palestinians already prohibited from entering or using nearly 90% of the territory for any purpose.

Almost half of the Jordan Valley is called state land, most of the rest designated closed military zones, nature reserves, and land set aside for regional councils administered by local officials of settlements.

Annexation would formalize grand theft, more Palestinian land seizures to follow, according to Israel’s longterm plan for full control over all valued historic Palestinian territory.

After vowing never to be part of a coalition government headed by Netanyahu, Gantz yielded to his key demands — destroying B & W party unity along with his own standing in the eyes of many supporters.

Saying he’s “at peace with (himself) and…with (his) decision” defies reality.

Haaretz editors slammed his capitulation, saying his “lack of understanding is colossal,” adding:

“Instead of pursuing his wish to restore Israel to a path of statesman-like behavior and the rule of law, he may turn out to be the person extricating Netanyahu from his legal predicament.”

COVID-19 “is a smokescreen used by Netanyahu to maneuver (Gantz) into a unity government trap…turn(ing) his back on (supporters, letting) Netanyahu…use (him) to dismantle the rule of law.”

His actions likely prevent enactment of Knesset legislation that “would prohibit a person under criminal indictment from forming a government.”

His capitulation permitted what should be impermissible.

Instead of demanding that Netanyahu be held accountable for charges against him in trial proceedings as soon as possible, Gantz handed him a possible stay out of jail free pass.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Video: COVID-19: Closing Down the Economy Is Not the Solution

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 21, 2020

While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as  the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis,  its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty.

A Government Against the People

By Philip Giraldi, April 21, 2020

The 24/7 intensified media coverage of the coronavirus story has meant that other news has either been ignored or relegated to the back pages, never to be seen again. The Middle East has been on a boil but coverage of the Trump administration’s latest moves against Iran has been so insignificant as to be invisible. Meanwhile closer to home, the declaration by the ubiquitous Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that current president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro is a drug trafficker did generate somewhat of a ripple, as did dispatch of warships to the Caribbean to intercept the alleged drugs, but that story also died.

Iran Defies American Naval Power

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, April 21, 2020

Iran is already beginning to challenge American naval power. The country recently reported on the development of an advanced mapping and communication network for submarines. The network consists of a complex wireless communication system called “Waza” and integrates an entire national defense project: with land and sea forces inferior to those of enemy countries, such as the United States, Iran invests in its submarine power, since it has several different classes, many of which were built by Russia decades ago and are still capable of venturing into distant waters.

The Gates Foundation’s Vaccination Activism

By Eric Wagner, April 21, 2020

In the corona crisis, billionaire Bill Gates makes a high-profile appearance as a vaccination activist. The essence: a vaccine is the solution, it is only a matter of implementation. According to Gates, the G20 should now “address the logistics of a global immunisation project”. There seems to be little interest in further discussions and the consideration of alternatives. Time is pressing and people are relying on Gates, who had identified the danger of a pandemic early on and would therefore know what to do. How justified is this trust?

Desertions in the Desert: US Mercenaries at Syrian Base Are Leaving

By Steven Sahiounie, April 21, 2020

The last Syrian ‘rebel’ unit on the US payroll is dissolving by desertions.  A former senior officer in the US-backed mercenary unit Maghaweir al-Thowra (MAT) deserted his unit in Syria on April 14.  Samir Ghannam al-Khidr deserted the Eastern Syrian desert along with his whole family and 26 armed men.  The convoy was subject to a video on social media, which showed 8 pickups, 1 truck, 11 small arms, including 5 M-16 rifles, 4 large-caliber machine guns, 5 grenade launchers and 6-7 thousand rounds of ammunition.  All of the vehicles and weaponry were US military property. Al-Khidr left the illegal US base at Tanf, which is home to about 200 US soldiers, and about 100 mercenaries of MAT. Previous desertions occurred in early April.

Coronavirus Capitalism: Entrenching Dispossession and Dependency

By Colin Todhunter, April 21, 2020

Things in the US hardly merit optimism for radical change either. The Federal Reserve estimates over 47 million will lose their jobs in the US, taking unemployment to almost a third of the labour force. This is more than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, in a series of short explanatory films for the layperson, analyst John Titus shows that US capitalism and the privately owned Fed are not going to change their spots: Wall Street and its top executives will continue to enrich themselves, while the public will suffer throughout the duration of lockdown, which could persist in various forms for 18 months.

As US Shale Oil Plunges, Trump Admin Takes Aim at Venezuela

By Whitney Webb, April 21, 2020

With oil extremely cheap at the moment, some of the issues raised by shale oil bankruptcies are not necessarily of immediate concern while demand remains low. Yet, if enough U.S. domestic oil producers go bankrupt, once current lockdowns are relaxed and oil demand creeps back up to relatively normal levels, there will be less domestic oil available, despite the SPR. As a result, the U.S. will again have to look more to other countries in order to make up the difference. Though the media thus far has explored the economic effects of this eventuality, less attention – if any – has been given to how it will impact U.S. foreign policy.

The Agribusiness Model Is Failing

By F. William Engdahl, April 21, 2020

The imposition of unprecedented mass quarantine, school and restaurant closings, factory closings across most of the world is putting the focus on the alarming vulnerability of what is a global food supply chain to severe breakdown. Before the lockdown an estimated 60% of all food consumed in the United States today was consumed outside the home. That includes in restaurants, fast food places, schools, in university cafeterias, company cafeterias and the like. That has now been all but shut since March, creating huge disruptions to what had been a well-organized supply chain delivery. Large restaurants or company cafeterias receive supplies of everything from butter to meat in entirely different volumes and packing than a retail supermarket. A major vulnerability exists in the mammoth agribusiness concentrations known as CAFOs or Concentrated Agriculture Feeding Organizations.


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The transit industry was one of the most important in Latvia and was established during the Soviet era. In the first years of Latvia’s independence in the 1990’s, it was destroyed. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has significantly lowered Latvia’s gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for this year, estimating that Latvia will have the sharpest economic downturn in the Baltic States this year at a massive 8.6%. A massive part of this downturn is precisely because of the failure of the transit industry.

Although the IMF does not decipher what factors led it to forecast the sharpest decline in GDP in Latvia, the Baltic country has the largest share of air transport in the region and the decline in the aviation sector will be very large. The difficulties in the aviation sector are entirely the result of the coronavirus pandemic of course, but the situation is different with the transit sector. While a significant drop in turnover is observed in Latvian ports and railway transportation, the Klaipeda port in Lithuania achieved a record monthly turnover last month at 4.5 million tons.

This effectively means that coronavirus is not to blame and rather it was the deliberate destruction of the transit industry that is attributed to the U.S. sanctions imposed and implemented by the New Conservative Party against Russia. This is in addition to the changes in the port administration model and the dismissal of the Riga City Council.

In Latvia, common sense and economic benefits were sacrificed for the emotional joy of the anti-Russian elites who came to power and associated the country’s ports and railways as belonging to the wrong political ideas and Russia. The new party gave up €380 million for the electrification of Latvian Railways, thus permanently returning the transit sector to Lithuanians ports and transportation networks. Latvia’s political elites chose to destroy the country’s economy for ideological reasons.

The whole pathos in the first years of independence was aimed at the fact that industry is something “foreign” to the Latvian people. From the political elite’s view, industry in Latvia must be destroyed as it embodies so-called Soviet occupation and Russian invasion. Even agriculture could not be saved from these purges. The old agricultural structures were considered to be ideologically harmful and therefore were destroyed. Effectively Latvia has been de-industrialized in a crazed frenzy to also de-Sovietize their societies, but at what price?

Latvia gave up its industry because it believed that it could potentially be a pressure point against Russia on behalf of the West and with its blessing. During a meeting with the German and Baltic Chambers of Commerce in February, Latvian President Egils Levits, said that it is important his country considers itself a part of the West but can be a bridge to Russia. Levits also emphasized that Latvia is an active member of the European Union and participates in discussion of all issues.

“We are thinking about the specific situation of Latvia so that these common decisions would benefit Latvia, but at the same time we also think about the fact that these common decisions in the EU would benefit the entire EU,” the President emphasized. In his view, this is the right approach, although it is more difficult for a small country to implement than for larger countries. “Therefore, our foreign policy and also our European policy is based on multilateralism,” he claimed.

Such positive comments towards the EU is rather just gestures in the hope to get money from the Bloc as Latvia surely enters into an economic crisis. The concept of connecting the East and West through the Baltics was developed by the Baltic states themselves who tried to convince the EU that they knew Russia best because they were part of the Soviet Union. However, such a bridge is only necessary when contacts do not exist between the West and Russia, and Moscow has never needed a mediator nor has anyone appointed Riga for this role.

Latvia has never been a mediator in relations between Russia and the EU in the political sense, but has acted as a transit hub for the supply of cargo and energy resources from Russia. However, even this is being reduced now in favor of Lithuania as the Latvian government continues to follow an aggressively anti-Russian policy.

With Riga not needed as a bridge between East and West, and Latvia now a deindustrialized country, it is now facing one of its worse economic crises that it created itself despite the coronavirus pandemic. It is also unlikely that the EU will bail them out since expansion into the Baltics was already achieved and Brussels has its eyes set on the Balkans instead.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Unprecedented: “Oil Prices Can Go Negative”

April 21st, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Last month, analyst Paul Sankey warned that “(o)il prices can go negative” in today’s environment. On March 18, he wrote:

“The physical reality of the market is that oil is pumped out of the ground and has to be consumed or stored.” 

“When the cost of storage goes high enough — or space runs out — companies might pay customers to take it.”

He wasn’t alone in this assessment, reports weeks earlier saying prices indeed can go below zero because of falling demand and increasing supply.

With global storage capacity close to its limit, negative oil prices if sustained would force producers to pay customers to take deliveries because the cost is cheaper than shutting down wells.

On Monday, the May spot futures contract for WTI (West Texas Intermediate oil) closed at an astonishing negative $37.63 a barrel, an unprecedented price collapse.

Commenting on what happened, oil analyst Louise Dickson said “(i)t’s like trying to explain something that is unprecedented and seemingly unreal,” adding:

“(M)idstream players are now paying ‘buyers’ to take oil volumes away as the physical storage limit will be reached. And they are paying top dollar.”

On Monday, the June futures contract for WTI closed down 18.3% at $20.03 a barrel, a figure unlikely to be a floor if economic conditions remain weak.

Last week, Schlumberger CEO Olivier Le Peuch said Q II is “likely to be the most uncertain and disruptive quarter that the (oil) industry has ever seen.”

A Halliburton assessment was grim, saying it “expect(s) activity in North America land to sharply decline during the second quarter and remain depressed through year-end, impacting all basins.”

Analyst Edward Moya said “no one wants to take delivery because storage capacity is getting close to being reached.”

Analyst Phil Flynn noted “demand ground to a standstill.” The Russian/Saudi led deal among global producers to cut output by 10 million barrels a day did nothing to stabilize prices because far greater production cuts are needed.

On Monday, Brent crude for June delivery closed at $25.57 a barrel because it’s more seaborne than WTI that’s mostly supplied more quickly via pipelines.

On Tuesday, AP News reported that “(t)he world is awash in oil. There’s little demand for it, and we’re running out of places to put it.”

On Monday, WTI crude for May delivery ranged from an astonishing +$15 to -$40 a barrel, closing near its low price.

Production continues daily at a slower pace. Output has to go somewhere, but to where if storage capacity is near its limit.

While one day’s price volatility is technical, according to analysts, negative WTI prices reflect economic weakness that’s likely to be around for some time.

Some pressure may be relieved by filling the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to capacity.

Gasoline is the cheapest in many years because most people aren’t driving, the same true for jet fuel because of limited air travel.

According to CNBC, the overnight price for late May delivery of WTI is $35.77 a barrel, a figure likely to swing widely in trading during the day and what follows.

Its website showed an image of parked commercial passenger planes sitting idle that normally would be in service. A second image showed a near-deserted passenger airline terminal.

As bad as things are at a time of weak economic conditions, OilPrice.com struck a positive note, saying:

“(N)egative oil prices do not mean curtains for the oil industry.”

The higher-priced June contract that expires May 19 “is a better representation of the true oil market” even though it shows price weakness because of low demand, adding:

“While (Monday’s spot oil prices) “may not be as bleak as they seem, there is still trouble ahead for the oil industry.”

Since around mid-March, about 260 US rigs were shut down for lack of demand, the number expected to rise.

If oil prices stay well below the cost of production for some time, many producers will likely declare bankruptcy — some reorganizing to continue operating, others shutting down permanently.

According to Rystad Energy, hundreds of oil exploration and production companies will go out of business if $20 crude continues through 2021.

It’s an ideal time for the Trump regime to launch a new Middle East war or escalate ongoing ones in Syria, Yemen, and/or Libya that surely would increase oil prices significantly.

Hard times for oil producing nations and companies are temporary.

But in a weak economic environment that could get weaker and stay soft throughout 2020 or longer, low prices may be around for some time.

Global economic shutdowns are uncharted territory. When they end, things won’t likely be as they were before current troubles began.

Privileged interests are benefitting from the current environment at the expense of ordinary people in the West and elsewhere.

They face greater poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and overall deprivation.

Hard times for them have been getting harder since the neoliberal 90s, especially post-9/11, and now economic shutdowns, countless millions struggling to get by.

For the vast majority of ordinary people, in the West and elsewhere, the outlook ahead is bleak.

Today’s perfect storm will likely cause more harm to more people than global wars, most of it under the radar so the true toll won’t likely be reported.

Expect the worst, what’s likely coming this year and what follows.

I remember and wrote about numerous economic downturns and wars, including WW I and II, the latter I remember well before the television age.

Long ago, I never imagined anything like what’s happening now and believe it’s not accidental.

Opportunities abounded for me what I entered the workforce in 1960.

The environment for today’s youths in the US and West is bleak.

Opportunities I had don’t exist for most people, just for the privileged few.

It’s sad testimony to America gone off the rails — never beautiful throughout its history.

Today it’s never been more unsafe and unfit to live in for the vast majority of people.

Both right wings of the one-party state are enemies of ordinary people at home and abroad.

The nation I grew up in no longer exists, things getting disturbingly worse, not better — a grim assessment for what likely lies ahead.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

As the nation struggles to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration has approved an antibiotic considered critical in the ongoing fight against the global tuberculosis pandemic for use as a pesticide on California citrus groves.

This marks the third straight year the so-called “emergency” approval has been granted for use of streptomycin to fight citrus greening disease in citrus trees like oranges, tangerines and grapefruits in California. As has become routine under the Trump Environmental Protection Agency over the past year, the emergency approval was not publicly announced but quietly posted to agency’s Emergency Exemption Database.

“The Trump administration’s shortsighted approval of medically important antibiotics as pesticides has very dangerous long-term consequences,” said Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These are lifesaving medicines, and we risk losing them forever if we keep using them as short-term fixes for reoccurring agricultural diseases.”

The EPA’s own analysis indicates that the widespread use of streptomycin could have negative long-term effects on all mammals that forage in treated fields, including chipmunks and rabbits. The EPA has also not analyzed how this change could affect endangered and threatened species that forage or nest in these citrus groves, or that rely on waterways contaminated by the antibiotic.

The emergency approvals are also controversial because they sidestep the typical pesticide safety review and because the World Health Organization has discouraged overuse of this antibiotic. Streptomycin is considered “critically” important to treating human disease, such as multidrug resistant tuberculosis.

In part because the misuse of antibiotics has fueled resistance in tuberculosis-causing bacteria, the global TB pandemic still kills more than 1 million people around the world every year. In the United States antibiotic resistance results in the deaths of an estimated 35,000 people every year.

The Center is currently litigating the EPA’s failure to release documents relating to concerns expressed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration about the use of antibiotics on agricultural crops.

“It makes no sense that, even as we struggle to find a treatment for COVID-19, the Trump administration is promoting overuse of an important drug in the fight against another pandemic,” said Donley. “The coronavirus crisis should serve as a wake-up call about the high costs of ignoring our leading scientists. We can fool ourselves, but we can’t fool nature.”

Background

Both the European Union and Brazil have banned the use of streptomycin as a pesticide on agricultural plants.

Yet for years the U.S. EPA has routinely allowed use of a range of unapproved pesticides, including antibiotics, under the pretext of an “emergency” when no actual emergency exists, according to an analysis by the Center.

The EPA has used the emergency exemption to approve the use of medically important antibiotics on citrus across 23,000 acres in California and more than 330,000 acres of Florida farmland.

The state of Florida has received an emergency exemption for streptomycin for the previous five years for use on citrus crops. Its current emergency approval is set to expire at the end on this year.

The emergency approvals come as the EPA has proposed a blanket approval that could see as much as 650,000 pounds of streptomycin used across half a million acres of citrus fields throughout the United States. By contrast only about 14,000 pounds of that antibiotic class are used for human medicinal purposes each year. If finalized this blanket approval would no longer require states to apply for emergency exemptions.

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SouthFront offers a scientific-based survey providing an in-depth look at the real death toll statistics and the spread of SARS-COV-2.

1. The research issued by the Bonn University Hospital

The research issued by the Bonn University Hospital and made by the group of scientists including Prof. Dr. Hendrik Streeck (Institute of Virology), Prof. Dr. Gunther Hartmann (Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, Spokesman for the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2), Prof. Dr. Martin Exner (Institute for Hygiene and Public Health), Prof. Dr. Matthias Schmid (Institute for Medical Biometry, Computer Science and Epidemiology).

In the framework of the research, all residents of Germany’s Gangelt were tested on the existence of SARS-CoV-2 infection and antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.

Gangelt is one of the most COVID-19-affected German municipalities. It is believed that the outbreak was caused by the carnival held on February 15, 2020. After the event, several people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

Preliminary result: the existing immunity was determined at about 14% (IgG against SARS-CoV2, method specificity>, 99%). About 2% of people had current SARS-CoV-2 infection detected by the method of polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The overal infection rate (the presence of a current infection or antibody in the body) was about 15%. The mortality (mortality rate), based on the total number of infected people in the Gangelt community, is approximately 0.37% based on the preliminary data of this study. The mortality rate based on the total population in the Gangelt is currently 0.06%.

2. A new Epidemiological bulletin from German Robert Koch Institute

A new Epidemiological bulletin from German Robert Koch Institute – “Estimation of the current development of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Germany” issued on April 15 confirms that:

in general, it is true that not all infected people have symptoms, not all who has symptoms go to a doctor’s office, not all who go to the doctor are tested and not all who test positive are recorded in a survey system. In addition, a certain amount of time passes between all these individual steps, so that no data collection system, however good, can make a statement about the current infection process without additional assumptions and calculations.”

Meanwhile, April 18 Daily Situation Report of the Robert Koch Institute shows that 86% of deaths, but only 18% of all cases, occurred in persons aged 70 years or older. The median age was 82 years. Pneumonia was reported in 2,764 cases (3%). COVID-19 related outbreaks continue to be reported in nursing homes and hospitals. In some of these outbreaks, the number of deaths is relatively high. The current estimate is R= 0.8 (95% confidence interval: 0.7-1.0).

3. On 13 April, the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, published its third ad hoc statement on the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany (the group of 26 Prof. Doctors)

The statement, which supplements its two predecessors, describes strategies for a stepwise lifting or modification of measures against the pandemic, taking into account psychological, social, legal, pedagogic and economic aspects. The document recommends in particular the re-opening of classroom primary and lower-level secondary education as soon as feasible, giving priority to the former, with observation of hygiene and physical distancing measures.

SARS-CoV-2 Mortality Is Distorted

SARS-CoV-2 Mortality Is Distorted

The National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina takes a stand with psychological, social, the legal, educational and economic aspects of the pandemic, following key recommendations:

  • Optimizing the basis for decision-making: The data collection, which has so far been largely symptom-based, leads to a distorted perception of the infection process. It is therefore important to collect the infection and substantially improve the immunity status of the population, in particular through representative and regional survey of infection and immunity status.
  • Enable a differentiated assessment of the risks both for social and individual dealings with the corona pandemic, contextual classification of the available data is important. Data to serious illnesses and deaths must be compared to those of other illnesses and related to the expected risk of death in individual age groups. A realistic one. Presentation of the individual risk must be clearly illustrated. This also applies to systemic risks such as overloading the health system and negative consequences for the economy and society.
  • To cushion psychological and social impacts: measures taken for implementation intrinsic motivation based on self-protection and solidarity is more important than the threats of sanctions. Providing a realistic schedule and a clear package of measures for gradual normalization increases the controllability and predictability for everyone. This helps to minimize negative psychological the physical andeffects of the current stress. Firs of all, aid and support should be provided for high-risk groups, such as children, who are particularly affected by the consequences of current restrictions in difficult family situations or people who are exposed to domestic violence must be provided become.

There are more another recommendations in the third ad hoc statement of the German National Academy of Sciences that now are being implemented by German leadership.

4. New research from the United States

Group of authors from Stanford University, Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Health Education is Power, Inc., The Compliance Resource Group, Inc., Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Bogan Associates, 8 ARL BioPharma, Inc., Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory, Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine measured the seroprevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County and made some conclusions.

The data received and conclusions of the US team are well corresponding with the research of German Bonn University Hospital taking into account that the German research came out on April 9, and the American one on April 14, with the reasonable assumption that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the German city of Gangelt began at least two week earlier (February 15, 2020) than in the American Santa Clara.

The US researchers estimated that under the three scenarios for test performance characteristics, the population prevalence of COVID-19 in Santa Clara ranged from 2.49% (95CI 1.80-3.17%) to 4.16% (2.58-5.70%). These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases. Conclusions. The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.

5. More data from the United States

Between March 22 and April 4, 2020, a total of 215 pregnant women delivered infants at the New York–Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center. All the women were screened on admission for symptoms of Covid-19. Four women (1.9%) had fever or other symptoms of Covid-19 on admission, and all 4 women tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 1). Of the 211 women without symptoms, all were afebrile on admission. Nasopharyngeal swabs were obtained from 210 of the 211 women (99.5%) who did not have symptoms of Covid-19; of these women, 29 (13.7%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. Thus, 29 of the 33 patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at admission (87.9%) had no symptoms of Covid-19 at presentation.

Our use of universal SARS-CoV-2 testing in all pregnant patients presenting for delivery revealed that at this point in the pandemic in New York City, most of the patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at delivery were asymptomatic, and more than one of eight asymptomatic patients who were admitted to the labor and delivery unit were positive for SARS-CoV-2. Although this prevalence has limited generalizability to geographic regions with lower rates of infection, it underscores the risk of Covid-19 among asymptomatic obstetrical patients. Moreover, the true prevalence of infection may be underreported because of false negative results of tests to detect SARS-CoV-2.

6. Hypothesis and justification from a Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the Milan State University, Italy

The real number of COVID-19 cases in the country could be 5,000,0000 (compared to the 119,827 confirmed ones) according to a study which polled people with symptoms who have not been tested, and up to 10,000,000 or even 20,0000,000 after taking into account asymptomatic cases, according to Carlo La Vecchia, a Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the Milan State University.

This number would still be insufficient to reach herd immunity, which would require 2/3 of the population (about 40,000,000 people in Italy) having contracted the virus.

The number of deaths could also be underestimated by 3/4 (in Italy as well as in other countries) [source], meaning that the real number of deaths in Italy could be around 60,000.

If these estimates were true, the mortality rate from COVID-19  would be much lower (around 25 times less) than the case fatality rate based solely on laboratory-confirmed cases and deaths, since it would be underestimating cases (the denominator) by a factor of about 1/100 and deaths by a factor of 1/4.

7. SARS-CoV-2 mortality in Italy

As for now, it is a well-known publicly recognized fact that Italy labels anyone who died with a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, regardless of the real causes of death, as the victim of the pandemic. At the same time, the objective fact is the increase of the overall mortality in Italy. According to Istat (Istituto nazionale di statistica), there is a general increase in mortality from all causes ⩾20% from March 1 to April 4, 2020 compared with the average for the same period in 2015-2019. Bergamo is at the top in the growth of mortality among municipalities, + 382.8% of deaths.

However, the mortality grew not only and not so much from the causes associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection.

A few examples:

  • Albino town: from February 23 to March 27, 2019 – 24 people died; from February 23 to March 27, 2020 – 145 people (SARS-CoV-2 causes – 30 dead).
  • Skandzoroshyate town: from January to March 2019 – 45 deaths; from January to March 2020 – 135 (SARS-CoV-2 – 20 dead).
  • San Pellegrino Terme town: March 2019 – 2 deaths, March 2020 – 45 (SARS-CoV-2 – 11 dead).
  • These numbers could be explained by the lack of SARS-CoV-2 tests in the specified period.

At the same time, the mortality from other diseases increased significantly in the comparative period of April 1-4, 2020 compared to April 1-4, 2019. The lack of transparence of the Italian system also should be noted. For example, on April 17, Istat said that at that moment it was impossible to draw any conclusions about the increase of the mortality in Italy in general (as well as in regions and provinces) from the data obtained by Istat for the first four months of 2020 and compare it with the same period in 2019. These graphs and tables show statistics:

SARS-CoV-2 Mortality Is Distorted

8. SARS-CoV-2 mortality in Spain

Spanish Minister of Health Salvador Illa stated that every dead person, that tested positively to SARS-CoV-2, is considered as a SARS-CoV-2 death.

The mathematical model employed by the University of Carlos III in Madrid (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, UC3M) demonstrates that in the last decade in Spain, an average of 1,150 people die from all causes every day in March. According to the records of acts of civil status, from March 16 (the day quarantine began), the number of daily deaths from all causes began to increase, sometimes reaching 1,400 per day. From March 17 to March 30, 21,243 deaths were recorded in Spain. This is 5,398 more than the prediction based on the extrapolation of data from previous years. The forecasted number for the same period is 15,844 – 34.1% less. At the same time, the total number of deaths from whom SARS-CoV-2 during the period from March 17 to March 30, 2020 was 7,591 people. This is a consequence of the general recognition of SARS-CoV-2 as the cause of deaths regardless of the actual situation. In any case, there is no exponential growth of the overall mortality in Spain or Italy.

Conclusions

In this survey, we demonstrated the researches and approaches of about 100 eminent scientists from around the world. In general, they agree that the current statistical data does not reflect the actual state of affairs, and the publicly distributed media estimates of the mortality rate are at least incorrect, and do not correspond to the actual picture.

The actual number of people with SARS-CoV-2 infection or people that already passed through COVID-19 early-stage or without symptoms is several dozen times higher than the public numbers show.

This is primarily due to the approaches and scope of testing. The public numbers have little to do with science. This is, to a greater extent, either media or politically motivated data. You should also consider the factor of a special picture of the course of the disease, which affects medical statistics (RKI Epidemiological bulletins).

Accordingly, the real mortality rate from SARS-CoV-2 is 25-60 times less than the figures presented to us by MSM and a number of governments.

The number of people with SARS-CoV-2 virus, but without the COVID-19 disease or with a mild form of the disease, according to various estimates, ranges from 85% to 95%. This group, as a rule, does not fall into official statistics, as it is not tested, not hospitalized, and does not seek medical help.

The negative consequences for life and health of people from ill-conceived social measures can at times surpass the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2. There has been a significant increase in the mortality from diseases unrelated to SARS-CoV-2 already.

Countries, whose leadership works closely with scientists, consistently and quickly responds to changes in the situation and the emergence of new data, will receive a huge advantage in the post-COVID-19 world.

The current actions of politicians in a number of countries are difficult to explain with anything other than incompetence or deliberate actions to achieve their personal/clan political ambitions or promote interests of external actors.

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Trump caught his political opponents flatfooted when he endorsed the patriotic protests against several Democrat Governors’ unreasonable quarantine demands, channeling the nascent Color Revolution spirit nationwide to show the rest of his compatriots that he truly has the people’s support as he gradually reopens America, which was a strategic twist to World War C that also represents his greatest counterstrike against the “deep state’s” Hybrid War on his country.

“Making America Great Again” One Protest At A Time

Americans of all political dispositions were surprised when Trump tweeted his support for the patriotic protests against several Democrat Governors’ unreasonable quarantine demands late last week, with his followers proud that their nascent Color Revolution attempts attracted the President’s attention of all people while his critics like Washington Governor Inslee claimed that he was “fomenting domestic rebellion“. The author asked at the beginning of the month, “Can Color Revolutions Stop The Coming COVID World Order?“, concluding that it would be dangerous for Americans to organize in support of their rights and the economy’s accelerated reopening unless they had the tacit backing of one of the US’ “deep state” factions. That, for as unlikely as it was to ever happen, is exactly what took place after the President himself threw his backing behind their growing protest movement. He sympathized with their civil disobedience against the ridiculous measures imposed upon them such as the Michigan Governor’s prohibition on seed sales and gatherings of any size, the Virginia Governor’s efforts to exploit this crisis in order to take away people’s Second Amendment rights, the closure of some churches during Easter, and police harassment of citizens who are self-isolating in public places, among many other examples.

“Liberating” America From Democrat Tyranny

Trump’s brazen call for Americans to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”, and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” were notable for only targeting states led by Democrat Governors even though other protests were taking place in those run by Republicans, leading some observers to suggest that the he had ulterior political motives in calling out those three specifically. That might very well be the case, which would actually be a shrewdly strategic move by him in three key swing states whose people are divided like never before over their Governors’ harsh quarantine measures. The protesters succeeded in what they set out to achieve, which was to draw national attention to their plight, casting their state leaders in the worst light imaginable after Trump seized the opportunity to portray them as tyrants taking advantage of a global pandemic to expand their power beyond all reasonable limits per his deeply held belief that the Democrats are ironically anti-democratic to the core. The protests also coincided with his plan to “Open Up America Again“, which is regarded as long overdue by his supporters but dangerously premature by his detractors.

The COVID Controversy

The crux of the controversy comes down to the questionable danger of COVID-19. The virus is extremely contagious and can worryingly incubate for up to two weeks before patients display symptoms, during which time they can still spread it to at-risk members of the population such as the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. This is understandably a cause for serious concern, though on the other hand, the argument can be made that it doesn’t necessitate shutting down what was hitherto the world’s best-ever economy, especially when some strongly believe that it would have been more reasonable to recommend that only those vulnerable members of society stay home instead of everyone else doing the same too. The case has been put forth that a better policy in hindsight would have been to quickly respond to the country’s hot spots such as New York, possibly imposing a comparatively stricter health regime on its residents out of an abundance of caution but nevertheless continuing to keep the economy open. This debate is so fierce because many Americans don’t have the financial wherewithal to weather a sudden period of unemployment that could seemingly last indefinitely, which is all the more stressful because they’ve seen Trump’s disputes with the “deep state” play out on their television screens almost daily over his desire to responsibly reopen the economy as soon as possible.

The Brouhaha Over Hydroxychloroquine

The President pushes hydroxychloroquine as a prophylaxis and potential treatment, but he’s regularly rebuffed by the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Fauci. The author wrote about this more in detail in his earlier piece about “Hydroxychloroquine & The Hybrid War On Trump’s America“, which explained how this drug is being politicized by Dr. Fauci and the anti-Trump members of the country’s permanent military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other bureaucracies (“deep state”). The “skeptics” (whether they sincerely are in this respect or are just faking it for show) assert that hydroxychloroquine hasn’t been clinically trialed to the extent that they feel comfortable recommending it to the American public, whereas its enthusiasts like Trump insist that it’s better to give it a try considering its reported successes in other countries than to let people get sick and possibly die anyhow. On the political level, hydroxychloroquine represents hope for responsibly reopening the American economy, which is why Trump is in favor of it so as to improve his re-election prospects while his enemies are against it in order to ruin his aforesaid chances. With or without this drug’s mass distribution into society, however, Trump took the bold move to issue federal guidelines for gradually reopening the economy, which is what his supporters wanted after they realized that its shutdown is largely a “deep state” plot.

The People vs. The “Deep State”

Sensing which way the wind was blowing in anticipation of Trump once again standing up to his “deep state” foes, protests started breaking out nationwide against some states’ draconian lockdown measures in the run-up to him releasing his plan to “Open Up America Again”, which dealt a powerful political blow to their targeted Democrat Governors and had a tremendous effect on shaping perceptions nationwide once the President publicly took up their cause with his surprise tweets. However risky it might be to gradually reopen the economy despite COVID-19’s ultra-infectious nature, Trump can now point to the passionate grassroots support that he has for this policy, which Americans are literally protesting in support of for simple economic and political reasons. In a sense, these Americans felt compelled to resort to Color Revolution tactics after seeing their President’s daily disputes with the “deep state” over the question of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness, realizing that their leader needs as much support as he can muster if he’s to continue his crusade against the Democrat-aligned “deep state’s” unprecedented plot to oust him in November by — as they see it — purposely killing the economy through their deliberate overreaction to COVID-19. With the people behind him, they knew that Trump would soon thereafter come out hard against the “deep state”, which is exactly what he’s done.

Concluding Thoughts

Trump’s patriotic Color Revolution call was therefore a strategic twist of the greatest magnitude imaginable during World War C since it turned the tables on his “deep state” foes by showing them just how much grassroots support he has for gradually reopening the economy despite their fearmongering about hydroxychloroquine and the lingering danger of COVID-19. After resupplying the nation’s hospitals with thousands of ventilators and other related equipment, coordinating a nationwide response to this crisis through regular conference calls with his country’s Governors, and proving through statistical data that America has largely passed the peak of the outbreak except for a few hot spots, it was only natural that he’d take the lead to responsibly return everything to as “normal” as can be under the circumstances. Giving the states the prerogative to decide how this will unfold was a stroke of political genius that capitalizes on the best that America’s federal system has to offer while also redirecting the growing rage against the country’s shutdown away from his administration and towards the state ones instead. This was a brilliant counterstrike against the “deep state’s” Hybrid War on his country which instantly put tremendous grassroots pressure on many of his Democrat opponents and showed how skillfully he can evade his enemies’ most devious traps.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from Disney-ABC Television Group/flickr/cc

A Government Against the People

April 21st, 2020 by Philip Giraldi

The 24/7 intensified media coverage of the coronavirus story has meant that other news has either been ignored or relegated to the back pages, never to be seen again. The Middle East has been on a boil but coverage of the Trump administration’s latest moves against Iran has been so insignificant as to be invisible. Meanwhile closer to home, the declaration by the ubiquitous Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that current president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro is a drug trafficker did generate somewhat of a ripple, as did dispatch of warships to the Caribbean to intercept the alleged drugs, but that story also died.

Of more interest perhaps is the tale of the continued purge of government officials, referred to as “draining the swamp,” by President Donald Trump as it could conceivably have long-term impact on how policy is shaped in Washington. Prior to the virus partial lockdown, some of the impending shakeup within the intelligence community (IC) and Pentagon were commented on in the media, but developments since that time have been less reported, even when several inspectors-general were removed.

To be sure, Trump has good reason to hate the intelligence and national security community, which utterly rejected his candidacy and plotted to destroy both his campaign and, even after he was elected, his presidency. Whether one argues that what took place was due to a “Deep state” or Establishment conspiracy or rather just based on personal ambition by key players, the reality was that a number of top officials seem to have forgotten the oaths they swore to the constitution when it came to Donald Trump.

Be that as it may, beyond the musical chairs that have characterized the senior level appointments in the first three years of the Trump administration, there has been a concerted effort to remove “disloyal” members of the intelligence community, with disloyal generally being the label applied to holdovers from the Bush and Obama administrations. The February appointment of U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard “Ric” Grenell as interim Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a position that he will hold simultaneously with his ambassadorship, has been criticized from all sides due to his inexperience, history of bad judgement and partisanship. The White House is now claiming that he will be replaced by Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe after the interim appointment is completed.

Criticism of Grenell for his clearly evident deficiencies misses the point, however, as he is not in place to do anything constructive. He has already initiated a purge of federal employees in the White House and national security apparatus considered to be insufficiently loyal, an effort which has been supported by National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Many career officers have been sent back to their home agencies while the new appointees are being drawn from the pool of neoconservatives that proliferated in the George W. Bush administration. Admittedly some prominent neocons like Bill Kristol have disqualified themselves for service with the new regime due to their vitriolic criticism of Trump the candidate, but many others have managed to remain politically viable by keeping their mouths shut during the 2016 campaign. To no one’s surprise, many of the new employees being brought in are being carefully vetted to make sure that they are passionate supporters of Israel.

While it is not unusual for presidents to surround themselves with devoted yes-men, as Trump does with his spectacularly unqualified son-in-law Jared Kushner, his administration is nevertheless unusual in its tendency to apply an absolute loyalty litmus test to nearly everyone surrounding the president, even several layers down into the administration where employees are frequently apolitical. As the Trump White House has not been renowned for its adroit policies and forward thinking, the loss of expertise will be hardly noticeable, but there will certainly be a reduction in challenges to group think while replacing officials in the law enforcement and inspector general communities will mean that there will be no one in a high enough position to impede or check presidential misbehavior. Instead, high officials will be principally tasked with coming up with rationalizations to excuse what the White House does.

Trump’s recent claim that he has the sole authority to shut down or open up the country is clearly unconstitutional based on Article 10 and his warning that he will use his executive authority to adjourn the continuing virtual session of congress to enable him to approve hundreds of pending recess appointments plausibly qualifies as impeachable. His exhortation last Friday to his followers to “liberate” three states from the control of their governors is insurrection, a dangerous provocation that undeniably meets the requirement to qualify as a “high crime” as defined by the constitution.

Trump’s latest firings of top level officials are notable because they have involved two inspectors general. The first one to go was the inspector general of the intelligence community Michael Atkinson. Atkinson, who admittedly was not well liked because of his job responsibilities, was reportedly fired because he had been the official who had forwarded to Congress the initial whistleblower report on the notorious Ukrainian telephone call. Trump explained his decision in a letter to the two congressional intelligence committees: “As is the case with regard to other positions where I, as President, have the power of appointment … it is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General.”

It should be noted that Atkinson had a statutory obligation to forward the report to initiate congressional oversight of an alleged executive criminal action. After the firing, Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz rejected Trump’s criticism of Atkinson, saying he had handled the whistleblower matter correctly. It was, of course, a phone call that led to Donald Trump’s impeachment, so Atkinson had to go and Horowitz might just be next.

Subsequent to the defenestration of Atkinson, Trump went after another inspector general Glenn Fine, who was principal deputy IG at the Pentagon and had been charged with heading the panel of inspectors that would have oversight responsibility to certify the proper implementation of the $2.2 trillion dollar coronavirus relief package. As has been noted in the media, there was particular concern regarding the lack of transparency regarding the $500 billion Exchange Stabilizing Fund (ESF) that had been set aside to make loans to corporations and other large companies while the really urgently needed Small Business Loan allocation has been failing to work at all except for Israeli companies that have lined up for the loans. The risk that the ESF would become a slush fund for companies favored by the White House was real, and several investigative reports observed that Trump business interests might also directly benefit from the way it was drafted.

Four days after the firing of Atkinson, Fine also was let go to be replaced by the EPA inspector general Sean O’Donnell, who is considered a Trump loyalist. On the previous day the tweeter-in-chief came down on yet another IG, the woman responsible for Health and Human Services Christi Grimm, who had issued a report stating that the her department had found “severe” shortages of virus testing material at hospitals and “widespread” shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. Trump quipped to reporters “Where did he come from, the inspector general. What’s his name?”

On the following day, Trump unleashed the tweet machine, asking “Why didn’t the I.G., who spent 8 years with the Obama Administration (Did she Report on the failed H1N1 Swine Flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the Admirals, Generals, V.P. & others in charge, before doing her report. Another Fake Dossier!”

A comment about foxes taking over the hen house would not be amiss and one might also note that the swamp is far from drained. A concerted effort is clearly underway to purge anyone from the upper echelons of the U.S. government who in any way contradicts what is coming out of the White House. Inspectors general who are tasked with looking into malfeasance are receiving the message that if they want to stay employed, they have to toe the presidential line, even as it seemingly whimsically changes day by day. And then there is the irony of the heads at major agencies like Environmental Protection now being committed to not enforcing existing environmental regulations at all.

Most damaging to consumer interests, the rot has also affected the so-called regulatory agencies that are supposed to monitor the potentially illegal activities of corporations and industries to protect the public. As University of Chicago economist George Stigler several times predicted, under both Obama and Trump advocates of ostensibly “regulated” corporations have taken over every U.S. federal regulatory agency. The captured U.S. government regulators now represent the interests of the corporations, not the public. This is more like government by a criminal oligarchy rather than of, by and for The People.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

Featured image is from The Unz Review

Iran Defies American Naval Power

April 21st, 2020 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Iran is already beginning to challenge American naval power. The country recently reported on the development of an advanced mapping and communication network for submarines. The network consists of a complex wireless communication system called “Waza” and integrates an entire national defense project: with land and sea forces inferior to those of enemy countries, such as the United States, Iran invests in its submarine power, since it has several different classes, many of which were built by Russia decades ago and are still capable of venturing into distant waters.

However, a new and important step was taken by Tehran in its quest to fortify its maritime and underwater power. A few days ago, Iranian Admiral Hossein Khazandi claimed that his country is seriously considering the possibility of developing nuclear submarines. In his words:

“It would be negligent on the part of Iran not to consider the use of nuclear powered submarines […] So we are thinking about it”.

Iran already has a very well-equipped fleet of several submarines, from small submersibles to some capable of carrying more than 50 crew members and crossing turbulent waters. However, they all use conventional propulsion. Nuclear-powered submarines have better operational capabilities than conventional ones, as they do not need to refuel frequently and can operate autonomously for a longer period of time, explains the admiral. For this reason, the strategic importance of creating nuclear powered submarines must be discussed, as it would take Iranian maritime power to a new international level.

As we can see, there is still no exact definition of what will happen or when Iran intends to start developing such submarines, however, it is an agenda that is gaining more and more strength among the defense sectors of the country. The Iranian admiral said that Tehran has “its own capacity” to build larger vessels than the current light submarines of the Fateh class, which gives Iran greater freedom to proceed with its project, since it apparently does not depend on foreign technological aid.

A curious fact is that this discussion was heightened due to a recent episode in the Persian Gulf through which the world became aware of Iran’s naval potential. On April 15, Iranian Revolutionary Guard military speedboats carried out a series of maneuvers against several American ships that were patrolling the region. “IRGC boats repeatedly passed the bow and stern of American ships at an extremely close distance and at high speed,” says the American report, noting that some have passed within 50 meters of the bow of the expeditionary mobile ship USS Lewis B. Puller and 10 meters from USCGC Maui, the US Coast Guard patrol ship of the Island class. The other American ships surrounded by the naval siege were the USS Paul Hamilton guided-missile destroyer, the USS Firebolt and USS Sirocco patrol ships, and the Coast Guard’s USCGC Wrangell. The Navy notes that these ships participated in operations in international waters with US Army AH-64E Apache attack helicopters.

