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The US was named the best equipped country to deal with a pandemic not a year ago — what happened there?

By Peter Andrews | RT | March 31, 2020

Just last year, the US topped a list of the countries best equipped to deal with a pandemic. But the experts have egg on their face as America spirals into Covid-19 catastrophe. What went wrong?

It looks clear now that the US is going to be one of the countries worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Their stock market has gone into full blown meltdown, and is set for its worst quarter of all time. It seems inevitable that their economy will be plunged into a second Great Depression.

Soon they will overtake China’s number of deaths from Covid-19. Their figures now stand at almost 165,000 people infected, and having doubled in three days, the death toll has surpassed 3,000 people. President Trump has had to quickly recant his rhetoric about the lockdown being lifted and the country being put back to work by Easter. It now appears that the US, and its economy, is in for a long dark summer.

A bad bet

In October of last year, the Global Health Security Index was published. Its website bills it as “the first comprehensive assessment of global health security capabilities in 195 countries.” Developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit, its major funders were the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Open Philanthropy Project and the Robertson Foundation.

Ever since the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014, which the Global Health Security Index calls “a wake-up call,” projects like this have been created to put better mechanisms in place for future pandemics of all kinds; be they naturally occurring viruses or genetically engineered bioweapons.

The tests the Index was based on concerns whether countries have “functional, tested, proven capabilities for stopping outbreaks at the source” which are then “regularly tested and shown to be functional in exercises or real-world events.” Pretty serious stuff, then.

Countries were assessed based on six criteria: “Prevention, Detection and Reporting, Rapid Response, Health System, Compliance with International Norms, and Risk Environment.” Of those six, the US topped the field in four, even scoring an almost perfect 98.2 in “Early Detection & Reporting.” (So much for that.)

Overall, the US put the rest of the world to shame, scoring 83.5 out of a possible 100. In second place was the United Kingdom, followed by the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. Italy is in 31st place overall, and China is in 51st place. Most of the lowest scoring countries are small islands or African countries, and Equatorial Guinea gets the wooden spoon. The full list and report can be viewed here.

A comedy of errors

Being one of the richest countries in the world at the cutting edge of scientific innovation and medicine should have gone some way towards making America pandemic-proof. So why, then, are they in such big trouble now? The answer lies in their government’s poor decision-making from the very beginning, which has sent them on the most dangerous of all possible paths.

They were too slow to begin testing suspected cases, and when they did, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bungled the rollout. Their cases really began to spike around mid-March, but now that they have taken the lead in confirmed cases outside of China, one feels that they will not look back. Just how bad the situation could deteriorate in the US remains to be seen.

A lot of very clever think tanks and one of the nation’s top universities collaborated on this project, and it turned out to be completely wrong. Their ’About’ page lists no fewer than 21 members of their International Panel of Experts, all with a list of qualifications and job titles as long as their arm.

If the experts could have looked into the future, they would have seen that South Korea, Singapore and China probably should have scored highest on the Index. Perhaps next time their predictions will be more accurate. That is, if the US economy has not been too badly decimated to fund research like this in the future.

Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics.

March 31, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 4 Comments

Can the United States decline peacefully?

By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | March 31, 2020

Professor Atta-ur-Rahman from Pakistan recently in an interview argued that this coronavirus pandemic may have originated as a US bioweapon. He’s not just any doctor, but he’s the chairman of (Pakistani Prime Minister) Imran Khan’s National Task Force on Science and Technology. And Pakistan’s former UN Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon said the same thing.

This is very interesting. The US, of course, has been very close to Pakistan in the past. And today Pakistan is trying to balance between the US and China. Hearing this kind of statement from high level people in Pakistan is a wakeup call that the world needs to take this seriously.

I think that the context is such that anybody who’s seriously paying attention to contemporary history has to admit that from the circumstantial evidence alone, it seems very likely that we should see this as a deliberate US biological attack on China, and perhaps on Iran or perhaps the Israelis did that.

The reason for this is that the US has entered into a period of great power competition with a rising China, not just a rising China but with a very rapidly rising China, if we listen to serious geostrategic analysts such as John Mearsheimer, a very brilliant man who tries to tell the truth as he sees it, as we all know, from his analysis with, with Walt on the Israel lobby here in the United States.

In October 2014, just about six years to the day before the US military sports team came to Wuhan, China, perhaps bringing that virus and while at the same time an exercise was being run, “Event 201”, mimicking exactly what would happen in the case of this kind of pandemic, John Mearsheimer published an article called, Can China Rise Peacefully? His answer was no.

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar. And he argued that the United States is going to take extraordinary measures to kill Chinese economic growth, which has been averaging 10% since 1980, and which is still up at 7%, putting China on a course to grossly eclipse the United States in economic and enhanced technological and military power within a decade or two at the very most.

Mearsheimer says the United States will undoubtedly do what it takes to stop this no matter what. Here’s a quote from his article he said,

“All of this tells us the United States has a profound interest in seeing Chinese economic growth slowed considerably in the years ahead. That outcome might not be good for American prosperity, much less for global prosperity, but it would be good for American security, which is what matters most.”

So that prediction was that the US would be willing to kill not only the global economy, but the American economy as well in order to stop this precipitous Chinese ascendance in the world. That’s what’s happened obviously.

If China’s growing at over 7% and the US is growing at a couple of percent at most, that differential leads to quick Chinese dominance of its region and then the world, whereas if the whole world’s growth is killed, and China’s dives down to a percent or two, and even if the US growth goes a little bit negative, this change doesn’t happen, the US maintains its current global military supremacy or so it may think.

So clearly, from the background, the historical background in the context everybody in the world who knows anything about history needs to be talking about, this as a US bioweapon attack on China just as the Chinese are saying, just like the Iranian government’s saying just like the Russian government’s saying and now just like the top people in Pakistan are saying.

Kevin Barrett is an American author, journalist and radio host with a Ph.D. in Islamic and Arabic Studies.

