Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

China denies covering up Covid-19 severity, says revision increasing deaths by 50 percent ‘common practice’

RT | April 17, 2020

The correction of Wuhan’s Covid-19 death toll, which rose by 1,290 and now stands at 3,869, was part of a statistical verification process and is a common international practice, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

Zhao Lijian rejected claims that the Chinese government had engaged in a cover-up of the severity of the outbreak, saying at a daily briefing that Beijing would not allow such a thing.

The claim has been pushed, among others, by US President Donald Trump, who froze funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) this week after accusing it of conspiring with China to mislead the world about the threat posed by the virus.

After the revision for Wuhan, the ground zero of the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s total death toll stands at 4,632. The change announced on Friday was explained by “incorrect reporting, delays and omissions of cases” by some medical institutions in the city during the early stages of the outbreak.

The US has had its own spike in Covid-19 deaths due to re-evaluation of previous cases. New York this week added 3,778 earlier deaths to its tally, including people “presumed” to have died from the infection based on symptoms and medical history rather than positive tests.

April 17, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Beijing says committed to moratorium on nuclear tests after US accusations

RT | April 16, 2020

China said on Thursday it is committed to a moratorium on nuclear tests. The statement from its Foreign Ministry followed a US State Department report that said China may have conducted low-level underground nuclear test explosions.

Spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters that China has been actively fulfilling commitments to treaties on arms control. “The US criticism of China is entirely groundless, without foundation, and not worth refuting,” the spokesman added.

Beijing may have secretly set off low-level underground nuclear test explosions despite claiming to observe an international pact banning such blasts, the US State Department said, in a report on Wednesday.

US concerns about possible breaches of a ‘zero yield’ standard for test blasts have been prompted by activities at China’s Lop Nur nuclear test site throughout 2019, Reuters said, citing the report. Zero yield refers to a nuclear test in which there is no explosive chain reaction of the type ignited by the detonation of a nuclear warhead.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Tara Reade, Biden’s Former Aide and Accuser, Files Criminal Complaint for Sexual Assault

Sputnik – April 12, 2020

Joe Biden’s sexual assault accuser, Tara Reade, filed a criminal complaint against the former vice president on Thursday, according to a police report seen by Business Insider.

In it, Reade claimed that Biden pushed her up against the wall in a Senate corridor and penetrated her with his fingers. The incident allegedly took place in 1993, when she was working for Biden, the then-Democratic senator from Delaware.

Reade, 56, initially claimed in April 2019 that Biden had inappropriately touched her several times and “used to put his hand on [her] shoulder and run his finger up [her] neck”. She also implied that Biden retaliated and eventually forced her out after she tried to speak out about his behaviour to the US Senate office.

She recounted the incident in vivid detail in an interview last month. “He had me against the wall,” she recalled, saying that it happened either in the Capitol or in the Russell Senate Office Building.

“And then his hands were down my skirt and up my skirt. And I was wearing–I wasn’t wearing stockings underneath. And then, with his hand, he went from there and entered me–with his hand–and as he was trying to kiss me, and saying things to me.”

The woman now maintains that she filed the report because she had been “harassed so badly” for her revelations and because she wanted to spur a “deeper conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace and powerful men.”

Reade told Business Insider that she was willing to testify under oath or cooperate with law enforcement if necessary. She acknowledged, however, that the statute of limitations for the alleged assault had expired, meaning that Biden won’t face criminal proceedings. The Biden campaign is yet to comment, although it flatly denied the claims last month.

The story has gained little traction in left-wing mainstream media, who have been supportive of Joe Biden as he is on course to secure the Democratic nomination.

Reade maintains that she does not pursue political motives; she urged Republicans in a tweet to “not use [her] assault for political gain” and pressure the media to question Biden more.

She was just one of several women who have accused Biden of inappropriately touching them or violating their private space – for instance, putting his hand on one woman’s thigh or rubbing noses with another – but none described his actions as sexual assault or harassment.

Reade’s accusations represent the most serious legal (and quite possibly public image) issue for the Democratic presidential hopeful.

Joe Biden refused to apologise for his alleged behaviour at the time, saying only that he was sorry that “they took it a different way”, but that he had not intended to be inappropriate.