Western media reacted to Iran’s maneuvers with disapproval and scandal, considering it unacceptable and worthy of sanctions. The US Navy published notes stating that the siege of vessels conducted by the speedboats was extremely irresponsible, disregarding international navigation standards and creating a serious risk of miscalculation, which could result in collisions. However, little or no attention has been paid to the fact that Iran was only responding to foreign occupation in the region. After all, what standard of international law guarantees the US patrol power in the Gulf ensuring that there will be no response from countries in the region? Where does Washington’s international police power come from?

There is a whole context behind the siege conducted by Iran. The US has been conducting military operations in the Persian Gulf since the end of March, with the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and its attack group arriving on the waterway in early April. The Persian Gulf has become an area of ​​international risk, as it is located between the regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, the latter US ally, and for much of the world’s maritime oil trade to pass through the waterway. As has often been seen over the past few decades, when any regional tension arises between two sovereign National States, the United States sends out highly equipped troops with high destructive power to “guarantee international peace and security”. In fact, there is no interest in peace and security, Washington just wants to protect its interests – which specifically in this region coincide with the Saudi ones – and to that goal it sends its armed forces, but does not like it and reacts with fiery speeches when any other country also aims to guarantee its own interests, opposing to American impositions.

This time, however, the world saw a reaction with equivalent power. Iran surrounded American vessels as a warning to Washington to immediately cease to act as a global maritime police. Gradually, the United States is forced by its own conditions to yield to these reactions, as its strength to guarantee a hegemonic status is crumbling. In other times, Americans would react to Iran by attacking their speedboats and conducting amphibious attack operations, but now they know that they may no longer have the strength to conduct conflicts of this magnitude, so that reacting to Iran would be extremely irresponsible.

Gradually, the sea becomes multipolar.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Freedom of Speech: The Next Casualty of COVID-19?

April 21st, 2020 by Brett Jordan

The question of free speech in our current COVID climate is something that begs revisiting, particularly since there have been enough recent incidents on the global stage that have appeared to diminish the potency of that freedom. 

I believe most people generally hold to the value of freedom of opinion and that the majority of us, likewise, endorse the freedom to actually express that opinion.  Being a Canadian, I draw first from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically the assurance provided therein that every person has the fundamental freedom of “thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” (Section 2).  Furthermore, Section 24 of the same Charter assures us of the freedom to pursue legal courses of action if any of these freedoms are “infringed or denied” in any way.

Similarly, the First Amendment of the US Constitution clearly holds that “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” is a violation of constitutional rights.  As a general proclamation, the Constitution specifically “guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely” (Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School).

Unsurprisingly, if we look to our Atlantic neighbors in the United Kingdom we find an identical spirit of embraced freedoms carried over from the European Convention on Human Rights, not the least of which is the “right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” as well as “the right to freedom of expression” (The UK Constitution / House of Commons).

Furthermore, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”  This includes “the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (United Nations).

While we could easily draw further confirmations of similarly-held values across our shared planet, I think we get the point. Plainly speaking, those of us who subscribe to a healthy standard of civilization that is rooted in the highest ideals of Democracy tend to take issue with any person, agency or policy that either infringes or outright prohibits our freedom to speak our mind and share our perspectives.

Many of these constitutions do include some form of exemplary clause, however, which is intended to safeguard against any potential harms that may arise from such freedoms.  Hate speech, in particular, tends to be the most obvious example in this regard.  It is also understood that the US Constitution, by way of example, discourages any form of expressed opinion which may incite “imminent lawless action” (Walker, 2018, p.1).  Naturally, we would consider these to be sensible and preventative aspects of any constitution – the lack of which could arguably result in some pretty disastrous outcomes.

With these things in mind, I think it’s worth revisiting the way in which freedom of speech may be at risk of being undermined in light of our current global pandemic.  Specifically speaking, I’m referring to the emerging controversy surrounding alternative views of COVID-19 itself.

While my aim here is not to necessarily promote any particular viewpoint regarding the questionable origins of COVID-19, I do take serious issue with the way in which such viewpoints (as espoused by many individuals in the world) has been vilified, discouraged and ultimately forbidden on various social media platforms and online video sharing services. Not only that, I find it equally if not more disturbing that such censorship is being partnered with initiatives to replace such expressions with deliberate exposure to more culturally and corporate-approved perspectives.

For example, a lot of attention has recently been placed on a recent episode of London Real, which is a popular video podcast series hosted by Brian Rose.  On April 6th, Rose interviewed veteran conspiracy researcher David Icke, only to have YouTube pull the episode very soon afterwards – purportedly as a result of Icke’s comments linking COVID-19 with the rollout of 5G technology.  UK’s Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden reportedly placed pressure on Ofcom (the British communications regulator) to investigate and address the content which aired on that particular night.  Dowden himself is quoted as referring to Icke’s comments in the interview as “lunatic conspiracy theories,” and that “no sensible person would give them a moment’s thought” (Metro News UK, April 9, 2020).

Vimeo, a widely-used American video platform, also pulled the episode from their listing the day after it aired, presumably for similar reasons.  While the episode can still be viewed on the independent websites of both London Realand David Icke, platforms such as YouTube are tightening the reigns on any content that seems to question the official narrative of COVID-19, in addition to anything that attempts to draw a link between the alleged virus and 5G technology.  According to one of YouTube’s media spokespersons, the platform has “begun reducing recommendations of borderline content such as conspiracy theories related to 5G and coronavirus, that could misinform users in harmful ways”  (The Guardian, April 5th).

On April 16th, NBC released an article detailing how Facebook will be taking affirmative steps to curtail and redirect consumers away from posts that contain alternative views on the coronavirus, and ultimately towards information backed by the World Health Organization.  As the article explains:

“Users who have liked, commented on or otherwise reacted to coronavirus misinformation that Facebook has flagged and removed as “harmful” will be directed to a website debunking coronavirus myths from the World Health Organization.”

The NBC article took the liberty of blatantly labelling any non-WHO endorsed perspective as “misinformation,” “misleading claims,” “misinformed beliefs,” “false,” as well as a “massive infodemic.”  The article specifically uses the term “harmful” throughout its length and, like the majority of its mainstream media news counterparts the world over, generally delivers its message from the preconceived assumption that the official designation of COVID-19 is already scientifically proven and is therefore journalistic Gospel.  The very idea that there could be alternative medical, technological and social insights on this global pandemic is simply not entertained, and the official story continues to be held up.  Appropriately, the standard narrative is further reinforced through a virtual arsenal of shaming tactics, not the least of which is the FCC’s Brendan Carr’s recent diagnosis of a COVID-19 / 5G connection as being “straight from the most dangerous depths of tin foil hat land” (CNET News).

While an argument can be made that such alternative views may incite “lawless action” (referring to the reported destruction of 5G towers in both the UK and the Netherlands), I am convinced that this is essentially a red herring fallacy that has no more credibility than the idea that anti-vaccination opinions are leading to widespread arsons at pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities.  A reasonably intelligent consideration would regard this as borderline conflation, while also recognizing the immaturity of silencing a specific idea out of fear that it could trigger a whole array of undesirable behaviours.

But surely we have moved beyond this crude form of logic in our overall pursuit of Democracy, have we not?  I, for one, have no desire to retreat backwards.  Is not the calculated effort to censor and suppress alternative perspectives the more fundamental problem that we are dealing with here? And yes, I do understand how information which challenges the standard WHO position could be interpreted as potentially harmful to the more vulnerable members of our society, but I would argue that this perspective, likewise, is born out of mere assumption rather than unilaterally-accepted scientific fact.  I dare say it is regarded as fact merely because we are told it is so.  The reality is that it is simply the dominant perspective, and one which seems to carry an insidious and unprecedented contagion of censorship – the likes of which our culture seems to be more than happy to swallow under the oft-repeated mantra that “we’re all in this together.” Forgive my saying this, but I can’t help but be reminded of a certain US President who, not that long ago, uttered the words “you’re either with us or….”

May I politely challenge this mantra by questioning whether the idea of being “in this together” is actually referring to a genuine embracing of our human diversity (including our varied perspectives on such a huge issue), or simply just a uniform and unquestioned brand of obedience to something that we have not actually bothered to investigate properly? How many of us can’t help but inwardly cringe whenever we hear that hollowed-out phrase echoed from our radio stations and supermarket loudspeakers, as it reminds us not of our shared humanity – but rather of an assumed stance of ‘responsible’ behavior which, if not collectively adhered to, is akin to social homicide?

Don’t get me wrong.  While I remain skeptical to the official narrative, I’m not about to be flippant in how I behave with other people who are feeling nervous and vulnerable over this whole pandemic.  I’m not about to go around touching every piece of produce at the grocery store while licking my fingers in a gutsy show of bravado between each handling.  Nor am I about to ridicule others for following the prescribed social guidelines for physical distancing.  But that’s the whole point.  I think we need to give due credit to our fellow members of society as having the sense of decency and respect toward each other that they will not deliberately make others feel unsafe, regardless of whatever personal beliefs or opinions they may have.  In that sense, is such a broad pandemic of speech censorship really necessary?  Is that really where we are?

Maybe what I find particularly unfortunate is the way in which this culture of censorship has managed to bleed its way down to the surgical gloved-strewn street level of our everyday life.  My observation is that one is apt to face strong skepticism, if not outright disgust, when any alternative insight on COVID-19 is expressed in a social setting.  Speaking personally, there is a sense of utter disapproval that borders on religious exclusivity which – naturally – makes it challenging to believe that my nation’s Charter is fully on board with my inherent desire to search, question and share information that I feel might be of benefit to people.

Funny, but I thought we really were “in this together.”

Maybe that’s why I continue to feel driven to find out what “this” is really all about.

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Brett Jordan is a registered Social Worker working in an ER of a local hospital in Metro Vancouver, BC, and have been writing about issues of emotional and spiritual health.  

Featured image is from TruePublica

Trump Blames China for His Own Failings

April 21st, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

The US is a nation in longterm decline, a process ongoing for decades, notably post-9/11.

Its focus on militarism, war-making, corporate welfare, and police state harshness comes at the expense of economic and human development.

Other nations are rising, notably China, heading toward becoming the world’s leading economy, its political influence growing worldwide.

It’s a reality not going down well in the US, what lies behind Trump’s China bashing and trade war.

US hostility toward Beijing is all about its sovereign independence, growing economic, industrial, and technological development, along with its increasing preeminence on the world stage.

Will US anti-China rage lead to war? What’s unthinkable is possible because hardline Republican and Dem leaders tolerate no challenges to US global dominance that’s waning.

Did COVID-19 spring like Topsy or was its emergence planned? US intelligence and the Pentagon knew of the threat long ago.

The US warned Israel and other allies of possible outbreaks last year.

According to ABC News, a November 2019 Pentagon National Center for Medical Intelligence warned of widespread coronavirus outbreaks.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that US intelligence warned the Netanyahu regime of the threat posed by the coronavirus.

According to analyst Kevin Barrett, the US “torpedo(ed) the entire global economy to break the global supply chains so that the economy would become less globalized and individual countries would be looking elsewhere rather than to China for their goods.”

The strategy aims “to stop the rise of China to number one world power status. To do that it has to slow down Chinese economic growth considerably.”

China owns over $1 trillion worth of US Treasuries. Does the Trump regime intend confiscating them to pay damages to US businesses harmed by COVID-19— what Beijing had nothing to do with?

Will Sino/US relations be damaged longterm because of intensified Trump regime’s war on the country by other means?

According to Bloomberg News on Saturday, Trump is increasingly blaming China for COVID-19 outbreaks.

“(W)e’re doing investigations (sic),” he said. If Beijing was “knowingly responsible…there should be consequences.”

The die is cast, the Trump regime blame game taking shape.  Congressional legislation is in the works to let COVID-19 businesses and ordinary Americans sue China for damages.

Not a shred of credible evidence suggests it’s responsibility for global outbreaks. Facts never interfere with US intentions.

Trump falsely claimed “(o)ur relationship with China was good until they did this (sic).”

“The question was asked, ‘would you be angry at China?’ Well, the answer might very well be a very resounding yes, but it depends: was it a mistake that got out of control, or was it done deliberately?”

Falsely claiming the latter is where things are heading.

A Trump campaign fund-raising email accused China of lying about the origin on COVID-19 outbreaks.

On Sunday, China’s Global Times said “(e)very move to stigmatize (the country) evokes our historical memory,” adding:

“Many Chinese netizens have responded strongly,” saying:

“They want compensation? If they want to get even with China, let us start from the damage China suffered since the first Opium War in 1840!”

A Global Times editorial slammed US COVID-19 Big Lies. In an election year with public support for Trump waning, based on recent polls, he’s going all-out to blame China for COVID-19 while falsely claiming he’s doing a great job to combat it.

Polar opposite is true on both counts. On Friday, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said the following:

“Trumpist quackery takes on a few key forms, one being that the Chinese government is responsible for unleashing the virus on the world as some act of germ warfare…”

Another US view is that “scientific wisdom on responding to the crisis is liberal fakery meant to unnecessarily cripple the economy,” adding:

“We can’t disregard these as lunatic conspiracy theories on the fringes.”

“These speculations, rumors and outright lies have a way of starting in partisan media and bubbling up to a level where they affect our political discourse and public health.”

Lunatic fringe claims of Chinese biological warfare show how far extremists in Washington and establishment media are willing to go — facts never backing their claims because none support them.

US media-spread disinformation shifted from the debunked bat theory to COVID-19 escaping or released from a Chinese bio-lab. No evidence supports either claim.

When repeated endlessly, Big Lies take on a life of their own, notably about China in the current environment, the convenient bogeyman of the times.

Carpet bombing Americans with fake news about the country will likely worsen ahead.

Most people are none the wiser, believing what’s pounded into their minds by establishment media with no credibility.

COVID-19 will pass in the fullness of time.

Harm to ordinary people and Sino/US relations will surely be long-lasting — to the detriment of public welfare and world peace.

A Final Comment

According to MarketWatch, “US  public opinion toward China is at an all-time low, and it’s not solely about the coronavirus,” adding:

“Americans…blame China’s government for the pandemic and believe Beijing can’t be trusted on a range of issues.”

A March Gallup poll showed two-thirds of Americans view China unfavorably.

According to senior Gallup editor Jeffrey Jones:

“Americans’ views of China have rarely been positive over the past four decades, but they have never held the country in lower regard than they do today.”

Poll results were published in early March before COVID-19 outbreaks began escalating greatly.

Current sentiment among Americans toward China is likely less favorable than weeks earlier.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Gates Foundation’s Vaccination Activism

April 21st, 2020 by Eric Wagner

In the corona crisis, billionaire Bill Gates makes a high-profile appearance as a vaccination activist. The essence: a vaccine is the solution, it is only a matter of implementation. According to Gates, the G20 should now “address the logistics of a global immunisation project”. There seems to be little interest in further discussions and the consideration of alternatives. Time is pressing and people are relying on Gates, who had identified the danger of a pandemic early on and would therefore know what to do. How justified is this trust?

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The foundation of former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” (BMGF), is controlled by its three trustees: Bill and Melinda Gates and hedge fund manager Warren Buffett. The foundation holds assets worth about $50 billion – about half of which originates from Buffett – and finances a large number of charitable projects.

Second only to the USA, the BMGF is one of the largest donors to the World Health Organization (WHO) and paid it more than $200 million in 2018 – more than Germany, France and Sweden combined in the same period. But this is not the only way in which the WHO is financed by Gates. GAVI, formerly known as the “Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation”, provided the WHO with an additional $150 million in 2018. One of GAVI’s main donors is again the BMGF, with $1.5 billion in 2016, for example.

It can therefore be said that the BMGF and thus the Gates family and Warren Buffett are the main source of income for the WHO through direct and indirect channels, which raises questions about its independence from these sources of finance. In addition, the BMGF also provided funding for the establishment of the “Coalition for Epidemic Prevention Innovation” (CEPI), which is concerned with the research and development of vaccines, amounting to around $100 million in 2017. In addition, the Foundation regularly supports non-governmental organisations such as PATH, which are involved in the development of vaccination technologies, with millions of dollars in funding. The list of BMGF’s beneficiaries also includes the largest global pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Aventis. The comprehensive influence of the BMGF in the vaccination sector is therefore obvious.

“Crisis-related” funding

In the Corona crisis, it is striking that institutions that currently play an important role are likewise supported by the BMGF. For example, Johns Hopkins University which maintains the worldwide corona statistics that are disseminated in all media, regularly receives large donations. In the last ten years only, more than $200 million have been transferred to the university by the Gates Foundation. The purpose of the donations was family planning programs.

In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute as the responsible national epidemiological agency received $250,000 in November 2019. The Charité in Berlin (employer of Prof. Christian Drosten, one of the most important government advisors during the crisis) received a total of more than $300,000 in 2019 and 2020. As with the WHO, the presumption of a conflict of interest is obvious if these institutions or their employees make policy recommendations that have an impact on companies that the Foundation sponsors or in which it invests for financial purposes.

In the meantime, the German website “Frag den Staat” (“Ask the State”) has been used to enquire about contacts and financial connections between the Federal Ministry of Healthor the Charité and the BMGF, the results of which could be revealing.

The Foundation’s activities in Germany are not limited to health aspects. It also provides financial support to established media. For example, Germany´s leading news magazine DER SPIEGEL received $2.5 million in December 2018 and the leading weekly newspaper Die ZEIT received $300,000 in December 2019. One may assume that this is not happening for nothing and that as a result critical research by these media regarding the activities of the Gates Foundation is not necessarily more likely.

Furthermore, the Foundation is one of the organisers of the pandemic simulation known as “Event 201”, which took place in October 2019 shortly before the outbreak of the corona crisis. Other participants were – again – Johns Hopkins University and the World Economic Forum.

Given the many financial connections to influential institutions in the health care industry and the media, the BMGF and its associated institutions should be given special attention. This applies in particular to the prominent role that Bill Gates wants to assume in crisis management and which he is also offered without any critical consideration.

Why the vaccination activism?

On the question of the aim of Gates’ vaccination activism, it is worth listening to Gates himself. At a TED talk in 2010 he stated the following regarding the CO2 problem and a possible part of its solution:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”

He thus says that vaccinations and reproductive health services can contribute to a reduction in population, which in turn helps solving the climate problem, even if only to a small extent. Now there are probably various viewpoints on this statement, which we shall not discuss further here. However, one could agree that such steps should only be taken in cooperation with the people involved and with their explicit consent. This includes, above all, complete information about the consequences and risks of such interventions. That this is not the case with the projects of the BMGF and the institutions financed by it is illustrated by the following case.

Vaccination abuse in Kenya

In October 2014, the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya raised accusations in the context of the tetanus vaccinations carried out by WHO and UNICEF. This was done because there were differences compared to previous vaccination campaigns which seemed peculiar to the people in charge. For example, the Catholic Church, as the provider of many medical facilities, was not involved in the campaign, and publicity was very limited, unlike previous polio vaccination campaigns. Furthermore, the tetanus vaccinations were administered without any particular health necessity and only to women between the ages of 14 and 49, which gave rise to the suspicion that they might be covert vaccinations for birth control. These are related to human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), the hormone responsible for the onset and maintenance of a pregnancy.

In February 2015, the gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Wahome Ngare, on behalf of the Kenyan Catholic Medical Association, published an article in the Catholic Medical Quarterly of the Catholic Medical Society of Great Britain, in which he explained the accusations. According to his article, the vaccine was deliberately imported and had a different batch number for designation than usual tetanus vaccines. In addition, five rounds of vaccination were planned, each with intervals of six months, which is unusual for tetanus but normal for hCG vaccines to prevent pregnancy.

He also referred to such “hidden” and methodologically similar sterilization measures in Mexico in 1993 and in Nicaragua and the Philippines in 1994, where girls and women were unknowingly sterilized. He described how the Catholic Church complained to the Kenyan Ministry of Health after the accusations became public and demanded a test of the vaccine, which was rejected. In the further course of the case, the Catholic representatives then succeeded in gaining access to some doses of vaccine and having them tested by an independent party.

According to Ngare, the vaccine contained the suspected pregnancy hormone, which in his opinion proves the leading role of the WHO in deliberate mass sterilizations for birth control. Before the secret vaccine analyses were made public, the World Health Organization expressed its “deep concern” about the “misinformation” of the Catholic Church, for which there would be no evidence. After the results were published, it agreed to submit the vaccine to a joint commission for re-analysis.

Confirmed by scientific work

A scientific paper published in October 2017 by the Universities of Louisiana (USA) and British Columbia (Canada), together with Dr. Wahome Ngare, confirmed the allegations made. The planned five vaccinations instead of the usual procedure for tetanus were identical to those for population control and the exclusive composition of the target group of girls and women of childbearing age could not be convincingly justified.

Moreover, the campaign was coordinated from a hotel rather than a medical facility, and the delivery and collection of the vaccine was carried out under police protection. The work of the nurses was also monitored by WHO and police. Pregnancy hormones were detected in the secretly tested vaccine doses, while the vaccine doses delivered later by the WHO tested consistently negative, the scientists said. The suspicion of an attempted manipulation by swapping the vaccine is therefore obvious and would also explain the extensive and unusual safety measures taken when handling the original vaccine. The essential role of the WHO in covert measures of forced sterilization and thus population control could therefore be proven for Kenya.

Planning for population control in the WHO since 1972

In this context, the scientists also looked at the history of population control measureswithin WHO, which has been operating under the euphemistic name of “family planning” since the organization was founded in 1945. The WHO research programme on vaccine development for population control started in 1972 and a study was published in 1976. According to the scientists, the WHO “services” of sterilization without the consent of those affected have been known since the 1970s, while the cases mentioned by Dr. Ngare also caused outrage in Mexico, Nicaragua and the Philippines in the 1990s.

The Gates Foundation, originally established in 1994 by Gates’ father William Gates Sr., still funds family planning activities today. As mentioned above, Johns Hopkins University has received more than $200 million for this purpose in the last ten years. In addition, the BMGF also funds the Planned Parenthood organization, which was led by Bill Gates’ father when the younger Gates was a teenager, and which originally emerged from the American Birth Control League. The funding of the WHO and the vaccination activism of the Gates Foundation, also in the name of population control, seem to be the continuation of a family tradition.

Vaccination abuse not an isolated incident?

A direct involvement of the BMGF in vaccine abuse was not proven. However, questions remain open, as a case from India in 2009 shows. There, the Foundation-financed organization PATH conducted a study of 16,000 girls between the ages of 9 and 15 with a vaccine against cervical cancer. Afterwards, many of the girls fell ill and five died, while elsewhere, out of 14,000 children, two did not survive the consequences of the vaccination. PATH and the BMGF were accused of not having informed the children’s parents, most of whom were not literate, about the vaccine, its risks and its objectives.

The lawyer and vaccination critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lists in an article a whole series of abuses in projects supported by Gates. His organization “Children’s Health Defense” urgently warns against a Gates vaccine in the context of the corona crisis.

ID 2020 – the digital identity

With regard to other projects financed by Gates, an even more extensive misuse of vaccination is conceivable.

The “Digital Identity Alliance”, or “ID 2020”, says it is concerned with the creation of a digital identity that will enable people to identify themselves across borders while retaining control over their personal data. The founding partners of the project are Gates’ company Microsoft, the Gates-sponsored vaccination alliance GAVI, the management consultancy Accenture and the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the oldest and wealthiest foundations in the USA.

Since September 2019, the “Digital Identity Alliance” has been cooperating with the government of Bangladesh to introduce digital identities. This involves combining vaccinations with the recording of biometric data, such as fingerprints, to enable digital identification of the respective person.

By February 2020, 100 million digital identities had been created, as the responsible minister reported in an article for the World Economic Forum. This collection is marketed as “digital inclusion”, supposedly to include disadvantaged people in the benefits of the modern world.

Traveling only with a “digital immunity proof”?

Also in Europe, the first approaches to establish the technology are emerging. Journalist Norbert Häring, for example, reports on an application within the framework of the “Known Traveller” program of the World Economic Forum, which provides for an initially voluntary data release for preferred handling in air travel. In the long term, however, a mandatory regulation also appears possible, once the system has been established. Gates explainedon 24 March in an interview with TED host Chris Anderson:

“Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who is a recovered person, who is a vaccinated person, because you don’t want people moving around the world where you have some countries, that won’t have it under control, sadly. You don’t want to completely block off the ability for those people to go there and come back and move around. So eventually there will be sort of this digital immunity proof, that will help facilitate the global re-opening up [after the lockdown].”

The last – very explosive – sentence was cut out in the official TED version of the interview (minute 33:55). Norbert Häring comments on this:

“Having the proof in digital form sounds practical because it’s faster and easier. But if a digital proof for international travel is to be globally applicable, it needs a storage location for the receipts that is considered secure and generally accessible, a standard for data exchange that works everywhere, and a global standard for certifying the authenticity of such a proof. The Known Traveller Program, which is being driven by the US Homeland Security and the World Economic Forum, wants to develop and implement all of this. Bill Gates is one of the most influential members of the World Economic Forum, if not the most influential.

The current cooperation between Google and Apple in providing a unified corona app to identify possible Covid-19 infected individuals for the two all-dominant mobile phone operating systems Android and iOS could create the globally accessible storage location. (…) And already the Known Traveller program is ready with a first application. (…) Everyone can decide for themselves whether they want to travel and use the app, or whether they prefer to stay at home.

Since Google and Apple are working closely and trustfully with the security authorities and intelligence agencies anyway, it will not be a problem to add further application areas. First of all, the security authorities can check the box “may not travel” or “to be watched closely” if necessary. After that, the system could be further refined at will (…) Thanks to Covid-19, the Brave New World is approaching in giant strides.”

In the long term, the measures allow for comprehensive control to which anyone who still wishes to participate in any way in life is to be exposed. The current crisis situation now appears to provide a suitable pretext for accelerating the implementation of such plans.

“We will give this vaccine to seven billion people”

Fittingly, the leading German TV news program “ARD Tagesthemen” offered Gates a platform on 12 April to present his project to the German public. The host, Ingo Zamperoni, acted as Gates’ assistant in a discussion which resembled more a press conference of the BMGF than a news programme interested in clarification. Fully in line with Gates, Zamperoni came to the conclusion that “despite all our efforts, we will only be able to control the pandemic if we develop a vaccine”.

Gates agreed and stressed that we could only return to normality “when we have either found a miracle cure that works in 95 percent of cases or when we have developed a vaccine”. He also emphasized that “we” (!) will ultimately administer the vaccine to be developed “to seven billion people”. The question arises as to who Gates is thinking of when he speaks of “we” in this context. One may assume that it is also the institutions supported by his foundation.

A more critical approach to the Gates Foundation and its activities as well as thorough information on the developments already underway, especially in the combination of vaccination activism, digital identity and far-reaching control and surveillance, seems urgently necessary.

Which measures have meanwhile become possible is demonstrated by the legal permission of forced testing, forced vaccination and forced treatment in Denmark. The failure to make such measures and structures known to a wider public could, in the current crisis situation, result in a society sleepwalking into a police and surveillance state, about which it may not become fully aware until the digital handcuffs have already closed.

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Eric Wagner, born in 1990, studied education, history and political science in Leipzig, followed by Southeast European studies in Belgrade and Ljubljana. He works as an educator at a free community school in Germany.

Featured image is from multipolar

The last Syrian ‘rebel’ unit on the US payroll is dissolving by desertions.  A former senior officer in the US-backed mercenary unit Maghaweir al-Thowra (MAT) deserted his unit in Syria on April 14.  Samir Ghannam al-Khidr deserted the Eastern Syrian desert along with his whole family and 26 armed men.  The convoy was subject to a video on social media, which showed 8 pickups, 1 truck, 11 small arms, including 5 M-16 rifles, 4 large-caliber machine guns, 5 grenade launchers and 6-7 thousand rounds of ammunition.  All of the vehicles and weaponry were US military property. Al-Khidr left the illegal US base at Tanf, which is home to about 200 US soldiers, and about 100 mercenaries of MAT. Previous desertions occurred in early April

The official Twitter account of MAT was busily posting scenarios in English.  Their ‘spin-doctor’ belittled the deserter and made it seem that MAT allowed him to leave peacefully as if they packed him a lunch for the road.

Textbook level English 

The MAT is made up of various Eastern Syrian tribes.  English as a second language is taught beginning in 4th grade in all Syrian public schools, which are free of cost and are compulsory through the 9th grade.  However, the level of English would be very basic, and anyone writing English texts on Twitter, for example, would be easily recognized as a novice in the English language.

However, the level of English used to explain and defend the MAT on their official Twitter account is of the highest level, comparable to an American, for example.  Most likely, the account holder of the MAT Twitter account is not a member of the MAT, but rather a member of the US Special Forces.  A US soldier was likely tasked with being the official public relations representative for MAT and sits at a laptop every day fielding complaints, accusations and commenting on charges against MAT in the news and social media.

Syrians use Arabic as their first language.  When University educated Syrians, who have more than basic English language skills, were asked to review the Twitter account postings for MAT, they all could tell that was not written by any Eastern Syrian tribesman, carrying a machine gun, and looking like a ‘Hollywood-Double’ for ISIS.  The members of MAT work for the US military, but they are not US-educated.

The illegal US base at Tanf

The US Army Special Forces have trained MAT at Tanf since 2016 to fight against ISIS, which was defeated in 2017.  It would follow that MAT should have been disbanded several years ago, except the US could see a use for them as local guards of the small contingent of US soldiers.  The MAT also was guarding the Baghdad-Damascus highway, which is a strategic trade route. Tanf is a US military base in Syria which is illegal under international law. There is no purpose for the base at Tanf except to thwart the free movement of goods and people on the Iraq-Syria highway.

Drugs, smuggling, and exploiting refugees

The recent deserter, Samir Ghannam al-Khidr, has been accused of being a drug dealer and smuggler between Jordan and the illegal US base at Tanf. He was accused last year of drug dealing and was detained but allowed to return to the US base at Tanf.  This is not the first time drugs have made headlines in connection with the US Special Forces at Tanf. In June 2018, MAT was involved in a large drug bust at Tanf.  The drugs were estimated to be valued at about $1.4 million.  The unit captured more than 300,000 Captagon tablets.  Captagon is classified as an “amphetamine-type stimulant” and has been used by ISIS as it keeps the fighters awake and has a mental effect of diminishing the conscience, allowing them to be vicious killers.  Captagon is also the popular illicit drug throughout the Arab Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

MAT may have been introduced to the value of drug dealing in an area in Syria which has no government, or police supervision.  The US base at Tanf is in a ‘no-man’s-land’ without any police, courts or judges. The Syrian government is not present there, and the US military likely turned a blind eye to the crimes being carried out by their mercenaries MAT.

The Rukban Refugee Camp is near the base at Tanf, and MAT has been used to provide security for the camp.  Thousands of refugees have been living in squalor and suffering there; however, many have left the camp by paying bribes to MAT, to leave for the Syrian government-controlled city of Palmyra.  Abu Muhammed recalled his ordeal at Rukban after leaving and told of how MAT would sell aid items that had been donated by international relief organizations.

“Sometimes, we received aid from the Red Crescent, but we only saw a small portion of it, most often sold to us, not given for free. The militants take the free aid and resell it to the refugees — that’s their business. To get money, we had to work at the camp. They set up a brick factory and we had to work like dogs there,” he said, and added, “They are all armed, they walk the camp with rifles, they have semi-military equipment and they own the place.”

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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WHO and China: A Case of Geopolitical Misdirection

April 21st, 2020 by Hassanal Noor Rashid

Who is at fault?

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a real roller-coaster ride as far as geo-politics is concerned.

Through the chaos and the barrage of information and updates on the on-going pandemic, there are still those, especially among the political elite who have moved ahead of the pandemic management curve and have begun investing time and energy into calling for accountability and reparations from those they claim were the chief cause of many catastrophic global, social infrastructure failures.

As of 20th April 2020, the United States has over 764,000 cases of Covid-19 with a staggering number of lives lost at over 40,000.

The question that is on everyone’s mind is how did a supposedly first world country like the United States, which has spent trillions of dollars in its overly inflated military budget, continue to send aid worth USD$3.8 billion to Israel, and touts itself as the global superpower unrivalled by any other, do so poorly in mitigating this crisis, but has allowed it to cripple its societal and economic balance at such an unprecedented scale?

Many are familiar with the rhetoric now that the United States (US) have directly blamed the World Health Organization (WHO), especially its chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, of not only failing to characterize the appropriate level of severity of the virus, but also for being too China-centric, depicting both of these as failings that have led to the present level of the pandemic.

As a result, Trump has decided to cut funding for the WHO, a crude retaliation for the perceived failing of the WHO to effectively inform about the severity of the virus.

The Trump Administration has also levelled criticism towards China’s reported cases of the Covid-19, accusing it of inaccuracies and false reporting, which is what was claimed tohavemisled many on the severity of the virus.

The varying and predictable responses were given, and blame was laid first and foremost at the WHO and China’s feet.

But is this truly a fair assessment?

Authority, responsibility and reality

It has to be acknowledged that during the initial phase of the virus pandemic, there was lacking a sense of urgency when it came to understanding the severity of the virus. The hardest affected country then was China, beginning in January, with over 80,000 cases.

The WHO, in the early stages of the pandemic, did mention that there was no evidence of human to human transmissions, that there was no need to impose any travel restrictions or bans to affected countries, and it did mention, too, that there was no need to wear face-masks.

Obviously, these previous statements did inform in some way on how seriously people took the disease, and perhaps contributed to the perception and misinformation that the virus was no worse than the flu.

So, is the WHO at fault for not considering the issue as severe from the very beginning?

Partly.

As an authoritative and trusted world body, its advice on matters pertaining to public health is crucial for policymakers and world leaders to ensure appropriate action and decision-making.

But with China reporting a downward trend of infections and local Covid-19 casesby February 2020, the worst was thought to be over. It was assumed that as the totalitarian measures taken by China to contain the virus had worked.

China’s virus looked like it was mainly China’s problem and there was no need to worry.

However, the pandemic, had begun to ramp up around the globe only in March 2020 with South East Asia and much of Europe suddenly begun turning into the new epicentres of the virus, with many falling to the virus at unexpected levels.

With this in mind, the situation that the WHO found itself in was one of shock, to the core, as within the span of a couple of months, the virus had attacked more viciously than ever and had outpaced our ability to respond.

The Chinese trust deficit: The China COVID-19 numbers

The first case of Covid-19 was reported by Beijing on December 31, 2019.

Was there an attempt at concealment, of the epidemic initially?

Strong evidence suggeststhat there was censuring. Those who spoke out about the virus, most notably Dr. Li Wenliang, who was the first to whistle blow on the virus was censured.

However, such secrets as the scale of the infection, cannot be kept hidden long and by January the whole world knew about the virus.

One may also recall that when the virus had hit its peak in China, on February 13th, Xi Jinping had moved to remove Communist Party officials who were in charge of the Hubei Province and Wuhan city. They were thoroughly replaced with Beijing’s hardliners.

Soon after, the city was in full lockdown, and the number of cases started pouring in.

But are these numbers trustworthy? After all the Chinese government has had a long-standing reputation for secrecy and censuring,

It is wholly understandable why people would mistrust their internal reports.

This move was made after the previous local government had reportedly attempted to subdue to the severity of the virus. Drawing from the country’s previous experience with the SARS pandemic, the Chinese government most likely knew that the secretive approach it had previously taken would not work.

As Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations had noted, the truthfulness in China’s reporting may be trustworthy, mainly because it is in its best interest to report the accurate numbers. After Xi Jinping’s firm reshuffling of the Hubei Province leadership, the Chinese President ordered more resolute efforts to bring the outbreak under control.

A comparison of China’s fatality rate by the virus with those outside of the Hubei province, and its regional neighbor, South Korea, closely matched. Data corroboration such as these confirm the validity of the numbers there. Hubei Province began reporting consistent updates ofcases and fatalities as well and their numbers were higher because the number of cases overwhelmed the local healthcare system and given the early stages of the virus’s discovery, many didn’t know how to best treat the virus.

The biggest spike in the number of cases on February 13th, 2020, was when it had begun to use CT scans on patients’ lungs rather than just traditional lab-test confirmation, allowing people to be isolated faster. China had changed the way it had detected cases several times but given that the pandemic was in its infancy, it is understandable.

Many of the numbers had been listed out in a comprehensive report on February 28th by the Chinese CDC and the WHO, which highly detailed the age brackets, methods on how the virus was contracted and the affected areas.

And finally, unlike the SARS outbreak which was only reported four months after the first case, the Covid-19 cases were reported within days of the first cluster which had appeared in Wuhan.

Between January 30th to February 16th, China had conducted 320,000 tests in the Guangdong province alone, which were all reported on a fairly regular basis.

China has been fairly transparent with its reporting and documentation, during the initial stages of the Covid-19 Pandemic and throughout, even sharing the mapped-out genetic sequence of the viruswas revealedwithin weeks of the first case.

It is to China’s credit that it had managed to contain the virus as well as it did, especially in a country of 1.39 billion people.

As Matteo Chinazzi from the Laboratory for the Modelling of Biological and Socio-Technical Systems at the Northeastern University in Boston had noted in his publication to Science, China’s efforts had cut the number of Covid-19 cases by 77 percent.

This understanding of the differences in governance and cultural make-up between Western and East-Asian societies explains why the Chinese experience cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Such factors which many have pointed out, is due to the highly-controlled governance of the Chinese state, its technologically sophisticated surveillance infrastructure, and highly coordinated social-mobilization; no other country can tout the same level of social mobilization as China does.

Its hard-handed approach towards maintaining social cohesion and control, may be seen by others as a human rights travesty, but it has allowed China to mitigate the spread of the virus domestically.

Decisive crisis management and the lessons learned

With all that has been mentioned so far, does it still stand to reason that the WHO and China are to be blamed for the current crisis shaking much of the world?

Did countries like the U.S and many others in Europe not have enough time to adequately prepare, and if they had more heads-up and more trustworthy numbers would the impact have been mitigated?

Despite having news of the virus in early January, there was no caution taken to successfully mitigate its spread in the West.

There have even been reports that indicated the U.S’ own military intelligence agencies had tried to raise alarms about the epidemic in China as early as November 2019, well before even China had first reported it to the WHO.

Reportedly, many analysts at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a subsidiary of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, had alerted Donald Trump’s administration officials months before. When the report had finally reached the President’s attention it would then purportedly undergo weeks of vetting and analysis.

So, if the U.S knew that the virus was already a severe issue then, how can it stay on its claim that the WHO and China were responsible for the severity of the US and European cases?

The WHO funding cut, and the accusations laid towards China are more indicative of an internal political dispute that is being played out in the U.S. with geopolitics involved.

With China having recently lifted the lockdowns on Wuhan, it has begun to re-ignite the engines of its economy. Depending on how the crisis plays out, some speculate that China may have the economic advantage to get ahead of the curve while its rivals are still in quarantine and lockdown, with their economies at a standstill.

To the elites of the hegemon, this is unacceptable.

This perhaps also explains why President Donald Trump had expressed intentions to re-open the U.S economy in May, a prospect which many of his health advisors have deemed as overly optimistic.

So perhaps the desperation of restarting the U.S economy, to rectify the surging joblessness crisis, the need to counter-balance China’s own reboot, is the main driving factor in this case.

It is no secret that much of the perceived success of U.S President Donald Trump, relies heavily on the alleged economic boom that he engineered bringing the US to new heights.

The Make America Great Again dream is quickly being undone by Covid-19.

If the U.S were to slump even further because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this will provide more proverbial ammunition for the President’s political rivals to tear him down and threaten the future of his presidency.

To hope for a well-guided future

With all that has been mentioned, laying blame for the Covid-19 on China and the WHO doesn’t hold much water, and perhaps doesn’t hold much relevance in the present situation.

The crisis that has been unfolding, had begun back in January 2020, but given the spread of the virus and the impact beginning to take shape in March 2020 around the world, there was perhaps little to no time to adequately prepare.

A lot of the blaming and finger pointing are exercises in political disaster control that is frankly not needed at this time.

It only serves to confuse andanger, which does not benefit anyone.

What is needed is strong decisive leadership and management from not just the political elites, but from local governments and community leaders. In the U.S much praise has been lauded towards Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has been regularly updating on the virus and its impact towards the citizens of New York. In Malaysia, the Health Director General Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah has received much praise in his handling and management of the pandemic with many Malaysians looking to him for guidance.

Praise needs to also be given to the local groups and front-liners whose initiatives are helping to us all ease through the crisis, as none are playing a small part in these trying times.

But if the Chinese experience is to be examined and contrasted with what is going on elsewhere, the lesson to be drawn here is that perhaps it is not just the preparation of a crisis that helps mitigate its impact, but, more importantly, the management of it which determines the outcome.

Rarely are we actually able to fully prepare adequately, but at this time, strong leadership, coordination and cooperation are the essential to succeeding against the virus.

In times of peace there are politicians, but in times of crisis, the true leaders emerge.

 

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Hassanal Noor Rashid is a Programme Coordinator for the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

What If the Lockdown Was All a Big Mistake?

April 21st, 2020 by Rep. Ron Paul

From California to New Jersey, Americans are protesting in the streets. They are demanding an end to house arrest orders given by government officials over a virus outbreak that even according to the latest US government numbers will claim fewer lives than the seasonal flu outbreak of 2017-2018.

Across the US, millions of businesses have been shut down by “executive order” and the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Americans, who have seen their real wages decline thanks to Federal Reserve monetary malpractice, are finding themselves thrust into poverty and standing in breadlines. It is like a horror movie, but it’s real.

Last week the UN Secretary General warned that a global recession resulting from the worldwide coronavirus lockdown could cause “hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths per year.” As of this writing, less than 170,000 have been reported to have died from the coronavirus worldwide.

Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical care they needed. Cancer treatments have been indefinitely postponed. Life-saving surgeries have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases. Meanwhile hospitals are laying off thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially empty.

What if the “cure” is worse than the disease?

Countries like Sweden that did not lock down their economy and place the population under house arrest are faring no worse than countries that did. Sweden’s deaths-per-million from coronavirus is lower than in many lockdown countries.

Likewise, US states that did not arrest citizens for merely walking on the beach are not doing worse than those that did. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said last week, “we’ve been able to keep our businesses open and allow people to take on some personal responsibility.” South Dakota has recorded a total of seven coronavirus deaths.

Kentucky, a strict lockdown state, is five times more populated than South Dakota, yet it has some 20 times more coronavirus deaths. If lockdown and house arrest are the answer, shouldn’t those numbers be reversed, with South Dakota seeing mass death while Kentucky dodges the coronavirus bullet?

When Anthony Fauci first warned that two million would die, there was a race among federal, state, and local officials to see who could rip up the Constitution fastest. Then Fauci told us if we do what he says only a quarter of a million would die. They locked America down even harder. Then, with little more than a shrug of the shoulders, they announced that a maximum of 60,000 would die, but maybe less. That is certainly terrible, but it’s just a high-average flu season.