March 31, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | 6 Comments

UAE’s Rapprochement With Syria Aimed Against Turkey

By Paul Antonopoulos | March 31, 2020

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the head of United Arab Emirates (UAE), spoke by phone on Friday in the first such communication since the Syrian War began in 2011. This shows a metamorphosis of alliances and geopolitics in the Middle East and the wider region considering the UAE was one of the main backers of terrorist organizations who fought to remove Assad from power. However, for more than a year, the UAE has been sending signals showing a change in policy towards Syria. The phone call was after a long series of rapprochement that began in late 2018 with the reopening of the Emirati embassy in Damascus.

“I have discussed with the Syrian president… updates on the coronavirus. I assured him of the support of the UAE and its willingness to help the Syrian people,” Prince Mohammed said on Twitter. “Humanitarian solidarity during trying times supersedes all matters, and Syria and her people will not stand alone.”

A diplomatic source close to the case was quoted by the Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour as saying the “Westerners, the Americans and French particularly, were against” a Syrian-Emirati rapprochement. According to the diplomatic source, the UAE is trying to gain favours from Moscow and has already won dozens of contracts, including in armaments, gas and infrastructure, but also with space cooperation. This is part of a broader geostrategic context and the stakes go far beyond Syria and the UAE. Rather, the UAE has acknowledged that Russia has taken a greater interest in the region, in particular in Syria and Libya.

Relations between the Gulf monarchies and the United States, traditional allies, have greatly deteriorated in recent years. The gradual disengagement of American forces from the region, but especially the lack of support from Washington against Turkey, made the monarchies with the exception of Qatar, lose the confidence they once had in the United States. According to the diplomatic source quoted by L’Orient-Le Jour, the UAE is trying to get closer to Beijing and Moscow, and the Crown Prince’s phone call to Assad is evidence of that. The call also comes as relations with Iran softened, especially seen with the many Emirati delegations who visited Iran last year, however this has not softened the UAE’s brutal Yemeni policy. None-the-less, this suggests a change in foreign policy that appeals to Moscow.

It appears then that the UAE’s turn around in its Syria policy serves two purposes: first – to strengthen relations with Russia, second – to form an anti-Turkish bloc.

As Turkey actively pursues the establishment of a neo-Ottoman Empire, the UAE is aggressively undermining the project as it opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has openly supported and backed in Syria, Libya and Egypt. The UAE recognized the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in 2014 after the fundamentalist group made plans to infiltrate and destabilize the Gulf country to take control – the main reason for the ever-increasing deterioration in relations between the UAE and Turkey.

Since then, the UAE has been actively countering Turkish influence across the region. As part of its efforts to create an anti-Turkish block, the UAE have strengthened their relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt fear being taken over by Muslim Brotherhood rule. However, the UAE’s pursuit of countering Turkey has not been reduced to only the Islamic world.

Greece, considered the “Old Enemy” by the Turks, received 11 tons of medical aid from the UAE on Thursday, with a Greek government press release stating that relations “began as economic cooperation, but thanks to the trust that was developed, it evolved into a strong bond.” This came as a working meeting of the Greece-UAE Broader Strategic Cooperation Forum was held in Athens on February 19 following the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ visit to UAE. In 2019 and 2020, the UAE and Greece has conducted joint military drills and military heads have been meeting each other often in a clear directive against Turkey.

In Libya, the UAE has not held back in supporting the Libyan National Army in their struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood government in Tripoli, headed by the ethnic Turk Fayez al-Sarraj who has the full backing of Erdoğan. The UAE’s material assistance has been crucial in the success of the Libyan National Army’s battle against Muslim Brotherhood forces, a clear demonstration that the UAE are willing to directly check Turkey’s ambitions to exert its influence and power across the region.

By securing close relations with Greece and directly countering Turkey in Libya, the UAE’s rapprochement with Syria is another step in formulating an anti-Turkish bloc, with itself at the head. While Turkey has acted to strangulate countries who oppose its hegemony in the region, it now appears that it is the UAE who is pressurizing Turkey and isolating it. There is every chance that the UAE will begin sending material aid to Syria that will be crucial in its future battles to expel the Turkish military and their jihadist proxies from Syrian territory. This will once again undermine Turkey’s efforts to dominate Syria and be the main power in the region, a move that Erdoğan would not have expected.

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

March 31, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump tiptoeing toward energy market management

Oil price war in the time of Covid-19
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 31, 2020

On Monday, the US President Donald Trump literally bit the bullet by telephoning Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the state of the energy markets, which are at a crisis point not seen in history. As of last weekend, global oil prices collapsed by over 50 percent and are the lowest seen in almost twenty years.

A defining moment has come. Starting April 1, OPEC+ countries (OPEC plus Russia) are at liberty to pump as much oil as they please. The increased oil volumes are sure to flood the oil market. Saudi Arabia has talked of offering 12.3 million barrels per day to the market.

The combination of a massive supply overhang and a significant demand shock at the same time has created an unprecedented situation in the oil market history. It threatens to have a multiplier effect on the deep recession in the world economy due to the coronavirus and the consequent lockdowns in large swathes of China and the industrial world.

For the US, the oil market bust could mean that over half of its shale industry, which has been charioting the country’s newfound oil superpower status, may go bankrupt. Breakeven price for US shale industry ranges from $40-50 per barrel — and prices have plummeted to around $20.

A similar crisis had arisen in 2014-2016 period but shale industry survived through a combination of pushing costs lower and retrenching — and bouncing back with higher profits once the crisis was over. However, this time around, shale drillers were already facing substantial hurdles with cash flow problems and maturing debt and the dramatic fall in income simply drives them bankrupt. Again, whereas the problem earlier was one of fall in oil prices, today it is also combining with the biggest demand slump in the history of oil.

The US shale sector is getting completely killed and tens of billions of dollars in equity could get wiped out. 13 US senators wrote to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman earlier this month urging halt to efforts to boost production and lower prices. They threatened to take action against Saudi Arabia if the “economic warfare” continued.

Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas told CNBC on Monday: “The Saudis are hoping to drive out of business American producers, and in particular shale producers, largely in the Permian Basin in Texas and in North Dakota. That behaviour is wrong, and I think it is taking advantage of a country that is a friend… If they don’t change their course, their relationship with the United States is going to change very fundamentally.”

However, the Saudis are not backing down from the oil price war for market share and are planning another increase in its oil exports starting in May. A prominent Saudi establishment commentator Bernard Haykel wrote recently that Riyadh’s decision reflects a broader and more fundamental strategic shift led by the Crown Prince. To quote Haykel, “He (Crown Prince) has embarked on a policy of capturing market share rather than trying to set the price.”

Indeed, the warning bells are ringing already for the shale industry. Tens of thousands of roughnecks are getting laid off. The Oil Price magazine forecasts that layoffs in the US oil industry could be as high as 200,000 jobs.

Tens of thousands are getting laid off in the US shale patch

The Brookings Institution anticipates in a study that the Midland-Odessa region of West Texas, where Occidental Petroleum and Parsley Energy have dominated, could be decimated. A top oil executive, Dan Eberhart, CEO of Denver-based Canary has been quoted as saying, “There’s definitely blood in the water. The weakest oil and gas companies, oilfield service companies and banks with heavy energy exposure might submerge beneath the waves before the end of the cycle never to surface again.”

The ripple effect is staggering. When the fracking companies go bankrupt and cannot repay debts, the credit market and the banks face a crisis, which in turn threatens the whole system of oil stock exchange.

Simply put, Saudi Arabia and Russia have dealt a lethal blow to the decade-old American fracking industry, which they have seen as a mortal enemy. The crux of the matter is that they are independently fighting the US and are determined to take the price war forward to conclusively finish off the American encroachment into their market share. (See my blog Oil price war is more about market share)

Recently, the chairman of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft, Igor Sechin, who is a longstanding associate of President Vladimir Putin, stated bluntly that as soon as US shale leaves the market, prices will rebound and could reach $60 a barrel.

The bottom line is that for President Trump, the political costs are exceedingly high. For one thing, his boast that the US has become the most significant player in global oil markets is coming unstuck and his agenda to secure “energy dominance” on the back of a shale boom is exposed as a pipedream.

More importantly, Trump’s trademark policy of weaponisation of sanctions against Iran, Venezuela and Russian oil industry and its flagship Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project to grab these countries’ market shares is running into headwinds.

Russia is moving in quickly to turn the “oil war” also into a war for natural gas market share in Europe. Russia has watched with unease the arrival of shale gas on European shores that could potentially erode its commanding position as the single largest supplier of natural gas to Europe. The US has been touting the LNG sales to Europe as “freedom gas”, which helps European countries to reduce their high level of dependence on Russian supplies.

The US sanctions against Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which connects Russian fields with Germany and northern Europe and was nearing completion, is a case in point. The sanctions targets Russia’s Gazprom from expanding and consolidating its towering presence in Europe’s energy market. Unsurprisingly, Moscow is in an unforgiving mood.  

Following Trump’s phone call to Putin, the White House said the Russian and US leaders “agreed on the importance of stability in global energy markets.” The US Department of Energy Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes hyped it up further and told TASS, “[US Energy] Secretary Brouillette will discuss with his Russian counterpart, Minister Novak, ways the world’s largest producers can address volatility in the global oil markets during this unprecedented period of turmoil.”

But the Kremlin readout merely said, “They (Trump and Putin) exchanged views on the current state of the global oil market and agreed that Russian and American energy ministers should hold consultations on this topic.”

The big question is whether Trump’s phone call to Putin signifies Washington’s first step in a historic move to cooperate with Moscow in energy market management. Objectively speaking, the oil crisis needs a joined-up international response, and, arguably, the solution lies in looking beyond OPEC (and OPEC+) at a wider coalition — OPEC++ that includes the US. In principle, Saudi Arabia and Russia would favour the idea that the high-cost producers outside the OPEC+ group must finally share the burden of balancing the oil market.

Given the fact that Trump is vying for re-election this year and a significant portion of his supporters are engaged in shale oil and gas production, he may bite the bullet — at least, as a one-off, time-limited bite.

 

March 31, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Europe sends medical supplies to Iran in first INSTEX transaction: Germany

Press TV – March 31, 2020

Germany says the three European signatories to the 2015 Iran deal have registered the first transaction under a trade system set up last year to protect companies doing business with Iran from US sanctions, delivering medical supplies to the Islamic Republic amid the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, Berlin’s Foreign Ministry said Germany, France and Britain “confirm that INSTEX (trade system) has successfully concluded its first transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran.”

“These goods are now in Iran,” it said in a statement, giving no further details.

The German Foreign Ministry added that Berlin hopes to enhance the mechanism and carry out more transactions with Tehran.

“Now the first transaction is complete, INSTEX and its Iranian counterpart STFI (Special Trade and Finance Instrument) will work on more transactions and enhancing the mechanism,” the German Foreign Ministry said.

Iranian authorities have not commented on the news so far.

The transaction comes over a year after the European trio announced the creation of INSTEX — a non-dollar direct payment channel officially called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges — in an effort to keep Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers alive.

The apparatus was designed to circumvent the sanctions that the United States re-imposed against Iran after leaving a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, the trio, plus Russia and China.

However, the Europeans have not been able to operationalize the non-dollar trade mechanism under pressure from the US.

The system was launched after Iran complained about the European countries failing to maintain trade with the country as mandated under the nuclear deal, and bowing instead to Washington’s pressure.

In May, Iran initiated a set of countermeasures against Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and following the European partners’ failure to guarantee Tehran’s business interests under the agreement.

Iran had accepted the nuclear limits voluntarily as part of the deal, despite not being obligated by the UN nuclear agency to commit to any such restrictions.

Tehran has vowed to reverse all its nuclear activities as soon as the other JCPOA signatories begin fully implementing their obligations.