April 12, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Head of EU’s top science body quits after Covid-19 response plans get bogged down by Brussels bureaucracy

RT | April 8, 2020

The head of EU’s main science organization has resigned just months after taking the job. He said both the body and EU leadership failed to adopt a robust science-based approach to the Covid-19 outbreak when one was badly needed.

Professor Mauro Ferrari submitted his resignation to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday, effective immediately. His four-year term ended abruptly just months after starting on January 1. Ferrari said he was “extremely disappointed by the European response to Covid-19,” according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news.

Ferrari headed the European Research Council (ERC), a body established in 2007 with a multibillion-euro budget with the goal of supporting scientific discovery in the EU. The ERC’s ‘bottom-up’ approach to distributing grants clashed with Ferrari’s suggestion of launching a large-scale effort to fight the pandemic, which he proposed in March after it became apparent that the outbreak would cause a health crisis in Europe.

“I thought that at a time like this, the very best scientists in the world should be provided with resources and opportunities to fight the pandemic, with new drugs, new vaccines, new diagnostic tools, new behavioral dynamic approaches based on science, to replace the oft-improvised intuitions of political leaders,” he explained.

The proposal was rejected by ERC’s Scientific Council. Ferrari said he tried to get his ideas implemented through von der Leyen, but the very fact of him working directly with the Commission head “created an internal political thunderstorm.”

“The proposal was passed on to different layers of European Commission administration, where I believe it disintegrated upon impact,” he said. He lamented a lack of coordination of national policies in response to the crisis and said his experience completely changed his view of the EU, of which he used to be “a fervent supporter.”

A spokesman for the Commission expressed regret that Ferrari had resigned “at this early stage in his mandate.” He said 50 ongoing or completed ERC projects were contributing to fighting the pandemic.

Ferrari is a US-Italian nanomedicine pioneer focusing on developing new cancer treatments.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Coronavirus: Virological findings from patients treated in a Munich hospital

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin | April 3, 2020

In early February, research teams from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, München Klinik Schwabing and the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology published initial findings describing the efficient transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The researchers’ detailed report on the clinical course and treatment of Germany’s first group of COVID-19 patients has now been published in Nature*. Based on these findings, criteria may now be developed to determine the earliest point at which COVID-19 patients treated in hospitals with limited bed capacity can be safely discharged.

In late January, a group of patients in the Starnberg area near Munich became Germany’s first group of epidemiologically linked cases of COVID-19. Nine patients from this ‘Munich cluster’ subsequently received treatment at München Klinik Schwabing. “At that point time, we really knew very little about the novel coronavirus which we now refer to as SARS-CoV-2,” says one of the study’s lead authors, Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten, Director of the Institute of Virology on Campus Charité Mitte. He adds: “Our decision to study these nine cases very closely throughout the course of their illness resulted in the discovery of many important details about this new virus.”

“The patients treated at our hospital were all young to middle-aged. Their symptoms were generally mild and included flu-like symptoms like cough, fever and a loss of taste and smell,” explains the other lead author, Prof. Dr. Clemens Wendtner, Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at München Klinik Schwabing, a teaching hospital of LMU Munich. “In terms of scientific significance, our study benefited from the fact that all of the cases were linked to an index case, meaning they were not simply studied based on the presence of certain symptoms. In addition to getting a good picture of how this virus behaves, this also enabled us to gain other important insights, including on viral transmission.”

All nine patients underwent daily testing using both nasopharyngeal (nose and throat) swabs and sputum samples. Testing continued throughout the course of their illness and up to 28 days after the initial onset of symptoms. The researchers also collected stool, blood and urine samples whenever possible or practical. All of the samples collected were then tested for SARS-CoV-2 by two separate laboratories working independently of each other: the Institute of Virology on Campus Charité Mitte in Berlin and the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology, an institution which forms part of the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF).

According to the researchers’ observations, all COVID-19 patients showed a high rate of viral replication and shedding in the throat during the first week of symptoms. Sputum samples also showed high levels of viral RNA (genetic information). Infectious viral particles were isolated from both pharyngeal (throat) swabs and sputum samples. “This means that the novel coronavirus does not have to travel to the lungs to replicate. It can replicate while still in the throat, which means it is very easy to transmit,” explains Prof. Drosten, who is also affiliated with the DZIF, and is a professor at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH). Due to genetic similarities between the new virus and the original SARS virus, the researchers initially assumed that, just like the SARS virus, the novel coronavirus would predominantly target the lungs – thus making human-to-human transmission more difficult. “However, our research involving the Munich cluster showed that the new SARS coronavirus differs quite considerably in terms of its preferential target tissue,” says the virologist, and adds: “Naturally, this has enormous consequences for both viral transmission and spread, which is why we decided to publish our initial findings in early February.”