Imagine if we had used even a fraction of the resources spent to lock down the entire population and focused on providing assistance and protection to the most vulnerable – the elderly and those with serious medical conditions. We could have protected these people and still had an economy to go back to when the virus had run its course. And it wouldn’t have cost us six trillion dollars either.

Governments have no right or authority to tell us what business or other activity is “essential.” Only in totalitarian states does the government claim this authority. We should encourage all those who are standing up peacefully and demanding an accounting from their elected leaders. They should not be able to get away with this.

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There is surprisingly a certain degree of optimism around at the moment, despite virtually entire populations and economies on lockdown. Although things are really bad for millions right now due to the effects of lockdown, economist Mariana Mazzucato believes that the Covid-19 crisis will shine light on societal and economic systems all across the world, exposing some of the deep-rooted flaws of capitalism.  

After lockdown ends, Mazzucato believes societies can be reshaped to become more inclusive. She says an overly financialised business sector has been siphoning value out of the economy by rewarding shareholders through stock-buyback schemes, rather than shoring up long-run growth by investing in research and development, wages and worker training. Mazzacuto thinks we can use the current state of emergency to start building a fairer and more sustainable economy with the state playing a leading role to serve the public interest over the long term.

Her optimism is also shared by others who think that out the wreckage of the current crisis, the state and citizens can work together to shift towards more stakeholder capitalist or even more socialist oriented societies. 

The reality, however, may merely mean the entrenchment of the prevailing system. For example, does anyone really believe that the ruling Conservative administration in the UK genuinely cares about the well-being of ordinary people or has any kind of commitment to publicly funded institutions? The Conservative Party has devastated millions of lives courtesy of an ideologically driven austerity agenda for over a decade. And for over three decades, it has been waging war on workers, unions and the public sector on behalf of global capital.

The situation is not unique to the UK. In India, successive administrations have been facilitating neoliberal policies that have led to a wholly avoidable agrarian crisis, marked by farmer suicides, child malnourishment, growing unemployment, increased informalisation, indebtedness and an overall collapse of agriculture. If anything, the current Modi administration has been keen to further open up the sector to the demands of Western agrocapital. 

Things in the US hardly merit optimism for radical change either. The Federal Reserve estimates over 47 million will lose their jobs in the US, taking unemployment to almost a third of the labour force. This is more than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, in a series of short explanatory films for the layperson, analyst John Titus shows that US capitalism and the privately owned Fed are not going to change their spots: Wall Street and its top executives will continue to enrich themselves, while the public will suffer throughout the duration of lockdown, which could persist in various forms for 18 months.

Even if we take a brief, more general look at what is happening, we can see that, for instance, factory farms in the US are expected to receive $23.5 billion in stimulus money. The Center for Biological Diversity and allies have urged congress to direct these funds to small and mid-size farmers instead of big agri-food concerns. With the threat of environmental regulation rollbacks also on the cards, it is clear the current crisis is being used to consolidate the position of major players in the sector.

Consider too that, according to a recent piece in the New York Times, the $2 trillion-plus coronavirus relief package making its way through US congress will give bailouts to a number of key industries and companies that have indulged in the types of shameful activities that Mazzucato outlines. The airline industry is expected to get some $50 billion in cash and loans and Boeing, which asked for $60 billion, is widely expected to receive some part of a $17 billion fund.  

During the past decade, most of the companies in line to get taxpayer money did not prepare for a downturn. For example, the airline industry, which is prone to booms and busts, collectively spent more than $45 billion on stock buybacks over the past eight years. Viewed in context, The New York Times says the relief package still amounts to a bailout of private capital and the endorsement of self-enriching practices.

Further Neoliberal reforms

The current crisis is hitting workers hard across the world, possibly more so in India than elsewhere. Consider that nearly half of India’s workforce of 467 million is self-employed, 36 percent are casual wage workers, while only 17 percent are regular wage workers. Two-thirds of them work without contracts and more than 90 percent lack any social security or health benefits in the workplace. The six-week coronavirus lockdown has made survival extremely difficult for them.

But is there hope on the horizon? World Bank Group President David Malpass recently stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns that have been implemented in response to the Covid-19 crisis. However, before getting anyone’s hopes up too much, this ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded.

Malpass says:

“Countries will need to implement structural reforms to help shorten the time to recovery and create confidence that the recovery can be strong.  For those countries that have excessive regulations, subsidies, licensing regimes, trade protection or litigiousness as obstacles, we will work with them to foster markets, choice and faster growth prospects during the recovery.”

Ranil Salgado, mission chief for India at the IMF, echoes the views of Malpass by saying that when the economic shock passes, it’s important that India returns to its path of undertaking long-term reforms. 

In the face of economic crisis and stagnation at home, this would seem like an ideal opportunity for Western capital to further open up and loot economies abroad. On 20 April, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline ‘IMF, World Bank Face Deluge of Aid Requests From Developing World. Scores of countries are asking for bailouts and loans from financial institutions with $1.2 trillion to lend. An ideal recipe for fuelling dependency.

Global conglomerates will be able to hollow out the remnants of nation state sovereignty, while ordinary people’s rights and ability to organise and challenge the corporate hijack of economies and livelihoods will be undermined by the intensified, globalised system of surveillance that beckons.

This is a sentiment shared by economics professor Michel Chossudovsky, who implies Covid-19 provides ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a global debt crisis and the subsequent privatization of national states. The current crisis will certainly have the effect of impoverishing hundreds of millions of workers and increasing the national debt of nations. It could prove so devastating to economies that bailout packages from global financial institutions might saddle nation states with debts that prove almost impossible to pay back.

Dollar denominated loans will help secure the global hegemony of the dollar, which has been looking increasingly fragile in recent years.

At the same time, with mass unemployment and workers’ pay decimated, ordinary people in both rich and poor countries will have finally reached the finishing line in the race towards the bottom. Workers’ rights and well-paid jobs will be at a premium, with a global reserve army of labour waiting in the wings to snap up any work that is available.

In India, neoliberal reforms have already devastated many livelihoods and the US – via the WTO and World Bank – has since the 1990s been pushing India to further open up to Western goods and corporations. Pressure has been applied to further reduce subsidies to the farm sector and to dismantle mechanisms which have ensured some degree of food security for the hundreds of millions who rely on state support.

As the lockdown plays out in India, we see stories of fractured supply chains and of farmers who cannot sell their produce. In rural areas, millions of migrant workers have returned to the countryside. Rural affairs commentator P Sainath paints a dreary picture of the impacts of India’s lockdown. He discusses the desperate plight of migrant workers, a shortage of cash to buy food and a potential shortage of food as farmers are unable to complete their harvests.

He notes that Dr. Sundararaman, a former executive director of the National Health Systems Resources Centre, asserts that there is a desperate need to “identify and act on the reverse migrations problem and the loss of livelihoods. Failing that, deaths from diseases that have long tormented mostly poor Indians could outstrip those brought about by the corona virus.”

But no doubt cash-rich Western capital which will gain from the trillions being pumped into the system will see many strategic opportunities to benefit. It has been pushing via the World Bank to bring Indian agriculture under corporate control for a long time. This would involve forcing GMO food crops into the country, the displacement of peasant farmers, corporate consolidation and commercialisation based on industrial-scale monocrop farms incorporated into global supply chains dominated by transnational agribusiness and retail giants.

This would amount to the wholesale restructuring of Indian society. What we could see is the acceleration of existing processes which have already led to what Sainath describes as a crisis of civilisation proportions.

Across the world, people need to question the narrative, the data and the data collection methods surrounding Covid-19 and assess whether lockdowns and their devastating effects are in line with the risks involved. Because, five years from now, given what is at stake and the massive hardships being endured, it will then be too late to look back and say it was all based on flawed data and wrongheaded responses and was driven by vested interests who were set to benefit financially.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

President Trump recently praised a deal reached largely by Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the top oil producers in the world who together dominate the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), saying that the agreed upon production cuts would “save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States.”

Despite the president’s rosy tone, most analysts have called the agreement – which presumably will freeze the Saudi-Russian oil price war that broke out last month – “too little too late” and have noted that a slew of bankruptcies from the U.S. shale oil industry are inevitabledespite the actions that have been taken. Even the Federal Reserve has stated that around 40% of domestic shale companies now face bankruptcy in just a few months if the price of oil remains under $30, a figure it is unlikely to pass for some time due to slumping demand caused by global lockdowns, among other factors that have emerged as the current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis has played out. Trump has since fielded the possibility of imposing tariffs on oil imports to drive up oil prices and favor the domestic consumption of U.S. shale oil, but it remains to be seen if that policy will materialize.

Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a former Wall Street financial analyst and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, told The Last American Vagabond that, not only are numerous shale oil companies set to go out of business, but the entire shale oil industry in the U.S. “can’t be saved.”

“We have peak shale oil,” Hudson stated, “It was always an awful idea … It’s an over indebted sector and is one of the first to go.”

Hudson further asserted that the U.S. government’s “nurturing” of the shale oil sector in recent years was chiefly aimed at targeting Russia’s oil industry by driving down global oil prices, calling it an unsuccessful “anti-Russian cold war campaign” that has since backfired. He added that Trump’s recent overtures with respect to the shale oil industry are likely aimed at “making an excuse to give huge loans to the shale oil producers, as if it’s to keep them in business, and then they [the oil companies] are just going to pay the loans to themselves and go out of business. It’s a cover story for a huge corporate giveaway before this sector falls and goes bankrupt.”

Thus, the imminent reckoning for shale oil in the U.S. is unlikely to be stopped, despite the new production cuts and Trump’s efforts last month to set aside billions for the purchase of shale oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a move critics labeled as a bail-out for domestic “Big Oil” producers. In addition, the fate of U.S. shale oil is compounded by the possibility that the production cuts will not hold and that the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia could flare up again at any time. Previous yet recent OPEC-brokered deals of a similar nature have ended in this way, and it is very possible – if not likely – that it will happen again.

With oil extremely cheap at the moment, some of the issues raised by shale oil bankruptcies are not necessarily of immediate concern while demand remains low. Yet, if enough U.S. domestic oil producers go bankrupt, once current lockdowns are relaxed and oil demand creeps back up to relatively normal levels, there will be less domestic oil available, despite the SPR. As a result, the U.S. will again have to look more to other countries in order to make up the difference. Though the media thus far has explored the economic effects of this eventuality, less attention – if any – has been given to how it will impact U.S. foreign policy.

For years, President Trump has publicly claimed on several occasions that U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Middle East were no longer guided by oil due to the U.S. having obtained “energy independence,” “independence” that relies heavily on U.S. shale oil production. However, critics – including Michael Hudson – have long charged that this claim of energy independence is a “deliberate falsification.” Such claims are also supported by the fact that U.S. foreign policy in IraqSyria and elsewhere has remained linked to oil in key ways during this period of so-called “domestic energy independence” under Trump. Yet, the bankruptcies of 40% (or perhaps more) of U.S. shale oil producers would likely greatly increase the role oil plays in guiding U.S. foreign policy.

While there are many reasons as to why oil has long been a key factor in U.S. foreign policy (with the petrodollar ranking chief among them), another often overlooked reason is the U.S. military’s heavy reliance on oil. Indeed, the U.S. military is the largest institutional purchaser and consumer of oil in the world and, therefore, securing a reliable, stable and –ideally – geographically nearby source of oil has long been deemed a critical, strategic objective by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has said as much on numerous occasions, stating recently that

 “… longer operating distances, remote and austere geography, and anti-access/area denial threats [areas or nations unfriendly to the U.S.] are challenging the Department’s ability to assure the delivery of fuel. As the ability to deliver energy is placed at risk, so too is the Department’s ability to deploy and sustain forces around the globe.”

In other words, long distances from fuel sources as well as fuel sources located in or near areas/nations that are hostile to the U.S. directly threaten U.S. empire and its global military presence. In addition, control and influence over global oil flows has long been a key component of military strategy, as noted in the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

It is also worth noting that the economic calamity that threatens the domestic oil industry is not the only reliable, stable and geographically close oil supply to be hit by the crisis. For instance, Argentina’s shale oil industry in the “Vaca Muerta” area also faces ruin, an endeavor that had largely been “kick-started” by Exxon Mobil after that company had been ejected from Venezuela and also includes considerable investments from another U.S. oil giant, Chevron – a company ordered by the Trump administration to stop doing business in Venezuela by April 22.

US returns attention to Venezuela amid domestic oil collapse

Venezuela, the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has also made a seemingly odd reappearance on the Trump administration’s list of priorities during the current coronavirus crisis. On March 26, the Department of Justice, led by Attorney General William Barrannounced narco-terrorism and other criminal charges against top Venezuelan officials, including the country’s president Nicolás Maduro, alleging that these officials are involved in the trafficking of cocaine to the United States. The charges were odd for a few reasons, one of the main ones being that the U.S. government’s own data shows that Colombia, not Venezuela, is the source of the vast majority of cocaine that ends up in the U.S.

Then, on March 31, former CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a plan entitled “Democratic Framework for Venezuela,” where he demanded that Maduro resign and the “opposition” figure Juan Guaidó also relinquish his claim to the Venezuelan presidency, a claim to power that the U.S. had previously backed. Pompeo’s plan calls for the formation of a council that would be led by an “interim president” (a title the U.S. had previously reserved for Guaidó) and that the council would be formed by members of Venezuela’s largest four political parties, including that led by Maduro. Unsurprisingly, Maduro’s government rejected the plan.

The criminal charges against Maduro and Pompeo’s “democratic” plan were quickly followed with much more troubling news. Announced at a press conference on April 1, President Trump, alongside top government officials, announced that U.S. Southern Command would begin a new “counter-narcotics effort” targeting Venezuela that would include the deployment of Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircraft, helicopters and more. The official justification of this large deployment is to surveil, disrupt and seize shipments allegedly containing “drugs” that are leaving Venezuela.

“We must not let narco-terrorists exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives,” Trump said at the time.

It was also announced that other countries would be joining the U.S. in what amounts to both a military build-up and a de facto blockade of Venezuelan exports, including its oil.

Soon after the announcement regarding this new build-up and de facto naval blockade of Venezuela, U.S. media accused President Trump of using these announcements to deflect criticism about his administration’s handling of the federal response to the coronavirus crisis. One report in Newsweek revealed that these initiatives with respect to Venezuela had been planned several months ago and were set to be announced this May. That report also alleged, citing senior Pentagon officials, that the administration had decided to announce the planned crackdowns on Venezuela sooner in order to “redirect attention.”

However, there may be another reason that these initiatives targeting Venezuela were sped up: the carnage in shale oil markets in the U.S. as well as Argentina and the implications of that for U.S. access – particularly the military’s access – to oil supplies once lockdowns and their associated economic effects begin to lessen.

Michael Hudson told The Last American Vagabond that the U.S. pivot towards Venezuela was “absolutely” related to the carnage in global oil markets and particularly the U.S. oil industry. He further argued that the U.S. was seeking to reimpose a debt-for-oil system that it had enjoyed under pre-Chavista governments in Venezuela:

“Under U.S.-backed dictators, Venezuela provided the collateral [for its debt] with all of its oil reserves… [Now,] America wants to give IMF [International Monetary Fund] loans to Venezuela and [oversee] the collateralization of Venezuela’s foreign debt with its oil reserves and then foreclose. [They want to] find an excuse to do to Venezuela what it did to Argentina, to grab Venezuela’s oil reserves as collateral by … preventing Venezuela from paying its foreign debt, [thus] forcing it to default on its foreign debt.”

This certainly seems to be a big part of the equation, as the U.S.-backed Juan Guaidó has long promoted IMF loans and personally sought sizable loans from that organization to finance his “interim government,” which controls essentially nothing in Venezuela. More recently, the IMF rejected Venezuela’s request for a loan to help it combat the coronavirus crisis, but the IMF has reportedly offered to give the country such a loan were Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, to step down and cede authority to a U.S.-backed “emergency government.”

Yet, there is much more to be concerned about than the IMF and the U.S.’ interest in imposing a debt-for-oil scheme on Venezuela. As Hudson told The Last American Vagabond, one very notable “great threat” is the parallel between the recent U.S. policy and military moves towards Venezuela and the moves that were made by the George H.W. Bush administration just prior to the 1989 invasion of Panama. “America would like to grab Venezuela’s oil and it wouldn’t be the first time,” said Hudson.

Regime change in the time of coronavirus

Though recent mainstream media reports claimed that the sudden reappearance of Venezuela on the White House’s agenda was merely political theater, subsequent events suggest something else. This past Saturday, U.S. envoy for Venezuela – war criminal and Project for a New American Century neo-con Elliott Abrams – stated that, if Venezuela’s Maduro did not agree to the Pompeo plan for a new “transition government,” a transition in Venezuelan governance would still occur, but would be more “dangerous and abrupt.” Abrams’ comments failed to generate much buzz in the media, as the April 1 press conference and announcement had done, despite the fact that Abrams was essentially starting that “dangerous and abrupt” action would be taken to force Maduro from power.

There is also the added mystery of an incident that took place right before the announcement of the large deployment of U.S. military assets to target “narco-terrorism.” On the last day of March, a Venezuelan coast guard ship asked a Portuguese cruise ship, the “RCGS Resolute,” that was in Venezuelan territorial waters to accompany it to port. Instead, the cruise ship rammed the Venezuelan vessel, sinking it. Maduro subsequently claimed that the cruise ship “was being used to transport mercenaries,” noting that Dutch authorities in Curacao, where the “RCGS Resolute” is currently docked, had been instructed to not inspect the ship. The company that owns the cruise ship, however, asserts that it is carrying no passengers and disputes Venezuela’s account of why the coast guard vessel was sunk.

In addition to this disconcerting event, there is the fact that the U.S.’ recently announced military build-up is the largest in the region since the U.S. invasion of Panama, which took place in 1989 during the George H.W. Bush administration. Disturbingly, the same Attorney General that greenlit the invasion of Panama once again serves in that same role in today’s administration, William Barr. At the time of the Panama invasion, it was Barr who created the legal justification for the war, arguing that the U.S. had the “legal authority” to arrest Panama’s then-dictator Manuel Noriega on drug charges, despite him not residing in the U.S. To think that Barr would not do so again is naive, especially considering that Trump had previously pushed to invade Venezuela, citing the invasion of Panama as an example of successful “gunboat diplomacy,” and has long talked about “taking the oil” of foreign countries and, in places like Syria, has used military force to do just that.

Though the 1989 invasion of Panama was dressed up in the typical rhetoric of restoring “democracy” and promoting “human rights,” it was actually waged with the intention to utterly destroy Panama’s military. Why would the U.S. want to destroy Panama’s capacity for self-defense? The answer lies in the treaty that then existed between Panama and the U.S. over the Panama canal, whereby control over the canal would eventually be returned to the Panamanians.

The only “loophole” for the U.S. to retain control of the canal, per that treaty, was if Panama became incapable of defending it. Notably, the gradual turnover of control of the canal was set to begin just ten days after the Bush administration’s invasion of Panama ended. Not long after the invasion, in 1991, the U.S. passed a law that ensured an indefinite U.S. military presence in the canal zone due to the fact that Panama (thanks to the U.S. invasion) could no longer defend that territory.

There are other notable points regarding the invasion of Panama that are seemingly relevant today as well. For instance, media’s effort to manufacture public consent for the invasion was largely centered around pointing out Manuel Noriega’s involvement in narco-trafficking and Panama’s lack of democracy under his rule. Of course, this rhetoric has obvious similarities to current rhetoric involving Venezuela.

However, this media campaign, in Noriega’s case, failed to note that the Noriega’s role in drug smuggling was largely on the behalf of U.S. interests and that Noriega had closely collaborated with then-President, George H.W. Bush, when he had served as CIA director. In addition, Noriega was well known at the time to have been on the CIA payroll for years. Such reports also overlooked the fact that the CIA had recently been caught driving the trafficking of drugs and weapons between Central America and the U.S. as part of the Iran Contra scandal. If these reports had pointed this out, it would have made Noriega’s involvement in these matters, including his supporting role in Iran Contra, appear negligible by comparison.

Similarly, today, efforts to link Venezuelan leadership to the drug trade fail to note that the U.S.-backed Juan Guaidó took selfies with a narco-paramilitary organization just a few months ago and that Colombian leadership and its military, the U.S.’ biggest regional supporter of its Venezuela regime change agenda, both share direct ties to drug cartels.

It is also worth pointing out that, not only did the U.S. military hide the actual civilian death toll and cover up the war crimes committed during the invasion, they tested out new experimental weapons on the Panamanian people, which CounterPunch noted was “a kind of dress rehearsal for the Persian Gulf War the following year.” As many readers of this article are likely aware, the Trump administration has been making strong overtures about regime change, and potentially war, in Iran alongside their push for regime change in Venezuela. Were a similar invasion to occur in Venezuela, it seems likely that this pattern would repeat and would be treated as an experimental battlefield for a subsequent war in Iran.

The current confluence of factors suggests that such a Panama-style invasion of Venezuela is not only a possibility, but increasingly likely. Indeed, as previously mentioned, the U.S. has ordered the few U.S. companies that have been given waivers to avoid sanctions for their operations in Venezuela (namely Chevron) to terminate their dealings in the country by April 22 – next Wednesday. In addition, soon after that date, Venezuela’s oil sector is set to resume two joint oil ventures, one of which involves two European oil companies and another that involves Russia’ Rosneft, which the U.S. sanctioned in February for doing business with Venezuela’s state oil company. Those projects are due to re-initiate in May and July, respectively. The U.S. is openly opposed to these projects going forward and has threatened sanctions (and further sanctions in Rosneft’s case) against the companies involved.

Taken in combination with Elliott Abrams’ recent statements, the massive U.S. military build-up and the collapse of U.S. oil markets, such events seem to be pointing in the direction of an invasion being more likely than not. There is also the added layer of the U.S. facing a new “Great Depression” and these major economic downturns are often followed by the U.S. entering a major war. On the other hand, there is also the fact that most of the U.S. population is on lockdown due to the coronavirus crisis, making domestic resistance against such an invasion unlikely to manifest in any significant way. If Americans aren’t careful and don’t quickly begin to pay attention, the country could soon sleepwalk into another devastating and deadly “war for oil.”

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Whitney Webb is a MintPress News contributing journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

Featured image is from Alliance for Global Justice

Finance Versus the People in the Era of the Pandemic

April 21st, 2020 by Prof Prabhat Patnaik

The current pandemic has brought to the fore, and with exceptional clarity, the fundamental contradiction underlying contemporary globalisation, namely, the contradiction between the interests of finance and thoseof the people. Indeed this contradiction, which characterizes the era of globalisation as a whole, has now come to a head.

It is becoming clearly visible in country after country. Take the case of India. Millions have been suddenly rendered jobless, and lakhs of migrant workers trekking home from far away places, where they had been employed but no longer are, find themselves quarantined with little or no money. The paramount need of the hour is for the government to provide succour to these working people; and the government can do so immediately by enlarging the fiscal deficit.

But it refrains from doing so because a large fiscal deficit is not to the liking of globally mobile finance capital. The finance minister comes up therefore with a package of measures that is paltry beyond belief, where the total expenditure promised as help to the distressed households, ignoring re-packaged measures, comes to a mere Rs 92,000 crores (consisting of Rs 34,000 crore of cash transfers, Rs 45,000 crore of transfers through the public distribution system, and Rs13,000 crore of transfers in the form of gas cylinders). This comes to about 0.5 per cent of the country’s GDP, which is a trivial sum in the context of what is generally considered the worst tragedy to hit the country after independence!

But consider the state of the economy. The government is sitting on a whopping 58 million tonnes of foodgrain stocks (77 million tonnes if we include grains available but not yet ready for immediate distribution); the rabi crop promises to be good; industry has for long been demand-constrained with lots of unutilised capacity (in fact the country was sliding into an industrial recession before being hit by the pandemic); and foreign exchange reserves are at a record half a trillion dollars. A larger fiscal deficit under these circumstances cannot possibly have any harmful effects for the economy; but people are suffering because finance capital would not like it.

The official fear is that, if the fiscal deficit increases further, then the credit-rating agencies would downgrade India’s status, which would undermine the “confidence of the investors” and trigger a capital flight. This would cause a further fall in the value of the rupee which may become cumulative.

In all this however a simple point is lost: if this denouement actually comes about then there should be no hesitation in putting restrictions on capital outflows. Even a Hindutva government should not demur at putting such restrictions, if necessary, at a time like this.

But such is the stranglehold of finance capital that the very thought of capital controls, even in a pandemic, does not enter the government’s head. Hence any possibility of capital controls is simply ruled out from the very outset, so that even before any dire consequences of enlarging the fiscal deficit have actually materialised, the sheer thought of this happening frightens the government into sacrificing the interests of the people to satisfy the whims of finance.

The union government’s pusillanimity vis-à-vis global finance is also tying the hands of state governments. They have to bear a sizeable burden of the expenditure necessitated by the pandemic; and given the enormous centralisation of resources that has occurred of late, where they cannot even alter commodity taxation rates without the permission of the GST Council at which the centre is represented and has a dominant voice, they basically have to depend upon transfers from the centre.

Even their borrowing limits are controlled by the centre. Hence if the centre is strapped for funds, then so are the states; if the centre is hamstrung by the dictates of finance, then so are the states. The centre’s pusillanimity, in other words, restricts public expenditure down the line, for ameliorating the people’s distress during the pandemic.

Exactly the same conflict, between the people’s interest and that of finance, is clearly visible in Europe too. Many countries in southern Europe, notably Spain and Italy, have been hit very hard by the pandemic. Raising resources for public expenditure to meet the crisis at the level of each country would be extremely expensive as the yields on individual country bonds would be high; so a proposal has been made to float Eurobonds which would be the liability of a pan-European body and therefore entail lower yields. It is as if the whole of Europe would be borrowing on behalf of Italy, Spain and other needy countries instead of these countries themselves doing so.

This suggestion, made in particular by Italy, has however been opposed by Germany and the Netherlands, because German finance capital which dominates the Eurozone is opposed to a socialisation of the risks of borrowing by individual countries; the argument is that if at all a country needs to enlarge its fiscal deficit then it must be willing to pay the price for it. Angela Merkel as the head of the German government is articulating the position of German finance capital, exactly as she had done during the Greek crisis when Greece’s request to re-schedule debt had been stoutly opposed by German finance capital.

There have been international appeals by economists, and intellectuals generally, to Angela Merkel to relent on this. Even the example of a century ago, when the harsh terms for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles after the first world war, had increased the depth of the recession in that country, giving rise to the growth of Nazism, has been hinted at in the appeal. (Lenin, it may be recalled, had highlighted these harsh terms in his speech to the Second Congress of the Communist International as evidence of the maturing of the conditions for a world revolution). But finance capital has remained unmoved by such appeals.

A large number of third world countries, which have to meet their debt repayment obligations in the midst of the pandemic, have approached the International Monetary Fund for loans and also for arranging a rescheduling of their debt. The IMF’s own resources being meagre, it is in no position to provide sufficient loans to accommodate the interests of both financial creditors and the pandemic-hit people. And the debt-rescheduling that the IMF can arrange is unlikely to be enough to leave adequate resources for succour to the working poor in these countries.

Thus all over the world the conflict between finance capital and the interests of the pandemic-hit people is becoming acute and moving centre-stage. This conflict had always been camouflaged in verbiage about “high growth rates” (supposedly of benefit to all), and “wealth creation” (supposedly for the “nation” as a whole, of which all its citizens were legatees). The idea sought to be presented was that the interests of finance coincided with the interests of the country and its people, that serving the former ipso facto served the latter.

This idea was wearing thin anyway because of the world economic crisis. It was clear that no amount of interest rate reduction was going to get the world economy out of the crisis; what was needed was a fiscal stimulus. Given the objections of finance capital to any such fiscal stimulus (for which fiscal deficits would have to be expanded), no single State was in a position to engage upon such a fiscal stimulus while remaining within the framework of financial globalisation. For if it did so, then there would be an outflow of finance from its shores creating severe problems for it.

But now the vacuity of this idea of coincidence between the people’s interest and that of finance stands fully revealed by the pandemic; it can no longer be camouflaged by verbiage. There is a stark urgency about reaching help to the people, but the hurdle against doing so is the one imposed by the dictates of finance.The intensification of this conflict in the days to come will sound the death-knell of financial globalisation.

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Video: Perspectives on the Pandemic by Dr. John Ioannidis

April 21st, 2020 by Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis

In this long-awaited follow-up to his interview in late March, Dr. John Ioannidis discusses the results of three preliminary studies, (including his latest, which shows a drastically reduced infection fatality rate), the worrisome effects of the lockdown, the Swedish approach, the Italian data, the ups and downs of testing, the feasibility of “contact tracing”, and much more.

Watch the interview below.

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  • Posted in English
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This brave and intelligent respiratory therapist has blown the whistle on the fake pandemic that is COVID-19. He joins the ranks of a growing number of doctors on the frontlines who are reporting that this so-called pandemic simply doesn’t add up, due to various reasons that have been reported by independent and citizen journalists: empty hospitals, inflated figures and people being falsely counted as COVID-19 cases.

This respiratory doctor also exposes the COVID-19 test itself as useless. It is not testing for the virus but rather the reaction to the virus. Since it is a PCR test and not the gold standard of isolation and purification etc. (Koch’s postulates discussed here), it is merely testing for RNA sequences that could be caused by many other things, not a dreaded new coronavirus strain.

The PCR test is limited in function and flawed if used for broad diagnosis; it uses cycles to amplify the RNA sequence, which leads to many people getting a “positive” that in reality could be from cancer, radiation or many other things. He also had some scathing things to say about his fellow doctors just going along with the program and not asking the tough questions, a sad reflection on the profession, since it is well-known people look up to doctors and give away their power to perceived authority.

 


Full transcript is below:

“Good evening YouTube. This is our future and the power’s with the people. Just wanted to let you know I am a respiratory therapist and I’ve been doing this for 21 years. I’ve been kind of all over the place doing this. I wanted to show you our equipment room here. So we want to talk about COVID-19 for a few minutes and the first thing I want to say is: does it look like there’s a ventilator shortage? There’s not, okay! As a matter of fact, we’re running less ventilators right now than we would normally run and that’s cause people are just staying home. They’re not having elective surgeries. I want to talk about the numbers and the criteria that goes into what a COVID patient is or a patient under investigation (what’s also called a PUI). Basically right now, and the way it has been last couple of months when they locked us down, is that any patient that came in with a respiratory problem was labeled COVID. Now that doesn’t matter if it’s you got stage 4 lung cancer, pancreatitis, heart disease, liver failure and everything else – you’re still, because you come in with breathing problems, you’re labeled a COVID patient.

Now we have one lady that could do the testing at first that would go … those tests went to the CDC. Only one person was qualified to to test that for the whole place. So several of these patients under investigations were never tested and maybe they died or whatever. Then they would die of COVID and not of stage 4 lung cancer or these things. This is clear that this is what’s come out every single patient that needs one of our pieces of equipment here … any of this if they need any of this stuff, okay, then they are a rule-out COVID. And these tests have taken as long as 2 or 3 weeks to get back. We’re finally getting what they claim; they’ve been claiming this for a month but we’re finally getting in-house testing that’s going to change the game. I think that’s that’s what’s going on in most places and what that also means is isn’t it now you’re going see the numbers either go up or go down, and I would suspect we’re gonna see them spike up, and then spike down real quick, and this is the reason for the number of deaths. So you have to recognize that if every single patient is under COVID investigation and dies, then that goes into a COVID death, and they’re showing the numbers like a football game to scare you. They’re showing you loading bodies into a tractor trailer to scare you. I’ve never in my career ever seen bodies loaded into a tractor trailer. It just doesn’t happen. I wonder if those were even bodies. I really don’t believe it! All of this stuff is fake, okay?

Look at our ventilators. Let’s talk about ventilators and why there would be a shortage of ventilators. Well this is non-invasive ventilation here. CPAP or BiPAP: this is a mask that gets strapped on in we can help you breathe with that. We’re not allowed to use those okay? We’re finally opening up to where we can use them a little bit but for the most part since COVID came out they said absolutely not; that’s going to cause the virus to spread all over the place by spraying air slaws everywhere and so we can’t use it you have to let the patient crash and go straight to a ventilator, okay? Traditionally that’s not the way we would treat a patient. We also have air slides medications (bronchodilators) – we’re not allowed to use those either. So everything that we would traditionally do we’re not allowed to do. Every patient that comes in no matter what their history is labeled a COVID under investigation, so if that patient dies that becomes a COVID death, okay?

So, there’s a lot of weird things going on when it comes to the testing itself. I’ve been looking at this for about a month now but you can also look for yourself. They were open about it on CBS News the other night. They’re not testing for a virus, like if you go to you get sick you go to the hospital; traditionally you get tested for flu A and B.  Flu A by the way is H1N1 (the one that killed everybody in 2008). They’ll test you for RSV. Those are actual viruses that, you know, they will test you for. This COVID test is different. They’re testing for an RNA sequence from a reaction to the virus. Look this up! Please look it up! They’re not testing for a virus! There’s not one test to test for a virus okay? Then they put it in a PCR. It’s a PCR test which means it amplifies it so if there’s any little one little shred of that RNA sequence from a damaged cell in your lungs or in your nasal passage, you’re going to test positive. Now that can come from cancer, that can come from radiation, that can come from several things, so … and then you hear all this talk on the news about antibody therapy and all of us are kind of stuff people want to donate plasma everything else, but they’re not talking about the virus itself. They’re not testing for the virus itself, and that’s a big big issue, because that makes you say: “Well, is this as infectious as they’re telling us it is?” because if it was as infectious as they’re telling us that it is, these would all be in use and everybody would be dying and we’re not seeing that, okay? This is unbelievable – every bit of this has been created, okay?

If you cannot use the non-invasive ventilation and have to go straight to this the ventilator that creates a ventilator shortage but you also want to ask why it’s Ford and GM in the business of making ventilators when we have plenty of companies that already make ventilator you know what kind of ventilator is it? What does it do who’s going to train us on those ventilators and you know how is it going to be tested and then what is the cost per ventilator that the United States is paying for it in GM for these these products that really aren’t obviously needed so all this talk you hear on the news by the governors and everybody else we’re having shortages of ventilators it’s not true it’s not true, okay? So how about health care workers. Yeah we’re getting one or two healthcare workers or coming up positive and you know that would be expected but I would actually expect a lot more healthcare workers to get sick and come up positive and we’ve had some extreme contamination issues from patients that didn’t show any symptoms what and a patient under investigation and then all of a sudden came up positive and none of those health care workers came up positive got sick carried a fever or anything else just to show you real quick here’s my PPE that I have to wear sorry here’s my PPE that I have to wear. This an N95 mask in here and a face shield and of course we got some gowns and stuff but we’re going wearing this or 5 shifts minimum before we can get a new one all right so I’m contaminating myself every time I put this N95 masking the shield in this bag it’s contaminated. it’s contaminating over and over and over again and then I’m putting the mask on, okay? I’m still here I’m not sick and nobody else is either except with the exception of one or two.

If you look at the areas that these people are in where the hot spots are like such in Georgia, Albany and Atlanta you really have to say well why are all these places happening in these condensed areas? Well I truly believe this is something else that’s causing this all these patients have comorbidities they’re all older the ones that are you know in life-threatening situations and and the mortality rate is really not that low so if you actually look at what’s going on compared to H1N1 … H1N1 was a million times more scary than the COVID 19 hen it comes to a vaccination you cannot vaccinate yourself really for a sinus infection it’s just not going to work. You can’t vaccinate yourself for every little human ailment that there is you know people are going to get sick. What traditionally happens with viruses such as this if this is a virus and I’m not so sure it is but you’re going to have a real spike such as in SARS Zika H1N1. You gotta have a spike and then it’s going to lose its its efficacy and it’s going to drop and and the mortality rates going to drop I mean the people that get really sick is going to drop you know so you have this initial little bang and then it drops off that’s what a fire wrist normally does I’m not completely convinced this is a virus. I’ve been doing this a long time. Do your own homework do your research but the equipment should speak for itself – does this warrant shutting down the country? Does this warrant $6 to $10 trillion in economic stimulus just for this country? Does this warrant all these things that are being put in place? I mean does this warrant the trillions lost? Does this warrant locking everything up? Beaches, you know, hiking trails, tennis courts, bars, restaurants, pool halls, arm, schools … Does this warrant this? yeah I really don’t think it does – not even close.

So y’all need to be asking some some really hard questions here and questioning your government and questioning and people in charge and also questioning your doctors because the doctors believe this stuff just as much as everybody else does but they’re not looking at the real information all they’re doing is they’re told something and hey guess what they got lives they got jobs they got everything else you got. Plus on they don’t care I mean they do care but they’re not gonna go look it up they’re not gonna look up exactly what this test is they’re not gonna look up that hey why aren’t we getting these in fact you know they look up the little things that they’re told look up and that’s it just like anybody else would okay so you know these questions really have to be asked and then for the Trump supporters out there I’m gonna ask you something think about this for a minute we’re doing the same thing they’re doing in France we’re doing the same thing they’re doing in Italy we’re doing the same thing they’re doing any UK so does that mean Trump’s really in charge of this whole thing because I really don’t think he is I think he’s being told to do what he’s doing and and and that’s the way it is I mean this is a deep state Illuminati stuff and this is the real deal and they’re shutting the world down okay y’all people really need to understand this the world okay and they’re putting our kids and grandkids and severe debt – that will never be paid off and if you think of how many taxes you’re paying now can you imagine what our children and our grandchildren are gonna have to pay for this scam so please look up do your homework ask questions look at our equipment room ask why can’t we use this if we’re not seeing the infections yeah you know why can’t we use this non-invasive equipment why are we having auto manufacturers make ventilators. Who’s testing the ventilators? What kind of ventilator price per ventilator all these things the economic stimulus package you know is this gonna be another corporate bailout where they you know give themselves million-dollar bonuses while we starve I bet you it will be so this is real dangerous time we’re coming in – when it comes to the vaccinations I promise you.”

Fake Tests, Fake Bodies, Fake Pandemic: All to Keep People in Fear

As this respiratory therapist reveals, there are so many levels of fakery going on with this scamdemic. We have now entered the Brave New World of COVID-1984. We are in a new War on Bioterror, where everyone is a suspected or asymptomatic carrier, and the PCR test can replace the judge to prove your innocence or guilt. There are truly dangerous and unprecedented times. It is vitally important for everyone to not only question government but also to question their doctors so enough people.

Share this information. Knowledge dispels fear. Once enough people climb out of fear, naturally they will begin to unite and rise up in anger to demand freedom. Self-respect will kick in. The NWO manipulators who orchestrated this entire event will have a much harder time rolling out their plans when a united and aware citizenry protest en masse and refuse to buy into the fear and refuse to tolerate any more lockdown, house arrest or quarantine.

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This article was originally published on The Freedom Articles.

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and FB.

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHhyLvH7FQg

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-19-umbrella-term-fake-pandemic-not-1-disease-cause/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/new-war-on-bioterror-everyone-suspected-carrier/

Amid a health crisis that has made Brazil the country with the largest number of COVID-19 cases in Latin America, President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration closed its embassy and consulates in Venezuela on Friday.

At least 38 people boarded in a Brazilian Air Force plane bound for Brasilia. Among the returnees were diplomats, officials, and their families.

On March 5, Brazil’s president ordered the withdrawal of all his officials in Venezuela, an action framed in the U.S. strategy against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his fellow citizens.

Bolsonaro administration also notified its neighboring country to withdraw its diplomatic representatives from Brazilian territory.​​​​​​​

In this way, Brazil endorsed its alignment with the U.S. geopolitical proposal, which seeks to establish a transitional government in the Bolivarian nation.

“Since Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019, Brazil has become a close ally of the Donald Trump administration and shares its vision on Venezuela,” outlet Infobae recalled.

On March 17, the Brazilian regime ordered the “partial” closure of the borders with Venezuela, arguing that this measure would prevent a further spread of COVID-19.​​​​​​​

As of Saturday morning, Brazil had reported 34,485 COVID-19 cases and 2,181 deaths.

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Featured image: President Jair Bolsonaro leaves the Palacio do Alvorada, Brasilia, Brazil, March, 27, 2020. | Photo: EFE

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COVID-19: The Economic and Social Impact on Ocean Islands

April 21st, 2020 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

Understandingly, it has become important to analyze the spread of coronavirus and its impact on the economy of small islands especially Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatu and the Union of Comoros. These islands, which are favorite tourist posts and foreign investors, have also closely diverse geopolitical relationship with the world.

It comes into spectacular focus for this research study, although in general, the islands seem to have the lowest cases of the pandemic, and efforts taken in preparedness against the disease, and the possible effects on their economies and sociocultural lives of the population. Part of the research and monitoring is presented here in three headings as follows: (i) The Islands and Coronavirus: An Overview, (ii) Economic Impact of Coronavirus on these Islands and (iii) Current Scenarios and Lessons for the Future.

The Islands and Coronavirus: An Overview

The coronavirus disease appeared first in 2019 in Wuhan city in China. The disease was, first identified in Wuhan and Hubei, both in China early December 2019. The original cause still unknown but its symptoms include high body temperature with persistent dry cough and acute respiratory syndrome. Some medical researchers say it is a pneumonia-related disease.

Late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of the disease in the city of Wuhan in China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus – named COVID-19 by the WHO – have spread around the world. WHO declared the outbreak to be an international health concern only on 30 January, and then recognized it as a “pandemic”on 11 March 2020.

The basic transmission mechanisms of the coronavirus are the same worldwide. But the speed and pattern of spread definitely varies from country to country, urban to rural and place to place. It depends on cultural practices, traditional customs and social lifestyles. A densely populated township can have a different trajectory to a middle-class suburb or a village. The epidemic can spread differently and among nomadic peoples.

There have been claims that this coronavirus may not likely survive in hot countries due to the tropical climate in these regions, yet cases of this virus confirmed in these tropical countries. There are officially confirmed coronavirus cases on the islands of Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatu and the Union of Comoros.

On the Cape Verde, about 300 miles (483 kilometers) off the west coast of Senegal, consists of 10 islands and five islets, all but three of which are mountainous. The island has a total of 55 reported cases among its half a million population, according to the Cape Verde’s Public Health National Institute.

Mauritius is a very small island far away from China – and yet greatly affected by the coronavirus. Mauritius is a country reliant on tourism. The sector accounts for roughly a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since the first three case investigated and confirmed on 18 March, Mauritius now has 324, including 65 recoveries and 9 death, according to the Health Ministry.

On 15 April 2020, no new cases were reported, three patients who recovered from the coronavirus agreed to donate their blood through Plasmapheresis, according to the official coronavirus website of the Health Ministry.

Maldives, officially referred to as the Republic of Maldives, is a small island in South Asia, located in the Arabian Sea of the Indian Ocean. Its population, one of the most geographically dispersed, is nearly 400,000 and the island attracts many foreign tourists throughout the year.

The disease got to Maldives on 7 March 2020 from an Italian tourist who had returned to Italy after spending holidays in Kuredu Resort & Spa. Thereafter, the Health Protection Agency of the Maldives confirmed two more cases in the Maldives, both employees of the resort. Following this, the hotel was closed down, several tourists stranded on the island.