March 31, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | | 2 Comments

Virginia Goes Zionist

Jewish power manifest in the Old Dominion

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • March 31, 2020

Politicians, bureaucrats and media talking heads have long turned a blind eye to legislation and policies that benefit the state of Israel to the detriment of United States’ interests. The U.S. Treasury is plausibly describable as a gift that never stops giving to the people and governments of Jewish state. Since the foundation of Israel in 1948, the federal government in Washington has provided some $142.3 billion in direct aid of various kinds. Currently, Israel receives $3.8 billion per annum guaranteed for ten years, a sum that is supplemented by various giveaways, tax concessions and co-production arrangements from the government. Private “charitable” donations from individuals, businesses and foundations, some of which are fraudulent, considerably augment those numbers, making the total that Israel receives annually from the United States well in excess of $10 billion. A considerable proportion of that money is technically illegal, as it goes in support of the Israeli settlements on Arab land. No other country has received anything even approaching what Israel gets from the American taxpayer in one form or another and the one-way flow of money is also remarkable in that it has been guaranteed well into the future.

Other benefits obtained by Israel from the United States are less easy to quantify, to include the theft of U.S. military technology, which is then copied and sold by the Israeli arms industry, directly eliminating American jobs in one of the few manufacturing sectors that is relatively speaking thriving. There is also the observable transfer of high-tech jobs from the U.S. to Israel, engineered by Jewish billionaires like Paul Singer who are able to influence such decisions in the corporate world.

Israel also benefits enormously from the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement of 1985, which is, by design, intended to give the Jewish state free access to the huge U.S. market without any real reciprocity for U.S. companies to enter the tiny Israeli market. Israel also is able to bid on U.S. government contracts, including classified defense contracts, a practice that has led to several lawsuits when the Israeli company gets a contract by lowballing the bid but then fails to perform. In some cases, Israeli companies have submitted low bids to obtain contracts at state and federal levels even when they had no relevant experience and no facilities that can actually perform the work. They pocket the subsidies and advance payments they receive from local governments and states and then effectively disappear.

The desire of some American Jews who occupy powerful positions to aid Israel at the expense of the United States is despicable, sustained by the lie that Israel is an ally and that both countries ultimately benefit from the process. Israel’s ability to impose its own priorities at the levels of Congress and the White House has long been observed, but its political manipulation and ability to corrupt U.S. democracy of behalf of a foreign power have lately been extended to the state and local levels. This shift is due in part to the desire on the part of Israel’s promoters to shut down the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It has proven difficult to pass an unconstitutional national level ban on non-violent criticism of Israel going through Congress, so the Israel firsters have instead concentrated on the states. Twenty-eight states now have some form of legislation that denies state services or jobs to anyone who does not sign an agreement to not boycott Israel. A particularly draconian bill being considered in Florida equates any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, enabling any critic to be sued in courts for hate speech.

A particularly egregious and also unique example of a state’s economic policies being manipulated by a dedicated Israeli fifth column in government is the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. Grant Smith, long a critic of the VIAB, heads the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP). He has written a new book entitled The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, which documents in considerable detail how the conspiracy by powerful Jews in Virginia to benefit Israel has actually operated, much of it secretly through special arrangements and deals. He has also had a long interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar.com regarding the book which is well worth listening to.

The VIAB is unique because it is actually part of the Virginia state government. It is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is able to access funds from other government agencies to support Israeli businesses. It is staffed by Israelis and American Jews drawn from what has been described as the “Israel advocacy ecosystem” and is self-administered, appointing its own members and officers. While there are many Israel business promotion entities active in the United States, only Virginia has such a group actually sitting within the government itself, ready to make secret preferential agreements, to arrange special concessions on taxes and to establish start-up subsidies for Israeli businesses. Israeli business projects have been, as a result, regularly funded using Virginia state resources with little accountability. Bear in mind that this agency exists not to promote Virginia businesses but rather to give an advantage to Israeli businesses, some of which might even be competing with existing Virginia companies and putting local people out of work.

Virginia already runs an estimated $500 million trade deficit with Israel due to the federal Free Trade Agreement and the promotion of Israeli businesses in the state, which repatriate their profits to Israel, adds considerably to that sum. Smith reports how VIAB is not just an economic mechanism. Its charter states that it was “created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda.” Smith also has observed that “VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.”

Jewish federations and groups active on behalf of Israel were present in Virginia before VIAB was founded in 1996. Its Godfather was Eric Cantor, a state legislator who later entered Congress as the only Jewish Republican, where he was a powerful advocate for Israel. The board grew significantly under governor Terry McAuliffe’s administration (2014-2018). McAuliffe, regarded by many as the Clintons’ “bag man,” received what were regarded as generous out-of-state campaign contributors from actively pro-Israeli billionaires Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker, who were both affiliated with the Democratic Party. McAuliffe met regularly in off-the-record “no press allowed” sessions with Israel advocacy groups and spoke about “the Virginia Advisory Board and its successes.” That was, of course, a self-serving lie by one of the slimiest of the Clinton unindicted criminals.

And wherever Israel goes there is inevitably going to be the usual hanky-panky. Many of the Israeli companies chowing down on the Virginia feed bag are located on land stolen from Arabs on the West Bank. They are illegal under international law, even if President Donald Trump and company have declared otherwise. And then there are the conflicts of interest. VIAB board member Aviva Frye, whose family mostly resides in Israel and who worked to obtain the government approvals for an Israeli solar and wind energy company called Energix, located on the West Bank, was subsequently rewarded with a company directorship. And one hand inevitably washes the other. Board member Eileen Filler-Corn, a leading advocate for Israel, recently became the first woman to become speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. Grant Smith reports how she benefited greatly in her campaign by virtue of large donations from other board members as well as from Jewish groups and Israeli companies.