In most cases, viral load decreased significantly during the first week of symptoms. While viral shedding in the lungs also decreased, this decline happened later than in the throat. The researchers were no longer able to obtain infectious virus particles from day 8 after the initial onset of symptoms. However, levels of viral RNA remained high in both the throat and lungs. The researchers found that samples with fewer than 100,000 copies of viral RNA no longer contained any infectious viral particles. This allowed the researchers to draw two conclusions: “A high viral load in the throat at the very onset of symptoms suggests that individuals with COVID-19 are infectious very early on, potentially before they are even aware of being ill,” explains Colonel PD Dr. Roman Wölfel, Director of the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology and one of the study’s first authors. “At the same time, the infectiousness of COVID-19 patients appears to be linked to viral load in the throat and lungs. In hospitals with limited bed capacity and the resultant pressure to expedite patient discharge, this is an important factor when it comes to deciding the earliest point at which a patient can be safely discharged.” Based on these data, the study’s authors suggest that COVID-19 patients with less than 100,000 viral RNA copies in their sputum sample on day 10 of symptoms could be discharged into home-based isolation.

The researchers’ work also suggests that SARS-CoV-2 replicates in the gastrointestinal tract. However, the researchers were unable to isolate any infectious virus from patients’ stool samples. None of the blood and urine samples tested positive for the virus. Serum samples were also tested for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Half of the patients tested had developed antibodies by day 7 following symptom onset; antibodies were detected in all patients after two weeks. The onset of antibody production coincided with a gradual decrease in viral load.

The Munich- and Berlin-based research groups plan to conduct additional research on the development of long-term immunity against SARS-CoV-2, both within the first German cluster and in other patients. This type of research will also play an important role in the development of vaccines.

*Comprehensive research data now published in Nature.

###

A joint press release by Charité, München Klinik Schwabing and the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology

April 4, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

First COVID-19 Death Reported in Asia’s Largest Slum, Dharavi

teleSUR | April 3, 2020

Asia’s largest slum located in India’s financial capital of Mumbai has reported its first COVID-19 fatality, according to local reports.

The patient, a 56-year-old man, had no travel history and was admitted to a local hospital with a fever on Sunday and tested positive for the new coronavirus on Wednesday, an official of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said, according to Al Jazeera.

The authorities have sealed the building where he lived, which is located in a redeveloped part of the Dharavi slum, local media reported.

Also, seven members of his family were quarantined and tested on Thursday for the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, the Xinhua news agency said.

Mumbai authorities are concerned over the possible spread of the new coronavirus, as Dharavi is known as the most densely populated slum in Asia. At the same time, a doctor and a worker from a municipal corporation also tested positive.

An estimated 700,000 to 1 million people live crammed in Dharavi – a roughly five-square-kilometer maze of narrow lanes, dilapidated buildings, huts, and open sewers.

Public health experts say it would be difficult to contain the virus if it spread in a slum-like Dharavi where eight to 10 people often share a room.

The population density is about 270,000 per square kilometer, making social distancing almost impossible. Scores of people share water sources and sanitation facilities, Al Jazeera reported.

Dharavi’s cases have raised concern that India may be experiencing community transmission of the disease despite a countrywide lockdown since March 25, as well as exposing the harsh reality and problems of inequality in the country.

For his part, Prime Minister Narendra Modi insisted that “testing, isolation and quarantine” will remain priorities in the coming weeks, ignoring the situation of places like Dharavi, the problems of its population, as well as the needs that have arisen in the public health system in the country.

The death toll due to the COVID-19 in India stands at 62 as of Thursday, according to the latest data, while the number of confirmed cases in the country is around 2,547.

April 4, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Bodies of Covid-19 victims pile up in streets of Ecuador as residents beg authorities for help

A vehicle carrying a coffin lined up to enter a cemetery, in Guayaquil, Ecuador April 2, 2020. ©  Reuters / Vicente Gaibor del Pino
RT | April 4, 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic rips through Ecuador, some cities are struggling to cope with a deluge of fatalities, pushing residents to make harrowing pleas for help as the bodies of loved ones accumulate in the streets.