On 27 March, the government announced the first confirmed case of a Maldivian citizen with COVID-19, a passenger who had returned from the United Kingdom. And that brought the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 16; there are other 15 foreign citizens. Thus, in April the figured climbed to 28 cases.

Seychelles, located in the Indian Ocean, reported its first two cases on 14 March. The two cases were people who were in contact with someone in Italy who tested positive. On 15 March, a third case arriving from The Netherlands was confirmed, and the next day, there were four confirmed cases, visitors from The Netherlands. As at 20 April, there are only 11 confirmed cases and two patients quickly recovered and have been released.

Vanuatu is a Pacific island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. It is east of northern Australia, nearer to New Guinea, Solomon and Fiji islands. Vanuatu has a population of approximately 250,000. All these islands’ mainstays of the economy are agriculture and tourism. They attract tourists throughout the year. As of 3 April 2020, it has no coronavirus but still vulnerable, if strict measures are not adopted. It, however, continues its surveillance.

There are five public hospitals, and one private hospital with 27 health centers located across the islands and more than 200 aid posts in more remote areas. The two major referral hospitals are located in Port Vila and Luganville in the country.

The Union of Comoros, an island nation to the east is Mozambique and northwest is Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, gained independence from France on 6 July 1975. In mid-2017, Comoros joined the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with 15 other regional member states. The Comoros share mostly African-Arab origins. It economic activities are the same as other ocean islands.

On 17 April, Chief Epidemiologist, Dr. Izzy Gerstenbluth, indicated that 269 people have been tested so far, 106 men and 163 women. The number of confirmed cases is still at 14 as the official counted figure. One has died, one is still in the hospital, 10 are safe and three are active. 18 are being actively monitored and 12 are still in quarantine because they returned to the island after the measures were announced.

The Medical & Health Affairs Department (G & Gz) of the Ministry of Health, Environment and Nature (GMN) keeps a close eye on how the new coronavirus spreads and behaves worldwide. The G & Gz team is in direct contact with Curaçao Airport Partners (CAP), Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB), Curaçao Hospitality and Tourism Association (CHATA), the Analytical Diagnostic Center (ADC), Curaçao Medical Center (CMC) and Department of Immigration.

Here are the aforementioned coronavirus figures: Cape Verde (55), Mauritius (324), Maldives (28), Seychelles (11), Vanuatu (0) and the Union of Comoros (14), it would be erroneous to attribute tourism as the key reason for comparatively high numbers of cases in Mauritius. Of course, more Chinese are attracted there so as South Africans. There is propensity that the figures may not rise as the island governments have also taken strict control measures.

Economic Impact of Coronavirus on these Islands

The already weak capacity of health care system on these four islands – Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatu and the Union of Comoros – is likely to exacerbate the pandemic and its impact on their economies. These islands’ coronavirus disease burden is not so different from each other. But in each case, the key factor is the economic models and what these mean for this circumstance.

As an example, Maldives took an admirable step in the health sector. The Maldivian government turned the resort island of Villivaru in the Kaafu Atoll into a quarantine facility, described as “the world’s first coronavirus resort”, where patients would enjoy a luxurious stay and free medical care. According to Minister of Tourism, Ali Waheed, the Maldives had 2,288 beds available for quarantine as of late March 2020.

Obviously, other economic implications of the coronavirus are detrimental not only to public health systems but to trade and travel industry. On all the islands, small-scale agriculture that includes fishing, local industries as well as retail markets are largely affected. More than 80% of people in rural areas depend on subsistence farming for survival; however, restrictions on market activities would limit market access.

It is worth to say that both agriculture and fishing in these islands are conducted at subsistence level and for small-scale exports. Seafood is very popular and resultantly export of seafood is curtailed. The Maldives’ economy is dependent on tourism, which dropped severely due to travel restrictions amid the pandemic. Experts warned of an economic contraction and possible difficulties paying back foreign debt, especially to China.

Specifically, it is estimated that the shutdown implemented to control the pandemic costs the Mauritian economy about 5% of the country’s GDP for the full 15-day lockdown announced by government on 20 March. Later, there was sanitary curfew started on 23 March and was extended up to 15 April 2020. Now, the lockdown was again extended till 4 May to further contain the spread of the COVID-19 in Mauritius.

As already known, Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatu and the Union of Comoros depend mostly on the travel industry. Due to the outbreak of this coronavirus, all these governments have imposed restrictions on travel to the islands that have the best climate and attractive beaches. Travel restriction imposed, thus paralyzing tourism industry in all the four islands.

The Government of Maldives and the Tourism Ministry of the Maldives with the guidance of the Health Protection Agency of the Maldives (HPA) placed a temporary travel restriction for the following countries to control new cases. Since then, there are no passengers (traffic) originating from, transiting to or with a travel history of said country/province is to be permitted into the Maldives. Maldivians and spouses of Maldivians who are foreign nationals are allowed in, but subject to observe quarantine measures.

The Cape Verdean authorities have closed all sea borders and stopped internal flights between the islands. Travelers are required to comply with any additional screening measures put in place by the authorities. As a further step, the government has declared a state of emergency for the whole country until 17 April, the details of which can be found here (in Portuguese). This has activated a series of measures including significant restrictions on movement nationally and internationally.

However, all citizens have been instructed to remain at home unless they needed to carry out the following activities. These are: (i) to buy food or other essential items, (ii) to go to work if unable to work from home, (iii) to go to hospital or health centers, (iv) to carry out caring or similar duties or in case of real need, and (v) to walk pets. Cape Verde’s Public Health National Institute pledged to help in cases of emergency.

Since the beginning of March, the Mauritian authorities have been conducting ‘Contact Tracing’: people who have been in contact with infected patients have been placed under quarantine, including doctors, nurses and police officers.

Seychelles banned any person from Seychelles from travelling to China, South Korea, Italy and Iran. These countries have high cases. An exception is made for returning residents, under similar rules taken by Cape Verde, Mauritius and Vanuatu.

The most significant remittances to Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles,Vanuatuand the Union of Comorosas a source of financial stability come from the islanders who work as temporary laborers around the world, disappeared. The Union of Comoros depends heavily on remittances. For instance, there are between 200,000 and 350,000 Comorians in France. Official statistics are hard to find especially most of the government sources and international organizations become inaccessible for required information.

There have been a steady development or facelift in the cities over the past years. A substantial process of urbanization is still unfolding in Cape Verde, especially to the cities of Praia and Mindelo. The same trend city’s development and expansion in Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatuand the Union of Comoros.

Beyond all the points raised above, Dr Antipas Massawe, a former lecturer from the Department of Chemical and Mining Engineering, University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, East Africa, strongly insisted that “the scale of the challenges facing the health sector is tremendous, it requires extensive investment of resources and governments have to direct focus on the sustainable solutions.”

Charles Prempeh, a lecturer in Africana Studies at the African University College of Communications (AUCC), and a doctoral candidate at University of Cambridge, also explains in an email thatthere are deficiencies – ranging from poor health policies through inadequate funding of health infrastructure to training and research – that have characterized the health sector in Africa. Ocean islands have similar pitfalls or problems.

Amid the fast spreading coronavirus in some regions, it is simply providential that the African continent has not recorded high numbers, compared to the so-called western countries. But it is also true that even with the relatively smaller number of cases that most countries in Africa have recorded,there are deep-seated doubts that the health system can match squarely with the debilitating effect of the virus, as they have come under disproportionate strain, according to him.

“The current situation is serious setback,” both academics acknowledged. But further suggested that small island governments draw a long term development plan, make consistent efforts at mobilizing resources for realizing – support for education, health and employment generating sectors, – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Current Scenarios and Lessons for the Future

It is time for solidarity, to fight the end the global health mess. The key lessons for epidemic response are to act fast but act locally. That is exactly what Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatu and the Union of Comoros are focusing on now.

But as the international response gains momentum, some financial assistance may be extended to these islands. The islands hospitals need testing kits, basic materials for hygiene, personal protective equipment for the professional health workers, and equipment for assisted breathing. There is a global shortage of all of these and a shameful scramble among developed countries to get their own supplies – relegating Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles,Vanuatu and the Union of Comoros to the backyard.

The islands absolutely have no pharmaceutical companies to produce the needed medicaments. The medical supplies, equipment and whatever have to be imported from the United States and Canada, Europe, Asian countries such China and India.

Media reports said Mauritius and Seychelles had received a few tons of medicine including thousands of hydroxychloroquine tablets from India to help in their fight against COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine is an anti-malarial drug used by some doctors to treat COVID-19 patients, though its efficacy is still being tested. Mauritius and Seychelles are favorite tourist posts, and have long-time close geopolitical relationship with India.

The COVID-19 epidemic is currently forcing governments to cut agricultural expenses and prioritize health-related expenditures. This will heavily affect the economy in the future if the restrictions continue, and further expected to bring additional economic hardship in the nearest future to these poor ocean islands. More than 80% of people in rural areas depend on subsistence farming for survival, restrictions on market activities would limit market access.

Repeat: Most of these people derive their livelihoods from the informal economy, small-scale farming, open market trading, livestock keeping and fishing. Workers in the formal sector have low incomes. Only a few of them have social security, and some may not even have saving accounts. This means with the lockdown, these islands are likely and adversely affected.

The above scenarios complicate the situation for poor people, who have little resources or insurance to cushion the social and economic impact of the pandemic. These small islands are, indeed, in a quagmire both, at the state level and the individual. While much depends on post-pandemic internal policies directed at transforming the economy, strategies to expand practical collaboration with foreign partners, the islands still have to keep good diplomatic relationship with the world. Nevertheless, global leaders have called for a comprehensive approach to mobilizing support for least developed countries, and so it is time to show absolute solidarity with Cape Verde, Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles, Vanuatuand the Union of Comoros.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a Special Representative of the Russian Trade and Economic Development Council on interaction with Africa. He is also an independent research writer on African affairs in the EurAsian region and former Soviet republics.

Featured image is from Avas.mv

When Your Bank Goes Bust…Run! Or…

April 21st, 2020 by Brett Redmayne-Titley

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.” – Bertolt Brecht

Daily, a thus distracted public is told that the financial patsy for the growing worldwide economic disaster is simply a virus. As Americans fearfully watch passively as the US Congress throws the ever-mounting trillions in Bail-out funds so quickly at the feet of their puppet masters, the paltry cash reserves of all American bank depositors have never been more at risk.

“I’m sorry, Sir. We are unable to cash this check,” were the rather ominous words delivered to me by a fresh-faced, none-too-friendly, Wells Fargo Bank assistant manager. He had just kept me waiting ten minutes while in consultation with others about my pending transaction. Returning to his Wells’ colored cubicle he sat down quickly, straightened in his chair and then looked at me intently through narrowed eyes before delivering the bad news.

Four feet away, between us and in front of him, were three forms of my personal identification face up. Looking down, this budding banker particularly glowered at two personal checks, also laying on the desk before him, written to me as payment by a client and drawn on his bank. Not being a “Wells” customer I had expected a shake-down, hence I had brought with me multiple forms of ID including passport.

These two checks totalled the small sum of almost US$8,000.00. Not expecting this much difficulty I insisted on a reason, to which he now looked up from once again carefully considering the two checks and replied, “I’m sorry, but the bank does not have sufficient funds on-hand to cash these checks.”

Oh, dear.

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For those fortunate Americans who have personal cash savings available and would prefer to keep them, the unspoken reality is: that in 2010  your Congress legalized any bank’s total control over your savings deposits should, by financial urgency, the banks say that they need them.

Ten years ago, in the aftermath of the 2008-9 Great Recession the US Congress, then, approved a 30,000-page bill that you were told would fix, once and for all, the ills of the evil banks and the need for them to ever be “Bailed-Out” again. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in part provided the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) with new powers and methods to guarantee depositor’s savings. Incredibly, congress failed via Dodd-Frank to regulate the derivatives trade despite this type of fiscal Russian roulette applied to worthless mortgage-backed securities being the root cause of the original 2008 recession for which everyone-except Wall St. – suffered dearly.

The resultant lack of regulation has seen  OTC derivatives increase to$640 trillion at end-June 2019.

Considering that banks currently reward depositors for this unreported risk with virtually zero- or negative– interest rates, the made-wary depositor would do well to reassess the long-held fallacy that banks have sufficient cash reserves to meet their obligations to a depositor’s cash deposits. Or, that your cash is safe. Neither is true. With the crashing financials of the nation’s largest banks flash in crimson red, your cash has never been more at risk.

Naturally, like the majority of incorrectly informed US bank depositors, I had assumed that this here bank, today, would have lots and lots of cash on hand.

Au contraire.

Unapologetically the Wells manager informed me that he was “sorry” but he could only cash one of the checks at this time. Both checks were for about the same amount. I inquired if this was new bank policy and was told that the bank simply did not have enough cash on hand, and, “no,” I could not come back at the end of the day after the bank had received the day’s cash deposits. However, he informed me that, if I ventured to a larger Wells Fargo branch they might be able to handle both checks at once.

This rather unique news seemed worthy of delving into further, so I declined his kind offer and left with both my onerous financial instruments in hand. Being away on business, I decided to wait and stop by my home town’s main Wells Fargo branch office and investigate this further.

Thus began my quest to pick-up a paltry eight large in cold, hard cash.

Turned out, since Dodd-Frank, I no longer had a primary right to my hard-earned deposited cash, anyway. Nor, even, a secondary right. In fact, when it came to my cash, I, as the bank’s cash depositor, and my money was these days legally a tertiary banking financial obligation at best.

Oh, dear!

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“… people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”  –Henry Ford

The banks have known this new economic crash was coming for years. Post-2009, US banks also knew well that most American people, thanks to the omissions and distortions by media mythologists, are still woefully ignorant regarding the nuances of the genius of their bank’s financial alchemy that magically creates money out of thin air. Most live daily in the illusion that their financial institutions will protect their deposited savings. This is because they missed their bank’s greedy preparations for the next stock market crash to come.

In the aftermath of 2009, a year later the banks understood that Americans, Europeans and UK citizens had lost all enthusiasm for any future government Bail-Out, most people preferring instead that any institution suffering self-inflicted financial distress should –next time– enjoy the fruits of their crimes via formal bankruptcy proceedings.

After the Obama era Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) chucked its own $trillions into the 2009 trough back then, the “Too Big to Fail,” (TBTF) banks developed a very fraudulent and elitist connotation as did the applicable term, “Bail-Out.” To millions across the world who had lost their homes, pension funds, retirement plans- and dreams– these were both now very tired monikers for financial oppression and fraud. In 2010, the previously bailed-out TBTF banks were provided with a far more magnificent definition: “Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions” (G-SIFI).

As for the much-maligned and properly vilified “Bail-Out”? No… No. That, too, recalled those days of congressionally imposed privation. Would not a “Bail-In” sound much more welcoming? More acceptable? “Bail-Outs,” may have lost their popular flavour but in the new world of the G-SIFI, the next bank bail-out is actually just a “Bail-In,” away.

Yes, Bail-Ins are now the new “systemically” correct term for publicly guaranteed banking fraud. With the Bail-out thus discredited, this new politically correct renaming has now been incorporated in newly crafted national policies and laws appearing in multiple other countries as well. These finance laws, such as Dodd-Frank and its similar UK and European Union versions, turn the intent of Dodd-Frank on its head and make future Bail-Ins legal. The difference in the definition should shock any bank depositor.

These Bail-Ins allow failing G-SIFI banks, should they need to avoid insolvency, to legally convert the cash funds of “unsecured creditors” (the bank’s depositors) into bank capital. This also includes “secured” creditors, like state and local government funds. Like pensions.

The 2008-9 reaction to the financial damage of the recession was a massive effort to avoid that systemic financial bankruptcy. The increased and unregulated use of derivatives was a primary cause of the fiscal damage then. In the aftermath, rather than regulation, thanks to Dodd-Frank, derivatives suddenly were amazingly provided “super-priority” status in any future bank bankruptcy.

Worse, at the same stroke of Obama’s pen, formerly secure cash depositors were suddenly demoted to “un-secured” status.

As America once again impotently watches a new orgy of massive “Bail-Outs” being thrown just as quickly at Wall Street as during  2008-9, one might also recall how their corporately controlled Federal Reserve Bank and US Congress threw, then, several trillions of US taxpayer dollars just as quickly at US corporations and banks. Massive public funding under TARP also went then to any corporation with enough political pull to be defined as “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF). These were the Bail-outs of yore.

The financial law firm Davis Polk estimates the final length of Dodd-Frank, the single longest bill ever passed by the US government, is over 30,000 pages. Before passage, the six largest banks in the US spent $29.4 million lobbying Congress in 2010 and flooded Capitol Hill with about 3,000 lobbyists prior to Obama predictably signing its final unreadversion. Reportedly, no US congressperson, senator, or staffer had bothered to read it.

However, the bank’s congressional minions were told to vote for it. And dutifully they did.

But, the authors of Dodd-Frank did little about derivatives. Banks almost exclusively hold this risk exposure. Today, that estimate is pushing three-quarters of a quadrillion dollars. What this means today for cash depositors is that applied to Dodd-Frank and these same again failing banks, all these upcoming bad bank bets will be paid-off first-not last- using the savings of depositors who are now legally last on the minds of the banks.

Normally in any managed court-ordered capital liquidation via corporate bankruptcy proceedings, secured creditors- such as a bank’s depositors- are paid off first because theirs were hard assets when first deposited, not investments. In the past, secured creditors normally had a mandated and legal priority during any liquidation. However, under the new “Bail-In” of the Dodd-Frank mandates, your government has re-prioritized your bank’s exposure and your cash deposit. Derivatives and other similar banking high-risk ventures are now more highly protected than any bank depositor’s savings which are now treated as un-secured instead.

Similarly, in the 2013 example of Cyprus, Germany and the ECB also made depositors inferior to other bank holdings and investments leaving depositors with, after many months, a small remaining fraction of their deposits.

And then came Greece.

“It’s [FDIC] already indicated that they will confiscate [savings] funds…”. -US congressman Ron Paul

With this recent history in mind, I entered my town’s main branch of Wells Fargo. The two checks in hand. On the way in I was greeted warmly, one after the other, by three more fresh-faced and eager proteges, all smartly uniformed to match the Wells décor, and who proffered in turn, “Good morning, Sir!,” again, and again… and again. Certainly, these little fish were not in possession of authority sufficient to cash my two mammoth checks, so I asked for bigger game: the Branch Manager.

Thus, I explained my plight to a very lovely lass who predicted she, “would be glad to help me.”

“Cheryl,” patiently explained that I had come to the right place and she would be glad to cash both checks. Regarding my previous polite banking experience, she admitted that it was indeed bank policy to have limits on the availability of cash for withdrawals and that different branches had different limits. This was the main branch so my request here was meritorious. Further, she admitted that whatever daily cash coming into the branches in the form of deposits was not available for withdrawal, but was sent from the branch for daily accounting at a central point common to all area Wells bank branches. Only a prescribed amount of cash was provided to each bank for daily customer cash withdrawals. The amount was kept at par to begin each day.

“A couple of times your current request,” was Cheryl’s cautious response to my question about her branch’s limits on check cashing. Not to be put-off, I asked about a hypothetical US$25,000 check. She admitted this would be beyond her branches authority. “But,” she smiled, “Today, you’ve come to the right place.”

We are told that the near-certain global economic collapse was caused most decidedly by a pernicious virus branded as COVID-19. True, but that virus would much better titled, “Unregulated Capitalism.” This week, depositors were repeatedly told by media whores that the banks are safe and not to withdraw cash. This lie was obviously reverse psychology since the lines for ATMs were long and many ran out of cash within hours. CNBC and others assured worried savers that banks will not be given taxpayer bailouts next time. True.

The preamble to the Dodd-Frank Act claims, “…to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.”

But then, how does a failing bank get a Bail-In as a designated G-SIFI without receiving another taxpayer Bail-Out?

No problem. Enter the FDIC and another new banking term, “cross-border bank resolution.”

As the US agency required to pay back depositors who lose savings up to $250,000, FDIC is insufficiently armed with a paltry US$25 billion war chest. Under Dodd-Frank, the FDIC is the mechanism to replace deposits lost or squandered by banking largesse. Sadly for the public, the bank’s US depositors have claims to an estimated US$7.36 trillion in cash. Once the banks steal your savings to pay-off their superior obligations, the FDIC will be more than a tad short of the funds needed.  How to fix this mathematical shortfall?

On December 10, 2012, a joint strategy paper was drafted by the Bank of England (BOE) in conjunction with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) titled, “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” Here the plot to steal depositor’s savings is laid out.

The report’s “Executive Summary” states,

“… the authorities in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) have been working together to develop resolution strategies…These strategies have been designed to enable [financial institutions] to be resolved without threatening financial stability and without putting public funds at risk.”

Sounds good until you read the fine print.

Despite the movement of the Congress to rescind the provision, Title II of Dodd-Frank gives the FDIC a new enforcement arm, the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) which is similar to its British counterpart the Prudent Regulation Authority (PRA). Both now have the authority to punish the depositors of failing banking institutions by arbitrarily making their savings deposits subordinate- actually tertiary- to bank claims for the replacement value their derivatives, junk mortgage exposure, and propagation of economic sector bubbles of historic proportions.

Further, with US banks holding $7 trillion in personal cash savings deposits compared to approx. $230 trillion in US derivative obligations, the FDIC’s $25 billion will still not be quite enough. The creators of Dodd-Frank knew this before it was signed. As John Butler points out in an April 4, 2012 review in Financial Sense,

“Do you see the sleight-of-hand at work here? Under the guise of protecting taxpayers, depositors… are to be arbitrary, subordinated… when in fact they are legally senior to those claims…”

Oh, but bank depositors can rest easy in the knowledge that replacing their savings via FDIC will not come out of their yearly taxes via a Bail-Out. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, the first line of defence for depositors will allow Congress to instead replace personal savings via the FDIC with a government paid for $7 trillion bail-in…of your cash savings.

But, what’s another $7 trillion after $6 Trillion last month on top of $23Trillion in accrued national debt after yet another $1trillion yearly US budget deficit?

Fiscal insanity.

Worse than this monetary conjuring act, Dodd-Frank gives new powers to the FDIC and its OLA that allows for an even more powerful and draconian resolution: any deposited funds in a bank, from $1 to $250,000 (the FDIC limit), and everything above, can instead be converted to bank stock!

Since this will eliminate their responsibility, FDIC has provisions within Dodd-Frank so that this can be done, via OLA, quite literally overnight.

An FDIC report released in 2012 reads:

“An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors [depositors] of the failed company [Bank] into equity [stock].”

Additionally, per an April 24, 2012, IMF report, conversion of bank debt to stock is an essential element of Bail-Ins included in Dodd-Frank.

“The contribution of new capital will come from debt conversion and/or issuance of new equity, with an elimination or significant dilution of the pre-bail in shareholders. …Some measures might be necessary to reduce the risk of a ‘death spiral’ in share prices.”

As was the case post-2009, in order for affected depositors to retrieve the cash value of what was formerly their cash account balance, the stock provided to them in lieu of their cash must next be sold.

When Lehman Brothers failed, unsecured creditors (depositors are now unsecured creditors) eventually got eight cents on the dollar.

This type of conversion of deposits into equity already had another test-run during the bankruptcy reorganization of Bankia and four other Spanish banks in 2013. The conditions of a July 2012 Memorandum of Understanding resulted in over 1 million small depositors becoming stockholders in Bankia when they were ordered to be sold- for their cash and without their permission- “preferences” (preferred stock) in exchange for their missing deposits. Following the conversion to common stock, these preferenceswere originally valued at EU 2.0 per share. Of course this stock in a bankrupt Bankia continued to tumble in value and like Lehman Bros. ended up being further devalued to EU 0.1 after the March restructuring.

Canada has also stated they were planning a similar “Bail-In” program. The Canadian government released a document titled the Economic Action Plan 2013 which says, “the Government proposes to implement a “Bail-In” regime for systemically important banks.”

However, don’t be getting cute by hiding your cash, precious metals, or passport in a US bank safe deposit box. This illusion of financial security is no longer safe either. Dodd-Frank took care of that, too.

Under Dodd-Frank the FDIC, using the auspices of Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) can legally, without a warrant, enter any bank vault, have the manager secretly open any and/or all safe deposit boxes and inventory, or seize the contents. Further, if a manager is honest enough to inform the depositor of the illegal incursion they are subject to criminal charges and termination from bank employ. Independent reports reveal that at this point all of America’s safe deposit boxes have already been invaded and inventoried for future consideration.

This situation happened in Greece. Depositors who visited their bank to remove their jewellery or precious metals or cash were met at the bank’s door by security, a metal detector and confiscation.

The power of the now remaining G-SIFI banks and FDIC was further evident when, cash finally in hand, I headed to my own evil bank, JP Morgan Chase, right next door to Wells Fargo. The manager confirmed that the cash withdrawal policy at Chase (which was called Great Western before Chase gobbled them up in 2009)  was in keeping with that at Wells; very little cash available on demand. I posed a slight untruth and inquired as to what I should do about my upcoming need for $50,000 in hard cash. No, his bank would not do that on demand, but arrangements could be made to have the cash transferred to his bank. That would only take “about two days.”

Of course, I would need to fill out a few forms. For approval.

Bank failures are caused by depositors who don’t deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.” – Dan Quayle

With the American public again on the hook-by law– for the anticipated losses of the banks a distressed depositor might think this plot thus complete. Of course, the realities of Dodd-Frank were, so far in this story, the exclusive purview of the Obama administration.

It should be noted that the only voice of economic reason at the White House at the time, former Fed Chairman, Paul Volker, divorced himself very publicly from this renewed banking scandal of  novel economic acumen. As head of Obama’s recession inspired, President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Volker ran into the challenge of renewed fiscal insanity for a year, resigning in January of 2011 in disgust. His departure thus coincided with the beginning of the next ten year orgy of financial criminality flaunted by the banks in the faces of the public as the DoJ let them off every time for pennies-on-the-crime.

The advent of the Trump regime went further to gut the supposed intentions of Dodd-Frank. Right away, the new president issued a memorandum that set in motion his plan to scale back the provisions of Dodd-Frank and repeal the Fiduciary Rule. As example, the House approved legislation on Feb. 2, 2017, to erase a number of core financial regulations put in place by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, as Republicans moved a step closer to delivering on their promises to eliminate rules that they claim have strangled small businesses and stagnated the economy. Said Trump,

 “I have so many people, friends of mine, with nice businesses, they can’t borrow money, because the banks just won’t let them borrow because of the rules and regulations and Dodd-Frank.”

That’s funny on so many levels.

Never mind, at least, that these poor banks are holding derivative exposure grotesquely larger than the total cash deposits of US savers…nor that their ill-gotten riches- such as the UBS, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, RBS multi-billion dollar criminal prosecutions – were taken off-calendar in Federal court for approx. 15% of the total crime every time. The banks kept the rest. That’s banking.

Banks are worried, but have one big problem: They are still very profitable. So far.

Last week, JPMorgan reported Q1 adjusted revenue of $29.07 billion plunging from a year ago, with dividends down 70% to $0.78 per share. Despite their strong profitability, Wells, Citi and BofA all posted similar declines. However, in reaction to the looming disaster the Big 7 US banks this week set aside some $27 billion in credit loss provisions, a number which is 4x greater than the total provisions set aside a year ago, and the most since the financial crisis. Beyond derivatives, bank’s are already bracing for a surge in defaults and delinquencies on its loans amid the complete US economic shutdown.

On the derivatives front Capital One, the nation’s #11 bank by assets, is already in deep trouble on their derivative exposures. Reportedly, Capital One made highly speculative trades, betting via derivatives that oil would not plunge to where it is now at 17-year lows. With the recession just getting started the price of oil isn’t going anywhere. But Capital One likely is: Bankruptcy

German Deutsche Bank has for years been the face of worldwide banking fraud and risk personified and the working model for US banks. The German bank is again, thanks to derivative exposure, in really deep trouble this time. As Alasdair Macleod writes in an excellent article this week,

“…Deutsche provides us with a laboratory experiment for how a derivative virus can kill a bank.”The looming derivative crisis

Macleod uses Deutsche as the working model for the derivative disaster heading directly at the US and other world banks and their trickery in hiding this massive risk on their books. Using Deutsche Bank’s own accounting Macleod assesses:

“It [Deutsche] conceals derivative exposure under the headings “Trading assets” and “Trading liabilities” on the balance sheet. You have to… discover that under Trading assets… and under Trading liabilities, [there is] a difference of €1.062bn. This is relatively trivial. But wait, there is another table that breaks derivative exposure down even further into categories… The true total of OTC derivatives and exchange-traded derivatives to which the bank is exposed is €37.121 trillion. That is nearly thirty-five thousand times the €1.062bn netted difference in the balance sheet.”

The same equation of GAAP accounting fraud thus hiding a bank’s massive total derivatives risk is being used by all of America’s Big 7 banks right now. And, apparently, Capital One.

The non-banks, US financial institutions and corporations of any and all brands, have this past month shouldered-up together to the congressional piggy bank for a historic $6trillion give away. For any collapsing multinational already running out of tricks to game their stock price with phoney earnings statements, the rush to a global pan-panic could not have come at a better time.

Predictably, the media addled American public-the true Covidiots-have nicely ignored this massive scam in lieu of a, so far, mythical $1200 carrot. Wall Street got theirs, post haste, as congress quickly huddled close together… and America shuddered in lockdown.

Of course, at this point in American economic history the subject of cash to any dollar, Euro, or UK pound sterling only matters, by example, to 40% of the US public because reportedly 60% of American families have less than a grand total of $500 in savings in total. 23 million of them just entered unemployment in the past four weeks as well.

The 2020 stock market fire sparked to life upon a pyre of 2019 economic metrics already sufficient to burn the US national economy to a crisp like a wheelbarrow full of Reichsmarks. This was predicted yearly since 2014 by the champion of laissez-faire banking, JP Morgan/ Chase itself.

Unless one believes in a sudden dramatic resurgence of the US economy in the face of absolutely biblical economic metrics to the contrary- or that Keynesian economic witchcraft will actually prevail- a wise cash depositor might, at this juncture consider the actual safety of one’s life’s savings. The language of Dodd-Frank is the language of banking theft…personified.

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As shown, daily the banking sector is in far worse shape than before 2010 and, just like the scores of other greedy corporations, banks will also need a Bail-out to avoid catastrophe.

But, since Dodd-Frank passed, the banking sector is restricted from receiving any federal Bail-outs this time? And, banks can legally only get a Bail-in? But, a Bail-in means that my savings deposits… willbe …?

Oh, dear!

With all this in mind, I stepped into the bright sunshine outside of the dim confines of Chase, having apparently cleaned out Wells Fargo of their cash just minutes before. Safely in my coat pocket rested all but $100.00 of my day’s take tucked deep down- and securely; Its final outcome, no one’s god damn business but my own.

So… if you’ve got cash, maybe you ought to get a hold of it soon. Or, when YOUR bank fails, don’t walk…. Run!

YOU do not want to be second in line.

Oh, dear!

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 180 in-depth articles over the past ten years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

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Three back-to-back developments over the past week prove that the Gulf Kingdoms are finally waking up to Hindu extremists’ inherent Islamophobia, the threat of which Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been warning about for a while now, suggesting that the rest of the world might eventually follow suit as more people become aware of the danger that this rapidly spreading ideological virus poses to the fifth of humanity living in South Asia.

The dark reality of modern-day India, which deceitfully presents itself as the self-proclaimed “world’s largest democracy”, is finally dawning on the influential Gulf Kingdoms after three back-to-back developments over the past week. Emirati Princess Hend Faisal Al Qassemi responded on Twitter to a Hindu extremist migrant worker living in her country who was ranting about his country’s conspiracy theory that Muslims are allegedly to blame for India’s coronavirus outbreak, which the author exposed in his piece earlier in the month about how “Hindu Extremists Ridiculously Believe That Muslims Are Responsible For World War C“. Saurabh Upadhyay, the man in question whose account has since been deactivated, was also disparaging Muslims in general and even went as far as to insult his host country by claiming that it’s become as successful as it has only “because Indians have built cities like Dubai from scratch”.

The royal wrote in response that

“The ruling family is friends with Indians, but as a royal your rudeness is not welcome. All employees are paid to work, no one comes for free. You make your bread and butter from this land which you scorn and your ridicule will not go unnoticed.”

She then shared a few screenshots of some of his screeds while warning all the guests in her country that “Anyone that is openly racist and discriminatory in the UAE will be fined and made to leave.” This exchange was notable because it was hitherto the highest-profile condemnation of Hindu extremism by any representative of the Gulf Kingdoms, whose countries host millions of Indian migrant workers. Just like some Western countries have belatedly realized that importing cheap labor from civilizationally dissimilar countries such as majority-Muslim ones comes with serious social risks, so too are some Muslim ones finally reaching the same conclusions vis-a-vis Hindu-majority India.

Princess Qassimi’s response to Upadhyay was preceded by Saudi scholar Abidi Zahrani writing on Twitter a few days prior that

“Gulf states host millions of #Indians some of whom are infected #COVID__19 are treated free of charge regardless of their faith While #Hindutva #Terrorists gangs are committing crimes against #Muslims citizens”,

and that

“I propose to all respected followers to list all militant Hindus who are working in the GCC and spreading hate against #Islam #Muslims or our be loved Prophet Mhmd PBUH under this #hashtag #Send_Hindutva_Back_home show a copies of their bio.”

His strong condemnation of the radical Hindu ideology (“Hindutva”) that’s seized control of Indian society in the six years since Prime Minister Modi’s election is due to the aforementioned conspiracy theory that the author touched upon earlier and the fact that “India’s Waging A State-On-Citizen Hybrid War To Build Modi’s Hindu Rashtra“, a Hindu fundamentalist state.

This seemingly sudden high-profile awareness among influential figures in the Gulf of the danger that the rapidly spreading ideological virus of Hindutva poses to the fifth of humanity that lives in South Asia prompted the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission of the de-facto Gulf-controlled Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to tweet that “#OIC-IPHRC condemns the unrelenting vicious #Islamophobic campaign in #India maligning Muslims for spread of #COVID-19 as well as their negative profiling in media subjecting them to discrimination & violence with impunity” and that “#OIC-IPHRC urges the #Indian Govt to take urgent steps to stop the growing tide of #Islamophobia in India and protect the rights of its persecuted #Muslim minority as per its obligations under int”l HR law.” In an instant, it became apparent that the billions of dollars a year that India spends importing energy from the region failed to buy those countries’ silence over its Islamophobia.

That shouldn’t be interpreted to automatically mean that the Gulf Kingdoms will put any credible pressure on the Indian government to stem the spread of state-backed Islamophobia in society, but it’s still a significant soft power victory for the victimized Muslims of that country. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been warning for a while now about the threat that Hindu extremists’ inherent Islamophobia poses, most notably during his speech before the UN General Assembly last September that the author analyzed in his piece about how “Pakistan Just Warned The World About The 21st Century’s Munich Moment“. Although ridiculed by Indian-sympathetic critics at the time for allegedly exaggerating the scale of the threat that Hindutva poses (and even claiming that it’s a threat to begin with), he’s since been vindicated after the world’s most prominent Muslim body came out to condemn India for the exact same politics of hatred that he’s been warning about.

Going forward, it’s foreseeable that the OIC will continue to hound India over its discriminatory treatment of the Muslim minority. In addition, there’s a possibility that the Gulf Kingdoms will seek to identify and deport the Hindutva migrants within their borders, or at the very least put immense pressure on them to respect their host states during their time of stay there and not dare spread their Islamophobic vitriol while living as guests in those Muslim-majority countries. In the event that there’s a systemic crackdown against Hindutva ideologues (whose adherents, to be clear, are radical Hindus that don’t represent Hinduism as a whole), then the economic void left by their deportation could be filled by Indian Muslims or fellow co-confessionals from elsewhere in the region, thus reducing some of the influence that India’s Hindutva-led government holds over the GCC. That, in turn, could free the bloc to more confidently oppose India on other related topics one day, such as Kashmir.

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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.

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The Agribusiness Model Is Failing

April 21st, 2020 by F. William Engdahl

Over the past decades the organization of the entire world food supply from farm to consumers has been reorganized into a globalized distribution known as agribusiness. With most of the world in lockdown over the fears of spread of the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, that global food supply chain is in danger of catastrophic breakdown. The consequences of that would dwarf deaths by coronavirus by orders of magnitude. Yet governments seem oblivious.

The imposition of unprecedented mass quarantine, school and restaurant closings, factory closings across most of the world is putting the focus on the alarming vulnerability of what is a global food supply chain to severe breakdown. Before the lockdown an estimated 60% of all food consumed in the United States today was consumed outside the home. That includes in restaurants, fast food places, schools, in university cafeterias, company cafeterias and the like. That has now been all but shut since March, creating huge disruptions to what had been a well-organized supply chain delivery. Large restaurants or company cafeterias receive supplies of everything from butter to meat in entirely different volumes and packing than a retail supermarket. A major vulnerability exists in the mammoth agribusiness concentrations known as CAFOs or Concentrated Agriculture Feeding Organizations.

CAFOs At Risk

On April 12, one of the largest pork processing plants in the USA, Smithfield Foods, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, announced it would close indefinitely after several hundred of its 3,700 employees tested positive for coronavirus, COVID-19. The closing of that one plant will impact some 5% of US pork supply. Smithfields Foods is one of the world’s largest agribusiness concentrations.

In 2018, Smithfields, the world’s largest pork producer, was forced to pay almost half a billion dollars in its Tar Heel, North Carolina plant for massive and unreasonable pollution. That one plant, the world’s largest processing plant, slaughters some 32,000 pigs daily. The animal fecal waste, mixed with massive doses of antibiotics to control infections, was cause of the lawsuit.

Smithfields Foods has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, and the United Kingdom, mostly countries where regulations are lax. And the Virginia-based group today is owned by China. In 2013 the largest meat producer in China, WH Group of Luohe, Henan, purchased Smithfield Foods for $4.72 billion. That made the Chinese company one of the largest foreign landowners in the United States and owner of the largest pork supplier in the USA. Given that China suffered a devastating loss of its pig population in 2019 from African Swine Fever by as much as 50%, today there are huge competing demands on the pork production from Smithfields.

The COVID testing at the South Dakota plant is just the tip of a very precarious iceberg of infections and sickness, not only coronavirus strains, that is endemic to the huge concentration of agribusiness in North America and globally.

Another giant meat processing conglomerate, Tyson Foods, on April 6 was forced to shut its plant in Waterloo Iowa after death of two workers tested positive for coronavirus. On April 17 after four workers at a Tysons plant in Camilla, Georgia, died after being tested positive for COVID-19, pressure has been building for the company to close that plant as well. To date the company says it will do temperature testing and require face masks in the densely-crowded, low pay plant. The trade union is asking 14-day quarantine paid sick leave for workers tested positive, so far without success. There is no evidence of detailed examination into whether these workers died of co-morbitity from other infections and happened also to test coronavirus positive.

Tyson Foods, an Arkansas company, whose then head, Don Tyson, was instrumental in Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, is the world’s second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork, with sales of $46 billion in 2019. Tyson Foods is a major meat supplier to Wal-Mart, the huge Arkansas retail giant. It also supplies fast food chains such as KFC. Since an agreement in December, 2019, Tysons also exports significant volumes of chicken parts and pork to China to help fill the lack of pigmeat protein there, in addition to owning major poultry facilities in China. Reportedly, workers, typically low-paid, work elbow to elbow with no access to masks.

Even without coronavirus fears, the CAFO plants are rife with sickness and toxins. The size of the company’s facilities is staggering. One Tyson Foods facility in Nebraska produces enough meat products every day to feed 18 million people. Tyson, one corporation, controls roughly 26 percent of US beef production.

On April 13 JBS USA Holdings was also forced to close its main US facility in Greeley, Colo., for a deep cleaning, and all of its workers will be tested before they can return for their jobs after major numbers of coronavirus positive cases were tested there after two workers, one 78 years old, died. JBS USA is a subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s largest processor of fresh beef, with more than US$50 billion in annual sales. The subsidiary was created when JBS entered the U.S. market in 2007 with its purchase of Swift & Company. JBS USA controls some 20 percent of US beef production.

The third largest US meat processor, Cargill, has cut half its workers at their Fort Morgan Colorado meatpacking plant as multiple positive coronavirus tests emerged. In Canada, Cargill, has tested 358 coronavirus positives at its major Alberta meat-packing plant. The food-workers’ union there is calling for the plant to be closed for two weeks to develop a better health strategy, a plea so far ignored by Cargill. At the same time the company laid off 1,000 of its 2,000 workers at that plant, refusing to give details. The plant, one of two beef suppliers to McDonalds Canada, processes thousands of cattle daily. Cargill today controls about 22 percent of the US domestic meat market.

These three giant corporate conglomerates, then, control more than two thirds of the total meat and poultry protein supply of the United States and additionally supply major exports to the rest of the world. That is a concentration which is alarmingly dangerous as we are beginning to see. Whatever coronavirus test results, they are huge cesspools of toxins that workers are exposed to. Covid-19 tests would indicate positive for such toxic infections as well as they do not directly test presence of any virus, merely of antibodies claimed to indicate COVID-19.

The Agribusiness Model

This unhealthy degree of concentration was not always so. It began as a strategic project of Nelson Rockefeller and the Rockefeller Foundation after World War II. The idea was to create a corporate strictly-for-profit vertical integration and cartelization of the food chain as John D. Rockefeller had done with Standard Oil and petroleum. Rockefeller money funded two Harvard Business School professors. John H. Davis, former Assistant Agriculture Secretary under Eisenhower, and Ray Goldberg, both at Harvard Business School got financing from Rockefellers to develop what they named “agribusiness.” In a 1956 Harvard Business Review article, Davis wrote that “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.”

The Harvard group was part of a Rockefeller Foundation four-year project in cooperation with economist Wassily Leontieff called “Economic Research Project on the Structure of the American Economy.” Ray Goldberg, an ardent proponent of GMO crops, later referred to their Harvard agribusiness project as, “changing our global economy and society more dramatically than any other single event in the history of mankind.” Unfortunately, he may have been not all wrong.

In fact what it has done is to put control of our food into a tiny handful of global private conglomerates in which the traditional family farmer has all but become a contract wage employee or bankrupted entirely. In the USA today some industrial cattle feedlots hold up to 200,000 cattle at a time driven by one thing, and one thing only, and that is economic efficiency. According to USDA statistics, the number of cow/calf ranch operations in the US has dropped from 1.6 million in 1980 to less than 950,000 today. Similarly, the number of small farmer/feeders – those who fatten the cattle in preparation for eventual slaughter – has declined by 38,000. Today fewer than 2,000 commercial feeders finish 87 percent of the cattle grown in the United States.