The VIAB is little more than a mechanism set up to carry out licensed robbery of Virginia state resources being run by a cabal of local American Jews and Israelis to benefit their co-religionists in Israel. Grant Smith observes how some pushback is finally in evidence, due to fraud in accounting procedures that have been exposed as well as environmental devastation for various projects that were never completed. Some human rights groups have also begun to challenge the illegality of the Israeli West Bank settlement-based companies involved. But it is not enough and it is probably too late as Israel is never held accountable for anything by the American Establishment. For my part, as a Virginia resident I have written and called the governor’s office and the offices of my state Senator and Delegate. No one has returned my calls or responded to my letters. Whose America is it? one might well ask.

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 inform@cnionline.org.

March 30, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 5 Comments

WTC7 Was Expertly Prepared For Demolition Prior to 9/11

By Bill Willers | Dissident Voice | March 30, 2020

What seemed to allow this deadly night to descend was that the intellectual patterns that were supposed to be in charge of things, that should comprehend the threat and lead the fight against it, were paralyzed.

— Robert M. Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, pg 305

I become frustrated with people who remain ignorant because of laziness.

— Bruce Coville, Thoughtful Thinker

Later in the day on 9/11/2001 a third building, WTC Building 7, descended at nearly free-fall speed with such perfect symmetry as to serve as a textbook example of excellence in prepared demolition. The official reason for the collapse of the 47 story, steel-framed skyscraper was given in 2008 by Shyam Sunder of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): “WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings.” It had taken seven years for NIST to fabricate a tortured videotaped explanation obviously out of sync with the actual collapse. The explanation reeked so visibly of scientific fraud that demonstrating that Building 7 was professionally wired for destruction became seen as the factor that could best be used to expose the larger web of lies surrounding the 9/11 events.

In years following 9/11, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth was formed, as were similar truth-seeking organizations for pilots, lawyers, scientists, firefighters, religious leaders, and many more (even cops). But mainstream journalism has been silent, dismissive or openly hostile to individuals and groups questioning the official account. The now jaded epithet of “conspiracy theorist”, a 1960s invention of the CIA, soon gave way to the insults of “truther”, and even “troofer”. But perhaps the best indicator of governmental/media defense of the preposterous but official account of 9/11 may be seen in a March 8, 2010 Washington Post editorial that threatened a prominent Japanese politician and his entire Party for suggesting controlled demolition as cause for the 9/11 collapses, and that Japan should have its own independent investigation. The Post, long linked to the CIA, used in its threat identical derogatory language seen widely in attacks on people and groups aware of the physical impossibilities inherent in the government’s explanation: “bizarre”, “half-baked”, “intellectually bogus”, “lunatic fringe”, “fact-averse”, as if the terminology had derived from a single source. Well, imagine that!

In 2015, researchers at the University of Alaska’s Institute of Northern Engineering, funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, began a four-year study of details of the WTC7 collapse. The Final Report, released on March 25, concluded that WTC7 was destroyed not by office fires but “by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.” Four years and a third of a million dollars, and that’s IT? What is so maddeningly frustrating – now after nearly two decades – is that all these engineers and architects refuse to take the next appropriate step and openly state, as a “working hypothesis”, that the building was prepared for demolition. All were trained in the physics of Isaac Newton’s universe, and all of their data point to that and nowhere else.

In the name of science and good sense, all of these engineering physicists have an obligation to speak much more clearly. I am a zoologist and therefore lack the professional standing to frame a hypothesis for an engineering issue, but there is a crying need for an openly-stated hypothesis from the professional community. What other than professional demolition could cause dozens of massive steel columns to “fail” simultaneously to such an extreme degree as to allow for free fall of a skyscraper, even for a moment? I’m serious. If there is another possible explanation that makes physical sense, all of these architects should just state it. Instead, what they suggest people do is send the Final Report to their members of Congress. Really! Such a level of naïveté is unacceptable and is merely a recipe for more years of failure to win a “new” investigation — as if the 9/11 Commission whitewash could qualify as a legitimate investigation.

One might argue that US journalism had some excuse to be blind to the demolition of WTC7 as long as the NIST report could be cited, but as of now, the reputation of NIST is a smoking ruin, and rightly so. Leaders of the NIST report lied before the eyes of the world, and if they have a shred of decency remaining they would be publicly begging for forgiveness. And the same would apply to the members of the 9/11 Commission who certified the deception, Max Cleland the sole exception, his having resigned in disgust early on. In particular, consider the 9/11 Commission’s Executive Director, Phillip Zelikow. Look over the array of governmental positions the man has enjoyed, and then reflect on what it must say about inner workings of the U.S. Government that he remains honored and in key positions rather than behind bars. Further, what does it say about political involvements of the University of Virginia that he heads its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences?

Becoming aware of the depth of rot and corruption throughout upper levels of government, media and academia is absolutely heartbreaking. Elements within and without the U.S. Government, in concert with a mercenary journalism, have executed a monstrous and convoluted deception on the American people and the world, and as Ben Bagdikian wrote in The New Media Monopoly, “Once a basic untruth is rooted, it blurs a society’s perception of reality and, consequently, the intelligence with which society reacts to events.” As psychologist Robert Griffin has put it: “9/11, and facing the truth about it, is important to the soul of America. Values that have come from the official story have corrupted us emotionally, mentally and spiritually.” Accordingly, the engineering community, rather than just dumping years of accumulated data onto a lay society, has a moral obligation to state, in clearest terms, a hypothesis as to what caused the steel of WTC7 to fail.

Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press.

March 30, 2020 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

Second US Aircraft Carrier Is Facing A COVID-19 Outbreak Among Crew

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 03/30/2020

After late last week the USS Theodore Roosevelt diverted from its mission in the Western Pacific in order for its 5,000 crew to disembark in Guam to be quarantined due to coronavirus outbreak among sailors, now at at least 38 cases, a second Navy aircraft carrier is dealing with a potential outbreak in its midst.

Over the weekend Fox News cited unnamed US officials to report that the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier has two sailors who have recently tested positive for Covid-19.

This as a major naval station in Japan has already gone on lockdown over cases on the base itself.