The port city of Guayaquil, some 260 miles south of the capital of Quito, has been hit especially hard in the outbreak, leaving hospitals and morgues utterly overwhelmed in a flood of new patients and deaths. With local authorities unable to keep up with the influx of casualties, President Lenin Moreno has created a task force to tackle the problem, tapping Jorge Wated, board chairman at BanEcuador – a self-described “public development bank” – to lead the effort.

Seeking to ramp up the collection of bodies, Wated has allowed funeral homes to sidestep a nationwide curfew to work into the night to gather the deceased, and has dispatched teams of soldiers and police to pick up corpses from homes, hospitals and even streets around the city.

The efforts have still fallen short, however, sending countless citizens to social media to make desperate pleas for help, appealing directly to Wated through his Twitter account, where he shares frequent updates on the grim task at hand.

“Help me for the love of God,” one person said to Wated earlier this week, providing a home address and the name of a deceased man. “Nobody takes him … what do I do? I beg you.”

“Jorge. I have a case. Deceased going for 3 days. Already decomposed. Please … contact me,” another man wrote.

Left with few other options, social media appears to be the last recourse for many residents, with some of Wated’s tweets garnering dozens of similar urgent requests.

“On Monday my grandmother passed away, we do not know where else to call to remove the body and [need help] with the death certificate.”

Yet another appeal reads: “Dear Jorge Wated, a friend without Twitter asks for help, her brother died today 4 pm … and they still do not coordinate the removal of the corpse.”

Though Ecuador has reported only some 3,300 infections and 145 fatalities in its Covid-19 outbreak – over 100 of them in Guayaquil – the official disease and death tolls depend on the number of tests administered, and Ecuador has faced a shortage of test kits, leaving health officials unable to verify cases and add them to official tallies.

“The truth must be told. We know that both the number of infections and the official records fall short. Reality always exceeds the number of tests,” Ecuador’s president said in a recent address.

Well over 1 million cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed worldwide as of Friday, with the global death toll fast approaching 60,000. The United States remains the top hot spot for the illness, counting more than 266,000 cases – over twice that of the next largest outbreak, in Italy – and some 7,000 deaths. Still yet to reach the peak of its outbreak, the US has seen infections soar by the tens of thousands each day this week, breaking records for deaths and cases time and again.

April 4, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

EU Demands Serbia to Help Kosovo During Coronavirus But Restricts Assistance for Bosnian Serbs

By Paul Antonopoulos | April 2, 2020

The Working Group for the Chapter 35 of the Serbian National Convention on the European Union (EU) has called for the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo to create a cooperation to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We witness the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) representing a great danger everywhere in the world and the health systems increasingly burdened with the number of infected patients. The pandemic has shown that the spread of the disease goes beyond borders, national and ethnic origin or religion of the affected, and can only be combatted through joint action, cooperation and solidarity. Cooperation is necessary primarily for the sake of humanity and responsibility for human lives in these difficult times,” the press release reads.

In times of crisis, the EU proclaims that Kosovo is in fact Serbia’s responsibility. This unprincipled nature of the EU is solely guided by the interests of its major members and aims to palm off the medical responsibility of the illegal breakaway province of Kosovo back to Serbia. The EU did nothing to suppress Albanian separatism. In fact, the EU supports the illegality of Kosovo’s independence by deploying over 1,000 police officers under the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo mandate and all member states with the exception of Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia, recognizing Kosovo’s independence.

The EU Task Force on Chapter 35 calls for communication channels between medical staff in Serbia and Kosovo to be open as it would allow the exchange of information on the pandemic to be crossed over on a daily basis. This could also perhaps even contribute significantly to the reconciliation of the two entities. Even though Serbia is under EU pressure to help Kosovo, Belgrade should not give in to any concessions offered by Brussels on the Kosovo issue. The promise of EU membership will certainly be mentioned.

The EU is trying to force Serbia to expend their resources to send aid to Kosovo without expecting any acts of good will from the Albanian side. This is a policy that requires Serbia to treat Kosovo as its own territory while the EU still attempts to make Belgrade accept that Kosovo is an independent state. A similar appeal was sent to Serbia from the EU at the time of the migrant crisis when the EU also isolated itself from the problems in Kosovo and asked Belgrade to cooperate with Pristina in controlling migrant flows and make records of illegal immigrants traveling via Kosovo in 2015 and 2016.