Food production, like electronics, has become global, as cheap foods are mass packaged and shipped worldwide. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Russian shops were flooded with Western agribusiness brand products from Nestle, Kelloggs, Kraft and the like. Domestic farm production collapsed. Much the same has taken place from India to Africa to South America as cheaper multinational products drive out local farmers. China before the current crisis imported 60% of its soybeans from US-controlled grain companies such as Cargill or ADM.

The system is essentially one in which farming has transformed to become factories to produce protein. It takes GMO corn and GMO soybeans to feed the animal, add vitamins and antibiotics in massive amounts to maximize weight gain before slaughter. The vertical integration of our food supply chain under globalization of the past decades has created an alarming vulnerability to precisely the kind of crisis we now have. During all past food emergencies production was local and regional and decentralized such that a breakdown in one or several centers did not threaten the global supply chain. Not today. The fact that today the United States is far the world’s largest food exporter reveals how vulnerable the world food supply has become. Coronavirus may have only put the spotlight on this dangerous problem. To correct it will take years and the will to take such measures as countries like Russia have been forced to do in response to economic sanctions.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

A Decade on the Left

April 21st, 2020 by Leo Panitch

The 2010s were the end of ‘the end of history.’ Beginning in the shadow of the largest financial crash since the Great Depression, it was a decade in which the injustice of austerity tore away at the social fabric and consigned third-way politics to the rearview mirror.

In Britain, the decade began with the iconic student protest movement, the rise of UK Uncut and the TUC’s “March for the Alternative.” Soon, these protests against the political and economic order reached global significance with the rise of Occupy Wall Street in New York alongside the movements of the squares in Spain and Greece.

Before long, those countries would be at the forefront of attempts to elect left-wing governments in opposition to the European Union’s austerity measures, attempts which themselves prefigured the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.

It has been a tumultuous period for the Left, one in which it suffered seismic defeats but also gained audiences far in excess of any it had seen since the early 1990s. To assess its ramifications Tribune sat down with Leo Panitch, co-editor of the Socialist Register.

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Ronan Burtenshaw (RB): Looking back over the last decade on the Left, you can identify three phases. It begins with the Occupy moment, a horizontalist response to the Financial Crisis which eschewed party politics. Then you have the development from the ‘movements of the squares’ across Europe to new left-wing parties of various kinds, such as SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain. At the end of the decade, you have this attempt by longstanding left-wingers to win power within the traditional left-of-centre parties in their respective countries, such as in Britain and the United States. How would you characterize these experiences? To what degree do you think progress has been made?

Leo Panitch (LP): I think enormous progress has been made. We saw a movement from protest to politics. It was a short bridge from the police riot against the G20 demonstration here in Toronto in 2010 to Occupy Wall Street and the Spanish indignados a year later. There is a path you can follow from this to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party in 2015 and the Bernie Sanders candidacy in 2016 in the United States.

These were remarkable political developments. People began to realise a decade before, when parties like SYRIZA and Die Linke were formed, that you can protest forever – even with large and impactful protests – without changing the world. The anti-WTO protests began in 1995, then reached their height in Seattle in 1999, these were followed by the mass anti-war protests of the early 2000s. These were evidence that neoliberalism was actually far less popular than people imagined. But as the protests lingered on, people figured out that more was needed. No one sat down and figured it out, or gave instructions to the protestors.

It took some creative leadership, like when Alexis Tsipras said in 2012 ‘we will join with anyone to form a government and stop the torture’ or when Pablo Iglesias said ‘we need to move from the squares to some relationship with the state.’ In the UK it took Corbyn to say, when no other Socialist Campaign Group MP would say it, ‘I’ll run for leadership.’ His campaign in many ways built on years of anti-austerity movements and campaigning, but that moment was able to galvanise something that reached far beyond them. It tapped into a deep enthusiasm for change which those protests represented but which wasn’t capable of changing things fundamentally. Sanders has been much the same in recent years.

Today, even after the defeat in the general election, there are 40,000 members of Momentum. In the United States, similarly, there are 60,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America. These are things to build on. That is not to say these organizations are always clear politically or know where they are going – they often do not. It is not to say they have done enough to sink deep roots in working-class communities, though many involved want to. But it is an important historical development and it is crucial that Corbyn’s defeat doesn’t lead to their demoralization.

RB: Where does the question of the party stand after this decade? Clearly, one part of what you have just laid out is the movement from the streets into the parties. Yet it has happened in different forms: SYRIZA brought together existing radical left groups, Podemos was a populist party based on digital organizing and a communications strategy, and in Britain it was an attempt to take the historic party of the labour movement back to left-wing politics. What do you make of these different models?

LP: In the 1960s there was this kind of creativity in the streets that led to the creation of historic social movements for liberation and against war. My generation back then already felt that the historic working-class parties had run their course as agents of transformative social change. That wasn’t to say we thought the party apparatuses, the MPs, the councillors, the institutions, didn’t have a long shelf life. We saw that they did. But we recognized that they weren’t going to be transformative any longer.

So we set off on the course of founding new mass parties. Some, not myself, set themselves the task of finding a better Leninism. Others, far fewer in number, tried to find a better Maoism. Some of us tried to found new mass democratic socialist parties, ones that would use the pre-First World War Second International as a model but try not to become so co-opted and oligarchic. My generation, in each of those efforts, failed. The younger generation has embarked on this path again.

It was surprising in some ways – certainly to people like me who had followed previous attempts to transform the Labour Party in the 1970s and ’80s – to see a socialist win the leadership. But he galvanized the same energy that was mobilizing those new parties in other countries in Europe at the time, which was clearly powerful. It is worth pointing out that many of those newer parties are now in deals of various kinds with the old social-democratic parties. In fact, in Spain, they are in coalition government. So there is a kind of coming together of these experiences.

Whichever path was pursued – building new parties or trying to bring the old ones back left – it was never going to be easy. There is a danger that even the new parties in countries with proportional representation voting systems will become ‘social-democratised’ in the bad sense of that word. We can see that now happening with SYRIZA under Tsipras. In some ways, the forces at work inside the Labour Party now and inside the Democratic Party in the United States are more on guard against these tendencies, they are more aware of the old problems of hollowed-out, top-down, centralized parties.

Every time there has been this attempt to transform the Labour Party – and it has happened many times – it has been the result of a great crisis of capitalism. In the early decades of the last century, there was the Great Depression and Ramsay MacDonald taking the party into national government, imposing harsh cuts on unemployment insurance and trying to resolve things from the right. The MacDonald faction became National Labour and the Labour Party itself won only won fifty seats in the 1931 election. Labour then moved left and elected a radical pacifist and socialist, George Lansbury, as its leader.

It was a time of huge unemployment marches and a great desire for change, but Lansbury and the Labour Party in parliament more generally struggled to resonate with the mood outside. Then, just before the 1935 election, Labour conference rejected his line on rearmament – Lansbury was opposed as a pacifist – and he resigned the leadership. Shortly afterwards, Labour regained about 100 seats in the general election under Clement Attlee. Attlee, of course, won the 1945 general election, and led the great post-war Labour government. But, with the exception of Bevan, who of course built the NHS, that was a government in which the Left was largely marginalized.

In that period, even a lot of previously left-wing MPs rapidly accepted the settlement with capital that government oversaw. They accepted that nationalization would be limited and wouldn’t have anything to do with industrial democracy, even though in the early stages the trade unions were voting for workers’ control at Labour conferences. Stafford Cripps, who was one of the founders of Tribune who was seen as a Marxist in the 1930s, became a very conventional chancellor of the exchequer by the end of the 1940s and introduced wage restraint. Bevan, of course, was the exception – he truly managed to carry out a radical reform in building the National Health Service on left-wing lines, although he admitted he had to ‘stuff the doctors’ mouths with gold’ to do it.

The Bevanites, who were then leading Tribune, like Michael Foot, were on the outside of that 1945 government and critical of its limitations. In fact, they stayed on the margins until the 1960s when a former Tribunite in Harold Wilson became prime minister. Some of them joined his cabinet – but it was an extremely disappointing government. It was under Wilson that the contradictions of post-war social democracy first began to show, and the settlement come apart, particularly as finance capital began flooding into London by the end of the 1960s. Under Wilson, wage restraint became almost the main aim of the Labour government, disciplining the trade unions to ensure that the economic crisis didn’t deepen. This got even worse in the 1970s. But by that time the great 1960s protest and social movements had begun to change the political landscape, and galvanize the New Left.

Image on the right: Michael Foot (1913 – 2010) was British Labour Party Leader from 1980 to 1983. Tony Benn (1925 – 2014).

The Bennites, of course, were those who attempted to take these energies into the Labour Party and transform it in a more democratic direction. People like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were produced by that effort to move the party to the left, learning from and developing on the work of social movements in previous years. That was the most impressive attempt in any social-democratic party anywhere in history, in my view, to take a party that had become ossified and bureaucratized and co-opted by capital and make it a force for change again with democratic socialist politics. Tony Benn had been laying the ground for it since 1969 when he said ‘we need to go beyond the post-war reforms’, that unless we challenged capital and took control over the investment process, we would lose those reforms. He saw neoliberalism before it happened.

Together with the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) Benn fought a decade-long struggle for democracy and socialism inside the party. The CLPD used to say ‘if you can’t democratise the Labour Party, you can’t democratize the British state.’ The Bennites’ attempts to reform the party remain relevant today – making MPs accountable to members with reselection, giving them the right to elect the leader and making the cabinet responsible to Labour conference for its policies. Foot was, in a responsible way, I think, taking the need for party unity on his own shoulders – but we know what happened then.

After Foot, Neil Kinnock came in – another figure who had been on the left, and used his leadership to discipline the Bennites as well as drive others like the Militant Tendency out of the party. This, in turn, laid the foundations for New Labour to emerge in the 1990s. That project ended any idea that Labour would break fundamentally from neoliberalism. The lesson is that it’s very difficult to transform these parties. But there are encouraging signs – the size of Momentum, the role of left-wing unions in supporting Corbynism. There is a lot to be said for fighting to continue the effort in the coming years. But it won’t be done under an effort that puts uniting the party front and centre. That has been the calling card for all previous projects to defeat and marginalize the Left.

RB: I want to ask as well about the working class itself. At the beginning of this decade, in the years after the crash, you had severe austerity programmes across many countries and what remained of the welfare state came under attack. At the same time there was a rise of job casualization and insecure employment, and attacks in many countries – like in Greece, Spain, Britain, France – on the unions themselves. But looking at statistics about the days lost to strike action and union density, there hasn’t been a marked growth in trade union membership or in class struggle. What does that tell us about these left-wing projects of the past decade?

LP: Ultimately, it comes down to the success of the neoliberals in breaking the backs of the trade union militancy that was the response to the economic crisis of the 1970s. That was one big difference between Bennism and Corbynism. In Tony Benn’s case you had a real movement across the country of workplace organizing and struggle, then obviously through the 1980s you also had events like the miners’ strike. But that resulted, as we know, in a great defeat for the trade union movement.

The Thatcher government waged war on the union movement and the question has to be asked: why couldn’t the unions stop it? The answer to that is to be found in how the unions themselves developed over the course of the century, particularly in the post-war period, how they were pulled into corporatist relations with the state and were demobilized in the process. Beyond that, they never became the ‘schools of socialism’ that Marx and Engels had hoped for. Even when they were strong and winning things, they were increasingly winning things for their members so they could fill modern capitalism’s allotted role for them as individual consumers. Members knew, in those days, that the only way to improve terms and conditions was to gather together collectively in your workplace and demand it. But the improvements they demanded were increasingly so that they could participate more actively in the market as individual consumers.

The vision of taking power in the workplace, changing who owned things, solving social needs got progressively lost. The main example of this is, of course, the United States, where unions in some ways were involved in the privatization of the welfare state through healthcare. Workers in unions were given guaranteed insurance coverage through private systems while the public systems were dismantled and workers not in unions got thrown to the wolves. But it isn’t just an American question. When the great class struggles of the 1960s and ’70s happened in Europe, they were largely oriented toward being able to own a refrigerator or buy a car. They were about giving more layers access to this kind of society, rather than changing it. There was an anti-authoritarianism to it as well – I won’t be bossed around, or if you were a woman, I won’t be harassed – but it wasn’t really a political class struggle, aimed at changing which class was in power in society.

During the 1970s, Tony Benn would go to party and trade union conferences and sometimes criticise officials for not educating members about politics and the need for industrial democracy. He would talk more broadly too, he would say ‘do your neighbours know what you do as a trade unionist? Do they know why you do it?’ He was asking the question of whether union members would stick with the union through hard times, whether there was a deeper commitment. If you don’t have trade unions that are involved in class formation, in overcoming the differences between a nurse and a miner, inside the class itself, and building a class for itself, then you’re going to be left with a working-class that can be picked off industry by industry.

When you see this as the backdrop, it’s not hard to understand how precaritization developed in recent years. The demise of the unions and their changing character, too, where a young teacher, no matter how proletarianized, doesn’t have the same class-forming experiences as an industrial worker, creates a very different environment today.

RB: Would it be fair to say we have, in this era, attempted to overcome a relatively low level of class struggle with a political substitute? That’s not to say it was the wrong course of action, but that we elected a socialist leader of the Labour Party without any growth in workplace militancy or the development of a real working-class movement. It’s hard to win on those terms. What can we do in the next ten years to ensure we are not trying to do it all from above again, but that our left-wing projects can be backed by renewed workplace militancy?

LP: We don’t write history on our own terms. I think a lot of people would have hoped that the rise of Corbyn – who consistently backed unions and workers’ issues – would go alongside an increase in workplace activity. Certainly, that was one of the reasons that Corbyn got such strong support from left-wing trade unionists; and many unions in Britain had been coming around to the idea that there was a connection between broader movements and what happens in the workplace, you can see this by the role they played in things like Stop the War and the People’s Assembly.

It is certainly true that huge numbers of young people were galvanized into politics by Corbyn. You have to hope that the capacity is there for them to become active in their workplaces, that they undertake struggles in their own lives and take part in that class formation. Similarly, I was speaking recently to younger members of the DSA in the United States. One of them, Meagan Day, was describing a recent campaign of theirs in California, where they backed a black working-class activist [Jovanka Beckles] for state assembly. They didn’t win, but she said the real value of the campaign was the roots they built in black working-class communities. This meant that, when the teachers’ strike happened in January and February of last year, it was the Oakland DSA that was running the school luncheons outside the picket line, so that the local families didn’t have to cross the picket line to get a meal for their kids.

People are changed through their involvement in projects like the ones around Corbyn and Sanders. The process of trying to build a party that can transform a state itself creates a broader capacity in people to look at the world differently. When you’ve won people over to a project like that, they are prepared to sacrifice – and everyone knows you don’t win a strike without sacrifice. You don’t win a strike without collectivizing a part of your life, either, and that’s what being in a movement means. Strikes are rarely won without collective institutions at a local level, which help people see through a struggle. This is a long and slow process, it involves people dedicating themselves to become organizers.

RB: Arguably, the defining characteristic of Corbynism was its generational politics – that is the sharpest division and most pronounced shift we have seen in the past two elections. Corbyn’s base in the end was young people dealing with real class questions: low wages, high rents, student debt. Many of them saw in Corbyn’s Labour Party a possibility of improving their lives. As someone who has been around decades on the left, what would your advice be to this emerging generation of socialists?

LP: It’s easy to give advice, it’s much harder to follow it. I think this generation really threw itself creatively into electoral politics – not just in 2017 but in 2019 as well – and produced some of the most vibrant campaigns we have seen in a long time. They showed enormous dedication and selflessness. The hard answer to your question is, real change involves doing that on a more permanent basis. That’s difficult to do, especially if you’re in a precarious situation.

But there is a tradition of this on the left. Many of the old organizers were precarious. They went into places they didn’t know, places that needed organizing. They slept on people’s floors and in their attics, they shared food. They were an integral part of building up the collective capacity of workers to engage in class struggle. This can’t be done in isolation – it should be done alongside the trade union movement. I remember one leading figure in Unite once spoke to me about needing to have a Momentum in Unite. Well, when you have all these young people with such enthusiasm, many of whom have difficult working conditions, many of whom are already socialist, trade union leaders should be thinking about how to bring them on board to revitalize their own organizations.

As for Momentum, we need an organization that goes beyond just supporting Corbyn in elections. Or winning reselection and other democratic reforms inside the party. It needs to be permanently engaged in teaching people how to be organizers and in developing its members’ own political education, so they can work at the base to engage in what needs to be seen as class re-formation today. Organizers need to facilitate the process whereby the rider for Uber Eats, the call centre worker, the worker in a warehouse, and erstwhile professionals like teachers, who are being proletarianized, all recognize themselves as part of the new working-class.

I think my greatest piece of advice would be to commit for the long haul. The tenor of the moment is to say ‘we’ve only got five or ten years left’ because of the depth of the climate emergency. That kind of slogan was designed to get people to see how serious things are. But as a political strategy it is a dead end. We can’t think in those terms, no matter how desperate the climate situation. We have to be able to think in terms of ten, fifteen or twenty years. There is fundamental class and organizational rebuilding to be done. It takes time.

Even if Corbyn had won a plurality in December’s election, he would still have been forced to govern not only with the Scottish National Party (SNP) or the Liberals, but with many MPs in his own party who aren’t committed to socialism. How much would he really have been able to do without longer-term organizing happening outside the government? Without rebuilding class institutions? Without political education? We have to be sober about this, it’s a long fight.

*

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Leo Panitch is emeritus professor of political science at York University, co-editor (with Greg Albo) of the Socialist Register and co-author (with Sam Gindin) of The Making of Global Capitalism (Verso). His new book, co-authored with Colin Leys, Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn (Verso).

Ronan Burtenshaw is editor of Tribune Magazine. Follow him at @ronanburtenshaw.

All images in this article are from The Bullet

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Video: COVID-19: Closing Down the Economy Is Not the Solution

April 21st, 2020 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail. 

While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as  the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis,  its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.  

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of  mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty. 

This is the true picture of what is happening.

How is it implemented? The fear campaign plays a key role. The lockdown is presented to national governments as the sole solution.

No need to reflect or analyze the likely impacts. Corrupt national governments are pressured to comply.

The economy is the basis for the reproduction of real life.

It is also the basis for upholding public health endeavors.

This closing down operation affects production and supply lines of goods and services, investment activities, exports and imports, wholesale and retail trade, consumer spending, the closing down of schools, colleges and universities, research institutions, etc.

In turn it leads almost immediately to mass unemployment, bankruptcies of small and medium sized enterprises, a collapse in purchasing power, widespread poverty and famine.

VIDEO: COVID: Closing Down the Economy is not the Solution

O Distanciamento Social da Democracia

April 21st, 2020 by Manlio Dinucci

“O distanciamento social chegou para ficar muito mais do que algumas semanas. Num certo sentido, irá perturbar o nosso modo de vida para sempre”: anunciaram os pesquisadores do Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts, uma das universidades de maior prestígio dos Estados Unidos (MIT Technology Review, We’re not goingback to normal, 17 March 2020).

Citam o relatório apresentado pelos pesquisadores do Imperial College London, segundo o qual o distanciamento social deve tornar-se uma norma constante e ser reduzido ou intensificado, de acordo com o número de pacientes hospitalizados pelo vírus, nas unidades de terapia intensiva. O modelo elaborado por estes e por outros pesquisadores não diz respeito só às medidas a ser tomadas contra o coronavírus. Torna-se num modelo social, real e preciso, do qual já se preparam os procedimentos e os instrumentos que os governos deverão impor como lei.

Os dois gigantes da Informática, Apple e Google, até agora rivais, associaram-se para inserir biliões de sistemas móveis para iPhone e Android, em todo o mundo, num programa de “seguimento de contactos” que avisa os clientes se alguém infectado com o vírus se  está a  aproximar deles. As duas empresas garantem que o programa “respeitará a transparência e a privacidade dos utentes”.

Um sistema de rastreio ainda mais eficaz é o dos “certificados digitais”, nos quais estão a trabalhar duas universidades americanas, a Rice University e o MIT, apoiadas pela Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a fundação americana criada por Bill Gates, fundador da Microsoft, a segunda pessoa mais rica do mundo na classificação da revista Forbes. Ele anunciou-o publicamente, respondendo a um empresário que lhe perguntou como retomar as actividades de produção, mantendo o distanciamento social:

“No final, teremos certificados digitais para mostrar quem se recuperou ou foi testado recentemente, ou quando tivermos uma vacina, se esse indivíduo a tomou. (The Blog of Bill Gates, 31 questions and answers about COVID-19, 19 March 2020).

O certificado digital de que Gates fala, não é o actual cartão de saúde electrónico. A Rice University anunciou, em Dezembro de 2019, a invenção de pontos quânticos à base de cobre que, injectados no corpo juntamente com a vacina, “se tornam em algo semelhante a uma tatuagem de código de barras, que pode ser lida através de um smartphone personalizado”.(Rice University, Quantum-dot tattoos holdvaccination record, 18 Dicember 2019). A mesma tecnologia foi desenvolvida pelo Instituto de Tecnologia Massachusetts (Scientific American, Invisible Ink CouldReveal whether Kids Have Been Vaccinated, 19 Dicember 2019).

A invenção desta tecnologia foi encomendada e financiada pela Fundação Gates, que declara querer usá-la nas vacinas para crianças,principalmente nos países em desenvolvimento. Também poderia ser usada numa vacinação à escala global contra o coronavírus.

Bill Gates

Este é o futuro “modo de vida” que nos é anunciado: o distanciamento social com estrutura variável sempre em vigor, o medo constante de ser abordado por um infectado pelo vírus sinalizado por um toque do nosso telemóvel, o controlo permanente pelo “código de barras” implantado no nosso corpo. Seria, essencialmente, uma extensão dos sistemas militares com os quais se podem seguir e acertar nos “alvos” humanos.

Sem subestimar o perigo do coronavírus – seja qual for a sua origem – e a necessidade de medidas para impedir a sua propagação, não podemos deixar nas mãos dos cientistas do MIT e da Fundação Gates a decisão de qual deve ser o nosso modo de vida. Também não podemos parar de pensar e fazer perguntas. Por exemplo:

É muito grave que o número de mortes devido ao coronavírus, na Europa, seja actualmente, quase 97.000, mas que medidas devem ser tomadas em proporção, contra as partículas finas, as PM2,5,  que – segundo os dados oficiais da European Environment Agency(Airquality in Europe – 2019 report)  – provocam, a cada ano, na Europa, a morte prematura de mais de 400.000 pessoas?

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Distanziamento sociale dalla democrazia

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

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Distanziamento sociale dalla democrazia

April 21st, 2020 by Manlio Dinucci

«Il distanziamento sociale è qui per rimanere molto più di qualche settimana. Stravolgerà il nostro modo di vivere, in un certo senso per sempre»: lo hanno annunciato i ricercatori del Massachusetts Institute of Technology, una delle più prestigiose università statunitensi (MIT Technology Review,We’re not going back to normal, 17 marzo 2020).

Essi citano il rapporto presentato dai ricercatori dell’Imperial College London, secondo cui il distanziamento sociale dovrebbe divenire una norma costante ed essere allentato o intensificato  a seconda del numero di ricoverati per il virus nei reparti di terapia intensiva. Il modello elaborato da questi e altri ricercatori non riguarda solo le misure da prendere contro il coronavirus. Esso diviene un vero e proprio modello sociale, di cui già si preparano le procedure e gli strumenti che i governi dovrebbero imporre per legge.

I due giganti statunitensi dell’informatica Apple e Google, finora rivali, si sono associati per inserire nei sistemi operativi di miliardi di cellulari iPhone e Android, in tutto il mondo, un programma di «tracciamento dei contatti» che avverte gli utenti se qualche infettato dal virus si sta avvicinando a loro. Le due società garantiscono che il programma «rispetterà la trasparenza e la privacy degli utenti».

Un sistema di tracciamento ancora più efficace è quello dei «certificati digitali», a cui stanno lavorando due università statunitensi, la Rice University e il MIT, sostenute dalla Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, la fondazione statunitense creata da Bill Gates, fondatore della Microsoft, la seconda persona più ricca del mondo nella classifica della rivista Forbes. Lo ha annunciato lui stesso pubblicamente, rispondendo a un imprenditore che gli chiedeva  come poter riprendere le attività produttive mantenendo il distanziamento sociale:

«Alla fine avremo dei certificati digitali per mostrare chi è guarito o è stato testato di recente, o quando avremo un vaccino chi lo ha ricevuto» (The Blog of Bill Gates, 31 questions and answers about COVID-19, 19 marzo 2020).

Bill Gates

Il certificato digitale di cui parla Gates non è l’attuale tessera sanitaria elettronica. La Rice University ha annunciato nel dicembre 2019 l’invenzione di punti quantici a base di rame che, iniettati nel corpo insieme al vaccino, «divengono qualcosa come un tatuaggio con codice a barre, che può essere letto con uno smartphome personalizzato» (Rice University, Quantum-dot tattoos hold vaccination record, 18 dicembre 2019).

La stessa tecnologia è stata sviluppata dal Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Scientific American, Invisible Ink Could Reveal whether Kids Have Been Vaccinated, 19 dicembre 2019).

L’invenzione di questa tecnologia è stata commissionata e finanziata dalla Fondazione Gates, che dichiara di volerla usare nelle vaccinazioni dei bambini principalmente nei paesi in via di sviluppo. Essa potrebbe essere usata anche in una vaccinazione su scala globale contro il coronavirus.

Questo è il futuro «modo di vivere» che ci viene preannunciato: il distanziamento sociale ad assetto variabile sempre in vigore, la costante paura di essere avvicinati da un infettato dal virus segnalato da uno squillo del nostro cellulare, il controllo permanente attraverso il «codice a barre» impiantato nel nostro corpo. Sarebbe in sostanza una estensione dei sistemi militari con cui si possono seguire e colpire i «bersagli» umani.

Senza sottovalutare la pericolosità del coronavirus, qualunque sia la sua origine, e la necessità di misure per impedirne la diffusione, non possiamo lasciare in mano agli scienziati del MIT e alla Fondazione Gates la decisione di quale deve essere il nostro modo di vivere. Né possiamo smettere di pensare, ponendo delle domande. Ad esempio:

È molto grave che le morti da coronavirus in Europa siano attualmente quasi 97.000, ma quali misure si dovrebbero in proporzione prendere contro le polveri sottili, le PM2,5, che – secondo i dati ufficiali  della European Environment Agency (Air quality in Europe – 2019 report) – ogni anno provocano in Europa la morte prematura di oltre 400.000 persone?

Manlio Dinucci

 

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The corona hype is not based on any extraordinary public health danger.

However, it causes considerable damage to our freedom and personal rights through frivolous and unjustified quarantine measures and restrictions.

The images in the media are frightening and the traffic in China’s cities seems to be regulated by the clinical thermometer.

Evidence based epidemiological assessment is drowning in the mainstream of fear mongers in labs, media and ministries.

The carnival in Venice was cancelled after an elderly dying hospital patient was tested positive.

When a handful of people in Northern Italy also were tested positive, Austria immediately closed the Brenner Pass temporarily.

Due to a suspected case of coronavirus, more than 1000 people were not allowed to leave their hotel in Tenerife. On the cruise ship Diamond Princess 3700 passengers could not disembark., Congresses and touristic events are cancelled, economies suffer and schools in Italy have an extra holyday.

At the beginning of February, 126 people from Wuhan were brought to Germany by plane and remained there in quarantine two weeks in perfect health. Corona viruses were detected in two of the healthy individuals.

We have experienced similar alarmist actions by virologists in the last two decades. WHO’s  “swine flu pandemic” was in fact one of the mildest flu waves in history and it is not only migratory birds that are still waiting for “birds flu”. Many institutions that are now again alerting us to the need for caution have let us down and failed us on several occasions. Far too often, they are institutionally corrupted by secondary interests from business and/or politics.

If we do not want to chase frivolous panic messages, but rather to responsibly assess the risk of a spreading infection, we must use solid epidemiological methodology. This includes looking at the “normal”, the baseline, before you can speak of anything exceptional.

Until now, hardly anyone has paid attention to corona viruses. For example, in the annual reports of the Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) they are only marginally mentioned because there was SARS in China in 2002 and because since 2012 some transmissions from dromedaries to humans have been observed in Arabia (MERS). There is nothing about a regularly recurring presence of corona viruses in dogs, cats, pigs, mice, bats and in humans, even in Germany.

However, children’s hospitals are usually well aware, that a considerable proportion of the often severe viral pneumonia is also regularly caused or accompanied by corona viruses worldwide.

In view of the well-known fact that in every “flu wave” 7-15% of acute respiratory illnesses (ARI) are coming along with coronaviruses, the case numbers that are now continuously added up are still completely within the normal range.

About one per thousand infected are expected to die during flu seasons. By selective application of PCR-tests – for example, only in clinics and medical outpatient clinics – this rate can easily be pushed up to frightening levels, because those, who need help there are usually worse off than those, who are recovering at home. The role of such s selection bias seems to be neglected in China and elsewhere.

Since the turn of the year, the focus of the public, of science and of health authorities has suddenly narrowed to some kind of blindness. Some doctors in Wuhan (12 million inhabitants) succeeded in attracting worldwide attention with initially less than 50 cases and some deaths in their clinic, in which they had identified corona viruses as the pathogen.
The colourful maps that are now being shown to us on paper or screens are impressive, but they usually have less to do with disease than with the activity of skilled virologists and crowds of sensationalist reporters.

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.

The horror reports from Wuhan were something, that virologists all over the world are waiting for. Immediately, the virus strains present in the refrigerators were scanned and compared feverishly with the reported newcomers from Wuhan.

A laboratory which was the first to be allowed to market its in-house tests worldwide.

Prof C. Drosten was interviewed on 23rd of january 2020 and described how the Test was established. He said, that he cooperated with a Partner from China, who confirmed the specific sensitivity of the Charitè-Test for the Wuhan coronavirus. Other Tests from different places followed soon and found their market.

However, it is better not to be tested for corona viruses. Even with a slight “flu-like” infection the risk of coronavirus detection would be 7% – 15% . This is, what a prospective monitoring in Scotland (from 2005 to 2013) may teach us. The scope, the possible hits and the significance of the new tests are not jet validated. It would be interesting to have some tests not only on airports and cruising ships but on German or Italian cats, mice or even bats.

If you find some new virus RNA in a Thai cave or a Wuhan hospital, it takes a long time to map its prevalence in different hosts worldwide.

But if you want to give evidence to a spreading pandemic by using PCR-Tests only, this is what should have been done after a prospective cross sectional protocoll.

So beware of side effects. Nowadays positive PCR tests have tremendous consequences for the everyday life of the patient and his wider environment, as can be seen in all media without effort.

However, the finding itself has no clinical significance. It is just another name for acute respiratory illnesses (ARI), which as every year put 30% to 70% of all people in our countries more or less out of action for a week or two every winter.

According to a prospective ARI-virus monitoring in Scotland from 2005 to 2013, the most common pathogens of acute respiratory diseases were: 1. rhinoviruses, 2. influenza A viruses, 3. influenza B viruses, 4. RS viruses and 5. coronaviruses.

This order changed slightly from year to year. Even with viruses competing for our mucous membrane cells, there is apparently a changing quorum, as we know it from our intestines in the case of microorganisms and from the Bundestag in the case of political groups.

So if there is now to be an increasing number of “proven” coronavirus infections. in China or in Italy: Can anyone say how often such examinations were carried out in previous winters, by whom, for what reason and with which results? When someone claims that something is increasing, he must surely refer to something, that has been observed before.

It can be stunning, when an experienced disease control officer looks at the current turmoil, the panic and the suffering it causes. I’m sure many of those responsible public health officers would probably risk their jobs today, as they did with the “swine flu” back then, if they would follow their experience and oppose the mainstream.

Every winter we have a virus epidemic with thousands of deaths and with millions of infected people even in Germany. And coronaviruses always have their share.

So if the Federal Government wants to do something good, it could learn from epidemiologists in Glasgow and have all clever minds at the RKI observe prospectively (!!!) and watch how the virom of the German population changes from year to year.

***

Some questions for the evaluation of the current findings:

  1. Which prospective, standardised monitoring of acute respiratory diseases with or without fever (ILI, ARI) is used for the epidemiological risk assessment of coronavirus infections observed in Wuhan Italy, South Korea, Iran and elsewhere (baseline).
  2. How do the comparable (!) results of earlier observations differ from those now reported by the WHO? (in China, in Europe, in Italy, in Germany, etc.)
  3. What would we observe this ARI-season if we would ignore the new PCR-testing?
  4. How valid and how comparable are the detection methods used with regard to sensitivity, specificity and pathogenetic or prognostic relevance?
  5. What is the evidence or probability that the observed corona viruses 2019/2020 are more dangerous to public health than previous variants?
  6. If you find them now, how can you proove, they were not there (e.g. in animals) before.
  7. How do you make shure, that a positive tested case is not in the same time suffering/dying from other virus co-infections?
  8. What considerations have been made or taken into account to exclude or minimise sources of bias (sources of error)?

 Some important questions for science:

  • Is Covid-19 in Italy a model for the pandemics that threaten the world?
  • What does the SARS-2-CoV test really measure?
  • Does the test give positive results in human pets or other tame animals?
  • Is it possible, that so many infected are so easily recovering if it is a really new virus?
  • What is the pathogenetic role and impact of Covid-19 compared to „normal” flu?
  • Which preventive actions are necessary in addition to those during normal flu-seasons?
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Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg is a distinguished physician and German politician. In 2009-2010, he was chairman of The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Committee (PACE), which investigated the WHO’s motives in declaring the H1N1 2009 a Worldwide pandemic. 
Wolfgang Wodarg, declared that the “false” H1N1 swine flu pandemic  was “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Forbes, February 10, 2010) Scroll down below video for January 2010 statement by the European Parliament. 

Watch the video below for Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg’s opinion on the coronavirus.

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Concerns about the virus SARS-COV-2 that causes the disease called COVID-19 have centered around reported mortality rates. However, errors in reporting those rates have led to confusion regarding the true health impacts. Because estimated rates are dependent on the test used to identify infected patients, understanding that test and its history could lead to much needed clarity.

Errors in reported mortality rates have come from mistakes in calculation. An example has been equating the measured case fatality rate (deaths divided by patients actively infected) with the actual mortality rate (deaths divided by patients who were ever infected). The latter number is unknown and will not be known until antibody titers can be performed to see who has previously been infected. But that actual mortality rate is expected to be much lower, perhaps around 0.3% as estimated by an epidemiologist from Stanford University.

Another common error has been attributing the deaths of all infected people to COVID-19, regardless of other pre-existing illnesses. This error has been magnified by governments mandating that all deaths of presumptive patients be listed as death from COVID-19, even if the patient was never tested for SARS-COV-2 at all.

The mortality rate errors would be further worsened if there were errors in testing for presence of the virus. What is becoming increasingly clear is that there have been serious questions regarding the reliability of that testing.

The test in question uses a technique called reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to identify the presence of RNA from SARS-COV-2. Testing follows different protocols in different countries and the first problem was seen in China, the reported origin of the virus.

The Chinese Mystery

A scientific study was performed in China that targeted subjects who had been in close contact with SARS-COV-2 infected patients. The results were peer-reviewed and published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology on March 5th, 2020. The data-driven conclusion of the study was that “nearly half or even more” of patients testing positive for SARS-COV-2 did not actually have the virus. In other words, half of the results were false positives.

For perspective, this study was peer-reviewed and published in a Chinese state journal a month after COVID-19 was said to have surpassed the 2003 SARS epidemic and just as the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak to be a pandemic. This was a full month after China had ordered a lockdown affecting over 36 million people.

Mysteriously, this peer-reviewed study was withdrawn a few days after publication and is no longer available for review. In response, one investigative team asked a Chinese graduate student to contact the lead author of the study, Dr. GH Zhuang, for explanation. Dr. Zhuang responded by email but did not cite a reason for withdrawal of the paper, only saying that it was “a sensitive matter.” Others then made the false assumption that the author had identified a mistake in the science despite the fact that no such mistake was ever identified.

As reported by the investigative team that contacted Dr, Zhuang,

 “Without access to the paper, nobody can assess the value of the work or determine whether it suffers from a scientific flaw. It’s also unknown if the paper was retracted for political reasons.”

To understand the concept of a false positive one should realize that analytical test methods need to be balanced with respect to quality considerations like sensitivity and specificity. If a test is not sensitive enough, the analyte of interest will not be found when it is there, giving a false negative. If a test is not specific enough, something else in the test sample will be identified as being the target analyte when it is not, giving a false positive.

In this case, a false positive could mean that the test is reacting to another virus or genetic source. Alternatively, the test could be detecting the presence of SARS-COV-2 residues after a previously infected individual is no longer sick. Lastly, even very small amounts of contamination in the laboratory can cause a false positive. No matter the cause, false positives mean higher reported mortality rates, more confusion, more fear, and more bad decisions.

The RT-qPCR test for SARS-COV-2 is being used as a qualitative test, despite the technique name including the word quantitative. This means that the actual amount of virus in a sample is not considered important, only the presence of even a small amount of virus. This concern would be lessened if the actual test results showing levels of virus detected were available. Unfortunately, all the public sees are numbers of positive or negative determinations.

WHO Guidance and the Test

The World Health Organization (WHO) originally based testing on a kit developed in Germany, not on the Chinese protocol. WHO has since developed general guidance for testing SARS-COV-2. This guidance requires some understanding of terminology so it’s helpful to understand the virus and the principle of testing.

RT-qPCR involves multiple steps. The sample is first lysed (i.e. the cells are cut) to release any viral material. Then the target RNA is converted into complementary DNA (cDNA) using an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. This is sometimes called the “extraction” step. After this, the cDNA is used as a template for amplification using qPCR, allowing the original quantity of target RNA to be determined.

The amplification is not done on the entire cDNA sequence but on segments that are expected to be representative of the specific genome of interest and, correspondingly, not representative of other genetic materials that could be present. Segments of the SARS-COV-2 genetic code that are usually targeted correspond to sections of the original RNA named ORF1a, ORF1ab, S, M, E, and N.

Synthetic primers and fluorescent probes are identified to match up with the target genetic segments to facilitate amplification and detection. The primers are small nucleotide sequences that bind to the target segments of the cDNA genetic sequence. The primers used are critical and issues with primer design can lead to variation in results.

As described in an article in The Scientist, the WHO-recommended primers first target the E gene of SARS-COV-2. The E gene is considered highly divergent and therefore more specific to the different coronaviruses. If a lab following WHO guidance obtains a positive screening test, it will do confirmatory testing targeting other areas of the virus genome. To avoid false positives, “every positive test has been confirmed with whole genome sequencing, viral culture, or electron microscopy.”

The U.S. Test

Unfortunately, the U.S. decided to follow its own rules for testing of SARS-COV-2. In fact, WHO and CDC never discussed the U.S. using the same test as being done internationally. Investigators from The Scientist found that it was “not clear why the CDC chose to develop a different assay to that selected by the WHO and taken up by other countries. The CDC declined to respond to questions.”

The CDC was criticized for its decision and problems were later found with its test kits. Although CDC has been secretive about the details, the concerns with its test appear to have included both test design issues and contamination.

CDC began manufacturing its test kit in January and shipped it on February 5th to state labs and to 30 other countries including 191 international labs. A week later, in a February 12th briefing at the CDC, problems with the test were reported. Although the statements made were unclear, it appeared that states were complaining the test was “inconclusive” and therefore CDC was going to focus on “redoing the manufacturing.”

It was reported that, “the CDC added to the confusion by providing limited information to labs in the weeks that followed. There was a period of time after the tests were recalled where there was near silence. It was about two weeks.” It was only after an open letter to Congress on February 28th, from more than 100 virologists and other specialists, that the CDC responded by allowing independent labs that had validated their own tests to begin testing.

The CDC test originally included three primers, all targeting one gene—the N gene of SARS-COV-2 that encodes for the nucleocapsid. The primers were denoted N1, N2, and N3. Nucleocapsids of RNA viruses “are fairly simple structures that contain only one major structural protein…This protein is usually basic or has a basic domain.”

Although the CDC test might have provided good sensitivity, it appears that it did not provide high specificity as it targeted only one basic gene of the coronavirus. CDC admitted the lack of certainty in a disclaimer noted in the method, saying, positive results “do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.”

At first, due to CDC secrecy, problems with the test kit were difficult to understand. As the Washington Post reported, “The trouble with the CDC test arose because the third attempt at a match, known as the N3 component, produced an inconclusive result even on known samples of the coronavirus.”

But that was not the whole story.

On February 28th, as the open letter to Congress was being recognized, it was reported that the N3 primer of the CDC kit was contaminated. The contamination caused the negative control within the kit, containing DNA that was unrelated to SARS-COV-2, to react as if it was a positive hit for SARS-COV-2. In other words, the kits were generating false positives for negative controls.

How much contamination was present was not clear because, again, the actual test results giving amounts of virus found are not available to the public. And CDC has not been open with communications about the problems found. Oddly enough, in April, test kits in the UK were also found to be “contaminated with COVID-19.”

What did CDC do to correct the problems with the kit? Instead of re-manufacturing the N3 primer as originally planned, on March 15th the CDC simply told everyone who had the kit to remove the N3 primer and use the kits without it. Additionally, CDC changed its method requirements to eliminate the need to confirm positive results. This made the test kit that was based on detection of only one basic gene in SARS-COV-2 even less specific and told users that results didn’t need to be confirmed. These changes made the test less reliable in terms of identifying SARS-COV-2 and therefore made any subsequent estimates of mortality rates less reliable as well.

Summary

The history of testing for SARS-COV-2 infection has involved problems that have led to delays in testing and reporting of rates of infection than are falsely higher than actual. Complicating these issues are government mandates for medical professionals to list COVID-19 as cause of death for patients who have inconclusive causes of death and, in some cases, were never tested for SARS-COV-2 at all.

Understanding problems with the test performed for identification of infected patients can lead to much needed clarity and less panic. There are many questions that still need answers. For example: Are reported rates for other diseases like influenza dropping in proportion to the rise in reported infection by SARS-COV-2? What were the details of the Chinese study that was mysteriously retracted? What has investigation into the CDC kit contamination revealed? What other countries have based their mortality figures on test kits that provided unreliable results?

Citizens can help by calling on authorities and test facilities to publicly share the details of testing including the actual results of the RT-qPCR tests showing levels of virus present. In addition to information sharing, an international investigation into the problems seen with testing, starting with Chinese results and U.S. test kits, should be conducted. Such an investigation could lead to preventing the reporting of false positives and the ensuing panic and bad decision making that come from artificially high estimated mortality rates.