Military newspaper Stars & Stripes, which also reported the two cases aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, on Monday noted the base spent the weekend on lockdown:

The Yokosuka base entered a third day of lockdown Monday to mitigate spread of the virus following the three positive test results announced last week. Base commander Capt. Rich Jarrett instructed non-essential personnel to stay home and instructed residents to shelter in place “until further notice.”

The Reagan is permanently forward deployed out of the base, US Fleet Activities Yokosuka.

Few details were given over the USS Ronald Reagan and its two reported cases, also as the Navy has begun a policy of restricting its coronavirus numbers to only publicly reporting branch-wide cases.

But the Reagan could be the next disaster in the making, given the Roosevelt sent Navy top brass scrambling for a solution, which was to drastically divert the ship to US bases at Guam in order to isolate and test all 5,000 crew members.

Of that massive and disruptive effort the the Daily Beast reported: “But in Guam on Wednesday, both Navy and Marine Corps service members set up roughly 140 military beds in a basketball gymnasium.”

The report continued: “To squeeze more troops into the gym, Navy medical professionals recommended measuring the six-foot distance per guidance from the CDC from the center of the bed rather than from the outer edges, meaning, that the beds are actually 3-feet apart.”

Only a week prior to Sunday’s report of 38 USS Roosevelt crew being positive, merely three had been confirmed for Covid-19. The numbers are expected to rise as the Navy awaits testing on all crew members, and as another potential outbreak looms for the USS Ronald Reagan.

March 30, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | 3 Comments

Open Letter to Chinese Government Highlights MSM Hypocrisy

By Daniel Lazare | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 30, 2020

The Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal have written an open letter to the Chinese government urging it to reverse its “damaging and reckless” decision to expel their reporters amid a spiraling COVID epidemic.

The letter makes all the usual points about a “free flow of reliable news and information” in the middle of a growing international emergency. And however clichéd, such sentiments are correct since access to the broadest possible sources of information is indeed essential if the world is to make it through the crisis.

But the letter would have been a lot more convincing if the three papers had spoken up on Mar. 2 when the Trump administration moved to expel sixty Chinese journalists working for five news organizations that the White House regards as little more than state propaganda outfits.

Moreover, they’d be on even firmer footing if they had not actively cheered on the most dangerous anti-media effort of all, the U.S. crackdown on the TV news service RT, formerly known as Russia Today, that began in November 2017.

The crackdown on RT was in some ways even worse than McCarthyism since the latter was at least about something real and important, which is to say a Communist movement that controlled roughly forty percent of the global population and was pressing in on capitalism from every side. If the ruling class seemed spooked, it was facing a challenge of unprecedented dimensions.

But the threat this time around was about something entirely made up, i.e. the belief that Russia had supposedly used various dark arts to trick Americans into voting for Trump. The nonsense began in January 2017 when the CIA, NSA, and FBI “assessed” that Vladimir Putin had interfered in the previous year’s election in order “to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability” and, in the process, boost Trump. The report was entirely devoid of evidence, yet the press took it as gospel. Even worse, the intelligence report included a seven-page annex accusing RT of engaging in “criticism of U.S. and Western governments as well as the promotion of radical discontent,” running “numerous reports on alleged U.S. election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities,” contending that U.S. election results cannot be trusted and do not reflect the popular will,” and hosting third-party candidates who contend that “the U.S. two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’”

Imagine – a foreign news service daring to suggest that U.S. politics were flawed! If papers like the Times or Post had the slightest inkling of self-respect, they would have laughed themselves silly over such hyper-sensitivity and told the CIA to grow a thicker skin. But they didn’t. Instead, they worked themselves up into ever greater levels of indignation. Within a few months, the New York Times was warning that “if there is any unifying character to RT, it is a deep skepticism of Western and American narratives of the world and a fundamental defensiveness about Russia and Mr. Putin” and that, thanks to snazzy graphics and snappy repartee, the network had put together “the most effective propaganda operation of the 21st century so far, one that thrives in the feverish political climates that have descended on many Western publics.”

Of course, one might observe that outlets like CNN and MSNBC are characterized by a deep skepticism of Russian narratives, so what’s the difference? But that wouldn’t be fair since everyone knows that America is right and Russia wrong and that any comparison between the two is automatically invalid, isn’t it?

Not to be outdone, the Washington Post – official slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness” – ran not one but two op-eds (here and here) calling on the federal government to require RT to register as a foreign agent, a step the Trump administration would dutifully take just two months later.

So the big two turned out to be more aggressive than the Trump administration in reducing journalistic diversity and using the power of the state to undermine a foreign competitor. Finally, just a month ago, the Times ran a front-page article declaring – queue the ominous music – that Radio Sputnik, RT’s sister outlet, had begun “broadcasting on three Kansas City-area radio stations during prime drive time.” Horror of horrors, the station was bombarding Missourians with Russki propaganda criticizing impeachment, the media, and the U.S. political system in general and informing that, in the words of one Sputnik host, that “the masses of poor and working people don’t have access to even the most essential things.”

Where did Radio Sputnik come up with such a notion? Doesn’t everyone know that perfect equality reigns in the United States and that anyone who says otherwise must be working for a foreign power?

In fact, while America never tires of touting its devotion to the First Amendment, it loses control when a foreign news service turns tables by engaging in journalism that is cheeky and irreverent. It wants a free press, which is to say one that is free to repeat over and over again how perfectly wonderful America really is. But it does not believe in a free press that allows foreigners to say the contrary.

March 30, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia quizzes US on coronavirus’ parentage

Medical workers in protective suits attend to coronavirus patients at the Intensive Care Unit of a designated hospital in Wuhan, China, February, 2020.
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 30, 2020

All through the recent weeks since US President Donald Trump coined the epithet “China virus” to rename Coronavirus, Moscow kept a deafening silence.

Finally, on Sunday, March 29, Moscow broke that silence. That the first Russian statement came at the level of the Russian foreign ministry makes this particularly significant.

In an exclusive remark, a “source in the Russian Foreign Ministry” told the state news agency Tass :

“In order to unambiguously answer the question about the origin, about where the first case emerged, major research needs to be carried out. So, Washington’s accusing tone in comments against China arouses blatant bewilderment.”

The source then went on to touch on the allegation made in China —namely, that a team of American military personnel had visited Wuhan, China, previously before the outbreak. The Russian Foreign Ministry source said:

“As for “US trace” in the COVID-19 outbreak, we don’t have this data today. However, for a long time we have been watching with concerns the US military and biological activity carried out in direct proximity with our borders. In other words, there are indeed questions for the US.”

Now, a few things must be said right at the outset. Any longtime observer of the Russian state system, media culture and Russian diplomacy would know that Tass, which functions under the supervision of the Kremlin is not in the business of lapping up stray remarks by a moonlighting Russian source.

As for Russian diplomats, even the dumbest of them know better than to casually chat up a Tass correspondent. And, of course, Tass will never put out as lead story a stray remark of such significance without clearance from a high level, possibly even from the Kremlin.

What it adds up to is that Russia is signalling that it knows something about coronavirus’ parentage that is explosive in its impact on world politics and international security. Russia has highly privileged intelligence sharing arrangements with China. The Kremlin is the only interlocutor with which President Xi Jinping’s office maintains an institutionalised system of sharing vital information and coordination.

All these factors come into play while assessing yesterday’s Tass report.

Suffice to say, one plausible explanation for the Tass report today is that Moscow has alerted Trump to something that he may not yet be aware of.

Indeed, no attempt has been made by the US so far to disprove the Chinese allegation. There has been a media cover-up instead. Meanwhile, experts have opined that it is unlikely that coronavirus has been used by anyone as a biological weapon but it cannot be ruled out that during research, the virus might have “escaped”.

Interestingly, the Russian “source” drew a pointed comparison with covert attempts by the US military to indulge in “biological activity” near Russia’s borders as well.

Trump is on record that his “china virus” reference was an instinctive reaction to the Chinese allegation. Trump since added that he has stopped using that expression. In fact, he has more than made up by making a telephone call to Chinese President Xi Jinping to bury the hatchet.

After their conversation on March 27, Trump seemed relieved that Beijing is agreeable to bury the past and to look forward to a future of joint effort to combat coronavirus. Trump tweeted in unusually empathic language, even expressing his “respect” for the Chinese system:

“Just finished a very good conversation with President Xi of China. Discussed in great detail the Corona Virus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet. China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!”

Xinhua carried an unusually detailed report on the conversation which highlighted that a serious discussion took place between Trump and Xi and made it clear that POTUS quizzed Xi closely and held out reassuring words:

“Stressing that China’s experience is very illuminating to him, he said he will make personal efforts to ensure that the United States and China can ward off distractions and concentrate on cooperation against COVID-19.”

The references here to “personal efforts” and “distractions” merit particular attention. Has Xi taken Trump into confidence? The Russians have broken their silence within 2 days of the conversation between Trump and Xi.

However, this isn’t the end of the story. The orphan who appeared in Wuhan late last year may be establishing its parentage by reaching the US and creating an apocalyptic situation in New York. The big question will continue to haunt the world community: Was the coronavirus originally conceived in the womb of a Pentagon lab developing biological weapons?

Harrowing imagine from the inside of a truck in New York City. All victims of the coronavirus for disposal. Image taken by a local nurse, New York, March 29, 2020

Russia now says it has information to that effect. Was the Pentagon conducting tests of potential biological weapons on the two big powers that the Deep State in America regards as the US’ principal adversaries and existential threats?

Moscow has a way of drawing the White House’s attention to sensitive issues through such modes at a time when the direct communication channels remained hopelessly clogged. Moscow knows fully well from past experiences that the POTUS may not always be kept briefed on the shenanigans of the cold warriors in the US intelligence and defence establishment.

The military-industrial complex and the ‘Deep State’ have been historically a law unto themselves. Remember the farewell speech by President Dwight Eisenhower on 17 January, 1961 when he forewarned the nation to be on guard against the potential influence of the military-industrial complex (a term he is credited with coining). Eisenhower said:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Eisenhower was drawing deep into the bitter experience during his presidency that despite his profound military background and being the only general to be elected president in the 20th century, the military-industrial complex torpedoed his efforts to initiate detente with the USSR.

In the wake of the famous U-2 spy plane incident on May 1, 1960 (just days before a summit meeting between Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Paris), which infuriated the Kremlin, Eisenhower had to abandon a planned Moscow visit in June to flesh out his pet foreign-policy project of detente with the USSR, which the highly decorated World War 2 general had deeply cherished would be his finest presidential legacy.

March 30, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Beyond Chutzpah: US Charges Venezuela with Nacro-Terrorism

By Roger D. Harris | Dissident Voice | March 29, 2020

According to the parable, the ungrateful son takes out a life insurance policy on his parents, murders them to collect, and is caught and found guilty. At his sentencing, the judge asks if he has anything to say on his behalf. The son replies: “Have mercy upon me because I am an orphan.” That’s chutzpah.

US Attorney General Barr’s indictments on March 26 against the government of Venezuela for narco-terrorism go beyond chutzpah. For starters, William P. Barr was chief counsel for the CIA airline Southern Air Transport implicated in the 1980s for running illicit drugs and related narco-terrorism during Iran-Contra.

The US charges of drug trafficking against Venezuela are the height of hypocrisy. The world’s leading source of heroin is US-occupied Afghanistan; the US is the world’s largest cocaine market.

The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), is the latest in a line of corrupt presidents since the 2009 US-backed coup there. JOH was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in October by a US federal court for smuggling multi-million dollars’ worth of cocaine into the US.

Colombia is the chief regional US client state, distinguished by being the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere. Hillary Clinton called Plan Colombia a model for Latin America. Yet this model is the planet’s largest supplier of illicit cocaine. And that’s only scratching the surface of the US’s history of complicity in international narcotrafficking.

The false criminal charges by the US government against fourteen high-ranking Venezuelan officials are for alleged involvement in international drug trafficking. The US government has, in effect, put a $15 million bounty on Venezuelan President Maduro and bounties of $10 million each for the head of the National Constituent Assembly and other leading officials and former officials.

Thirty years ago, the US posted a $1 million reward on the head of Manuel Noriega, then president of Panama, on charges of narcotrafficking. Noriega had long been a US security asset assisting in the US’s dirty Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Noriega had also used his US patronage to consolidate his rule in Panama as well as his ties with Colombian drug cartels. However, toward the end of his tenure, Noriega did not demonstrate a sufficient level of servility to his US handlers and was deposed in the US invasion of Panama in 1989, taking the lives of many uncounted civilians.

As RT warns: “The US indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his subordinates on narcotrafficking charges echoes the rationale used to invade Panama and kidnap its leader.” Unlike the Noriega case, where the Panamanian president was convicted of massive drug trafficking with the knowledge and full protection of the CIA and other US security agencies, the US lacks evidence against the Venezuelans.

The US claims that Venezuelan officials are conspiring to “flood the United States with cocaine” are thoroughly groundless. Even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a Washington-based think tank that supports regime change for Venezuela, found in a recent detailed report using the US government’s own data that the facts do not support such bogus claims.

The authoritative US interagency Consolidated Counterdrug Database reports, in fact, that 93% of US-bound cocaine is trafficked through western Caribbean and eastern Pacific routes, not through Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean coast. Over six times as much cocaine flowed through the US-allied Guatemala than Venezuela in 2018.

Yes, some illicit drugs flow through Venezuela – a minor amount compared to those emanating from US client states – but the culprits are criminal gangs that the very indicted officials are fighting. The coca is grown and manufactured into cocaine in neighboring Colombia, not Venezuela. While supporting US government actions to undermine Venezuelan state institutions, WOLA recognizes: “Venezuela’s state institutions have deteriorated… In this environment, armed groups and organized criminal structures, including drug trafficking groups, have thrived.”

Yet WOLA’s conclusion is: “US government data suggests that, despite these challenges, Venezuela is not a primary transit country for US-bound cocaine. US policy toward Venezuela should be predicated on a realistic understanding of the transnational drug trade.”

The US indictments against the government of Venezuela are a ramping up of a policy of regime change. Ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998 and launched the Bolivarian Revolution, the hostile US government has floated consistently unsubstantiated accusations of narcotrafficking.

More recently the Trump administration has sought to replace the democratically elected president of Venezuela with a US-chosen and groomed security asset. Juan Guaidó, the man anointed by Trump to be president of Venezuela, had never run for the presidency nor served as president and was unknown to 81% of the Venezuelan population at the time of his self-declaration as president. Besides these dubious qualifications, Guaidó collaborated with the right-wing Colombian drug cartel and paramilitary group known as Los Rastrojos and even posed for pictures with some of their operatives, which were posted on Twitter. 

The ever-tightening unilateral coercive measures on Venezuela by the US have created a blockade, costing Venezuela over 100,000 lives. Sanctions are not an alternative to war but an economic form of warfare and just as deadly. As such, unilateral economic sanctions are an explicit violation of international law under the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States and even under US law.

Unfortunately, Venezuela is not alone. The rogue empire’s sanctions now blight a third of the world’s population in 39 countries.

This latest escalation of the US hybrid war against Venezuela takes place within the context of the global coronavirus pandemic, which the US empire sees as an opportunity to further attack the Venezuelan people made more vulnerable by the health crisis. Indeed, the US State Department has declared “Maximum-pressure March” against Venezuela. In service of the empire, Twitter has closed the accounts of the Venezuelan ministries of health, science, education, and housing.

Meanwhile, Cuba, Russia, and China are all materially supporting the Maduro government’s successful efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Venezuela. In contrast to this internationalist solidarity, the US is in the midst to the largest war games in 25 years, Defend Europe 20, in contravention of World Health Organization quarantine protocols.

Words cannot sufficiently describe the inhumane perfidy of the US empire’s response to the pandemic. This should be a time for the US government to:

  • Drop the unsupported indictments against President Maduro and other Venezuelan officials.
  • Lift the inhumane and illegal sanctions on Venezuela so that Venezuela can purchase medicines and equipment to better fight the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Restore normal relations with Venezuela based on respect for national sovereignty.

Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, a human rights group working in solidarity with social justice movements in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1985.

March 29, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Black Swan author Taleb urges UK to let Branson’s airline go bust

RT | March 29, 2020

Famed author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb has trained his sights on billionaire Richard Branson, urging the UK government to let the airline owned by the “tax refugee” to go bankrupt.

Branson has had a torrid fortnight, drawing the ire of politicians of all stripes for putting all Virgin Atlantic staff on unpaid leave because the carrier has been walloped by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The tycoon has led the calls for a state-sponsored bailout of the aviation sector, but plans to use the funds to cover fixed costs, rather than pay its staff.

Taleb wrote The Black Swan, which is widely touted as one of the most influential books of the century. His writings give his words extra weight in the current global situation as they focus on the extraordinary impact of rare events.

The risk analyst has given short shrift to the suggestion of bailouts for airlines, saying that the industry was hugely influential in preventing governments from calling a halt to flights from China as the outbreak spread in the Asian country.

However, the author reserved his most scathing analysis for Branson, whom he dubbed a “tax refugee” who “walks around virtue-faking with [the] TED [and] Davos crowd.”

“He lives in the British Virgin Islands and since the UK has no worldwide taxation, [he] pays no taxes. Yet wants the UK taxpayer’s backstop,” Taleb said, in a blistering tweet. “Let him go bust. Planes will fly with new owners!”

Virgin Atlantic has been particularly badly hit by the Covid-19 crisis as it does not have the cash reserves of some of its larger competitors. It reportedly approached the UK government and the Rothschild investment bank, who are said to be handling negotiations, for a package worth hundreds of millions of pounds in loans and guarantees.

March 29, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , | 1 Comment

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