While Serbia is expected to help Kosovo, despite the EU’s insistence that it is independent, Serbia is not able to assist the Republika Srpska in Bosnia. As part of Bosnia’s independence deal, two entities were formed, the Serbian-majority Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Hezegovina, where the majority of Muslims and Croatians in Bosnia live. Sarajevo’s political leaders are vetoing the decision of the Republika Srpska National Assembly to introduce a state of emergency in its territory to stop the spread of the coronavirus. For political reasons, Muslim Bosnians are stopping life-saving security measures, which are supported by the international community, and while Serbia is expected to help Kosovo, it cannot help the Republika Srpska.

Bosnia blocked the Republika Srpska so that the borders between the two entities could not be closed as the Serbian entity wanted to do. However, if we look internationally to places like Australia, states in the same country have closed their own borders to those who do not live in a particular state. According to the laws of Bosnia, Republika Srpska cannot close their border without approval from Sarajevo.

Therefore, Sarajevo’s moves are about antagonism and political contradiction at a time when coronavirus can engulf both entities of the country. The Bosnian Muslims have no argument for denying measures to protect people from coronavirus and are using this situation to stir up ethnic tensions rather than seeing this as a medical issue. As already shown earlier, it is not a contradiction to close the borders of the entities as many states and regions around the world have closed their borders despite being the same country.

The Republika Srpska is trying to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously and its National Assembly even voted in a majority to declare a state of emergency. Even EU High Representative to Bosnia, Valentin Incko, welcomed the decision and the commitment of Republika Srpska President Željka Cvijanović to use extraordinary powers in the interest of public health. Incko also pointed out that stopping the spread of the coronavirus and saving the lives of citizens must be priorities for all Bosnian authorities. However, his recommendations did not go into the realm of pressuring Bosnian authorities, and so long as the borders remain open, the people of Republika Srpska remain susceptible to higher rates of infection.

While Serbia is expected to assist Kosovo on the behalf of the EU, despite not being an EU member and the EU insisting on Kosovo’s independence, Belgrade also cannot assist Republika Srpska without being accused of interfering in Bosnian affairs. It is little wonder then that Belgrade has lost interest in appeasing Brussels and no longer responds to promises of EU membership, and rather it continues to build its relations with traditional ally Russia as well as emerging superpower China.

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

April 2, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

West Trying to Take Advantage of Venezuela’s Coronavirus Woes to Topple Gov’t – Moscow

Sputnik – April 2, 2020

The West is trying to take advantage of Venezuela’s difficulties during the coronavirus outbreak to depose the Maduro government, Russian Foreign Minsitry said on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, we see that a number of countries are still guided by the desire to take advantage of the difficult situation in the world and the epidemiological situation in Venezuela in particular to achieve political goals”, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said during a briefing on Thursday.

According to her, the idea of a coup that would lead to the ouster of the legitimately elected president of the country still remains in the minds of some political forces in the West.

“We object to the blocking of assistance to Caracas through the IMF. We condemn the US far-fetched drug-trafficking accusations against the head of a sovereign state”, she added.

Venezuela has so far registered 143 COVID-19 cases and three deaths. Last week, Russia delivered the first batch of 10,000 coronavirus test kits to the country and vowed to continue this assistance. China, in turn, sent a team to medical experts to help the sanctioned and the cash-strapped country. Both nations have called for lifting sanctions on Venezuela.

Amid these developments, Pompeo said on Tuesday that an interim government could be established in Venezuela, consisting of National Assembly members and accepted by both Caracas and the opposition, to serve until the next presidential and legislative elections. The US pledges to remove sanctions should the conditions of its plan, including “the departure of foreign security forces” and free elections, be met.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza rejected firmly on Tuesday Washington’s crisis settlement plan, which envisions the creation of an interim government and elections within the next year.

April 2, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

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 | , , | Leave a comment

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

Coronavirus hastens an Arab rapprochement

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 28, 2020

A phone call by the UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Friday signifies in many ways a major development in regional politics.

The official UAE news agency WAM modestly placed the UAE initiative “within the framework of Sheikh Mohamed’s contacts to follow up the humanitarian conditions in sisterly and friendly countries” in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in the region.