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“Colonialism is not a thinking machine,
nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.
It is violence in its natural state…”

— Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)

This past month Israeli soldiers dumped a Palestinian worker at a checkpoint on the border of the West Bank, shivering from fever and barely able to breathe. According to Middle East Eye, he “had been showing signs of the coronavirus over the past four days, and was recently tested for the virus. But before the man, allegedly a resident of Nablus, could receive his test results, his Israeli employer reportedly called the authorities, who picked him up and dropped him on the other side of the Beit Sira checkpoint, which connects central Israel and the occupied West Bank.” “It’s like we are slaves to them,” says a local Palestinian, “They use us when they need us, and when they are finished, they throw us away like trash.” Since the crisis began Israeli soldiers have actively obstructed the emergency response for Palestinians by shutting down multiple clinics and continuing their practice of arbitrary house demolitions.

Checkpoint in Bethlehem. [Photo: Anne Paq]

Praise for “battle-ready” Israel’s militarized response to the coronavirus pandemic has turned a blind eye to the manner in which it has also weaponized the coronavirus pandemonium against Palestinians. While Gaza has been strangled by a 13-year blockade and repeated military invasions, which renders its two million inhabitants vulnerable to pandemics, in the West Bank Palestinians struggle with a brutal occupation that seeks to deny them the most basic and necessary means to survive and care for themselves. As of April 9, 2020, the West Bank is reported to have 250 cases of the coronavirus. However, these numbers are set to increase significantly in the coming period due to the return of many Palestinian workers from Israel following Passover and for Ramadan. While people in Italy and UK take to their balconies applauding the “essential sector” workers, Palestinians who work in Israel’s “essential industries” find themselves crushed “between the rock of the occupation and the hammer of coronavirus.”1

Palestinian civil society organizations are calling for an immediate international intervention. Though the COVID crisis may be an “exceptional” moment in recent world history, the conditions to which Palestinians are subjected reminds us that the Nakba (النكبة) – the expulsion, dispossession, and dehumanization of Palestinians in 1948 – is not a fact of the past, but is ongoing. Palestinian workers bear the brunt of this violence. It is imperative that the international left recognize the exceptional setting of the pandemic confronting Palestinians, and take political actions in support of immediate relief to the medical emergency and an end to the Israeli occupation.

The Occupation and the Pandemic

Many Palestinians are denied access to basic health services by Israeli land confiscations and checkpoints. Palestinian communities in Area C, which comprises approximately 60 per cent of the West Bank, are particularly in jeopardy.2 In the area of the Naqab (Negev), for example, over 80,000 Palestinians have no access to emergency healthcare. Coronavirus cases are rapidly spreading in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are subject to Israel’s discriminatory “residency” criteria and severe underfunding of public services.3 Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem only have 22 ventilators for nearly 350,000 people. Many working class and poor Palestinians’ access to health services in the West Bank has been on the decline because their public health infrastructure has been undermined by Israel’s withholding of clearance revenues to the Palestinian Authority (PA), cuts in US funding under the Trump administration, as well as austerity measures imposed on the PA by the World Bank and IMF. In the West Bank, only 256 adult ventilators are available for a population of three million Palestinians, of which 90 per cent are already in use. Spread of the virus will have catastrophic consequences for Palestinians.

Yet efforts by Palestinians to develop communal systems of support are systematically sabotaged by the Israeli occupation. In March, Palestinians involved in disinfecting public spaces and distributing aid packages in the Old City of Jerusalem were arrested. In early April, the Israeli army arrested the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Affairs Minister Fadi Hidmi as he sought to assist Palestinians in Jerusalem with the COVID pandemic.4 On April 15, despite forty confirmed cases in the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, the Israeli army raided the coronavirus testing clinic in the local mosque and arrested its organizers. Palestinian residents of Silwan have been repeatedly the target of evictions and expulsions, as have Palestinians throughout Area C. In the Jordan Valley hamlet of Khirbet Ibziq, similarly, the Israeli army is sabotaging coronavirus relief attempts by confiscating equipment for the construction of a field clinic and emergency housing for its residents, some of whom have been subject to house demolitions.Even as the United Nations has called for ceasefire in all conflict zones and populations world over are told to stay indoors, Israel throws Palestinians out of their homes.

On a daily basis, Palestinians confront institutionalized segregation through Israel’s control over their water, access to which is a basic necessity under this pandemic. Israel’s appropriation and exploitation of water in Palestine’s coastal and mountain aquifers and in the Jordan Valley has been one of its main weapons of war. After the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities issued military orders to consolidate their control over underground water basins and water-related infrastructure, a control which they safeguarded under the terms of the 1994 Oslo Accords. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are forced to purchase water (trucked or from the Israeli state-owned water company, Mekorot) at exorbitant prices. According to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 180 rural communities in the West Bank have no access to running water. In the “unrecognized” villages of the West Bank, over 56,000 people are in the same situation. According to Amnesty International, water expenses can amount to one-half of the family’s monthly income in some of the poorest communities. The outcome is a manifestly racialized discrimination; the average Israeli settler living in the West Bank consumes three to eight times the amount of water than Palestinians.6 This system of “water apartheid” makes it impossible for Palestinians, especially working class and poor, to maintain the most basic hygiene conditions that are necessary to survive this pandemic. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel as an occupying power must at a minimum ensure the basic conditions of health and hygiene, including conditions of water and sanitation.

This moment of the COVID pandemic is being exploited by the Israeli authorities to further intensify military actions, electronic and other mechanisms of surveillance, and to create new “facts on the ground” in a process of annexation of Palestinian land that has been normalized by the Trump administration, recent Israeli Knesset decisions, and the “unity deal” being negotiated between Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz.7In the last month, major Israeli settlement blocs such as Gush Etzion south of Jerusalem are being expanded, further cutting the territorial contiguity of the West Bank.8 Apartheid road infrastructure for settlers only are being extended in major settlements like Ma’ale Adumim.9 While the Palestinian Authority has imposed lockdowns in the West Bank, the Israeli army has intensified night raids, arrests, home demolitions, and house evictions in the West Bank and Jerusalem.10 In a two week period during the pandemic in March alone, according to Mondoweiss, “Israeli forces injured 200 Palestinians, detained 100, demolished 16 structures.” Israeli violations in the West Bank have intensified meanwhile, with recent news reports that attacks by settlers have risen by 78 per cent with Palestinians being brutally assaulted,11 kidnapped, their olive trees uprooted, and their property spat on by Israeli soldiers and attacked by settler-youths who are under coronavirus quarantine.

Palestinians Crossing the Green Line and the Apartheid of Virus Containment

Palestinians who work in Israel and the settlements are particularly vulnerable during the pandemic. Having stripped Palestinians of their land, Israeli colonization has worked to transform them under military rule into dependent, subordinate, and exploitable wage-workers incorporated into the Israeli economy. A systematic policy of de-development suppressed Palestinian industrial development after 1967, and, accompanied by the expropriation of cultivable land and water in the Occupied Territories, forced many Palestinians to work as daily wage labourers in Israel and on the very settlements built on their confiscated lands. This policy remains in place today. Given the high levels of unemployment as a result of Israel’s strangulation of their economy, Palestinians now working in Israel and the settlements are estimated to number over 133,000,12 while their wages support a population of over half a million.13

Even before the pandemic, these thousands of workers were subject to multiple tools of racial discrimination by the Israeli authorities. These include subjection to the checkpoints’ permits system, which is a primary tool of blackmail to politically discipline Palestinians and force collaboration; inhumane conditions in the checkpoints as thousands cross in the early morning hours; humiliation and harassment by soldiers; and discrimination in law and exploitation in practice by Israeli employers. Palestinian workers have minimal to no legal protections, are paid far less than their Jewish Israeli co-workers, without the benefits of health insurance, and yet they are forced to pay social security contributions and union fees to the Israeli labour syndicate Histadrut without representation. They are exploited by Israeli and Palestinian intermediaries – mafias who force them to pay exorbitant fees (at over $800 (US) monthly) to acquire black market permits to simply cross the Green Line but without any guarantee of actual employment.

The Israelis have been lauded for their “military style” effectiveness in response to COVID, tightening internal lockdowns. However, in order to keep key sectors of the Israeli economy running in the midst of the pandemic, which stood to lose $1.8-billion a month from the cessation of construction alone,14 the Israeli government allowed continued entry of Palestinian workers into Israel. In doing so, Israeli authorities have used the pandemic to intensify surveillance and repression of these workers. Palestinians who require permits to stay in Israel are now “advised” to download a smartphone app called “Al Munasiq” (“The Coordinator”) which allows the Israeli military to track users’ location, and access their personal files as well as the phone’s camera.

The frontiers of Israeli apartheid not only segregate Palestinians from Jewish Israelis, but also the Palestinian bodies themselves. Israel has privileged able-bodied young Palestinian workers to the exclusion of older ones. On March 11, the Israeli authorities announced new regulations barring Palestinian workers over 50 years of age from crossing effective March 12; On March 17, they announced that effective March 18, those Palestinian workers under 50 were obliged to remain in Israel for a one- to two-month period if they wished to continue employment. It is estimated that between forty and fifty thousand Palestinian workers entered Israel in this scramble. However, on March 25, the Palestinian Prime Minister issued a call for Palestinian workers to return to the West Bank following public outcries over their racist and inhumane treatment. Workers are being forced to live in squalid conditions at their places of work in Israel, which are reportedly “not appropriate for humans” while Israel has failed to test workers for coronavirus. Rather than being cared for, workers who develop symptoms or who have been suspected of being sick have been have been dumped back into the West Bank at checkpoints along the Green Line, “like trash,” often without coordination with Palestinian authorities.

A potential uncontrolled spread of coronavirus is feared in the West Bank due to the return of over 40,000 workers after the start of Passover and Ramadan. Moreover, the Israeli government has announced that workers who return to the West Bank during this holiday period will be denied entry back into Israel for employment.15 These workers are highly reliant on their wages in Israel as the only source of income and many still owe debts for the permits they purchased to cross the checkpoints.16Meanwhile they risk direct exposure to the virus in Israel and are simultaneously unable to access healthcare or testing. Upon their return to the West Bank, these workers are still unable to get tested and face backlash with the recent surge of cases.17

International Labour Solidarity with Palestinians

This moment of crisis offers a historical opportunity to galvanize solidarity movements with Palestinians and other indigenous people and workers around the world. On April 7, a coalition of Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations issued a new call for international solidarity, demanding that Israel allow access to critical civilian health infrastructure, and release Palestinian political prisoners who have been illegally detained and risk exposure to the virus in Israeli prisons. They have also called for the siege of Gaza to be broken with another Freedom Flotilla, and the escalation of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.18 Coalitions between civil society organizations have issued a Palestinian Civil Society Joint Statement on COVID. Regular systems of reporting have been established by Al-Haq, the long-time legal advocacy group, to monitor the violence to which Palestinians are being subject in the current pandemic, as well as, on basic conditions of water, health, and medical equipment. Most recently on April 14, 2020, a coalition of human rights organizations issued an urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Procedures. They are calling on the UN to denounce Israel’s systematic practices of racial discrimination and exploitation of Palestinian labour, who are forced to risk their health and life under this crisis. Beyond COVID, initiativesto bring Israel to trial on war crimes in the International Criminal Court have direct bearing on current realities.

One of the questions for the international left is how to urgently mobilize support for the campaigns and coalitions being advanced in/from Palestine. Nakba Day on May 15, 2020 will mark the 72nd year of the unconscionable injustices against which the Palestinian people continue to struggle. It is imperative for left forces to link the specific conditions of colonialism and apartheid facing Palestinians with neoliberal attacks on working classes the world over. The struggle of Palestinian workers cannot be interpreted only as a national struggle for self-determination. COVID-19 comes at a time of intensified capitalist crisis, in which the working class has been under systematic attack from decades of neoliberalism, commodification of most areas of social life, dispossession of land base, and indebtedness. Palestinian workers are fully incorporated in these processes of global finance capital, in the particular context of the ongoing Israeli settler-colonial rule. Thus, struggle of workers in Palestine with COVID-19 needs to be understood as a struggle also against capitalism. Calls for unified global action by labour have been made by the International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle, among others, demanding solidarity with Palestinians and all colonized people in this pandemic.19 We need to urgently act in solidarity, understood, in the words of Mozambican revolutionary Samora Machel, not as “an act of charity but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives.”20

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G.N. Nithya is a Ph.D. candidate at York University.

Notes

  1. Mahmoud Zawahreh, Palestinian activist, in “Coronavirus: Israeli settlers exploit lockdown to annex Palestinian land.”
  2. Joint statement, “Israeli Apartheid Undermines Palestinian Right to Health Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic,” 7 April 2020; World Health Organization, “Overcoming barriers to healthcare access in the West Bank with mobile clinics.”
  3. Nir Hasson, “After Weeks of Warning, Coronavirus Spreading Among Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” 14 April 2020; J. Ahmad, “Falling between the cracks in Jerusalem,” 30 March 2020.
  4. Daoud Kuttab, “Palestinian minister claims Israeli police physically abused him,” 4 April 2020; Dr. Ashrawi, “Israel deliberately undermining Palestinian efforts to combat COVID19 pandemic,” 3 April 2020.
  5. B’Tselem, “During the Coronavirus crisis, Israel confiscates tents designated for clinic in the Northern West Bank,” 26 March 2020; The New Arab, “Coronavirus under occupation: Israeli forces demolish emergency health clinic for Palestinians,” 27 March 2020.
  6. Adri Nieuwhof, “Israeli settlers use six times more water than Palestinians,” 8 April 2013; Al-Haq, “On World Water Day, Al-Haq Recalls Israeli Water-Apartheid Amidst a Global Pandemic,” 23 March 2020.
  7. Chaim Levinson, Jonathan Lis, “Netanyahu, Gantz Agree on West Bank Annexation Proposal as Unity Deal Nears,” 6 April 2020; Yaser Alashqar, “From Covid-19 to the ‘Deal of the Century’ – Palestine and international law,” 8 April 2020.
  8. Israel exploiting coronavirus for settlement expansion,” 12 March 2020; Akram Al-Waara, “Coronavirus: Israeli settlers exploit lockdown to annex Palestinian land,” 27 March 2020.
  9. Haaretz editorial, “Israel’s Latest Highway to Apartheid,” 11 March 2020; for background: “The E1 plan and its implications for human rights in the West Bank,” 27 Nov. 2013.
  10. Ali Abunimah, “Israel attacks Palestinians as they fight COVID-19,” 31 March 2020; “Israel demolishes Palestinian homes amid coronavirus crisis,” 28 March 2020; “Since coronavirus pandemic outbreak: Israel kidnapped 292 Palestinian,” 3 April 2020.
  11. Tamara Nassar, “Settler attacks rise by 78 percent amid pandemic,” 11 April 2020; “Jewish Settlers Attack Palestinian Family Homes in Hebron,” 6 April 2020.
  12. Estimates includes West Bank and Gaza, “The Labour Force Survey Results 2019,” Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
  13. In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera, director of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Jerusalem estimated these figures at 200,000 Palestinian workers, implying their wages support a population of over one million (assuming each worker supports at least five dependents) (“Palestinian labourers fear loss of income as well as coronavirus”).
  14. On March 6, 2020, the Israeli financial newspaper, Calcalist, estimated significant losses at $1.8-billion monthly for the construction sector if Palestinian workers were not allowed in, see Ahmad Melhem, “Israel tightens grip on Palestinian workers to limit COVID-19,” 20 March 2020; Adam Rasgon, “PA urges Palestinian workers to return to West Bank as Israel’s virus cases grow,” 25 March 2020.
  15. Jack Khoury and Hagar Shezaf, “Palestinians fear coronavirus surge as workers return from Israel over passover,” 4 April 2020; Rania Zabaneh, “Palestinians brace coronavirus outbreak workers return,” 6 April 2020.
  16. Zeina Amro, “A Glimpse into the COVID-19 Crisis in the Context of Palestine,” 2 April 2020; Alex Lederman, “Palestinian labourers fear loss of income as well as coronavirus,” 28 March 2020.
  17. Palestinians brace for influx of workers as Covid-19 cases continue to rise; see video.
  18. Al-Haq, “In the face of potential COVID-19 outbreak in the Gaza Strip, Israel is obliged to take measures to save lives,” 7 April 2020; Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council press release, “PHROC Calls the International Community & ICRC for an Urgent Intervention,” 23 March 2020; Samidoun, “Virtual call to action for Palestine: COVID-19, Gaza and the Struggle for Justice,” 16 March 2020; also see, internationally: Michael Arria, “Warren, Van Hollen lead Senators in demanding Trump admin send aid to Palestine amid COVID-19 crisis,” 27 March 2020; IfNotNow, “Demand Israel Protect Palestinians in Gaza.”
  19. Solidaires (CM), “Coronavirus: colonialism worsens the situation too,” 1 April 2020; Solidaires (CM), “Palestine in the Time of Covid-19,” 9 April 2020.
  20. Salim Vally, “From South Africa to Palestine, Lessons for the New Anti‐Apartheid Movement,” Left Turn, Notes from the Global Intifada, April 2008.

All images in this article are from The Bullet unless otherwise stated.

‘China Lied, People Died?’ Look Who’s Talking!

April 20th, 2020 by Thomas L. Knapp

“The costs of the pandemic keep piling up,” writes Marc Thiessen at the Washington Post. “Somebody has to pay for this unprecedented damage. That somebody should be the government of China.”

And why, pray tell, should China’s government be punished? For “intentionally lying to the world about the danger of the virus, and proactively impeding a global response that might have prevented a worldwide contagion.”

Sounds fair, doesn’t it? If a government lies and people die as a result, that government and its functionaries should be held responsible, right? Good enough for me.

But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, so if we’re having Peking Duck this week, I’d like to know when Thiessen plans to cough up his share of US government’s tab.

As a speechwriter for US president George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the first decade of this century, Thiessen was directly responsible for pushing lies that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Humanity is still paying a steep price for fairy tales about weapons of mass destruction and cries of wolf that “the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud” – fairy tales and cries of wolf that Thiessen helped draft and craft.

In fact, he’s got a lot of nerve pretending that he’s even on the same moral level as Chinese government actors who may have lied about COVID-19, let alone in a position to lecture them.

Those Chinese actors were, at worst, trying to save face for their regime, and at best trying to keep themselves out of jail (the Chinese Communist Party has a reputation for harsh treatment of people who embarrass it).

Thiessen was shilling for an unprovoked war of aggression in Iraq by his regime, and he could have quit that job any time he chose without fear of being dragged off for “re-education.”

Governments collectively, and the people who comprise them individually, lie. A lot. About all kinds of different things and for all kinds of different reasons. And often, as a result, people die. I’m all for holding them accountable, but accountability starts at home.

Let’s be honest about what’s going on here: Republican flacks like Thiessen are trying to shift blame away from their party’s own policy failures by re-premising the same old anti-China campaign they’ve been waging for years.

Don’t forget to tip your server, Marc.

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Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida. This article is reprinted with permission from William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

Featured image is from Morning Star

We are seeing a massive backlash against the coronavirus lockdowns all over the United States, and it is likely that the protests against these lockdowns will only intensify in the days ahead.  But some elected officials are doubling down and are insisting that “shelter-in-place” orders will remain in effect in their jurisdictions for quite a few months to come. 

I honestly do not know how that is possibly going to work, because after just a few weeks millions upon millions of Americans have become deeply frustrated with these lockdowns.  Trying to confine people to their homes for the foreseeable future is likely to spark tremendous explosions of anger, but that appears to be exactly what authorities intend to do in some of our largest urban areas.  For example, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio just told Fox News that he expects his city will be shut down until July or August

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined Bill Hemmer today on FOX News Channel.

The mayor told Hemmer he does not expect New York City to open until July or August.

Does he honestly believe that New York City residents will put up with being confined to their homes for another three or four months?

Over on the west coast, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently told the press that there probably will not be mass gatherings in his state “until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine”

“The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine,” Newsom told reporters at his press briefing.

“Large-scale events that bring in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strangers … [are] not in the cards based upon our current guidelines and current expectations,” he said.

It is exceedingly unlikely that we will get to the point of “herd immunity” in the United States this year, and most experts do not anticipate a vaccine until some time in 2021.

Would he really try to keep his state locked down for that long?

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti appears to be on the exact same page, and he has already pretty much ruled out all large gatherings in his city “until 2021”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that large gatherings like sporting events and concerts are unlikely to occur until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, a major blow for one of the world’s major sports and entertainment capitals.

Considering the fact that the NFL has two teams in Los Angeles, this is potentially an absolutely devastating blow for football fans.

Of course it is possible that the Rams and the Chargers could play their games elsewhere, but that is probably not likely.

Especially in liberal bastions on the east and west coasts, fear of large gatherings is likely to persist for a long time to come.  Facebook has already canceled all large company events until 2021, and other big tech firms will almost certainly follow suit.

Without a doubt, everyone should be in favor of reasonable measures to help prevent the spread of the virus, but the hysteria that we are seeing in some areas of California right now is off the charts.

For instance, Mendocino County has actually banned people from singing in online worship services.  The following is an excerpt from their absurd social distancing directives…

No singing or use of wind instruments, harmonicas, or other instruments that could spread COVID-19 through projected droplets shall be permitted unless the recording of the event is done at one’s residence, and involving only the members of one’s household or living unit, because of the increased risk of transmission of COVID-19.

Of course we aren’t just seeing this sort of insanity here in the United States.

Over in Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seriously considering extending his nation’s social distancing measures for many months to come

Australian public life could be constrained for another year because of the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned on Friday, as the country’s most populous state mulled sending children to school in shifts.

Australia has so far avoided the high numbers of coronavirus casualties reported around the world after closing its borders and imposing strict “social distancing” measures for the past month.

These lockdowns may be slowing down the spread of the virus to a certain extent, but they are also absolutely crushing economic activity.

Thousands of businesses have been either crippled or destroyed, and tens of millions of jobs have been lost in the United States alone.

Needless to say, business owners and workers all over the nation are sick and tired of not being able to make a living, and President Trump added fuel to their frustration when he called for several states to be “liberated” on Friday

President Trump made himself the star of the ‘lockdown rebellion’ on Friday by tweeting ‘LIBERATE Minnesota’ and then adding Michigan and Virginia to the list of states that should be freed.

The tweets came one day after the president’s coronavirus taskforce rolled out guidelines that would give governors broad power to decide when states’ economies would open back up amid the coronavirus pandemic.

And instead of waiting for permission, some business owners across the country have decided that they are going to reopen anyway

Summit Motorsports Park owner Bill Bader Jr. vowed to start holding events with or without government permission, in a Facebook live post earlier this week.

“I’m not asking, I’m opening,” he said in the video and said that he thought that business closures were an overreaction. “If in Huron County, for example, we are able to save every life and limit and ultimately mitigate any outbreaks of Covid-19, but in the process of that we all starve to death, what have we accomplished.”

As I have warned all along, Americans are simply not going to have much patience with these sorts of lockdowns, and this is particularly true in areas of the nation that tend to lean conservative.

But those on the left are pointing out that we are already starting to see a huge surge in confirmed cases in parts of the country that haven’t been locked down

The bump in coronavirus cases is most pronounced in states without stay at home orders. Oklahoma saw a 53% increase in cases over the past week, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Over same time, cases jumped 60% in Arkansas, 74% in Nebraska, and 82% in Iowa. South Dakota saw a whopping 205% spike.

Once restrictions start being lifted nationwide, it is probably inevitable that we will see another huge wave of new cases and new deaths.

However, it is important to point out that this virus is going to eventually spread through most of the population no matter what measures we take.  Yes, we want to keep our hospitals from being completely overwhelmed, but we also don’t want to completely destroy our economy at the same time.

Our policy makers are going to have some very, very tough decisions in the days ahead, and the truth is that this coronavirus pandemic is just the very beginning of our problems.

The months in front of us are going to be extremely challenging, and life as you have known it will never be the same again.

The good news is that some of the coronavirus lockdowns will start to be lifted in the weeks ahead, and that will enable millions of Americans to start making a living once again.

But in other areas, politicians are warning that the lockdowns could last for many months to come.

If the politicians in your state tried to do that, what would you do?

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Things are getting dizzy in the White House on what, exactly, is being done to “open the economy”.  Cranky advocates for the financial argument over the restrictions of public health have been attempting to claw back some ground.  As Jonathan Chait puts it, “The anti-public health faction either believes the dangers of the coronavirus have been exaggerated, or that the cost of social-distancing requirements is so high that the economy should simply be opened, regardless of medical danger.” 

Officials such as US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow have been busy pushing the line that the shuttered economy will be opened come May.  In Mnuchin’s words, “As soon as the president feels comfortable with the medical issues, we are making everything necessary that American companies and American workers can be open for business and that they have the liquidity they need to operate the business in the interim.”  On the Fox Business Network, Kudlow outlined his views.  “Our intent here was, is, to try to relieve people of the enormous difficult hardships they are suffering through no fault of their own.”

The economy-before-health group, which also consists of Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, has never had much time for the medical arguments.  In the views of a senior administration official, “They already know what they want to do and they’re looking for ways to do it.”

What, then, could be done to remove the shutters?  President Donald Trump initially felt enough confidence to claim the broadest of powers on the subject, bypassing states and their authority to manage and ease the coronavirus lockdowns.  “The authority of the president of the United States having to do with the subject we are talking about is total,” he explained at a White House press conference early last week.  “I have the ultimate authority.”

He tantalised those gathered with promises of a written paper on the subject, though felt it unnecessary “because the governors need us one way or the other because, ultimately, it comes with the federal government.” 

On April 14, Trump took aim at his most favourite of hobby horses – the “Fake News Media” – for claiming “that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government.  Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.”  Legal authorities such as Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas in Austin disagree: “the president has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses.”   

After his initial imputation of such vast constitutional powers, Trump felt that it was all up to the governors in any case.  He called testing for COVID-19 “a local thing”, feeling that State officials were showing little or no initiative in using commercial labs.

Things are certainly not rosy, let alone coordinated, between the White House and the governors.  Criticism of the president’s uneven and tardy response has earned rebuke and mocking.  Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer became “Gretchen ‘Half’ Whitmer”; Washington Governor Jay Inslee was lashed by comments of being a “failed presidential candidate who was “constantly chirping”.  As Trump has explained with a note of tartness to Vice President Mike Pence, “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”  Even during times of high crisis, the president luxuriates in adolescent petulance.

In certain states, there has been a rash of protests against quarantine regimes.  Trump, ever the tease, has thrown in his lot with them, tweeting messages of “liberation” for Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia, all led by Democratic governors.  Michigan, in particular, has one of the firmest quarantine regimes in the country, measures which have spawned such groups of disgruntlement as the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine. 

The April 15 protest, which featured a gathering outside the Michigan State Capitol, was held with a daring impertinence, with participants fobbing off anything related to physical distancing rules.  Four Michigan residents have also decided to throw the law book at the governor, with legal proceedings claiming that the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” executive order is in violation of their constitutional rights.  The attorney responsible for filing the suit, one David Helm, argues that Whitner’s initial executive order passed muster in targeting “the specific needs of the crises”; the second, issued on April 9, was “unreasonable” and an act of executive over stretch.

The White House has suggested a strategy to the 50 governors, one involving three phases.  Phase one continues to feature social distancing in public, the isolation of vulnerable individuals, socialising in small groups and minimising “non-essential travel”.  Bars are to be remain closed, but gyms can open on the proviso of observing “strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols”.  Phase Two keeps vulnerable individuals in shelter, increases the number of individuals who can gather in social settings (from 10 to 50) and permits non-essential travel.  The continuation of telework where feasible and keeping common areas where workers might gather closed also feature.  The final phase permits vulnerable individuals to resume public interactions, though low-risk populations should still exercise caution in spending time “in crowded environments” and the resumption of “unrestricted staffing of worksites”.

But confusion reigns, exemplified by the remarks made by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. “Open what, open it when, and open it how?”  Trump continues to play – loudly – to his political base, indulging bouts of pageantry even as he mocks the methods of the States.  In responding to Trump’s tweets of support for the protestors, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz tried to get some clarification.  “I called to ask, what are we doing differently about moving towards getting as many people back into the workforce without compromising the health of Minnesotans or the providers?”  No reply was forthcoming.  And that, to a governor who has not, as Walz described it, “had open clashes with the administration.”

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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. Email: [email protected]

Sweden Is Right. The Economy Should be Left Open

April 20th, 2020 by Mike Whitney

Sometimes, the best thing to do, is to do nothing at all. Take Sweden, for example, where the government decided not to shut down the economy, but to take a more thoughtful and balanced approach. Sweden has kept its primary schools, restaurants, shops and gyms open for business even though fewer people are out in public or carrying on as they normally would. At the same time, the government has kept the Swedish people well-informed so they understand the risks the virus poses to their health and the health of others. This is how the Swedes have minimized their chances of getting the infection while avoiding more extreme measures like shelter-in-place which is de facto house arrest.

What the Swedish experiment demonstrates, is that there’s a way to navigate these unprecedented public health challenges without recklessly imposing police state policies and without doing irreparable harm to the economy. And, yes, the results of this experiment are not yet known, but what we do know is that most nations cannot simply print-up trillions of dollars to counter the knock-on effects of bringing the economy to a screeching halt. These countries must dip into their reserves or take out loans from the IMF in order to recover from the lack of production and activity. That means they’re going to face years of slow growth and high unemployment to dig out from the mess their leaders created for them.

And that rule applies to the US too, even though the government has been recklessly printing money to pay the bills. The unforeseen cost to the US will come in the form of long-term unemployment triggered by millions of failed small and mid-sized businesses. That grim scenario is all but certain now. And just as the USG “disappeared” millions of workers from the unemployment rolls following the 2008 Financial Crisis– forcing them to find low-paying, part-time, no-benefits work in the “gig” economy– so too, millions of more working people will fall through the cracks and wind up homeless, jobless and destitute following this crisis. One $1,200 check from Uncle Sam and a few weeks of unemployment compensation is not going to not be enough to prevent the fundamental restructuring of the US labor force that will be impossible to avoid if the economy isn’t restarted pronto.

That’s why we should look to countries like Sweden that have taken a more measured approach that allow parts of the economy to continue to function during the epidemic, so other parts can gear-up quickly and return to full capacity with minimal disruption. This should not be a “liberal vs conservative” issue as it’s become in the United States. One should not oppose restarting the economy just because Trump is ‘for it’, but because millions of working people are facing an uncertain future in an economy which– most economists believe– is headed for a severe and protracted recession. Liberals should be looking for ways to avoid that dismal outcome instead of wasting all their time criticizing Trump. (Of course, now that the idiot Trump has appointed Ivanka, Jared, Kudlow and Wilbur Ross to lead his Council to Re-Open America” it will be impossible to extricate the issue from partisan politics.) This is a clip from an article by Donald Jeffries at Lew Rockwell:

“The shutdown of businesses now has been going on for more than a month. How many of the dwindling small businesses left in our casino economy have already closed down forever? How many mid-sized ones will ever be able to reopen? How many millions will be furloughed, laid off, fired- however they word it- because of this draconian reaction? How can an economy based on commerce exist without commerce?” (“The Locked Down World”, Donald Jeffries, Lew Rockwell)

Indeed. This isn’t a question of putting profits before people. The economy IS our life. Try to make a living without an economy. Try to feed your family or pay the rent or buy a car or do anything without an economy. We need the economy. Working people need the economy, and we need to find a way to do two things at the same time: Keep the economy running and save as many lives as possible. The idea that we can just do one of these things and not the other, is not only blatantly false, it is destructive to our own best interests. We have to do both, there is no other way. Here’s more background on Sweden from an article at Haaretz:

“The truth is that we have a policy similar to that of other countries,” says Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, “Like everyone, we are trying to slow down the rate of infection … The differences derive from a different tradition and from a different culture that prevail in Sweden. We prefer voluntary measures, and there is a high level of trust here between the population and the authorities, so we are able to avoid coercive restrictions”…

It’s still too early to say whether Stockholm’s policy will turn out to be a success story or a blueprint for disaster. But, when the microbes settle, following the global crisis, Sweden may be able to constitute a kind of control group: Did other countries go too far in the restrictions they have been imposing on their populations? Was the economic catastrophe spawned globally by the crisis really unavoidable? Or will the Swedish case turn out to be an example of governmental complacency that cost human lives unnecessarily?” (“Why Sweden Isn’t Forcing Its Citizens to Stay Home Due to the Coronaviru”, Haaretz)

Tegnell, is no long-haired, fist-waving radical, he’s Sweden’s chief epidemiologist and has worked for mainstream organizations like the WHO and the European Commission. Where he differs from so many of his peers is simply in his approach, which empowers ordinary people to use their own common sense regarding their health, their safety and the safety of others. It’s simple, if you develop symptoms, stay home. Tegnell believes that its easier to get people to do the right thing by trusting their judgement then by ordering them to do so.

That said, Sweden’s objectives are the same as every other country impacted by the pandemic. The emphasis is on “flattening the curve”, slowing the rate of infection, testing as many people as possible, and protecting the vulnerable and older populations. It’s just their methods are different. They’ve taken a more nuanced approach that relies on level-headed people conforming to the guidelines that help to minimize contagion until some better remedy is found. “Social distancing” is practiced in Sweden, but the population has not had their civil liberties suspended nor have they been put under house arrest until the threat has passed. Sweden has not compromised its core values in a frenzied attempt to stave off sickness or death. Can the U.S. say the same? Here’s more from an article at the Washington Times:

“As government leaders in the UK and the United States are grappling with how to revive dormant economies, Dr. Tegnell said the Swedish approach will allow the country to maintain social distancing measures in the long term without putting the economic system at risk. Dr. Tegnell said he believes certain regions in Sweden are already very close to … a state where so many in the population have built up resistance to the virus that it is no longer a pandemic threat…

“We do believe the main difference between our policies and many other countries’ policies is that we could easily keep these kinds of policies in place for months, maybe even years, without any real damage to society or our economy,” Dr. Tegnell said. Although the government has not issued a stay-at-home order, many Swedes have decided to quarantine and practice social distancing on their own volition, Dr. Tegnell said.” (“Top Swedish official: Virus rates easing up despite loose rules”, The Washington Times)

The threat of pandemic is new to most countries, so it’s not entirely fair to criticize their response. But, at this point, reasonable people should be able agree that implementing sweeping policies that inflict incalculable damage to the economy and on people’s personal liberties is a gross overreaction that poses as big a threat as the pandemic itself. Leaders must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. That’s all we should expect of them: Just restart the damn economy while minimizing the risks of infection as much as possible. Is that too much to ask? Here’s an excerpt from an article at MedicineNet:

“The financial ruin this pandemic has caused for many will almost certainly lead to increased suicide, mental illness, and physical health problems exacerbated by a loss of health insurance in countries without socialized medicine, according to the World Economic Forum. That’s partly why both Sweden and Singapore have tried to keep life in their countries as normal as possible for as long as possible during the response. It does not explain the drastically different death tolls between the two countries, however….

Anders Tengall, the country’s chief epidemiologist, is making a grim wager. The hypothesis is there will not be significantly more Swedes dead at the end of the pandemic than if the country had initiated stricter distancing protocols, but the looser approach will keep the number of cases from spiking when lockdowns are lifted.

Tengall’s and the rest of the Swedish government’s bet is this approach is more sustainable, and can help prevent some of those other bad health outcomes that accompany economic depression.” (“Sweden and Singapore: The COVID-19 ‘Soft’ Approach vs. Techno-Surveillance”, MedicineNet)

So, yes, the number of deaths per thousand in Sweden do not compare favorably to nearby Denmark, but the final results of the experiment might not be known for years. With a population of 5.8 million, Denmark’s death-toll is currently 336, while Sweden’s is 1,400 for a population of 10.2 million. (as of 4-17-20) So, as a practical matter, the Swedish method looks vastly inferior. (Interestingly, Sweden’s population is similar to NY City’s 8.4 million, but coronavirus deaths in NYC have now reached a horrific 12,822.)

But there’s more to this story than mere data-points or the latest grim statistics. Here’s a clip from the LA Times that helps to connect the dots:

“Tegnell… insists that Sweden’s approach still seems to make sense, though he also acknowledges that the world is in uncharted territory with the virus. He argues that while Sweden might have more infections in the short term, it will not face the risk of a huge infection spike that Denmark might face once its lockdown is lifted.

“I think both Norway and Denmark are now very concerned about how you stop this complete lockdown in a way so you don’t cause this wave to come immediately when you start loosening up,” he said. He said authorities know that the physical distancing Swedes are engaging in works, because officials have recorded a sudden end to the flu season and to a winter vomiting illness.” (“Sweden sticks to ‘low-scale’ lockdown despite rise in coronavirus deaths’”, LA Times)

The Swedish plan will continue to be criticized by public health experts who think that their draconian recommendations should be fully-implemented without the slightest deviation, but it could turn out that the Swedish model is not only vastly superior to the other courses of action but, ultimately, the only real option for countries that want to save lives but avoid a permanently-hobbled and severely-depressed economy.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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VICE on Thursday published an “astounding” and “important” exclusive report on how Rick Snyder, a Republican who served as Michigan’s governor from 2011 to 2019, “knew about Flint’s toxic water—and lied about it.”

The report, based on a year-and-a-half investigation, comes almost six years after an emergency manager appointed by Snyder switched Flint’s water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River. Since that move on April 25, 2014, city residents have endured health consequences resulting from a deadly Legionella pneumophila bacterial outbreak and exposure to heavy metals and cancer-causing contaminants.

As Jordan Chariton and Jenn Dize reported Thursday:

Hundreds of confidential pages of documents obtained by VICE, along with emails and interviews, reveal a coordinated, five-year cover-up overseen by Snyder and his top officials to prevent news of Flint’s deadly water from going public—while there was still time to save lives—and then limit the damage after the crisis made global headlines.

All told, the waterborne bacterial disease may have killed at least 115 people in 2014 and 2015, and potentially more whose pneumonia wasn’t officially considered Legionnaires’ disease, the illness caused by Legionella. In addition to the outbreak, Flint’s water supply was contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, harmful bacteria, carcinogens, and other toxic components. This wreaked havoc on Flint residents, leaving them with a laundry list of illnesses, including kidney and liver problems, severe bone and muscle pain, gastrointestinal problems, loss of teeth, autoimmune diseases, neurological deficiencies, miscarriages, Parkinson’s disease, severe fatigue, seizures, and volatile mood disorders.

Beyond this, the long-term effects of heavy-metal poisoning takes years to develop, meaning many ill residents’ conditions are worsening as the years go on. Many have said they still rely on bottled water to avoid using the water that comes through their pipes and into their homes, schools, and businesses.

The report detailed actions of local and state officials both leading up to and during the public health crisis, which continues today. It is based on interviews and documents from a criminal investigation of Snyder’s administration that was led by special prosecutor Todd Flood from 2016 until last year, when newly elected state Attorney General Dana Nessel fired Flood and others.

The prosecution team led by Flood charged 15 Flint and Michigan officials with various crimes; seven of those cases were resolved with plea agreements. In January 2019, Nessel appointed Fadwa Hammoud as the state’s solicitor general and assigned her to take over the Flint criminal cases.

In June, the state’s prosecution team dismissed all pending criminal charges against the eight remaining defendants and launched a new probe based on concerns about the initial one. That decision, as Common Dreams reported, “elicited fresh concerns and demands for justice.”

VICE noted that with Flint about to enter its sixth year of the water crisis, “the clock for justice is also ticking.” Unless the Republican-controlled state legislature intervenes, the statute of limitations for filing new felony misconduct-in-office charges will run out next week. Chariton highlighted that detail in a series of tweets about the reporting Thursday.

In August, a pair of state legislators from Flint proposed legislation to extend the statute of limitations from six years to 10. Karen Weaver, then-mayor of Flint, expressed support for the proposal, declaring at the time that “there is no time limit that can be put on the amount of suffering that we have faced, nor the amount of pain as a result of the loss of life.”

Weaver told VICE that the governor’s office repeatedly dangled “a pot of money for different things” and pressured her to publicly claim that the city’s water was safe. The outlet reported that “after repeated attempts by the Snyder administration to get Mayor Weaver to cooperate proved unsuccessful, the promised funding suddenly became unavailable.”

The outlet added:

Weaver was even pressed to say the water in Flint’s schools was safe to drink, according to former city government officials familiar with the administration’s overtures to Weaver. Weaver didn’t, and soon after, the remaining free water-bottle stations Flint residents relied on were prematurely shut down.

When the stations were shuttered, Weaver attempted to reopen them by turning to the $48.8 million rainy-day fund that was allocated to Flint from the state’s 2017-2018 budget. But when Weaver looked, the money was gone. The Snyder administration had been using these funds—meant to be under Flint’s control—to pay for the water stations.

In addition to detailing interactions between Weaver and the Snyder administration from the mayor’s perspective, the report highlighted a few findings from the Flint criminal investigation documents:

  • Snyder was warned about the dangers of using the Flint River as a water source a year before the water switch even occurred.
  • Snyder had knowledge of the Legionella outbreak in Flint as early as October 2014, six months after the water switch—and 16 months earlier than he claimed to have learned of the deadly outbreak in testimony under oath before Congress.
  • Communication among Snyder, his top officials, and the state health department spiked in October 2014 around the same time state environmental and health officials traded emails and calls about the Legionella outbreak in Flint.

Snyder and his attorneys did not respond to VICE‘s requests for comment. Several other officials named in the exhaustive report also declined to respond or comment, with some of them citing the ongoing criminal investigation.

The reporting provoked a fresh wave of criticism directed at government officials involved in the crisis and was published as the international community contends with a global pandemic that has infected more than two million people since late last year.

Sharing Chariton and Dize’s Flint piece on Twitter Thursday, VICE senior editor Maxwell Strachan wrote that “coronavirus is the biggest story in the country, and rightfully so. But today, this enormous, exclusive, and damning story should be a very, very close second.”

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

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Are We Brewing a New Feudalism? The Economy is Being Destroyed

April 20th, 2020 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The answer to the question is “YES.”  The large bailed-out creditors will end up with the property of the non-bailed-out debtors who are being pushed deeper into debt with “bail-out loans” and fees and penalties for missed debt payments. Write-offs for the One Percent, and more indebtedness for everyone else.

Turn your mind to the economy.  The US has a work force of 164,000,000.  The unemployment forecast from the work closedowns is 30%.  That would mean 49,000,000 people who are potential rioters. (We are half way there with today’s report of a 16% unemployment rate with 22 million unemployed). Many of these people were already living paycheck to paycheck, could not raise $400, and their debts leave them no discretionary income.  As they could barely service their debts when employed, how do they service them when unemployed and when their small businesses are closed and incurring costs but have no revenues?  Loans further indebt them. The cash payouts to the unemployed might cover food and housing but will not service their debts.  

Fast food franchises and stores in malls are saying they are not paying their rents for three months.  Mall owners won’t be able to pay their creditors.  The bailout works for no one except those who caused the problem. As they are being bailed out, they will have the money to buy up or foreclose on the bankrupted businesses. More property will be concentrated in fewer hands.  

The bail-out scheme concocted by the New York banks and Trump’s Treasury Secretary, who earned the name “the foreclosure king” during his Wall Street career, leaves creditors whole and debtors deeper in debt.  

The more debt is concentrated in fewer hands and the more indebted everyone else becomes, the less consumer purchasing power there is to drive the economy.  The foreclosed assets become less valuable as their profitability declines with consumer purchasing power.

The destruction of the US economy has been underway since global corporations moved middle class jobs offshore. It has been underway since the financial sector diverted a larger share of consumer income to the service of debt.  It has been underway since corporations invested their profits in buying back their own shares instead of expanding their production capabilities.  It has been underway since Quantitative Easing inflated stock and bond prices beyond realistic values. It has been going on since the rules against concentration were set aside and the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed.  It has been going on since endless wars crowded out infrastructure investment and social safety net expansion.  

Is this a plot or stupidity?  Whatever the answer, the economy is being destroyed.  

The economic problem is that private sector debt, both personal and corporate, is too great to be paid.  This problem existed prior to the closedown.  The closedown means that there is even less income with which to service the unsustainable level of debt.  This is not a problem that can be fixed with more debt.

The problem is that banks lend to finance the purchase of existing financial assets, not to exand the economy’s productive potential.

The problem is that corporations use their profits and borrow money in order to buy back their own equity instead of investing in their businesses.  The executives indebt the corporations while decapitalizing them, and they are rewarded for doing so with “performance bonuses.”

The problem is that global corporations thinking short-term moved high-productivity, high-value-added US jobs to Asia, thus reducing earned income in the US, impairing state and local tax base, and causing the Federal Reserve to substitute a growth in consumer debt in place of the lost consumer income growth.

The people in charge of the fix are only fixing it for themselves and in a short-sighted way.  There is only one way to fix the situation, and that is to write down private sector debts to levels that can be serviced.  As the creditors are being bailed out regardless, their loan losses don’t matter.

The bank and corporate bailouts are an opportunity to fix the economy in other important ways. In effect, the bailouts amount to nationalization.  The government should accept the ownership that it is purchasing.  Then the government can break up the “banks too big to fail” and separate investment from commercial banking without having to pass new Glass-Steagall legislation and without having to battle against financial lobbying in Congress.  Once broken up, the banks could be sold off.  This would take enormous vulnerability out of the financial system and restore financial competition.  With corporations in government hands, the jobs could be brought home from overseas.  The middle class would be restored. 

These measures together with a debt writedown would restore consumer purchasing power. Pent-up demand would propel the economy to higher growth as occurred following World War II.  

This is a real solution to a real problem.  But with the One Percent in charge of the problem, we are not going to get a real solution.  We are going to get more money used to push up prices of financial assets and paper over unsustainable debt and a dying economy with an artificially-inflated stock market.

The elite have failed us too many times.  It is time to dethrone them.

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

In the first of three books on Cuba, Latin America and the U.S., published in 1999 by Editorial José Martí (Havana), I wrote:

“During the 1960 May Day speech, Fidel Castro developed the notion of how the new state was a state of the majority in the true sense of the term. After the U.S. airstrikes took place as part of the overall policy to destroy the Revolution and to restore U.S. political and economic power, the people were faced with the real possibility of confronting full armed aggression. From this the notion of the militia arose.”[i]

On May 1, 1960 at the annual May Day march in Havana, the publication quotes Fidel:

“Only a few months ago there was not a single organized worker or peasant militia. The appeal for the organization of the militia was issued in the month of October, on 26 October, to be precise, in connection with the protest against the air attack which cost our citizenry more than 40 victims.

Six months ago, we did not have a single workers’ militia. Six months ago, the workers did not know how to handle weapons.  Six months ago, the workers did not know how to march. Six months ago, we did not have a single company of militiamen to defend the Revolution in the event of attack.  And in only six months we have organized the militia, we have trained and instructed them.” [ii]

Then, further developing Fidel’s unique vision of the militia, the book continues:

“The establishment of the militia meant far more than close ties between the state and the people. It signified in reality the masses of people becoming an extension of the state. The Rebel Army was the factor allowing the people to take political power, and out of it emerged the new state to protect and extend this political power in the hands of the majority. Therefore, the extent to which people participated in the armed protection and extension of the Revolution was necessarily an indication as to what point the people were actually in power. The Revolution and its defence had sunk such deep roots amongst the people that never did it cross the minds of the new government that the people may turn their arms against it. And so, guns were given to the people. This feature of the new Cuba was brought home in a most lively way by Fidel Castro on May 1, 1960 when he suggested the  analogy of what would happen if armaments were handed out to the most oppressed section of the population in a country where exploitation and discrimination prevails.

From the same May 1, 1960 podium where Fidel spoke, the Historical Leader of the Cuban Revolution is quoted once again in the book:

“A democracy exists when the people are made strong by uniting them!  A democracy exists when guns are given to the peasants, and to the workers, and to the students, and to the women, and to the Negroes, and to the poor — to each citizen who is prepared to defend a just cause!  A democracy exists when not only do the rights of the majority count, but when they are given weapons as well!  And this can only be done by a truly democratic government, wherein the majority governs!

And this could never be done by a pseudo-democracy.  We would liketo know what would happen if the Negroes in the southern part of the United States, who have so many times been lynched, were each given a gun!  Whatcould never be done by an exploiting oligarchy, what never could be done by a military camp representing those who oppress and plunder the peoples,what could never be done by a minority government is to give each worker,each student, each young person, each humble citizen, each of those whomake up the majority of the people a gun.”[iii]

The role of the militia in defeating the U.S. was even highlighted by BBC in 2011:

“The American plan was to sneak ashore virtually unopposed, secure the area, take the airfield and fly in a government-in-exile who would then call for direct US support.

At the same time, they were relying on a mass uprising in Cuba against the revolutionaries.

It could not have gone more wrong: when an advance frogman lit a beacon to show the exiles where to land, it also alerted the Cuban militia to their presence.

Local fisherman Gregorio Moreira, who still lives in the same house beside the beach, was one of the first to raise the alarm.

“I went out of the house and saw a flare, like a candle, in the sky. So I headed to the trench with my father and my brothers,” 74-year-old Mr Moreira recalls.

He was joined on the beach by one of his neighbours, another fisherman, Domingo Rodriguez.

“We thought, ‘This is the invasion boys, be careful! They are trying to invade.’

“We had 11 rifles between us and at about 0400 they started the landing, so we opened fire.”

Reinforcements, including Cuban air force planes, quickly arrived.

The exiles had some air support, but US President John F Kennedy was determined to keep the U.S. involvement a secret and as the initiative turned against the invading force, he backed away from providing further critically needed air cover.

At the same time, Fidel Castro took personal charge of the operation, and within only three days the battle was over. “

Furthermore, Granma in reporting on the anniversary act in Playa Girón in 2017, points out the important role of Fidel and the militia:

His [Fidel] physical presence at the scene of the invasion contributed to keeping morale high among the militias and was decisive to their victory in those glorious days of April 1961, stated Kenia Otaño, a young resident from Ciénaga de Zapata, speaking during the act.

Today, on the anniversary of the victory in Playa Girón, Cuba is more than able to confront a similar Playa Girón-type military provocation by the U.S. Washington knows it.

In addition, now there are two “civic-military unions” in the region: Cuba and Venezuela. Furthermore, Cuba and Venezuela today have more friends than ever around the world in defense of the Cuban and Bolivarian Revolutions.

The Yanquis should pay attention to history.

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Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 ElectionsCuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. He collaborates with many web sites, television and radio broadcasts based in Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Twitter  Facebook. 

Notes

[i] August, Arnold, Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections, Editorial José Martí, Havana, 1999, page 195.

[ii] Castro Ruz, Fidel, Revolución, La Habana, May 2, 1960 (Translation by author)

[iii] Castro Ruz, Fidel, Ibid.

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

 

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The Massive Covid-19 Hoax

By Tony Cartalucci, April 20, 2020

The numbers of infections versus deaths in Iceland where testing has been the most widespread shows a death rate of about 0.5%, though only 5% of the population has been tested. 50% of those tested showed no symptoms at all meaning that many, many more Icelanders likely had the virus, overcame it with ease, and never visited a doctor or hospital to avail themselves for testing or to make into national Covid-19 statistics.

Video: “The House Cat Flu” is Coming. The Meow Apocalypse…

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 19, 2020

In 2009, hundreds of thousands of pigs were executed Worldwide, despite the fact that  the WHO had confirmed that there was no danger of transmission from pigs to humans.

And then what happened, an authoritative study by the John Hopkins School of Public Health was released saying that humans could infect the pigsPutting Meat on the Table Industrial Farm Animal Production in Americas, see also Washington Post, May 9 2009).

A Universal Basic Income Is Essential and Will Work

By Ellen Brown, April 20, 2020

The mandated shutdown from the coronavirus has exacerbated the debt crisis, but the economy was suffering from an unprecedented buildup of debt well before that. A UBI would address the gap between consumer debt and the money available to repay it; but there are equivalent gaps for business debt, federal debt, and state and municipal debt, leaving room for quite a bit of helicopter money before debt deflation would turn into inflation.

Orwellian Lockstep and a Loaded Syringe

By Colin Todhunter, April 20, 2020

Some years ago, the then vice-president of Monsanto Robert T Fraley asked, “Why do people doubt science”. He posed the question partly because he had difficulty in believing that some people had valid concerns about the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.

Critics were questioning the science behind GM technology and the impacts of GMOs because they could see how science is used, corrupted and manipulated by powerful corporations to serve their own ends. And it was also because they regard these conglomerates as largely unaccountable and unregulated. 

Lock Step, This Is No Futuristic Scenario: Panic and the Post-Pandemic Future?

By F. William Engdahl, April 19, 2020

Every day world mainstream news reports more people in more countries diagnosed “positive” for the coronavirus illness, now called COVID-19. As the reported numbers grow, so does widespread nervousness, often in the form of panic shopping for masks, disinfections, toilet paper, canned goods. We are told to accept the testing results as science-based. While it is next to impossible to get a full picture of what is taking place in China, the center of the novel virus storm, there is a process, being fed by mainstream media accounts and genuine panic in populations unclear what the real dangers are, that has alarming implications for the post-pandemic future.

Bill Gates and the Depopulation Agenda. Robert F. Kennedy Junior Calls for an Investigation

By Peter Koenig, April 18, 2020

For over twenty years Bill Gates and his Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have been vaccinating foremost children by the millions in remote areas of poor countries, mostly Africa and Asia. Most of their vaccination program had disastrous results, causing the very illness (polio, for example in India) and sterilizing young women (Kenya, with modified tetanus vaccines). Many of the children died. Many of the programs were carried out with the backing of the WHO and – yes – the UN Agency responsible for the Protection of Children, UNICEF.

Why Are They Inflating the Numbers? New York City Adding 3,800 Unconfirmed Cases to COVID-19 Death Toll

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, April 17, 2020

Mayor De Blasio said that there was an increase in “unexplained at-home deaths” and that he “suspected many of them were caused by Covid-19″and he also said that “there’s no question in my mind and the doctors can speak to this, the driver of this huge uptick in deaths at home is Covid-19 and some people are dying directly of it and some people are dying indirectly of it, but it is the tragic X factor here.” There is something terribly wrong with this picture. Why are they adding unconfirmed cases to the death toll?

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Will America Launch a War on Iraq?

April 20th, 2020 by Elijah J. Magnier

The US administration views Iraq as an arena for confrontation with Iran, with the aim of subjugating the country to its hegemony and dominance. The US imposes harsh sanctions on Iran and is trying to close the Iraqi market to prevent Tehran from smuggling its oil through Mesopotamia, and to obstruct the sale of gas even if it means cutting the supply of electricity to southern Iraq. All US means are valid for the current administration to ​​crush Iran with economic sanctions and close off its access to neighbouring countries. The US is also said to be preparing a military campaign against Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq, apparently convinced that this group is the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah Lebanon. Even if both groups have the same objective—to oppose US hegemony—they differ in leadership and in their approach and relationship to Iran. However, it should be borne in mind that the consequences on US national territory of the devastating effect of COVID-19 have created an unprecedented economic decline and this burden also falls on the US army deployed abroad. Also, history shows that the US does not engage in any war if victory is not guaranteed. 

There are many reasons why the US is not even close to starting a war in Iraq. There is no doubt that America has the military power to wage any war it wants against any small or medium-sized country. However, Washington may start a war at will but will not be able to stop it so easily. It also has no idea about the damage a war on Iraq could cause. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are the best evidence, if we evoke contemporary history, of the US inability to decide when a war should stop! Hence, launching a war on Iraq in 2020 would not be such a cakewalk as the 2003 war. Notwithstanding its occupation of Iraq with tens of thousands of men, the US failed to subjugate Iraq, mainly due to the emergence of the Sunni and Shia resistance which drove America out of Iraq in 2011.

And when US forces returned in 2014 – at the request of the Iraqi government – to contribute to fighting ISIS, the US presence was regulated and limited to fighting the Takfiri organisation and to offering paid-for military training. It was to refrain from conducting any military activity in the country without the permission of the Iraqi Prime Minister. The US has not only violated this agreement, it hasattacked the Iraqi army, federal police, and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) on the Iraq-Syria border, killing and wounding 56 elements. Furthermore, it allowed Israel to attack Iraqi security forces’ warehouses, this according to what the American ambassador in Iraq revealed to the Prime Minister during a private visit to his office in Baghdad. Also, the US crowned its illegal interference in Iraqi affairs with the assassination of two leaders, the Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani on a mission requested by Iraqi Premier, and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis the commander of the PMF. These acts pushed the Iraqi parliament to formally request the immediate US departure from Iraq.

Iran was the first to respond to the need to defend Baghdad and Erbil when these were under imminent danger from the ISIS advance in 2014. Tehran carried on supplying the Iraqis with weapons at the request of Baghdad. A decision-maker in Iraq said “a senior British diplomat told a senior Iraqi official in Baghdad that the US believes that the PMF has very accurate Iranian missiles that can reach any country in the region and this is what worries America and the countries of the region.”

Following parliament’s request and the increase of hostility towards the US presence in Iraq, where foreign troops are considered occupation forces, the US initiated a redeployment plan. It has pulled out of 6 military bases and centres but equipped the military bases of Ayn al-Assad, Balad, and Harir with Patriot missiles, disregarding Baghdad’s disapproval. This is why Iraqi leaders are skeptical about the seriousness of the US’s real intention of withdrawal.

The US’s presence in Iraq aims to control Iran and to control access to the oil. Therefore – sources believe – the US exit will not be straightforward. The US has failed, after 17 years of occupation and military assistance against ISIS, to win the hearts and minds of the population.

The US wrongly assumed that Ismail Qaani, the commander of the IRGC-Quds brigade, would not replace his assassinated predecessor Qassem Soelimani. It also failed to understand that Iran is a country, whereas the IRGC is an institution. The axis of the resistance had never depended on a specific person, whatever his status. Qassem Soleimani was indeed a decision maker, but he was affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps – Al-Quds Brigade, which is headed by its supreme leader Sayed Ali Khamenei. Following the assassination of Soleimani, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, took over in the temporary void to follow up on the affairs of the Palestinians in Gaza, the development in Syria, the Iraqis and Yemenis. We can see the presence of the Lebanese Hezbollah in all these axes and countries.

In Iraq, statements have emerged from different new organisations showing competence in media warfare, possession of drones and reading of aerial footage, and a similarity to the methods and professionalism of the Lebanese Hezbollah. One of the latest communiqués of the new anonymous group “Islamic Resistance in Iraq – Cave Owners (companions)” thanked Sunni Iraqi for their help in attacking the US convoy travelling between Erbil and Salahuddine province and invited the Iraqi Sunnis to join the resistance against the US forces. The group offered to arm, train and deliver weapons to “our Sunni Brothers. ”

Another reason why the US is far from declaring any war on Iraqi groups is the outbreak of the Corona virus and the decision taken by the Pentagon to stop all military movement between the bases, and military deployment in the whole country. Any war is a risky adventure that could have heavy consequences for the US army especially that, in the number of cases and the number of deaths caused by the Covid virus, the US holds first rank. President Donald Trump is in no position to allow his army to be hit by the virus.

We also have already seen how President Trump refused to attack Iran on several occasions. Iran has said that it will defend Iraq, as Admiral Ali Shamkhani, Secretary-General of National Security-has confirmed. Therefore, the US does not want to see Iran involved on the battlefield in Iraq. Iran has shot down the most sophisticated drones and bombed the American base of Ayn al-Assad in the first attack against US forces since Pearl Harbour during the days of World War II. Trump preferred not to respond.

Last but not least, President Trump will not fight a war in the next few months before the presidential elections, especially when the results of such a war and its consequent retaliation are unpredictable. As a result, the US administration’s leaking of information to the Western media that the Pentagon issued an order to prepare for a war in Iraq can be identified as part of the psychological war.

The US has violated its agreements with Iraq in many occasions, deploying Patriot missiles to protect US bases inside Iraq and redeploying its forces by pulling out from more vulnerable bases spread in various parts of Iraq. However, the Patriots already demonstrated their inability to repel missiles fired from Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine. Consequently, it is a defensive measure that will not protect the US from the decision of various Iraqi organisations to bomb US bases when confrontation becomes inescapable, if the US insists on staying in Iraq and disregarding the Iraqis’ will. Thus, America doesn’t itself hold the decision to go to war in Mesopotamia: most probably the many Iraqi groups will be the ones starting it. The US departure may protect US interests strategically but, if the US insists on staying, the power of the central government in Baghdad will be weakened. Lebanon is the best example of this phenomenon. And Iraqi resistance organisations will become quasi-state actors, much stronger than they are now.

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The heavily anticipated (at least by Anti-Empire) Stanford University antibodies test of a representative population has now concluded.

Background

Addressing COVID-19 is a pressing health and social concern. To date, many epidemic projections and policies addressing COVID-19 have been designed without seroprevalence data to inform epidemic parameters.

We measured the seroprevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County. Methods On 4/3-4/4, 2020, we tested county residents for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 using a lateral flow immunoassay. Participants were recruited using Facebook ads targeting a representative sample of the county by demographic and geographic characteristics. We report the prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in a sample of 3,330 people, adjusting for zip code, sex, and race/ethnicity. We also adjust for test performance characteristics using 3 different estimates: (i) the test manufacturer’s data, (ii) a sample of 37 positive and 30 negative controls tested at Stanford, and (iii) a combination of both.

Results

The unadjusted prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County was 1.5% (exact binomial 95CI 1.11-1.97%), and the population-weighted prevalence was 2.81% (95CI 2.24-3.37%).

Under the three scenarios for test performance characteristics, the population prevalence of COVID-19 in Santa Clara ranged from 2.49% (95CI 1.80-3.17%) to 4.16% (2.58-5.70%).

These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases.

Conclusions

The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases.

Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections.

Professor Doctor John Ioannidis reports:

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has more:

 

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The Trump administration unveiled on March 31 a “democratic transition” plan to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office, in favor of a “council of state” composed of both opposition and ruling party loyalists.

The plan was, however, less an offer to negotiate than a diktat, with the US State Department (3/31/20) vowing that “sanctions will remain in effect, and increase, until the Maduro regime accepts a genuine political transition.”

Despite the obvious mafioso overtones, Washington’s stenographers in the corporate press were quick to present the initiative as “sanctions relief,” once again whitewashing murderous US economic warfare against Venezuela (FAIR.org, 2/6/196/14/196/26/19).

Western journalists’ callous obfuscation of sanctions’ deadly toll, especially amid a global pandemic (FAIR.org, 3/25/20), goes hand in hand with their parroting of bogus “narco-terrorism” charges leveled against Maduro and top Venezuelan officials, which butresses Washington’s ever-illicit casus belli.

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

The New York Times (3/31/20) jumped at the opportunity to furnish the Trump administration’s plan with a varnish of reasonability. “The proposal…offers to ease American sanctions intended to pressure President Nicolás Maduro and his loyalists over the past year,” Lara Jakes wrote, misconstruing the unilateral measures destroying Venezuela’s economy as well-intentioned steps to bring about “fair elections.”

At no point did the paper of record mention Washington’s threat to ramp up illegal sanctions if Maduro refuses the “offer” to replace his government with a five-person junta, in flagrant violation of Venezuela’s constitution. Other Western media likewise covered up the US blackmail, praising Donald Trump’s bayonet-hoisted ultimatum as a “roadmap to relief” (Washington Post, 3/31/20), a “more toned-down approach” (Reuters, 3/31/20) and a “conciliatory framework” (Economist, 4/2/20).

Having dutifully whitewashed US sanctions, the Times and its counterparts were free to cast war criminal Elliott Abrams, rehabilitated last year as Trump’s Venezuela envoy (CounterSpin, 3/1/19), as an honest broker committed to good-faith dialogue:

But Mr. Abrams was careful to say that the plan was an opening offer for talks between the two sides, “not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition,” and that no single issue was a deal breaker—except the demand for Mr. Maduro’s departure.

By contrast, Maduro—reelected in internationally monitored elections with a greater percentage of the electorate than Trump won in 2016, or Barack Obama in 2012—is for the Times “reminiscent of mid-20th century Latin American strongmen,” whose 2018 victory was “self-declared.”

The Times went on to accuse the Venezuelan leader of “creating one of the world’s largest refugee populations,” concealing the role of criminal sanctions in driving migration (FAIR.org, 2/18/18).

This vilification of Maduro and the Chavista poor people’s movement does not merely reflect reporters’ professional class bias, but is structurally necessary to justify US economic warfare and more overt criminality in the first place.

It is therefore no coincidence that the Trump administration’s gunpoint “proposal” to overturn Venezuela’s constitutional order came on the heels of Department of Justice “narco-terrorism” charges against the Venezuelan head of state and other top officials, which corporate journalists trumpeted enthusiastically.

Most outlets regarded the timing as a symptom of “contradictory” (Washington Post, 4/14/20) or “erratic” (New York Times, 4/10/20) US policy, which could “make it harder to remove Maduro” (Economist, 4/2/20), but the underlying regime change (ir)rationality never comes into question.

Indeed, even liberal imperialist academics like David Smilde and Abraham Lowenthal (Washington Post, 4/14/20) declined to call for scrapping the indictments, let alone easing sanctions, as a goodwill gesture aimed at securing Chavista support for the US plan, which they hailed as a “step in the right direction.” Rather, they merely recommend that the Trump administration offer “guarantees for indicted officials” against extradition, as if Maduro would be inclined to negotiate while Washington continues its collective punishment and maintains a $15 million bounty on his head.

Smilde and his Washington Office on Latin America colleague Geoff Ramsey’s  (Washington Post, 3/27/20) refusal to demand the immediate annulment of the drug charges and illegal sanctions is hardly surprising, given both men’s long-running support for US coup efforts (Common Dreams, 3/5/19).

(Left) The New York Times found Maduro's white suit and being flanked by ministers as "reminiscent of dictators."; (Right) The Washington Post found an unconstitutional plan to remove an elected president on the basis of threats as "a step in the right direction."

(Left) The New York Times found Maduro’s white suit and being flanked by ministers as “reminiscent of dictators.”; (Right) The Washington Post found an unconstitutional plan to remove an elected president on the basis of threats as “a step in the right direction.”

Calling the Kettle Black

The DoJ’s indictment of 14 current or former senior Venezuelan officials on “narco-terrorism” charges provided the Western media with fresh grist for its imperial propaganda mill.

This is hardly the first time that the corporate media have reported the Washington’s evidence-free drug allegations against official enemies, which they have frequently done without any pretense of journalistic rigor (Extra!, 1/909/12; FAIR.org,  9/24/195/24/19).

The New York Times (3/26/20) dedicated no less than 12 paragraphs to repeating prosecutors’ claims, which are centered on the outlandish notion that Maduro secretly heads a drug cartel that conspired with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas to “‘flood’ the United States with cocaine.”

Despite marshaling a crack team of three writers and four contributing reporters, the Times proved incapable of citing any contrarian perspectives, let alone basic facts, that cast doubt on the “narco-terrorism” narrative.

The Guardian (3/26/20) and the Washington Post (3/27/20) were virtually the only outlets to mention the US government’s own publicly available data showing that just a small fraction of drug routes pass through Venezuela, with the overwhelming majority of cocaine entering the United States via Mexico and Central America. Furthermore, Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer, right under the nose of large US military and DEA contingents, which have long waged a “war for drugs and of terror” in the country.

The DoJ’s case looks like a reheated version of equally unfounded accusations against former President Hugo Chávez, which corporate journalists eagerly promoted last year (FAIR.org, 9/24/19).

A map produced by the US Southern Command shows that most drug routes enter the US via the Pacific and then Central America. (Business Insider)

A map produced by the US Southern Command shows that most drug routes enter the US via the Pacific and then Central America. (Business Insider)

As with prior allegations against Socialist Party Vice President Diosdado Cabello (Wall Street Journal, 5/18/15), the indictments hinge on the testimony of defectors, whose claims are echoed in the Western press without scrutiny.

In the most recent case, retired Maj. Gen. Cliver Alcalá and former intelligence chief Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal were also charged by the DoJ and pledged to cooperate with US authorities. Both had previously broken with the Maduro government and endorsed self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

Alcalá, who swiftly surrendered to DEA agents and was flown to the US, boasted of plotting a coup in conjunction with Guaidó and “US advisers.”

In an exposé of the coup plot, the Financial Times (4/4/20) cast doubt on the general’s “rambling and contradictory” account, quoting several US officials denying the coup attempt and alleging Alcalá was “acting on the orders of Caracas.”

The outlet conveniently ignored that this would not be the first time Alcalá conspired to invade Venezuela with a paramilitary force.

According to Bloomberg (3/6/19), there was a plan for the general to lead a contingent of 200 Venezuelan exile soldiers to clear the way for the entry of “humanitarian aid” on February 23, 2019, which was vetoed at the last minute by Colombia, suggesting high-level coordination with Washington, Bogotá and Guaidó.

By repeating the US narrative of Alcalá as a Maduro “plant,” corporate journalists paradoxically legitimize the general as a reliable source of current information on Venezuelan “narco-terrorism,” while concealing his embarrassing ties to the US and its opposition proxies.

As we have exposed for FAIR.org (5/24/19), Carvajal has already proved his worth in the past by serving up to credulous reporters highly dubious allegations about Venezuelan leaders’ Hezbollah ties (New York Times, 2/21/19).

(Left) The New York Times (and other outlets) accepted the DoJ's "narco-terrorism" charges at face value; (Right) An AP headline endorsed Trump’s dubious justification for an aggressive military move.

(Left) The New York Times (and other outlets) accepted the DoJ’s “narco-terrorism” charges at face value; (Right) An AP headline endorsed Trump’s dubious justification for an aggressive military move.

Imaginary Cartels, Real Warships

The uncritical coverage of the DoJ charges paved the way for a further US escalation shortly after the “transition” plan was unveiled.

On March 31, the Trump administration announced a military deployment to the Caribbean described by Associated Press (4/1/20) as “one of the largest in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama.”

One might have expected such an obscenely expensive display of force amid a deadly pandemic currently killing thousands of Americans to be met with widespread rebuke across the media spectrum.

In fact, the opposition was largely muted. Newsweek (4/3/20) and Foreign Policy (4/2/20) gave voice to the Pentagon’s concern that the operation was wasteful and politically motivated, while the New York Times (4/10/20) published an op-ed raising polite proceduralist quibbles.  Agreeing with the Trump administration that Maduro is a “dictator” who “must go,” Michael Shifter and Michael Camilleri nonetheless placed a vague call for Washington “to reboot sanctions policy, provide aid through accountable channels, and press the country’s leaders to work together.” Evidently, demanding the immediate lifting of (arguably genocidal) sanctions was too unreasonable to ask.

Referring to the Venezuelan military as “deeply involved in corruption and criminality,” Shifter and Camilleri exemplify the decadent imperial intelligentsia’s psychology of displacement.

From social democratic left to neoliberal right, Global North journalists and intellectuals remain invested in the self-serving illusion that besieged Southern nations such as Venezuela and Iran are more “criminal,” “corrupt” and “authoritarian” than the US empire (FAIR.org, 2/12/20).

For all their polite critiques of illegal US sanctions and military escalation–whose monstrosity has been laid bare by the current pandemic–the cult of Western exceptionalism goes unchallenged.

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Lucas Koerner is an editor and political analyst at Venezuelanalysis.

Ricardo Vaz is a political analyst and editor at Venezuelanalysis.

Featured image is from Novinite.com

A Universal Basic Income Is Essential and Will Work

April 20th, 2020 by Ellen Brown

According to an April 6 article on CNBC.com, Spain is slated to become the first country in Europe to introduce a universal basic income (UBI) on a long-term basis. Spain’s Minister for Economic Affairs has announced plans to roll out a UBI “as soon as possible,” with the goal of providing a nationwide basic wage that supports citizens “forever.” Guy Standing, a research professor at the University of London, told CNBC that there was no prospect of a global economic revival without a universal basic income. “It’s almost a no-brainer,” he said. “We are going to have some sort of basic income system sooner or later ….”

“Where will the government find the money?” is no longer a valid objection to providing an economic safety net for the people. The government can find the money in the same place it just found more than $5 trillion for Wall Street and Corporate America: the central bank can print it. In an April 9 post commenting on the $1.77 trillion handed to Wall Street under the CARES Act, Wolf Richter observed, “If the Fed had sent that $1.77 Trillion to the 130 million households in the US, each household would have received $13,600. But no, this was helicopter money exclusively for Wall Street and for asset holders.”

“Helicopter money” – money simply issued by the central bank and injected into the economy – could be used in many ways, including building infrastructure, capitalizing a national infrastructure and development bank, providing free state university tuition, or funding Medicare, social security, or a universal basic income. In the current crisis, in which a government-mandated shutdown has left households more vulnerable than at any time since the Great Depression, a UBI seems the most direct and efficient way to get money to everyone who needs it. But critics argue that it will just trigger inflation and collapse the dollar. As gold proponent Mike Maloney complained on an April 16 podcast:

Typing extra digits into computers does not make us wealthy. If this insane theory of printing money for almost everyone on a permanent basis takes hold, the value of the dollars in your purse or pocketbook will … just continue to erode …. I just want someone to explain to me how this is going to work.

Having done quite a bit of study on that, I thought I would take on the challenge. Here is how and why a central bank-financed UBI can work without eroding the dollar.

In a Debt-Based System, the Consumer Economy Is Chronically Short of Money

First, some basics of modern money. We do not have a fixed and stable money system. We have a credit system, in which money is created and destroyed by banks every day. Money is created as a deposit when the bank makes a loan and is extinguished when the loan is repaid, as explained in detail by the Bank of England here. When fewer loans are being created than are being repaid, the money supply shrinks, a phenomenon called “debt deflation.” Deflation then triggers recession and depression. The term “helicopter money” was coined to describe the cure for that much-feared syndrome. Economist Milton Friedman said it was easy to cure a deflation: just print money and rain it down from helicopters on the people.

Our money supply is in a chronic state of deflation, due to the way money comes into existence. Banks create the principal but not the interest needed to repay their loans, so more money is always owed back than was created in the original loans. Thus debt always grows faster than the money supply, as can be seen in this chart from WorkableEconomics.com:

When the debt burden grow so large that borrowers cannot take on more, they pay down old loans without taking out new ones and the money supply shrinks or deflates.

Critics of this “debt virus” theory say the gap between debt and the money available to repay can be filled through the “velocity of money.” Debts are repaid over time, and if the payments received collectively by the lenders are spent back into the economy, they are collectively available to the debtors to pay their next monthly balances. (See a fuller explanation here.) The flaw in this argument is that money created as a loan is extinguished on repayment and is not available to be spent back into the economy. Repayment zeros out the debit by which it was created, and the money just disappears.

Another problem with the “velocity of money” argument is that lenders don’t typically spend their profits back into the consumer economy. In fact, we have two economies – the consumer/producer economy where goods and services are produced and traded, and the financialized economy where money chases “yields” without producing new goods and services. The financialized economy is essentially a parasite on the real economy, and it now contains most of the money in the system. In an unwritten policy called the “Fed put”, the central bank routinely manipulates the money supply to prop up financial markets. That means corporate owners and investors can make more and faster money in the financialized economy than by investing in workers and equipment. Bankers, investors and other “savers” put their money in stocks and bonds, hide it in offshore tax havens, send it abroad, or just keep it in cash. At the end of 2018, US corporations were sitting on $1.7 trillion in cash, and 70% of $100 bills were held overseas.

Meanwhile the producer/consumer economy is left with insufficient investment and insufficient demand. According to a July 2017 paper from the Roosevelt Institute called “What Recovery? The Case for Continued Expansionary Policy at the Fed”:

GDP remains well below both the long-run trend and the level predicted by forecasters a decade ago. In 2016, real per capita GDP was 10% below the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) 2006 forecast, and shows no signs of returning to the predicted level.

The report showed that the most likely explanation for this lackluster growth was inadequate demand. Wages were stagnant; and before producers would produce, they needed customers knocking on their doors.

In ancient Mesopotamia, the gap between debt and the money available to repay it was corrected with periodic debt “jubilees” – forgiveness of loans that wiped the slate clean. But today the lenders are not kings and temples. They are private bankers who don’t engage in debt forgiveness because their mandate is to maximize shareholder profits, and because by doing so they would risk insolvency themselves. But there is another way to avoid the debt gap, and that is by filling it with regular injections of new debt-free money.

How Much Money Needs to Be Injected to Stabilize the Money Supply?

The mandated shutdown from the coronavirus has exacerbated the debt crisis, but the economy was suffering from an unprecedented buildup of debt well before that. A UBI would address the gap between consumer debt and the money available to repay it; but there are equivalent gaps for business debt, federal debt, and state and municipal debt, leaving room for quite a bit of helicopter money before debt deflation would turn into inflation.

Looking just at the consumer debt gap, in 2019 80% of US households had to borrow to meet expenses. See this chart provided by Lance Roberts in an April 2019 article on Seeking Alpha:

After the 2008 financial crisis, income and debt combined were not sufficient to fill the gap. By April 2019, about one-third of student loans and car loans were defaulting or had already defaulted. The predictable result was a growing wave of personal bankruptcies, bank bankruptcies, and debt deflation.

Roberts showed in a second chart that by 2019, the gap between annual real disposable income and the cost of living was over $15,000 per person, and the annual deficit that could not be filled even by borrowing was over $3,200:

Assume, then, a national dividend dropped directly into people’s bank accounts of $1,200 per month or $14,200 per year. This would come close to the average $15,000 needed to fill the gap between real disposable income and the cost of living. If the 80% of recipients needing to borrow to meet expenses used the money to repay their consumer debts (credit cards, student debt, medical bills, etc.), that money would void out debt and disappear. These loan repayments (or some of them) could be made mandatory and automatic. The other 20% of recipients, who don’t need to borrow to meet expenses, would not need their national dividends for that purpose either. Most would save it or invest it in non-consumer markets. And the money that was actually spent on consumer goods and services would help fill the 10% gap between real and potential GDP, allowing supply to rise with demand, keeping prices stable. The end result would be no net increase in the consumer price index.

The current economic shutdown will necessarily result in shortages, and the prices of those commodities can be expected to inflate; but it won’t be the result of “demand/pull” inflation triggered by helicopter money. It will be “cost/push” inflation from factory closures, supply disruptions, and increased business costs.

International Precedents

Critics of central bank money injections point to the notorious hyperinflations of history – in Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc. These disasters, however, were not caused by government money-printing to stimulate the economy. According to Prof. Michael Hudson, who has studied the question extensively, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

For contemporary examples of governments injecting new money to fund domestic growth, we can look to China and Japan. In the last two decades, China’s M2 money supply grew from 11 trillion yuan to 194 trillion yuan, a nearly 1,800% increase. Yet the average inflation rate of its Consumer Price Index hovered between 2% and 3% during that period. The flood of money injected into the economy did not trigger an inflationary crisis because China’s GDP grew at the same fast clip, allowing supply and demand to rise together. Another factor was the Chinese propensity to save. As incomes went up, the percent of income spent on goods and services went down.

In Japan, the massive stimulus programs called “Abenomics” have been funded through bond purchases by the Japanese central bank. The Bank of Japan has now “monetized” nearly half the government’s debt, injecting new money into the economy by purchasing government bonds with yen created on the bank’s books. If the US Fed did that, it would own $12 trillion in US government bonds, over three times the $3.6 trillion in Treasury debt it holds now. Yet Japan’s inflation rate remains stubbornly below the BOJ’s 2% target. Deflation continues to be a greater concern in Japan than inflation, despite unprecedented debt monetization by its central bank.

UBI and Fears of the “Nanny State”

Wary critics warn that a UBI is the road to totalitarianism, the “cashless society,” dependence on the “nanny state,” and mandatory digital IDs. But none of those outcomes need accompany a UBI. It does not make people dependent on the government, so long as they can work. It is just supplementary income, similar to the dividends investors get from their stocks. A UBI does not make people lazy, as numerous studies have shown. To the contrary, they become more productive than without it. And a UBI does not mean cash would be eliminated. Over 90% of the money supply is already digital. UBI payments can be distributed digitally without changing the system we have. 

A UBI can serve the goals both of fiscal policy, providing a vital safety net for citizens in desperate times, and of monetary policy, by stabilizing the money supply. The consumer/producer economy actually needs regular injections of helicopter money to remain sustainable, stimulate economic productivity, and avoid deflationary recessions.

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

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of DebtThe Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com

Orwellian Lockstep and a Loaded Syringe

April 20th, 2020 by Colin Todhunter

Some years ago, the then vice-president of Monsanto Robert T Fraley asked, “Why do people doubt science”. He posed the question partly because he had difficulty in believing that some people had valid concerns about the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.

Critics were questioning the science behind GM technology and the impacts of GMOs because they could see how science is used, corrupted and manipulated by powerful corporations to serve their own ends. And it was also because they regard these conglomerates as largely unaccountable and unregulated. 

We need look no further than the current coronavirus issue to understand how vested interests are set to profit by spinning the crisis a certain way and how questionable science is being used to pursue policies that are essentially illogical or ‘unscientific’. Politicians refer to ‘science’ and expect the public to defer to the authority of science without questioning the legitimacy of scientific modelling or data.

Although this legitimacy is being questioned on various levels, arguments challenging the official line are being sidelined. Governments, the police and the corporate media have become the arbiters of truth even if ‘the truth’ does not correspond with expert opinion or rational thought which challenges the mainstream narrative.

For instance, testing for coronavirus could be flawed (producing a majority of ‘false positives’) and the processes involved in determining death rates could be inflating the numbers: for example, dying ‘with’ coronavirus’ is different to dying ‘due to’ coronavirus: a serious distinction given that up to 98 per cent of people (according to official sources) who may be dying with it have at least one serious life-threatening condition. Moreover, the case-fatality ratio could be so low as to make the lockdown response appear wholly disproportionate. Yet we are asked to accept statistics at face value – and by implication, the policies based on them.

Indeed, documentary maker and author David Cayley addresses this last point by saying that modern society is hyper-scientific but radically unscientific as it has no standard against which it can measure or assess what it has done: that we must at all costs ‘save lives’ is not questioned, but this makes it very easy to start a stampede. Making an entire country go home and stay home has immense, incalculable costs in terms of well-being and livelihoods. Cayley argues that this itself has created a pervasive sense of panic and crisis and is largely a result of the measures taken against the pandemic and not of the pandemic itself.

He argues that the declaration by the World Health Organization that a pandemic (at the time based on a suspected 150 deaths globally) was now officially in progress did not change anyone’s health status, but it dramatically changed the public atmosphere. Moreover, the measures mandated have involved a remarkable curtailing of civil liberty.

One of the hallmarks of the current situation, he stresses, is that some think that ‘science’ knows more than it does and therefore they – especially politicians – know more than they do. Although certain epidemiologists may say frankly that there is very little sturdy evidence to base policies on, this has not prevented politicians from acting as if everything they say or do is based on solid science.

The current paradigm – with its rhetoric of physical distancing, flattening the curve and saving lives – could be difficult to escape from. Cayley says either we call it off soon and face the possibility that it was all misguided (referring to the policies adopted in Sweden to make his point), or we extend it and create harms that may be worse than the casualties we may have averted.

The lockdown may not be merited if we were to genuinely adopt a knowledge-based approach. For instance, if we look at early projections by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in the UK, he had grossly overstated the number of possible deaths resulting from the coronavirus and has now backtracked substantially. Ferguson has a chequered track record, which led UK newspaper The Telegraph to run a piece entitled ‘How accurate was the science that led to lockdown?’ The article outlines Ferguson’s previous flawed predictions about infectious diseases and a number of experts raise serious questions about the modelling that led to lockdown in the UK.

It is worth noting that the lockdown policies we now see are remarkably similar to the disturbing Orwellian ‘Lock Step’ future scenario that was set out in 2010 by the Rockefeller Foundation report ‘Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development’. The report foresaw a future situation where freedoms are curtailed and draconian high-tech surveillance measures are rolled out under the ongoing pretexts of impending pandemics. Is this the type of technology use we can expect to see as hundreds of millions are marginalized and pushed into joblessness?

Instead of encouraging more diverse, informed and objective opinions in the mainstream, we too often see money and power forcing the issue, not least in the form of Bill Gates who tells the world ‘normality’ may not return for another 18 months – until he and his close associates in the pharmaceuticals industry find a vaccine and we are all vaccinated.

US attorney Robert F Kennedy Jr says that top Trump advisor Stephen Fauci has made the reckless choice to fast track vaccines, partially funded by Gates, without critical animal studies. Gates is so worried about the danger of adverse events that he says vaccines shouldn’t be distributed until governments agree to indemnity against lawsuits.

But this should come as little surprise. Kennedy notes that the Gates Foundation and its global vaccine agenda already has much to answer for. For example, Indian doctors blame the Gates Foundation for paralysing 490,000 children. And in 2009, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 girls. About 1,200 suffered severe side effects and seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations.

Kennedy adds that in 2010 the Gates Foundation funded a trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects to 1,048 of the 5,949 children. In 2002, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis.

Bill Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO in 2010. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilising millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a  ’tetanus’ vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested.  

Instead of prioritising projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases and improve health – clean water, hygiene, nutrition and economic development – the Gates Foundation spends only about $650 million of its $5 billion budget on these areas.

Despite all of this, Gates appears on prime-time TV news shows in the US and the UK pushing his undemocratic and unaccountable pro-big pharma vaccination and surveillance agendas and is afforded deference by presenters who dare not mention any of what Kennedy outlines. Quite the opposite – he is treated like royalty.  

In the meantime, an open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, emeritus professor of medical microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to Angela Merkel has called for an urgent reassessment of Germany’s lockdown. Dr Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University argues that we have made such decisions on the basis of unreliable data. In addition, numerous articles have recently appeared online which present the views of dozens of experts who question policies and the data being cited about the coronavirus.  

While it is not the intention to dismiss the dangers of Covid-19, responses to those dangers must be proportionate to actual risks. And perspective is everything.

Millions die each year due to unnecessary conflicts, malnutrition and hunger, a range of preventative diseases (often far outweighing the apparent impact of Covid-19), environmental pollution and economic plunder which deprives poor countriesof their natural wealth. Neoliberal reforms have pushed millions of farmers and poor people in India and elsewhere to the brink of joblessness and despair, while our food is being contaminated with toxic chemicals and the global ecosystem faces an apocalyptic breakdown.

Much of the above is being driven by an inherently predatory economic system and facilitated by those who now say they want to ‘save lives’ by implementing devastating lockdowns. Yet, for the media and the political class, the public’s attention should not be allowed to dwell on such things.

And that has easily been taken care of.

In the UK, the population is constantly subjected via their TV screens to clap for NHS workers, support the NHS and to stay home and save lives on the basis of questionable data and policies. Its emotive stuff taking place under a ruling Conservative Party that has cut thousands of hospital beds, frozen staff pay and demonised junior doctors.

As people passively accept the stripping of their fundamental rights, Lionel Shriver, writing in The Spectator, says that the supine capitulation to a de facto police state has been one of the most depressing spectacles he has ever witnessed. 

It’s a point of view that will resonate with many.

In the meantime, Bill Gates awaits as the saviour of humanity – with a loaded syringe.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

COVID-19: A Diabolical US Anti-China Plot?

April 20th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Is it coincidental that the first widely reported COVID-19 outbreak was in China.  

It’s unknown if the virus was natural or man-made, the latter very much possible, perhaps originating in a US bio-lab.

The US has a long disturbing history of bio-and-chemical warfare, waging it against Native Americans, during its Civil War, in WW I and II, and all its wars thereafter against invented enemies to the present day — along with homeland experiments.

Since at least the early 1940s, the US conducted research, development, and testing of bioweapons at Fort Detrick, MD, later at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs, Pine Bluff, AR and Dugway Proving Ground, UT.

Biological agents were introduced in New York, San Francisco, and other US cities to learn the effects of germ warfare.

The CIA’s Project MKULTRA research produced drugs and biological agents for mind control and behavioral modification.

The history of US development and use of banned weapons is long and disturbing.

Arsenals of chemical, biological, radiological, and other banned weapons are maintained by the Pentagon and CIA.

International law bans use of chemical, biological, and radiological weapons, the latter used by US forces at least since the preemptive 1991 Gulf War.

Depleted uranium weapons are radioactive, chemically toxic and poisonous, yet used in all US wars of aggression since GHW Bush’s aggression against Iraq.

No evidence suggests COVID-19 was made in a Chinese lab or originated from bats or other wildlife.

Was it made in the USA? US intelligence and the Pentagon have known for years about possible coronavirus outbreaks that could spread widely in the US and elsewhere.

COVID-19 shares common symptoms with seasonal flu/influenza that infects millions of Americans annually, hospitalizes hundreds of thousands, and results in tens of thousands of deaths — with no fear-mongering/screaming headlines.

Both are communicable diseases, COVID-19 more contagious by a factor of about 2.5 to 3.5, why precautions for personal safety are warranted.

Older individuals, anyone with a weakened immune system, and others with significant health issues are most vulnerable to serious illness from COVID-19.

According to Healthline.com, from 25 – 50% of COVID-19 infected individuals may be asymptomatic.

Iceland researchers reported that around half of individuals who tested positive for the virus had no symptoms.

That’s good news for them, worrisome for their ability to unwittingly spread disease to others.

The same goes for epidemic-level seasonal flu and numerous other infectious diseases that do not reach epidemic levels in developed and most other countries.

Because COVID-19 is much more contagious than influenza it’s wise to take protective measures if in a high-risk group.

The economic, political, and geopolitical fallout from what’s going on is far more serious than contagion that will pass.

Evidence one day may show that that US dark forces were and remain responsible for unleashing COVID-19 and its accompanying fear-mongering to further its objectives — domestic and geopolitical.

The former is all about the largest ever wealth transfer from ordinary Americans to privileged ones, along with greater erosion of human and civil rights for enhanced population control.

The latter appears primarily to target China, a nation heading toward surpassing the US as the world’s leading economy in the years ahead.

Washington’s likely main objective is trying to derail its growing economic, financial, industrial, technological, and geopolitical development.

It’s also a likely attempt to reverse US decline while other nations are rising, notably China.

It’s US public enemy No. one because of its growing geopolitical influence — establishment media allied with US dark forces in vilifying the country.

Last week, the NYT falsely accused China of growing “nationalism and xenophobia,” claiming “foreigners are being shunned, barred from public spaces and even evicted (sic).”

China leads the world in combatting COVID-19. It’s all-out efforts reduced outbreaks to a trickle.

Like other countries, it’s playing it safe until the virus is fully contained and no longer a threat to anyone, a short-term policy to ensure public health.

In its latest edition, the Times arrogantly said “(t)he US tried to teach China a lesson about (the) media, but it backfired.”

The above refers to Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal correspondents expelled from the country, including from Hong Kong and Macau.

China’s Foreign Ministry explained the action as follows:

Its authorities responded to Washington’s “unwarranted restrictions on Chinese media agencies and personnel in the US…subject(ing) them to growing discrimination and politically-motivated oppression.”

In February, the Trump regime “designated five Chinese media entities in the US as ‘foreign missions’ and imposed a cap on the number of their employees, in effect expelling Chinese journalists from the US.”

Beijing imposed “reciprocal measures” on US correspondents  because of “unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the US” — what the Times and other establishment media failed to explain, including the following Chinese Foreign Ministry remark:

“What we reject is ideological bias against China, fake news made in the name of press freedom, and breaches of ethics in journalism.”

“Should the US choose to go further down the wrong path, it could expect more countermeasures from China.”

US fake news about China and other sovereign independent countries on its target list for regime change is longstanding.

A WaPo editorial last week falsely accused China of spreading COVID-19 globally, along with “cover(ing) up the truth as the virus spread (sic).”

A WSJ report was similar, quoting Senator Rick Scott, calling for a congressional investigation into the alleged WHO’s “role in helping Communist China cover up information regarding the threat of the coronavirus.”

Over the weekend, Trump warned of “consequences” if China was “knowingly responsible” for spreading COVID-19, adding:

“It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it (sic).”

His weekend and earlier remarks were all about falsely shifting blame to China for his own failings and malfeasance.

If evidence proves the novel coronavirus to be a US bioweapon unleashed at home and abroad, it’ll be covered up to wrongfully shift blame to China.

It’s part of US war on the country by other means, what’s likely to intensify ahead.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

And so, It’s Biden

April 20th, 2020 by William Stroock

Last week the socialist pest from Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders, formally endorsed former vice president Biden in an awkward livestream in which the two septuagenarians told one another how wonderful they are and how awful Trump is. As of this writing, masses of Sanders’ supporters, the Bernie Bros, refuse to accept the endorsement and vow to fight on against the Democrat Party Establishment. Polls indicate that a significant number of Bernie Bros, perhaps as many as 10 percent, would vote for Trump before Biden.

There followed the coup-de-tat. Showing great political courage, Barack Obama waited till Biden had won the primaries to endorse his vice president. Three years after leaving office, Obama still looks old and tired. He watches powerlessly as Trump wipes away his legacy. Trump withdrew the United States from Obama’s ‘Iran Deal’. With the noxious individual mandate repealed by congress, Obamacare is dying a slow death. The man who offered ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ is a spent force now, too close to the center for the hard-left, while even his most ardent supporters wonder to what his eight years in office amounted.

After 18 months of campaigning, former vice president Joe Biden is the undisputed victor of the 2020 Democrat Party primary. The Democrat Presidential Primary began with such high hopes and had a slew of interesting and intersectional candidates. None of the young rising stars proved to be up to the task of defeating a 77-year-old white man who has been in politics for 50 years.

Former Congressman Robert Francis O’Rourke was young and charismatic, Kennedyesque, the nostalgists in the Dem media exclaimed. But with O’Rourke it seemed that there was no there-there.  In 2018, he failed to unseat the unpopular Senator Ted Cruz. On the campaign trail he spoke in platitudes only, his arms flailing about wildly as he did so. O’Rourke came off like a Generation-X cliché, a man in arrested development, stuck permanently in the mid-1990s.

New Jersey Senator Corey Booker (for whom we voted) looked like a strong candidate on paper. He was a college football player at Stanford and Rhodes Scholar. Booker was mayor of the state’s largest city, Newark, before being elected to the senate. But in committee hearings, Booker had this weird way of yelling at Trump officials so that his eyes seemed nearly to pop out of his head. Booker is the son of an IBM executive, and didn’t really have strong appeal among African American voters, while affluent white liberals preferred candidates more like them.

California Senator Kamala Harris is both female and black, twice a minority, one could say, giving her impressive intersectional credentials. Harris portrayed herself as a progressive but tough on crime prosecutor and attorney general. After eviscerating Joe Biden over his 1970s era opposition to Forced Busing, Harris was briefly the frontrunner. At the next debate, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard took Harris’ strength and turned it against her, ‘She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,’ Gabbard said. Harris never recovered.

Which opened a path to the nomination for Elizabeth Warren. The septuagenarian and senator from Massachusetts had all the right progressive stances and stole Sanders’ issues in a bid to win over the Bernie Bros. For decades, Warren lied about her Cherokee heritage (she has none) to advance her career. On the stump she has the bearing and voice of a middle school librarian, making her almost as unlikable as Hilary Clinton, no easy feat.

There were at least a dozen also-rans none of whom had any hope of winning the nomination, all but a few of them utterly forgettable and forgotten. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appealed to nobody. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of Indiana’s fourth largest city, tried to be the white, gay Obama. Late in the race came former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He campaigned for three months, spent a billion dollars and then dropped out just in time to disappear for the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis. Warren is at least coherent.

Not so, Sleepy Joe, as the president calls him. On the campaign trail, Biden will tell you what bills he voted for, pieces of legislation he co- and the senators with whom he wrote them. The man’s work goes all the way back to the Nixon Administration.  On his podcasts and livestreams from his home study in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden will sure as heck tell you what needs to be done during the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic and how he’s going to do it.  Last week he harkened back to the Roosevelt Administration, of which he has vague memories, “You know, there’s a, uh — during World War II, you know, Roosevelt came up with a thing that uh, you know was totally different than a, than the, you know he called it you know the, World War II, he had the war… the war production board,” he told us. And so, after eighteen months of campaigning and a couple dozen candidates, the Democrat Party has chosen Joe Biden.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

William Stroock is an author of military fiction.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

US President Donald Trump tried to prove his effective leadership in the COVID-19 fight during the White House briefing on Saturday. He said that the US mortality rate was 11.24 per 100,000 people, lower than that of Spain, France and Italy. China’s mortality rate is only 0.33 per 100,000 people and Trump blasted it as “impossible,” saying “does anybody really believe this number?”

The COVID-19 has claimed 4,632 lives in the Chinese mainland so far. For the Chinese people, the number is already very large. Some 3,869 people died of the virus in Wuhan, which is difficult for people to accept. Chinese public opinion has been questioning why so many people died. We think our country could have saved more lives and we sincerely believe that there is room for improvement.

The US is the most powerful country and has the most abundant medical resources and the most advanced technology. It could also refer to China’s experience. But now, its daily deaths are around 2,000 and could peak at 4,000. This is completely beyond the Chinese imagination of the US. There is no reason for such mass deaths. The COVID-19 spread in the US is almost like that of a primitive society. It should not have been like this if the US had the slightest science and organization.

The US president and ruling elite should have reflected on the current situation, but the federal government regards passing the buck to others as top priority. It quarrels with governors and the Democratic Party internally, and shirks responsibility to China and the WHO externally. Now it is claiming the US mortality rate is not as high as Europe and China’s figure is “impossible.” This is politically unethical.

China never intended to compare itself with the US. China has been doing its utmost to protect people’s lives while the US has been weighing between people’s lives and the economy. Moreover, those in power are calculating which side helps them win the upcoming election.

The US has never seen containing the epidemic and reducing the death toll as an overarching purpose. The federal and state governments have been engaging in endless disputes, and leading officials at both levels are focusing on their public appearances. US officials are in fact competing on how to act more like a “wartime leader” and how to shift blame onto others.

To put it bluntly, the US is no match for China in terms of anti-epidemic organization and mobilization. The US political system has been hit by the pandemic on its weak side and we were willing to show understanding for that. After all, every system has its weaknesses.

However, the Trump administration has repeatedly found fault with China, blatantly accused China of fabricating epidemic achievements, eagerly passed the buck to China and unscrupulously attempted to win reelection by stepping on China. In that case it is not our fault to reveal the miserable failure of the US.

Nearly 40,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the US, way beyond other countries in the world. And it is hard to tell how large it will become. Even if US laws are not ready to hold those in power accountable, history will eventually put them on trial.

The Chinese government has done its utmost to fight the epidemic and has controlled it, preventing the deaths from rising out of control like that in the US. China’s achievements stand the test of time and all kinds of doubts. The Trump administration only wants to shirk responsibility by blackening China. This will be proven a lame trick. This will only reflect the incompetence and ethical failings of the related US politicians.

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It was like scenes from an Armageddon-like movie made in Hollywood instead of a real-world Tehran hospital, Hesam Khezri said, describing the state of Masih Daneshvari during the first days of the coronavirus outbreak in Iran.

“Looking down from the rooftop of the hospital…you could see dozens of ambulances rushing with their sirens blaring. People in sanitary clothes were going hurriedly from side to side transferring patients on stretchers,” Khezri told Middle East Eye.

Khezri is a doctor’s assistant working in the hospital’s surgery department but was transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) as the demand for more personnel to deal with the crisis grew.

He was diagnosed with Covid-19 on 1 April.

“Suddenly, we were spearheading the fight against Corona,” Khezri said of Masih Daneshvari, a big hospital built in a mountainous area north of the capital.

“We were all taken by surprise. By no means, could the hospital staff have predicted that within 48 hours more than 20 different wards, including three for emergencies, would be filled with patients suspected of having coronavirus,” Khezri said.

The Iranian health ministry publicly announced the first two cases of Covid-19 in the country on 19 February.

A few days later, Iran became one of the global epicentres of the virus. At the time of publishing this article, there are more than 76,000 confirmed cases and more than 5,000 deaths in Iran.

Since the onset of the outbreak, Masih Daneshvari quickly became the primary destination for infected patients, with Iranian health officials also sending suspected cases there.

Khezri said the situation was made complicated by the state of panic felt by the hospital staff who had little experience in dealing with a new virus that is yet to have a cure.

“Within 24 hours, between 650 and 700 people were taken to our hospital, a trend that gained serious momentum over the next few days”, he added.

The rapid increase in the number of cases and the death toll saw other hospitals and medical centres in Tehran join the efforts to contain the spread of the virus.

Iranian Health Minister Saeed Nemaki recently said that despite the state of the first days of the outbreak, Iranian medical staff are already much more experienced now than they were at the outset.

The first wave of infections had caused fear and pushed people, either suffering from coronavirus symptoms or wishing to be tested, to rush to the hospital.

“A large number of people could have contracted the virus in the hospital during the early days,” Khezri said.

But, he added, the situation eventually improved at Masihi Daneshvari with fewer people seeking hospital treatment and medical staff having gained some experience in how to manage the inflow of patients.

Today, people presenting with acute difficulty in breathing and dry coughs are sent to the relevant departments for blood tests and CT scans for their lungs.

Meanwhile, patients with no pulmonary problem are sent into quarantine either at home or in an isolated ward in the hospital.

The frontline

“I will never in my life forget these days I am going through. [We see] patients who are in good condition in the morning but then show severe symptoms at night and die before the next morning,” Fatemeh, a nurse in Masih Daneshvari, said using only her first name.

Fatemeh said fear was prevalent at the beginning of the crisis, especially when some of the staff contracted the virus themselves.

“But now, as the cases increase, what matters most to us is saving people’s lives.”

In Iran, as is the case in many countries, there was a shortage of medical staff on the frontline of the outbreak.

Nurses and doctors have had to spend numerous long days and nights at the hospital, with many retired doctors and nurses returning to assist the exhausted personnel.

Being most at risk for exposure, health professionals are being applauded all around the world for their relentless efforts and dedication in battling the virus.

According to Iran’s health ministry, 43 medical workers including doctors have died so far after contracting the disease.

Nurses and doctors in the special unit for Covid-19 patients in Masih Daneshvari Hospital pose for a photo (MEE/Mohammadreza Abbassi)

Nurses and doctors in the special unit for Covid-19 patients in Masih Daneshvari Hospital pose for a photo (MEE/Mohammadreza Abbassi)

Fatemeh said Masih Daneshvari Hospital has suffered from a severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) – such as face masks, gloves, and sanitary clothing – at the start of the outbreak, and although the problem is being gradually solved, the damage was already done.

“We received a big shock at first,” she said.

“The huge number of cases and our poor experience in dealing with the disease has led us to witness some of our colleagues getting infected and has increased our anxiety in dealing with coronavirus patients.”

Medical staff either work 19-hour shifts and are off for 48 hours afterwards or works 7am-2pm shifts every day.

A few days after the outbreak, some retired physicians and nurses voluntarily joined the staff, reducing the initial pressure.

Dealing with grief

Hospital staff sometimes have to wear PPE for 19 hours at a time, which Fatemeh says can feel like a nightmare, but this is not their only problem.

“We work for many hours and days and have to isolate ourselves because of our exposure to the virus. Many of us have not seen our families for fear of transmitting the virus to them,” she said.

Many of the medical workers were not able to spend the eve of the Iranian new year, Nowruz, with their families because they had to stay at the hospital.

“Seeing the death of patients has caused us a lot of grief and sorrow. We have to sometimes sing together and play instruments to get over the sad situation,” Fatemeh said, praying that the crisis will be over soon.

Besides the medical staff, many other workers are part of the tragic scenes, including the personnel in charge of carrying the corpses to the morgue, those in charge of maintaining the quarantined areas of the hospital, and the catering staff taking care of the patients’ meals.

They too have to wear PPE as they carry out physically demanding tasks while also being exposed to Covid-19 patients.

In the coronavirus unit at Masih Daneshvari, a member of the cleaning crew has taken the initiative, in addition to his daily duties, to talk to patients, to listen and entertain them, and to improve the morale of his colleagues.

US sanctions

The coronavirus crisis in Iran has been compounded by the harsh sanctions imposed by the United States, which has essentially cut Iran off from the international banking system.

While Washington has repeatedly insisted that medicines and humanitarian goods are excluded from the sanctions, restrictions on trade have made many international banks and companies reluctant to do business with Iran.

Iranian officials have rejected recent US claims that Tehran can still import medicine and food, saying that no company is willing to sell medicine to Iran out of fear of punitive measures by Washington.

Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Iran, coronavirus

Medical staff work 19-hour shifts and are off for 48 hours or works 7am-2pm shifts every day (MEE/Mohammadreza Abbasi)

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if the sanctions against Iran remain in place.

A large number of civil and humanitarian groups across the world, as well as officials and even some US congressmen, have also called for the temporary lifting of sanctions on Iran during its battle against coronavirus.

One doctor at Masih Daneshvari said there is, in fact, no shortage of medical equipment at the hospital, with enough ventilators and beds in the intensive care unit.

But, the problem, he said, is the shortage of medicine caused by the sanctions.

“A pack of Tamiflu [an antiviral medication] is sold at over $100 on the black market in Iran. Had it not been for the sanctions, this medicine would cost less than $5,” the doctor told Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity.

“Another anti-coronavirus drug, Actemra [tocilizumab] is now traded at $3,000 on Iran’s unofficial market, while the same medicine would not be worth more than $100 had the situation been normal. That is the case with other imported medicines.”

Masih Daneshvari Hospital is a specialised centre for lung diseases and one of the best medical establishments in the Middle East. It is also presided over by prominent Iranian politician Ali Akbar Velayati.

Warnings

But the case is different for other hospitals in Iran.

According to various reports, many hospitals in the country lack appropriate medical equipment.

Other reports say that medical staff in many hospitals, particularly in small towns, face shortages of basic necessities such as face masks, sanitary clothes and goggles.

The overall situation of the coronavirus outbreak in Iran is improving according to the president and some health officials, although the daily number of reported cases in the country has not yet dropped.

Nevertheless, the number of suspected cases or infected people admitted to Masih Daneshvari Hospital has significantly decreased compared to the early days of the outbreak.

According to the doctor who wished to remain unnamed, the number of cases has dropped from 600-700 per day to 150.

He believes that Iran has already reached the peak of the disease and it will be on a downward trend.

The doctor cautioned, however, that if social distancing measures and restrictions on people’s activities are rolled back too soon, the country will suffer a more severe outbreak and a second peak.

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Featured image: The goggles of a member of the emergency medical staff cloud up after several consecutive hours of use (MEE/Mohammadreza Abbasi)

The U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) has furloughed about half of its 8,500 local hires, not for fear of the COVID 19 pandemic, but in a ploy to extract more subsidies from the South Korean government, using workers as pawns.

As of April 1, about 4,000 Korean employees were put on unpaid leave until further notice after the U.S. and South Korean governments failed to renew a cost-sharing deal that expired December 31.

“This is an unfortunate day for us,” USFK commander, Gen. Robert B. Abramssaid on April 1, commenting on the unprecedented massive furlough. “It’s heartbreaking.”

In a sarcastic tweet he sent some hours later, however, the four-star army general betrayed his sympathetically toned remarks.

“I learned today that,” Gen. Abrams said, “’Don’t count your chickens before they hatch’ = ‘Don’t eat your kimchi stew before the time is right.’”

He dashed any hope for a quick end to the furlough, dismissing local press reports that the two governments were a few days away from reaching a new deal.

Five-fold increase

The initial stages of negotiations for the renewal of a cost-sharing deal, known as the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), were bound to fail, as the Trump administration demanded of the South Korean government about $5 billion a year, more than a five-fold increase from about $853 million of the previous agreement. The Trump administration rejected a 13% increase offered by the South Korean government.

However, the mass furloughs could have been avoided had the United States not rejected an offer by South Korea to cover local hires’ wages during the runup to a new deal.

As of press time, half the usual level of South Korean staff clean and maintain at least 17 U.S. military bases for 25,800 troops stationed in the country.

U.S. belligerence

On the campaign trail, Trump routinely attacked South Korea, one of Asia’s new economic powerhouses, for shrewdly passing military costs on to the United States. In January 2016, he slammed South Korea, saying, “South Korea is a money machine. They pay us peanuts.” He went on to declare, “South Korea should pay us and pay us very substantially for protecting them”

However, South Koreans have been paying for the U.S. military presence on their own soil since 1953, when U.S. bases and camps began to dot their war-torn country to house more than 100,000 troops, after the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, a civil war that grew into a war by proxy between the Cold War superpowers.

While public data are still scant, there were three big bumps in South Korean contributions during the Cold War, between the 1950s and the early 1990s, when the country emerged as the U.S. government’s bulwark against communist bloc. In 1966, the United States and South Korean entered into the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), under which South Korea would pay for the land and facility use by the USFK.

In 1979 when the Carter administration stepped up pressure on South Korea, still a poor country with a per-capita GNI of $1,670, to increase military spending and financial support for the USFK, U.S. ambassador William Gleysteen and USFK commander John Wickham jointly warned Washington of “one of the most serious misperceptions” about U.S. policy toward Korea: “The U.S. finances a significant portion of Korean defense.” They argued that South Korea’s support largely exceeded that of more prominent allies with a U.S. military presence. Gleysteen and Wickham recommended gradual pressure. Any immediate, substantial rise in host-country support, they warned, would result in the postponement of South Korea’s infrastructure expenditures or even the downgrading of its credit ratings.

In 1991, the two countries signed the SMA, replacing much of the SOFA and further strengthening South Korea’s financial contributions to the USFK. In the three decades since 1991, South Korea’s payouts rose by 10 times, despite the post-Cold War reality that the USFK, once committed almost exclusively to the Korean peninsula, were increasingly becoming something of a rapid response force for the entire region.

Major foothold

The 28,500-strong USFK represents the U.S. military’s third-largest overseas presence. Nothing showcases South Korea’s financial burden better than Camp Humphreys, about 40 miles southwest of Seoul, and the largest U.S. military base outside the United States. The base, which can accommodate up to 45,000 personnel from all military branches, was completed in 2017, with the rise of China as military superpower in mind. Camp Humphreys, about 250 miles away from China’s eastern seaboard, is the most forefront of about 400 U.S. military bases encircling China. While neither government discloses dollar figures, several press reports said South Korea paid more than $9 billion out of a total of $10.8 billion for the construction.

Direct hit

The 4,000 USFK Korean employees were held financially hostage as the country grappled with the economic and social fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Categorized as freelancers under contract with a foreign entity, these workers are not entitled to furlough benefits. Their employment status and conditions are governed under a vagely SOFA that does not delineate labor rights or employment status.

USFK local hires are in a legal limbo that falls between U.S. and Korean jurisdiction. The workers are left with little legal recourse in the face of layoffs or wage freezes. Between 2017 and 2019, the USFK shed 400 to 500 Korean hires despite continued rises in South Korean subsidies. During the Great Recession in 2018, the command refused to approve a mediation deal by South Korea’s labor relations commission over a three-year wage freeze. All of these issues should now be settled under SOFA structure. Under the SOFA, both parties must agree to even discuss an issue, and to date, the U.S. has refused to initiate discussion about these labor concerns. The SOFA bans workers from taking collective action such as stoppages over a pending settlement.

“Amid the COVID 19 pandemic, it is even difficult find interim part-time jobs,” said the USFK Korean Employees Union in a statement. “Our livelihood will be hit directly.”

Unionists mount daily pickets at Camp Humphreys while the government considers a one-time loan program for the workers. As one community activist told the press, “This amounts to daylight robbery.”

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Kap Seol is a writer based in New York.

Featured image is from Flickr

The Massive Covid-19 Hoax

April 20th, 2020 by Tony Cartalucci

By all accounts and from the very beginning it was clear that Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) was at the very most a bad cold – little more dangerous than the annual flu – but being deliberately hyped to stampede the public into a tangled web of bad policies.

As early as last month cooler-headed experts warned that hyped death rates spread by politicians, the Western corporate media, other various panic-mongers, and even World Health Organization (WHO) officials would give way to much, much lower death rates as more people were tested, found to have had the virus, and showed little to no symptoms.

The numbers of infections versus deaths in Iceland where testing has been the most widespread shows a death rate of about 0.5%, though only 5% of the population has been tested. 50% of those tested showed no symptoms at all meaning that many, many more Icelanders likely had the virus, overcame it with ease, and never visited a doctor or hospital to avail themselves for testing or to make into national Covid-19 statistics.

Another study conducted in the United States by Stanford University found the infection rate was likely 50-85 times higher than reported – meaning the death rate was astronomically lower than reported at around 0.2% to as low as 0.12% – not the 3-4% claimed by the World Health Organization.

In other words – Covid-19 is no more dangerous or deadly than the annual flu. But it has been hyped as such by Western politicians, the Western corporate media, and even international institutions like WHO – a deliberate deception accompanied by coordinated theater including government briefings with reporters comically spaced out in “fear” of contracting Covid-19.

Other props used to panic the public into imprisoning themselves at home and accepting the immense socioeconomic damage “lockdowns” are causing included showing the expotential graphs of infections seemingly rising straight up with no end in sight.

If responsible journalists put these graphs in context – say, perhaps next to annual flu infection curves – the public would notice they are identical and simply represent the way the flu, colds, and Covid-19 which is related to both – work their way through populations.

The same goes for total deaths. Should the media present Covid-19 deaths in the context of and in comparison to annual deaths from the flu, Americans – for example – would see that versus the 2019 flu season, Covid-19 is actually 30,000-40,000 deaths short of just matching the common flu – saying nothing of living up to the hype and hysteria the government and media have deliberately created around Covid-19 to justify lockdowns.

So why have governments around the globe crippled their economies, put millions out of work, and placed draconian measures in place to, in essence, imprison their populations at home?

Those with power and money seek to keep what they have and to take what little is left in the hands of others. During the manufactured “War on Terror,” similar hysteria was deliberately spread across society to justify draconian police powers at home and endless wars abroad – pouring ultimately trillions into the accounts of defense contractors and the financial institutions invested in them.

During a manufactured health crisis like the 2009 H1N1 “Swine Flu” outbreak, the unfounded fear of an uncontrollable pathogen ravaging the population helped justify the centralizing of control over people’s health and lifestyle while pumping billions in pubic funding into the coffers of big-pharma.

And here we are again with the very same interests who lied to us about all of the above, doing it again and on a much larger and more destructive scale – creating socioeconomic havoc virtually no one will escape completely.

If the Covid-19 hoax doesn’t convince you to divest from the politicians and the corporations they serve – including divesting from big-business’ goods and services – nothing will. Special interests just beta-tested turning entire nations into virtual prisons. If people allow it this time, their ability to do it again and to an even greater and more disruptive degree is all but guaranteed.

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Tony Cartalucci writes on his blog site, Land Destroyer Report, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from LDR unless otherwise stated

Lies Won’t Stop COVID-19

April 20th, 2020 by Eric Margolis

Washington-based military think tanks constantly warn of possible attacks by the wicked North Koreans who have a large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver to North America.

So do Britain, France, Russia, India, Pakistan, China, India and Israel. The US still has a very large, lethal arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. I recently wrote of how the Reagan administration supplied Iraq with feeder stocks to make anthrax, Q Fever and other biowarfare materials for use against Iranians.

And yet we have just seen from the COVID-19 scare how woefully unprepared we were for a chemical/biological attack despite being world leader in germ and chemical warfare.

As the bodies of COVID-19 victims pile up from New York to New Zealand, politicians are waging a furious blame game over the pandemic.

At first, President Donald Trump dismissed COVID-19 as a simple cold or flu and, in the best dictatorial tradition, scared into silence scientists and politicians who disagreed with him for over a month.

China’s General Secretary Xi Jinping, or high-level Communist Party officials, may have suppressed information about the Wuhan virus for six days before news of the killer virus was revealed and a common Party response agreed upon.

Covering up bad news is standard procedure in Communist and autocratic regimes. That’s a major reason why the slow motion collapse of the Soviet Union’s economy went unknown to the Kremlin until too late.

In Trumpistan, none of the sycophants and yes-men around the president, except for the admirable Dr. Fauci, dared contradict the Great White Father cum Physician cum Mussolini in the White House. Anyone who does quickly gets a ‘you’re fired.’

Many of Trump’s evangelical supporters in the Bible Belt view him as a semi-religious figure, a sort of holy man who can, in the best Old Testament Biblical tradition, stop or even cure plague and pestilence. That’s what Trump’s claim to be able to miraculously end the Coronavirus plague by Easter was all about.

Next, fearing American voters would blame him for ineptitude and quackery for downplaying the crisis, Trump sought to lay blame on China and the World Health Organization for the pandemic. Flat-earth Midwestern Republicans believe the UN and anything that sounds international is satanic. This includes the bumbling, overly bureaucratic WHO which has indeed been too easy on China as the right-wing Republicans claim.

But this is the same UN-directed outfit that played a key role in repressing or even eradicating malaria, smallpox, Ebola, river blindness, bilharzia and other dreadful plagues of Africa and Asia. WHO has also had some success in fighting dengue and tsetse flies.

After studying the timeline of recent events in Wuhan, it appears to me that there was some confusion among Chinese medical authorities because of the unknown nature of the new virus. It took them close to a week to evaluate the virus which was at first believed to be a virulent influenza.

Their confusion was minor compared to the muddled reaction of US political and medical authorities and Trump-supporting evangelical groups who each had their own beliefs (usually mistaken) about the new virus. Trump was very successful at laying blame on China – just as the lethal 1918 flu epidemic that began in US Army camps and killed millions of people was successfully marketed to the public as the ‘Spanish flu.’

In an effort to come up with a snake-oil cure, Trump told Americans to take the anti-malaria drugs Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine. French doctors warned these drugs could provoke serious, even lethal heart problems.

They were quite right. I took Chloroquine while in the jungle in southern Africa while covering the fighting between South African (SADF) forces and East-Bloc backed African Congress forces. I developed a mild but still very scary psychological problem and was sick as hell. Who wants to be psycho and paranoid in the deepest jungle?

One remarkable factor in this 21st century plague is how successful China appears to be so far in bottling up the COVID plague. It may be the Chinese are fudging the facts as Republicans, who never lie, claim.

However, I think the key to China’s success has been the ubiquity of special Communist Party committees who ruthlessly and successfully managed the epidemic. Every Chinese factory, apartment building, school and organization has its very own Party official whose job is to spy and report on every person in their group.

Each member is graded and guided. ‘Good’ Communists received better apartments, school slots, factory jobs and retirement care based on their grade book. The all-seeing party knows all, sees all, and can control just about everyone.

That’s how China has so far bested this plague – though of course Trump will try to take the credit.

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Apple and Google last week announced a joint contact tracing effort that would use Bluetooth technology to help alert people who have been in close proximity to someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Similar proposals have been put forward by an MIT-associated effort called PACT as well as by multiple European groups.

These proposals differ from the traditional public health technique of “contact tracing” to try to stop the spread of a disease. In place of human interviewers, they would use location or proximity data generated by mobile phones to contact people who may have been exposed.

While some of these systems could offer public health benefits, they may also cause significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. If such systems are to work, there must be widespread, free, and quick testing available. The systems must also be widely adopted, but that will not happen if people do not trust them. For there to be trust, the tool must protect privacy, be voluntary, and store data on an individual’s device rather than in a centralized repository.

A well-designed tool would give people actionable medical information while also protecting privacy and giving users control, but a poorly designed one could pose unnecessary and significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. To help distinguish between the two, the ACLU is publishing a set of technology principlesagainst which developers, the public, and policymakers can judge any contact tracing apps and protocols.

Technology principles that embed privacy by design are one important type of protection. There still need to be strict policies to mitigate against overreach and abuse. These policies, at a minimum, should include:

  • Voluntariness — Whenever possible, a person testing positive must consent to any data sharing by the app. The decision to use a tracking app should be voluntary and uncoerced. Installation, use, or reporting must not be a precondition for returning to work or school, for example.
  • Use Limitations — The data should not be used for purposes other than public health — not for advertising and especially not for any punitive or law enforcement purposes.
  • Minimization — Policies must be in place to ensure that only necessary information is collected and to prohibit any data sharing with anyone outside of the public health effort.
  • Data Destruction — Both the technology and related policies and procedures should ensure deletion of data when there is no longer a need to hold it.
  • Transparency — If the government obtains any data, it must be fully transparent about what data it is acquiring, from where, and how it is using that data.
  • No Mission Creep – Policies must be in place to ensure tracking does not outlive the effort against COVID-19.

These policies, at a minimum, must be in place to ensure that any tracking app will be effective and will accord with civil liberties and human rights.

The Apple/Google proposal, for instance, offers a strong start when measured against these technology principles. Rather than track sensitive location histories, the Apple/Google protocol aims to use Bluetooth technology to record one phone’s proximity to another. Then, if a person tests positive, those logs can be used to notify people who were within Bluetooth range and refer them for testing, recommend self-isolation, or encourage treatment if any exists. Like the similar proposals, it relies on Bluetooth because the location data our cell phones generate is not accurate enoughfor contact tracing.

Like location histories, however, proximity records can be highly revealing because they expose who we spend time with. To their credit, the Apple/Google developers have considered that privacy problem. Rather than identify the people who own the phones, apps based on the protocol would use identifiers that cannot easily be traced back to phone owners.

As of this writing, the Apple/Google protocol could better address certain important privacy-related questions, however. For example, how does the tool define an epidemiologically relevant “contact”? The public needs to know if it is a good technological approximation of what public health professionals believe is a concern. Otherwise, the tool could be collecting far more personal information than is warranted by the crisis or could cause too many false alarms. And if there is indeed a plan to terminate the program at the conclusion of the pandemic, what criteria are the companies using to indicate when to press the built-in self-destruct button?

Another issue is whether phone users control when to submit their proximity logs for publication to the exposure database. These decisions should be made by the phone user. There may be good reasons why people do not want to upload all their data. User control can help to reduce false positives, for example if a user knows that identified contacts during that time were inaccurate (because they were in a car or wearing protective gear). It would also encourage people whose records include particularly sensitive contact information to at least volunteer the non-sensitive part of their records rather than fail to participate completely.

Also, when users share their proximity logs, what will they reveal? Right now, under the Apple/Google proposal, an infected user publicly shares a set of keys. Each key provides 24 hours of linkable data — a length of time that threatens the promised anonymity of the system. It is too easy to re-identify someone from 24 hours of data and the current proposal makes it impossible for the user to redact selected times during the day. There are other options that would ensure that identifiers published in the exposure database are as difficult as possible to connect to a person’s name or identity.

Voluntariness is particularly important. A critical mass of people will need to use a contact tracing app for it to be an effective public health mechanism, but some proposals to obtain that level of adoption have been coercive and scary. This is the wrong approach. When people feel that their phones are antagonistic rather than helpful, they will just turn location functions off or turn their phones off entirely. Others could simply leave their phone at home or acquire and register a second, dummy phone that is not their primary device with which they leave home. Good public health measures will leverage people’s own incentives to report disease, respond to warnings, and help stop the virus’s spread.

In the coming weeks and months, we are going to see a push to reopen the economy — an effort that will rely heavily on public health measures that include contact tracing. Bluetooth proximity tracking may be tried as a part of such efforts, though we don’t know how practical it will prove in real-world deployments. But privacy-by-design principles and the policy safeguards outlined here must be core to that effort if we are to benefit from a proximity tracking tool that can give people actionable medical information while also protecting privacy and giving users control.

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Jennifer Stisa GranickSurveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel

A new Gallup poll showed Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis and indifference toward infected Americans is catching up to him.

Concerned only about his own self-interest and monied ones he serves at the expense of the health and welfare of ordinary people everywhere, a newly released Gallup poll showed dissatisfaction with him growing.

His weeks earlier approval rating of 49%, the highest of his presidency, slumped to 43%.

Congress is worse at 30%, its lowest approval rating in over a decade.

Respondents’ satisfaction with the direction of the country fell 12 points from weeks earlier.

Poll results, based on interviews conducted from April 1 – 14, showed the sharpest drop in Trump’s approval rating in opinion surveys conducted by Gallup.

In over three years in office, he failed to ever reach the historic average 53% approval rating of US presidents since 1945.

His low since taking office was 40%. His approval among registered Dems fell six points to 7%.

He’s down four points among independents to 39%. Approval among registered Republicans in 93%.

According to Real Clear Politics, 11 national polls show Trump’s disapproval among respondents exceeding his approval by an average of five points.

A CNN/SSRS poll has his approval at 44%, his disapproval at 51%.

A FiveThirtyEight poll published Friday showed Trump’s approval at 44%, his disapproval at 52%.

Some others out in mid-April were as follows:

Morning Consult: 42% approve v. 54% disapprove of Trump’s performance.

YouGov: 42% approve v. 53% disapprove.

Rasmussen/Pulse Opinion Research: 46% approve v. 53% disapprove

Global Strategy Group/GBAO: 44% approve v. 54% disapprove.

Change Research: 44% approve v. 56% disapprove.

A new Pew Research poll showed that 65% of respondents believe Trump reacted too slowly to COVID-19 outbreaks.

Almost three-fourths of respondents believe the worst is still to come. Two-thirds fear state authorities will lift restrictions too soon.

Over half of respondents said Trump’s portrayal of current economic and contagion conditions is better than reality.

The nays on Trump have it. His bump was short-lived. The longer economic hard times and COVID-19 outbreaks continue, the worse his reelection prospect.

A USA/Ipsos poll released Monday showed “rising (public) uncertainty about when routine daily activities will seem safe again.”

Numbers of respondents expressing concern that COVID-19 threatens them personally doubled in recent weeks from 15- 29%.

Nearly all respondents said their lives were changed at least to some extent because of current conditions.

A late March Kaiser Family Foundation poll found nearly half of respondents saying what’s going on affected their mental health, 19% indicating it’s having a “major impact.”

The longer current conditions continue, or if they ease and then worsen, the more dismal survey numbers may look ahead.

A mid-April Gallup poll showed “Americans remain risk averse about getting back to normal.”

Around 80% of respondents said they’ll wait before resuming normal activities.

Rural and other less populated areas may ease restrictions sooner than large urban ones.

The longer shutdown continues, the more restless and eager increasing numbers of people may be to return to work for vital income to support themselves and families.

In the last four weeks, around 22 million US applications for unemployment benefits were processed.

A backlog likely includes millions more, authorities unable to keep pace with unprecedented demand.

State and city budgets are hard-pressed, large shortfalls expected, assuring cuts in essential services without federal help that’s very stingy for ordinary people.

The extent of US unemployment since March is unprecedented with likely more to come.

Because most US workers live from paycheck to paycheck, millions of Americans may be unable to pay rent, service mortgages, pay medical expenses with loss of insurance, and cover other essentials.

Homelessness may increase dramatically. Already hard-pressed food banks are overwhelmed by public need, hunger in America growing exponentially.

Feeding America needs greater amounts of charitable contributions to meet growing demand for their help.

What’s happening worldwide in most countries is what a perfect storm is all about that won’t likely end any time soon.

Hindsight will best explain the human toll from what’s ongoing that’s already unprecedented for growing millions of families in need.

Breadwinners are out of work. Stores, restaurants, factories, theaters, recreational facilities, sports arenas, hotels, and transportation facilities are closed.

Fear of coronavirus contagion has ordinary people looking at others like they’re typhoid Mary, even friends, keeping a good distance away.

A next door neighbor friend I’ve known for years in my building asked if it was OK to ride in the same elevator together.

People fear the unknown, especially because of round-the clock establishment media reports on one topic — COVID-19 contagion.

Even doctors aren’t operating normally, some only seeing emergency patients, others practicing telemedicine, many working shorter schedules.

One of my doctors told me his patient load is 20% of normal. Two others suspended face-to-face visits.

COVID-19 will pass — though maybe not for some time with possible new waves ahead.

The economic and social fallout is far more serious. It’ll likely be long-lasting for ordinary Americans and their counterparts abroad, especially for the world’s most disadvantaged people.

Michel Chossudovsky explained what establishment media ignore, saying the following:

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

It’s also a way for greater social control by eroding fundamental rights on the phony pretext of greater public safety and security — along with pulling off the greatest heist of wealth from ordinary people to super-rich ones in world history.

When current economic and contagion conditions ease, the state of things is highly likely to be more dismal for most Americans and others abroad than when what’s ongoing began.

The scourge of force-fed neoliberalism is coming full force to the US and most other countries.

It’s about more greatly empowering and further enriching wealth and privileged interests — at the expense of pushing growing poverty and human misery to unprecedented levels.

That’s what lies behind the current socio-economic/public health crisis.

A dystopian world more unsafe and unfit to live in for ordinary people everywhere than already has arrived.

Governments in the US and other Western countries are the public’s enemy, not its savior or ally.

We have a choice — resist or suffer the longterm consequences of what’s going on, our rights lost, our welfare harmed, our future hopes dashed.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.