The agency said the two leader “reviewed precautionary and preventive measures… and the possibility of helping sisterly Syria to fight the virus.” But it added that “Sheikh Mohamed stressed the need for countries to place the humanitarian solidarity over political issues during this common challenge …. [and] affirmed that Syrian – the sisterly Arab country – will not be left alone during these delicate and critical circumstances.”

The report ended by taking note that Assad welcomed the Crown Prince’s “collaborative initiative while praising the UAE humanitarian stance.”

The Syrian news agency SANA succinctly highlighted that the UAE Crown Prince “affirmed that the UAE supports the Syrian people during these extraordinary circumstances, saying that Syria will not remain alone in these critical circumstances.”

Clearly, a serious normalisation process has begun between Abu Dhabi and Damascus and this must be counted as one of the geopolitical fallouts of rampage of coronavirus.

The UAE was one of the main backers of the “regime change” project in Syria and a key promoter of jihadi groups. But a rethink apparently began sometime around late 2016 following the Russian intervention in Syria the previous year, which swung the military balance dramatically in favour of Assad’s government.

The UAE made a course correction once it became apparent that the regime change project had floundered. Its support for the extremist Islamist groups tapered off. Cool realism, which is UAE’s trademark, prevailed. (We see the realism also in the UAE’s disengagement from the Saudi-led war in Yemen.)

Most certainly, President Trump’s detached attitude toward the Syrian conflict would have played its part in the UAE rethink. Among other factors, the UAE’s growing rapport with Russia, involving the two leaderships at a personal level, encouraged the UAE to reassess the Syrian situation from a new perspective. At any rate, the UAE reopened its mission in Damascus in 2018.

Without doubt, one major consideration for the UAE has been the proactive and repeated Turkish military interventions in northern Syria in the period since 2016 starting with Operation Euphrates Shield, which steadily evolved into a Turkish occupation in northern Syria.

The Turkish-Emirati relations have been very poor in the recent years following President Recep Erdogan’s accusation that the UAE had a hand in the 2016 failed coup attempt to overthrow him. Basically, the leitmotif of this discord lies in Erdogan’s kinship with the Muslim Brotherhood, whom the UAE regards as an existential threat.

To be sure, the antipathy toward the Brothers, whom Turkey (and its regional ally Qatar) promotes as the vehicle of the Arab Spring, has been a key factor in the budding UAE-Syria rapprochement — as indeed in the growing rapport between Damascus and Cairo.

Interestingly, Syria finds itself on the same page as the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Russia in opposing the Turkish intervention in Libya as well. Recently, the Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar’s faction (which opposes the Turkey-backed government in Tripoli) was allowed to take over the Libyan embassy in Damascus.

Indeed, the UAE is playing a long game to isolate Turkey (under Erdogan) in the Middle East by drawing together forces in the region that abhor political Islam — Muslim Brotherhood in particular. How far Russia encourages such an alignment in regional politics is anybody’s guess but it won’t be a surprise, given the difficulties Moscow is currently facing in managing the mercurial personality of Erdogan and a possibility that Russian-Turkish relations could be on a collision course any day over northern Syria if a Turkish-Syrian military confrontation in Idlib erupts.

Interestingly, the UAE Crown Prince’s overture to Assad comes within six weeks of a visit by the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, a top Kremlin official close to President Vladimir Putin, to Dubai. Tass news agency reported that “that the approaches assessing regional crises and solutions to them (Russia and UAE) are similar or close.”

Interestingly, both Russia and the UAE have direct dealings with the Kurdish separatist groups that operate in Syria and Turkey. No doubt, Russia will view with satisfaction the acceleration of the UAE-Syrian rapprochement. Emirati assistance in Syria’s reconstruction and rehabilitation will come as a big relief to Moscow.

Also, the return of Syria to the Arab family can only enhance Russia’s room for manoeuvre, apart from giving Assad much-needed “strategic depth”. All this helps in the stabilisation of the Syrian situation. Can we expect Syria’s readmission to the Arab League? It’s entirely conceivable.

The bottom line is that the UAE-Syrian normalisation holds the potential to redraw regional alignments. Despite the calamities of the 9-year old conflict, Syria still remains the throbbing heart of Arab nationalism, although, tragically, it came to symbolise in the recent years the deep divisions across the Middle East.

On the ground, besides the tragic loss of lives, Syria has gone through destruction on a colossal scale that would take decades to reverse. Nonetheless, a nascent opportunity arises here for Syria to climb out of the deep divisions and regain its regional standing.

March 28, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »