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Covid-19: Modi, Putin to coordinate efforts

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 26, 2020

Soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the nation on Wednesday on the government’s coronavirus response and measures to be adopted to deal with the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to him on the phone. The Indian and Russian readouts (here and here) have alike highlighted that the two leaders “agreed to strengthen coordination in the coronavirus response effort” (Kremlin).

The two countries are facing similar challenges. Having done very little by way of testing, the actual figures of coronavirus patients could be higher than the official estimate in Russia and India alike.

The total number of infected people as of today touched 840 in Russia, while the Indian figure has reached 660. Importantly, the figures are dramatically rising. There was a 28% jump in Russia since Wednesday.

Putin has admitted candidly that the outbreak is worse than what he had thought previously. The head of a top Moscow hospital treating coronavirus patients told Putin on Tuesday when he visited the patients undergoing treatment that Russia needs to “prepare for the Italian scenario.”

To a degree, the relatively low number of cases so far in both India and Russia can be attributed to an early ban on entry for Chinese citizens at the time the epidemic was at full swing in that country.

But India has been ahead of Russia in denying entry to all foreigners except diplomats and members of official delegations. It was only last week that Russia imposed such restrictions. Again, India shut down international flights earlier than Russia which announced the decision only today.

Both Indian and Russian authorities were inclined to project an upbeat view on the situation, claiming that all measures have been taken to prevent a bigger outbreak. But both have acknowledged lately that there is indeed a crisis looming ahead.

On Tuesday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who leads a task force on dealing with the virus, told Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin that provincial governors must receive orders to move more quickly to ready hospital beds for the gravely ill. “Otherwise, the system won’t be able to cope,” he said.

Sobyanin has ordered all Moscow citizens over 65 to stay home starting Thursday. Construction of a new hospital for coronavirus patients that is being built from scratch is going on at breakneck speed in Moscow suburbs.

Basically, Russia suffers from the same disadvantages as India to cope with a big coronavirus crisis — underfunded healthcare system, paucity of hospital beds, shortage of protective gear for medical communities, grossly insufficient network of labs to conduct / analyse coronavirus tests and so on.

But the Russian system is better adapted to handle such crises. Sobyanin signed a decree today “to temporarily suspend … from 28 March to 5 April, the work of restaurants, cafes, canteens, buffets, bars, snack bars and other catering establishments, with the exception of takeaway services without citizens visiting the premises of such enterprises, as well as order delivery.”

Shops, except pharmacies and those selling essential goods, will suspend operation during this weeklong period. Sobyanin was almost apologetic: “The restrictions introduced today are unprecedented in the modern history of Moscow and will create many inconveniences in every person’s daily life. But, believe me, they are absolutely necessary to slow down the spread of the coronavirus infection and reduce the number of cases.”

The big question is whether these measures will suffice or Putin will also opt for a “total lockdown”, as Modi ordered on Tuesday. But then, Russia is a vast country spanning 9 time zones, and the Kremlin can always ramp up measures as cases grow. The regional imbalances are simply mind-boggling — between Moscow and St. Petersburg (European Russia) on the one hand and the Caucasus, Urals, Siberia or the Russian Far East (Asiatic Russia) on the other hand. 

Having said that, the crucial difference is that Russia is a developed country in most ways in the social sector, thanks to the Soviet rule, whereas India is a developing country with a much lower level of social formation.

The mammoth population of India puts additional pressure on social sectors of the economy. Again, the structure of the Russian economy is very different. It has nothing comparable, for example, to India’s “informal sector” or “migrant labour” that infinitely add to the complexity of the present crisis.

Russia was all set to join the OECD when the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014 and the European Union imposed sanctions. In fact, at that point in time, Russia had already signed on to some of the landmark OECD standards.

However, the raison d’être of the two countries’ desire to “to strengthen coordination in the coronavirus response effort” lies in their capacity to show a third way in addressing the present crisis.

Neither Russia nor India has followed China’s Wuhan model of “suppressing” the coronavirus and moving on to resuscitate the economy.

On the other hand, their humanistic traditions also do not allow the pitiless approach that US President Donald Trump espouses.

Both Russia and India stress “social distancing” as the key. PM Modi used a powerful metaphor from Ramayana which every Indian would understand, to drive home that one’s home is one’s ultimate citadel in these extraordinary times. Putin meant much the same thing when he said, “Don’t think: ‘This can’t happen to me.’ It can happen to anyone. The most important thing is to stay home.”

Putin announced paid leave for all Russians next week due to COVID-19. He announced, amongst other relief measures for the economy, that families eligible for maternity capital will receive an extra 5,000 rubles ($44.80) per month from the government for each child under 3 years old.

Small and midsized businesses will receive a six-month tax deferral. And those who lose their jobs or take sick leave will receive payments at minimum wage until the end of the year. The allowance for the unemployed has been raised by 50 percent and brought on par with the prescribed minimum wage.

Today, the Modi government also announced a massive $22 billion package of cash transfer and food security exclusively targeting the poor.

Both Russian and Indian leaderships are acutely conscious of grim economic warnings for their countries. Both economies could shrink significantly in a worst case scenario. Nonetheless, both Putin and Modi have chosen to concentrate on socially sensitive clusters — pensioners and families with children in Russia, the teeming hundreds of millions of poor people in India.

One may say they stay true to their history as “populist” leaders. But this time around, it is far from an opprobrium.

March 26, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Amid COVID-19, India Buys $116M Worth Of Weapons to Israel

teleSUR | March 25, 2020

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed Thursday an arms deal with Israel worth hundreds of millions of dollars, as cases of the coronavirus infections are surging and concerns are rising over the country’s ability to face a health emergency of such magnitude.

Israel will deliver to the Indian military 16,479 Negev light machine guns, the Indian government said in a statement.

The US$116 million contract was signed as doctors and health professionals in India continue to sound alarms about the shortage of masks and protective gear, pointing out the country’s ill preparation to deal with the crisis.

The weapons contract is part of a series of arms agreements between India and Israel under Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The provisioning of this operationally urgent and very critically needed weapon will boost the confidence of the frontline troops and provide much-needed combat power to the Armed Forces,” India’s defense ministry said.

There have been around 536 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in India with 10 deaths reported. But like several other countries, it has barely done any tests and is now going through a spike in infections.

India’s “total lockdown” began at midnight Tuesday and will continue for 21 days.

At a time of crisis with a fatal pandemic spreading like wildfire and concerns rising over the consequences it is likely to have on economies around the world, the decision to give priority to military spending has sparked indignation among critics.

A retired professor of International Relations and Global Politics at the University of Delhi, Achin Vanaik, described the move as “extraordinary and highly condemnable, especially as it becomes clear that authorities are well aware that official stats are a gross underestimation at this point.”

“India needs every rupee to deal with the very real danger of the coronavirus pandemic spreading in a country of 1.3 billion people – living in densely populated cities and towns. As it is, compared to Europe, North America or even China and other countries in Asia, the medical system here is woefully under-equipped to deal with this emergency. This diversion of funds is deeply distressing,” Vanaik told the MEE.

Likewise, many critics are denouncing the fact that the far-right government led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chose to spend hundreds of millions on military purchases while it has so far not announced any measure to assist those who are losing their income sources as a result of the epidemic.

“People rendered suddenly jobless are forced to rush back to villages to survive, risking the spread of the virus as they go,” leader of the Communist Party of India Kavita Krishnan told MEE.

“Why is the government of India choosing to spend massive amounts on military purchases instead of prioritizing a corona relief package, medical infrastructure, free healthcare and testing for all right now?” Krishnan asked.

March 25, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Trump Defies All Odds & Outflanks the Left

By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 25, 2020

Did you know that 25% of Americans want their state to secede from the United States? In part one of our series, we laid out our opening – that the betrayals of the Democrat Party against its own working class base would lead towards an uprising, finally coalescing around a National Labor Movement, christened through blood and sacrifice.  This would ultimately team-up with Trump’s small business and working class base, making every conservative-libertarian’s worst horse-shoe theory nightmare a living reality.

This is the era of the new populism, beyond left and right.

We said in the previous article in this series that because of Trump’s commitments and Reaganomic view of wealth creation, that he would not be able to rise to the ‘FDR level’ needed to radically transform America’s social contract and forge a genuine New Deal. As it stands, the American economy is set to shrink by a depression-era 14% in Q2 alone.

But Amazingly – Trump Once Again Defied All Odds

Between publishing our dire warning, written days before it had run on SCF, and when we had set to produce our next installment here, it appears that we were right to gauge the seriousness of the moment, but underestimated Trump’s ability to begin the very thing we had been urgently writing about for the past year: take up the necessary transformations proposed by Bernie, by Yang, and by Gabbard.

Reading comments sections on ‘progressive’ YouTube channels, the call for Trump to dump dumb Pence and take on Gabbard or Yang as VP. In a policy sense, that’s just what he’s starting now to do. Democrats would shatter upon the rocks of discoherence if they tried to pick up Pence’s pro-life Christian dominionist evangelical fundamentalist base.

And so Trump moved left, and no – not leftwards to the center – rather he made an unprecedented end-run around the anti-labor centrist Democrats over to the pro-labor economic left of the Democrat Party. That’s the very same economic left of the party that the Clinton-Pelosi-Biden corporate Democrats have suppressed and tried to relegate to invisibility. Clinton and Pelosi failed.

Where Clinton’s DNC succeeded in destroying the campaigns of Gabbard, Sanders, and Yang – despite their nauseating willingness to play DNC ball – the DNC fell victim to their own success. They handed this opening to Trump on a platter.

This happened because the DNC believed its own lies, and succumbed to the cognitive impairment disorder known as ‘Orange Man Bad’ Trump derangement Syndrome. For too long the DNC arrogantly believed that they could simply pander to the billionaire oligarchs and that working people would vote for them by default. Those days are over.

Now we are looking at the beginning of a Trump UBI, at the time of writing this stands at a proposed $500 billion which we have calculated works out as such: if there are about 160 million working age adults, which does not include about 45 million retirees receiving social security etc., then this comes out to $3000 per person. Is this just the beginning?

Once this sort of line is crossed, it’s difficult to go back. Trying to take it back will necessarily lead to the sort of backlash and threatened social violence and chaos which brought about its necessity in the first place.

We’ve already seen with Hurricane Katrina what upright citizens will do to survive, when literal starvation is the alternative.  But Trump went further. He ordered a moratorium on evictions, protecting working Americans who might be late on rent. He ordered a ban on bank foreclosures for Americans paying mortgages, for those whose loans were done through HUD and FM & FM.

Then Federal Reserve hack Larry Kudlow, now working as Director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump since 2018, announced even more – Trump is seriously looking to propose partial nationalization of businesses needing government assistance.

Universal Basic Income? Moratorium on evictions and foreclosures? Partial nationalization of business and industry? The possibilities presented now with “Comrade Trump’s” opening salvo, knows no bounds.

The most stupid criticism of Trump’s move is that he’s doing this merely in response to what the public wants, that he’s only doing this because people are demanding it, and if he didn’t do it, he couldn’t win re-election. We find this kind of anti-logic to be a form of violence against the understanding of politics in a republic with democratic traditions such as the U.S.

Isn’t this what elected representatives are supposed to do, to represent? Aren’t concessions and proposals in the face of losing one’s mandate what a responsible head of government is supposed to enact? Isn’t it strange that despite these very needs bubbling beneath the surface for decades, Democrats have not moved on these things, and haven’t been afraid of their own base? Isn’t this inability to carry out one’s responsibility to the constituents the very reason for the total implosion of the Democrat Party now underway?

When Democrats failed to do these things, the blue-no-matter-who crowd only made battered-wife syndrome level excuses – they blamed Republican obstruction even when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of congress for two years starting in 2008.

And Still it May Not be Enough – Towards a National Labor Movement

Despite Trump’s bold pronouncements which have outflanked the Democrat Party, the reality is that the present situation is so stark that even if these proposals all go through as planned, these will not likely be enough. That’s why we introduced this installment with the shocking figure on Americans wanting their states to secede. How this becomes part of the platform of the National Labor Movement will be critical.

There is a good possibility that Trump will extend and even reinforce these social-patriotic provisions at least through the election cycle. But then what, after that?

The reason this 25% secession figure is as small as it is, is because there has been no concerted effort to promote the idea. Compare this naturally popular idea to ‘politically correct’ social views which appear popular in polls, like gun control, but enjoy this largely as the result of tremendous social engineering. This came as public service announcements, subtle references in film and television, the expressed opinions of celebrities and social media ‘influencers’.

Eliminating the 2nd Amendment is an unconstitutional and anti-popular move that only a police-state would want. Despite a non-stop campaign since the 1980’s to vilify the very pillar which guarantees all the other amendments, only 20% of Americans are said to support its elimination.

But this is an idea that has been extremely unnatural, and expensive to promote. It required what many Americans even think were false flags and hoaxes to build to that 20%. It’s a figure that also happens to be shrinking despite thirty years of non-stop preaching.

What would happen to this 25% pro-secession figure if there were organized efforts to build around that idea? There was, bear in mind, the ‘Yes’ movement in 2016, for California to secede from the Union. Also, when the poll was conducted a few years ago, the situation was bad but not the catastrophe we are upon today. This catastrophe, whether engineered or not, has been a fascinating subject. It is unlikely that the Coronavirus is the cause of it, but rather the convenient timing of such appears to be a good reason to telegraph an emergency situation to the elites that now is the time to institute a series of socialist/corporatist/fascist (read: planned economy or distributist) changes to save the system by transforming it.

But absent a real show of extra-parliamentary force from the rank and file of a freshly organized National Labor Movement, any presently proposed patches to the failing system are unlikely to indefinitely stave-off a real uprising.

The 2016 through 2020 election cycles will go down in history as the final and most conclusive end to the America as we knew it. The global pandemic, Covid-19 is one thing, the phenomenon is another. That’s to say – the virus is one thing but the hype hysteria, and pretext for new forms of social control is entirely another.

The Democrat Party’s betrayal of its populist base doesn’t simply mean that millions of potential voters who favored Sanders and Gabbard are going to stay this election out – though they will. It means that some significant segment is going to throw in their lot with the anti-politics or the post-politics of a people with nothing left to lose. Direct action, veterans leading militia groups, organized crime, secessionist movements, revenge killings against corrupt cops,  ‘revolutionary conspiracies’, fed-up rogue labor organizers running decertification campaigns and wild-cat strikes – all now known to the state as ‘terrorism’.

“When the people have nothing left to lose, they lose it”, as the popular business consultant Gerald Celente has repeatedly explained for years.

Any analysis of what the DNC should have done, as this author’s ongoing series of essays for SCF on the subject has attempted to do, has wrongly been understood by some readers as a friendly exercise in hopeful proscription to ‘fix’ the DNC – it is not and was not.

My aim has been to show that when a society’s elites reach such a pinnacle of corruption and detachment from its moral and constitutional obligations and authority, then the whole society is on the precipice of collapse. It has been to show that numerous elements of the kinds of policies and attitudes that could have saved this country are in fact known to the Democrats, as Yang for example helps to prove, and they had cast these to the side nonetheless, as if these were all just optional ventures on what was otherwise a fair-weather day.

The sheer hubris of the chattering political class of beltway pundits has served to separate the have-less from the have-nots, to make those just getting by more blind to the situation of those who aren’t. Worse, it has been to set these two great classes against each other – the false notion that giving a hand-up to the latter will come with some greater tax burden to the former. The policies that could have fixed things were out there and were known to the political elite and their financial backers. Still, they turned the other way and told us to turn the other cheek.

Trump’s Still-Born Revolution?

Some of these needed fixes in the area of foreign policy, were seen in still-born form in Trump’s attempts as we discussed. And those opposing Trump’s attempts at steering foreign policy in a sustainable direction were met with obstruction and contempt from the Democrats and neoconservative Republicans as well. After years of impeachment chatter, threats of impeachment, Trump was pushed into striking Syria. And finally with an impeachment proceeding, pushed into murdering Qasem Soleimani. This happened to have the effect of turning off Trump’s anti-war supporters.

This author consistently explained and showed back in 2015 that the nature of Madame Secretary Clinton’s financial and ideological commitments would have irreconcilably led to a massive and bloody military intervention against the Russian Federation, which in turn could have signaled the kind of final, nuclear Armageddon which Ronald Reagan saw as akin to the Christian teleology found in Revelations.

To be clear: the party of Clinton is and has been the enemy of the American people, second only to the financial oligarchs who finance these Democrats. Trump’s left pivot is likely not to go far enough, and the necessary feedback loops are hard to read. That’s why in the next installment we will detail the coming national labor movement and the kinds of social violence we may expect as it emerges from the womb of chaos and bloodshed.

March 25, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Covid-19 has exposed just how broken American economy & society are – a $2 trillion package alone won’t fix it

By Scott Ritter | RT | March 24, 2020

As Congress and the president bicker over a huge financial stimulus package designed to keep the US economy afloat, they must confront the real existential questions facing the country.

Despite all the wrangling, there will be a national economic stimulus package passed by the Congress and signed by the president. Domestic political imperative guarantees as much. The American economy has largely shut down because of the social lockdown mandated by the coronavirus pandemic, and without a stimulus package the entire system would collapse with little hope of ever fully recovering.

The cost of the package will approximate $2 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion. No matter what the final amount is, it will exceed by far the nearly $1.5 trillion combined bailout/stimulus packages approved by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to recover from the 2008 economic crisis. The 2008 package, however, was a one-time deal; the coronavirus stimulus covers a period of approximately one month, after which the economy either gets restarted, or Congress and the president will be looking at the need for a follow-on stimulus package of similar size and scope.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed some uncomfortable truths about the state of America today. First and foremost is the fragility of the American economy. After years of outsourcing manufacturing, the United States has constructed an economy where services industries comprise some 55 percent of overall economic activity. In the age of globalization, with interconnectivity functioning seamlessly, this model has been able to generate the appearance of prosperity, with a booming stock market and increased GDP.

The reality, however, is that the American economy lacks resilience in time of crisis. The ongoing trade war with China, combined with a depressed global oil market, were in the process of exposing this reality before the coronavirus pandemic. The national lockdown, and resulting economic stoppage, only accelerated what was a gradual economic recession in progress. Even if the US economy could be taken off stimulus-driven life support, the conditions that preceded the shutdown still exist and, if anything, have only been exacerbated by the impact of the pandemic on global economic health.

American corporations have been shown to have little capacity to plan for “rainy day” contingencies, instead focusing all their economic resources on the generation of short-term profit. And the American working class has been likewise exposed as living on the edge of catastrophe, with few Americans able to fall back on savings that would enable them to ride out a period of sustained economic inactivity or, worse, to pay for emergency health care.

The other uncomfortable truth about America that has been exposed by the crisis is the overall fragility of American society. The medical emergency brought about by the need to treat this virus has shown that what passes for a national healthcare system is, in fact, a fragile construct of for-profit institutions susceptible to being rapidly overburdened and unable to function once the cash-stream of overpriced healthcare has been cut off. The coronavirus crisis has revealed the reality of the US healthcare system today – most Americans don’t have the wherewithal to get quality healthcare when needed – the cost of such care is prohibitive, as are the insurance premiums one must pay to cover it.

President Trump, while supporting the emergency economic stimulus package, has questioned whether this approach is sustainable. The short answer is that it is not. In addition to the approximately $2 trillion that the stimulus is adding to the US debt, the Federal Reserve has been pumping additional trillions into the American equity market, making virtually interest free money available to US banks and financiers.

The purpose of this injection of free money is to stimulate economic growth in a system which purports to be built on the principles of private capital. But when an ostensibly private equity market must be pumped up with government infusions of capital, it is neither private nor liquid.

Trump is wrestling with the horrible reality that in order to take the American economy off government life support, he must lift the restrictions on socializing that were imposed to slow down and reduce the human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus disease. Whether this move is economically sound, medically advisable or politically viable has yet to be seen. But one thing is for certain – the US is at a crossroads in its history.

Trump’s best-case scenario is that he can jump start the US economy, bringing it back up on all cylinders to resume where it had left off prior to the coronavirus-inspired shut down. Even if this plan worked, however, it would not resolve the underlying deficiencies in the US economic and social model that have been exposed as a result of the crisis.

The other alternative is to recognize the reality of the situation confronting the US today – that the crisis has fundamentally broken the American economy along with the American model of society which drove and sustained it. To fix the innumerable flaws and issues that have been identified by Covid-19 will require a level of government economic intervention over time that will forever tip America away from the vision of capitalism-inspired prosperity it aspired to, toward a more egalitarian form of socialism founded on the European model so many Americans claim to disdain.

Trump, the quintessential capitalist, recognizes this reality. He knows that the decision on whether to restart the American economy is much more than a question of simple economics. It is one which touches on the existential survival of America as we have come to know it.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

March 25, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Riyadh’s “Oil War” on Russia has some Global Objectives

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 24.03.2020

The on-going Saudi ‘oil war’ with Russia has its roots in the logic of increasingly using natural resources for geo-political and geo-economic purposes. While this is not something entirely new, the latest push comes against the backdrop of increasing competition between the US and Russia for global leadership roles and the former’s attempts at forcing the latter out, squeeze its share in the global oil market to increase that of the US shale oil, thus denting Russia’s economic capacity and its ability to project power in regions beyond its borders.

Whereas the Saudis blame Russia for the ‘oil war’ and Kremlin’s refusal to further cut oil production, the proposed cut, as it stands, would have ultimately meant a further decrease in Russia’s share of the global market and a significant increase in the US’ shale-oil production and exports. Ever since OPEC+ agreement of 2016 and the related cuts in oil production, the output of US shale oil has soared by 4.5 million barrels a day. Whereas the Western political pundits have been speaking and writing of Russia as the ‘malign’ player targeting the US’ ‘booming’ shale oil industry, the fact of the matter is that the US shale industry would not have grown in the first place if there had been no OPEC+ agreement. Russia, as it stands, has only refused to further cut its production, and is willing to extend the OPEC+ to continue a stable system of oil production.

How the OPEC+ benefited the US shale oil is evident from the fact that balanced production of crude oil meant stable and high prices, which made the US shale oil more profitable, further allowing the US to use the scenario to build its production and export infrastructure. As it stands, since 2016 when the OPEC+ deal was struck, US oil exports have increased five-fold and shale production increased from 8.9 million barrels per day to 13.1 million barrels per day. Thus, to a significant extent, by refusing the Saudi proposal of further cuts in oil production, Russia essentially refused to allow the US shale oil industry a further free-way for global expansion.

At the same time, Russia continues to stick with the OPEC+ deal. The Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has said,

“We did not initiate the withdrawal from the agreement [OPEC+ deal]. On the contrary, we proposed to extend the agreement on the existing terms, at least until the end of the second quarter or for a year, so as not to complicate the situation that has developed with the spread of coronavirus.”

At the recent meeting between Russia’s Putin and energy officials, Putin reportedly said that:

“OPEC+ has “proved to be an effective instrument to ensure long-term stability on global energy markets. Thanks to that, we have obtained extra budget revenues and, what is important, provided a possibility for upstream companies to confidently invest in promising development projects.”

What becomes evident here is that the blame for reduced oil prices can hardly be put on the Russians. Its roots lie in the global struggle for market share. This struggle is taking place at two levels. The first is between the Russians and the Saudis whereby the latter, known for playing on the US side in every war, want to expand their share of the market to sustain their massively oil-dependent economy. The second level, linked as it is with the first, is again about reducing Russian share of the market and allowing for the shale-oil sector to expand. Since this expansion will theoretically come at the expense of Russian oil, the Saudis would still benefit.

There is as such a Saudi-US consensus behind the dropped oil prices. US President Donald Trump spoke on the phone to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the eve of the Vienna meeting, and their subject of discussion, according to the White House, was the “energy market.”

That the US and Saudi Arabia have a deep interest in squeezing out Russia’s share of the global hydrocarbon market is evident from the way the US has been trying to block and even sanction the joint Russian-German Nord Stream-2 pipeline project.

Who will win this war? Unlike the Saudis, Russia’s economy does not solely depend on oil prices, although it still does play a significant role in enabling the Russian government to fulfil its budgetary commitments. The Saudis would be thus at a loss much sooner than the Russians. If the US president called the Saudi ruler to discuss the “energy market” and it was mainly about finding ways of squeezing Russia, it was equally about finding a way to stabilise oil prices because the continuously falling oil prices would only make shale-oil companies suffer losses. According to a Bloomberg report, “The US shale sector is getting completely killed. A complete bloodbath. Billions of dollars in equity wiped out.”

Whereas some in the West think that this is a Saudi-Russian project to destroy the US economy, this is not the case; for, if both oil producers had wanted this, they could have done this by doing a new OPEC+ deal in a way that would have allowed a cut in prices and still maintain production levels at agreed levels. This has not happened, and given the nature of deep Saudi interests in the US, it is difficult to conceive of a Saudi project to ‘kill’ the US economy. What it signifies is an attempt at squeezing the Russian share of the market. This explains the Saudi proposal for cutting oil production (and thus allowing that of the shale-oil grow further). The falling oil prices only indicate that the project is failing; Russia is resilient and has enough reserves to sustain itself for a decade.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistani foreign and domestic affairs.

March 24, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Top Doctor at Moscow’s leading disease hospital says current Covid-19 crisis will likely last Six months

By Bryan MacDonald | RT | March 20, 2020

Coronavirus panic is already threatening a worldwide economic disaster, as millions are forced to live under lockdown. This has left many people wondering how long we can expect these circumstances to endure.

“When I call my parents, I say jokingly: ‘see you in September,'” Denis Protsenko has told RT. He’s the head doctor of Moscow’s main disease hospital in Kommunarka.

Protsenko believes that while the pandemic may slow in summer, it’s more like it will be autumn before the siege will be lifted. If the country has a similar experience to China, then the spread will decline in May or June, he believes, but “If we get an explosion along Italian lines, we will consider a September conclusion a good result.”

The doctor emphasized that stopping the spread of coronavirus in Moscow will require “draconian prevention measures,” including the strict enforcement of a two-week self-isolation regime. At the same time, he stressed his belief that the capital should be temporarily closed for quarantine, right now.

The candid observations of Protsenko differ from previous mainstream thought in Russia. For instance, popular TV presenter Alexander Myasnikov, who is himself a Doctor by trade, urged Russians not to panic but warned that the psychological condition of people, and the economy itself, means more than a month of strict quarantine regulations isn’t realistic. Myasnikov, and others, had expressed the belief that the worst of the crisis would be over by mid-April.

According to the latest data, 253 are infected with coronavirus in Russia. The official tally rose by 54 on Friday and 52 on Thursday. While Moscow has the most cases, infections are spread across the country, with six reported in the remote Yakutia region. Twelve patients in Russia have been given the all-clear and discharged. One woman, suffering from Covid-19, died in Moscow on Thursday, but an autopsy showed the cause of death was a blood clot, rather than respiratory issues. She had a range of pre-existing conditions.

March 21, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

‘Utter contempt for human life’: Iranian FM Zarif slams US for hitting Tehran with new sanctions amid Covid-19 crisis

RT | March 20, 2020

Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif accused the US of taking its policy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran to a “new level of inhumanity” by imposing new sanctions on Iran as it struggles to cope with a huge surge of Covid-19 cases.

Zarif tweeted on Friday that The Trump administration was “gleefully” taking pride in “killing Iranian citizens” on Nowruz, the Persian New Year, celebrated on March 20 this year. He said US policy betrayed an “utter contempt for human life.”

His rebuke comes shortly after the US blacklisted five companies based in the United Arab Emirates for trading in Iranian petrochemicals. Three companies in China, three in Hong Kong and one in South Africa were also added to the list this week, as Washington attempts to choke off Tehran’s oil revenues.

“Washington’s increased pressure against Iran is a crime against humanity… all the world should help each other to overcome this disease,” Reuters quoted an Iranian official as saying on Friday.

“Our policy of maximum pressure on the regime continues,” US special representative for Iran Brian Hook told reporters, even though Iran is the worst-hit country in the Middle East by the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak and may face economic catastrophe as a result.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that the US has imposed “no sanctions” on medication or humanitarian assistance going into Iran. However, US financial sanctions have in effect prevented Tehran from buying the necessary supplies, while shipping sanctions have interfered with humanitarian deliveries.

China has called on the US to offer sanctions relief to Iran, with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Beijing tweeting on Wednesday that the policy was “against humanitarianism and hampers Iran’s epidemic response,” as well as deliveries of aid by the UN and other organizations.

Iran has seen at least 1,400 deaths from Covid-19 so far, with more than 19,000 confirmed cases. A health ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday that one person in Iran was now dying “every 10 minutes” from the virus, with 50 new infections every hour.

March 20, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Australia assigned to be the U.S. Policeman in the Pacific

By Paul Antonopoulos | March 19, 2020

The U.S. is ramping up pressure on Australia to support hostilities against China in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Last week in Sydney, the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse, said that “We’ll be pushing Australia to expand its step-up from the Pacific islands region to south-east Asia and to look north as well.” The U.S., Australia and like-minded countries need to win in this strategic competition, the diplomat said. The Ambassador emphasized that in consultations between American and Australian foreign and defense ministers, the two sides will focus their efforts to further strengthen the Pacific step-up strategy.

The US Ambassador told the gathering of business leaders last Tuesday that Australia “sits on the frontline of the great strategic competition of our time.” “If the security and prosperity enjoyed by our countries and the region is to continue, this is a competition that we must win,” he said in indirect reference to China being the competition that must lose.

Australia’s Pacific strategy was adopted in 2016 under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to assert Australia’s position as the policeman for the U.S. in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. The Pacific step-up strategy defines the Australian government’s approach to economic and strategic interaction with Pacific Island nations. However, this is just the friendly face of the strategy and rather it is primarily aimed at maintaining regional balance to counter China’s growing influence in the region. China signed an Action Program with eight Pacific Island nations at the October 2019 3rd China Economic Development Cooperation Forum and Pacific Islands held in Samoa. These countries’ support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative was confirmed.

As the U.S. is dealing with the growing influence of China and attempting to counter it all over the globe, Washington is relying on Australia to serve as a counterbalance to China in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. However, as the coronavirus continues to grow out of control in the U.S., it is likely that Washington is going to take its focus off the South Pacific for a long while. This will give Australia autonomy to act on Washington’s behalf and it appears that U.S. President Donald Trump immensely trusts the Australians in this role, so-much-so that  he honored the fellow Anglo-settler state by naming a new navy ship the USS Canberra, the only U.S. Navy warship named after a foreign city.

Australia wilfully wants to play a role that the U.S. assigned to them in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific so that it can more strongly assert its power on the region. Australia considers the small island countries of the South Pacific as an area within its sphere of influence. Canberra has a need to expand its weight in Southeast Asia, but finds this challenging as the region includes countries of larger populations and economies, such as Thailand and Indonesia.

Although Canberra wants to serve Washington’s interests in the region, Australia is a completely deindustrialized neoliberal country that does not have the means or capacity to challenge rising Southeast Asian countries and rather serves as a raw resource marketplace for the world. The U.S. is losing influence in Southeast Asia to China, and therefore Washington is relying on Australian support, hedging its bet on a common Anglo colonial-settler history to make Canberra receptive.

In this situation, Australia faces a very difficult choice as there is a clear divide between the economic community and the political class in regards to China policy. China is Australia’s most important economic partner, while the U.S. is Canberra’s most important security partner, so-much-so that Australia followed the U.S. to adventurist wars of aggression in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. China and Australia have established free trade areas and this agreement allows them to quickly increase the volume of bilateral trade. Therefore, the political will of Canberra is certain to face resistance from capitalist interests in the country as it wholly relies on China and other Southeast Asian countries for trade.

However, Australia is bound by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy that aims to use American allies like Australia, Japan, India and others, to counter China’s increasing influence. This is done by enhancing military cooperation between these countries and does not serve any economic role like the Belt and Road Initiative. As China finds the Indo-Pacific Strategy as an aggressive force aimed against it, it is likely that under economic pressure, Australia will try to balance relations, despite the political will and determination of Canberra to act as the U.S’ policeman in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

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

March 19, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Wash Your Hands—but Beware the Electric Hand Dryer

“Electric towels” were supposed to prevent the spread of contagious disease. What if they’ve been doing the opposite?

By Tom Bartlett | Wired | 03.06.2020

The spread of Covid-19 has turned us into a nation of hand-washing obsessives, citizens who vigorously interlace our fingers and circle-scrub our thumbs with an exacting, anxiety-fueled intensity. But it’s not over when you flip off the faucet: Drying your hands matters too, because damp skin provides a hospitable environment for microorganisms and, as a result, might increase the likelihood that you’ll pass on pathogens.

So now, as we confront what could be a society-altering disease outbreak, it seems worth taking a hard look at the widely reviled yet seemingly ubiquitous electric hand dryer. Are they as hygienic as paper towels, as their manufacturers claim?

The earliest pitches for hand dryers played up their supposed ability when it comes to “preventing the spread of contagious disease,” as a 1924 newspaper ad for the Airdry Electric Towel put it. More recently, Dyson, whose Airblade hand dryer promises to “scrape water from hands like a windshield wiper,” has bragged that its HEPA air filter captures particles as tiny as .3 microns in diameter, much like the N95 face masks that are now selling for AirPod Pro–equivalent prices on Amazon.

But the quality of the intake filter doesn’t address whether blowing air at high speeds is a smart idea given that it may be sending droplets and particles from your just-washed hands flying rapidly every which way. When you dig into the science on hand dryers, you’ll come across reason to be concerned. A study published in 1989 found that gentler, old-style hand dryers blew bacteria over a three-foot radius and onto the user’s clothes, which considering the era was probably an acid-washed jean jacket.

A 2018 study produced even more troubling results, finding that “potential pathogens and spores” could be “dispersed throughout buildings and deposited on hands by hand dryers.” It tested conventional hot-air models with and without filters and determined that the filters “most likely reduce the number of potentially pathogenic bacteria with the potential to colonize hands but do not eliminate the risk entirely.” A 2015 study found that super-aggro hand-dryers like the ones made by Dyson, which use higher-speed jets of air at room temperature, “produced significantly greater aerosolization of virus on the hands” than the traditional kind. Paper towels, meanwhile, were found to cause about the same amount of viral spread as hot-air models.

A 2012 analysis of 12 studies over four decades published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings concluded that “[f]rom a hygiene viewpoint, paper towels are superior to electric air dryers” and that they should be used in “locations in which hygiene is paramount, such as hospitals and clinics.” Though it could be argued that hygiene should be paramount in the restroom of, say, your neighborhood Panera Bread, too. The analysis did find that dryers like Dyson’s “led to much less bacterial transfer than hot air dryers.”

So does that tell us anything about whether hand dryers could spread a virus like the one that causes Covid-19? I called Peter Setlow, a biochemist at the University of Connecticut and one of the authors of that 2018 study. Setlow is a “spore guy” not an infectious disease expert, but he nonetheless came away from that research with a deep and abiding distrust of hand dryers regardless of the model. “Sorry, hand-dryer industry,” he told me. “My personal opinion is that they shouldn’t be used.”

There’s been understandable blowback from the hand-dryer industry, which questions the methodology of some of this research and notes that certain studies pegging hand dryers as disease vectors—including the one cited above, from 2015—were carried out by researchers who had worked as consultants for paper-towel manufacturers. This is true in some, though not all, cases. Dyson got in on the game by funding a study, published last April, that found—surprise!—hands dried with the company’s own Airblade harbored fewer bacteria than those dried with paper towels.

There’s reason to be skeptical of last year’s paper. In the study, subjects “slowly” moved their hands in and out of the machine for a full minute, something no normal human is ever going to do. Besides, Dyson says elsewhere that the model dries hands satisfactorily in a mere 12 seconds, so which is it? More importantly, that study only looked at the bacteria left behind on hands post-drying, not whether particles might have been blown onto your clothes.

It’s not just a matter of public health: There are fortunes at stake in the science war between the paper-towel and hand-dryer industries. Multifold paper towels, the kind commonly used in bathrooms, are a several-billion-dollar-a-year behemoth, and one recent estimate of the global market for hand dryers puts the number at a shade under $800 million, and growing. This is big money and obviously no company wants their products to be viewed as more likely to make people sick. Dyson has made the case that, while other brands of hand dryers might spread disease, its products are perfectly safe even in hospitals. Karen Holeyman, lead research scientist and microbiologist at Dyson, also notes via email that “Dyson Airblade™ hand dryers are proven hygienic,” and referred to its HEPA air filter.

Yet it’s hard to read the scientific papers without concluding that, well, paper is the way to go. If the science seems to lean in that direction, though, why have electric dryers continued to claim more and more tiled territory? For starters, they do have undeniable upsides. Unlike paper towels, hand dryers don’t create waste and they’re drastically cheaper over time. The annual cost for paper towels in a public restroom can easily top a thousand dollars, while the electricity required to run a hand dryer costs about a fifth of that, according to one estimate.

But focusing on paper towel prices seems a little ridiculous when epidemiologists are calculating death rates. We’re at a moment when hand-washing must be taken very seriously. The same is true for hand-drying. Electric hand dryers appear to be a modern, more responsible solution to an everyday problem—but one that may not live up to its billing.

March 15, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Ace Up Their Sleeve: US Media Outlet Says Russian Oil Companies Can Survive Price of $15 Per Barrel

By Tim Korso | Sputnik | March 12, 2020

Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak earlier stated that the sudden drop in crude prices, which happened following the collapse of the OPEC+ deal, doesn’t mean that Russian oil companies will stop being competitive on the global market.

Russian oil companies could survive and compete on par with their Saudi rivals even if the price of black gold drops to 15 to 20 dollars per barrel, Bloomberg reported, citing several energy analysts. This is possible due to a number of strengths of the country’s oil industry, as well as to precautions taken by Moscow in the aftermath of the last price drop.

“Russian companies can ensure sustainable production until oil hits $15 to $20 per barrel”, Karen Kostanian, an oil and gas analyst at Bank of America, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

The news outlet notes that due to having well-developed infrastructure, as well as cost-efficient railways and pipelines, major Russian oil companies can extract and transport crude at a price of $17 – including capital and operational expenditures.

Taxes and duties would not prevent them from working at extremely-low prices either, since Moscow established a floating tax rate after the last oil price dive in 2016. This means that instead of paying 40% of their revenue when oil prices were near $50, they will be paying next to nothing at prices under $20, Bloomberg reported, citing Senior Director at Fitch Ratings Dmitry Marinchenko.

“Under the current tax regime, it is the Russian state that shoulders most of the risks associated with low oil prices”, Marinchenko said.

Naturally, this means that the Russian budget, which is prepared for oil prices of around $40, will not receive some of the money from selling the crude, but at the same time Moscow still has the capacity to survive a relatively short-term price war, the media outlet said. According to Moscow-based analyst for Raiffeisenbank Andrey Polischuk, quoted by Bloomberg, such a war would only begin to affect Russia after three to five years, while the last price dip was over sooner than that.

In addition to this, Russian oil producers also benefit from the ongoing weakening of the national currency, the media outlet stressed. Because they are mostly paid in foreign currencies for their exports and most of their costs are denominated in rubles, they actually benefit from the current decline. When crude prices plunged and the ruble to dollar exchange rate doubled in 2016, one of Russia’s top oil producers, Rosneft, made use of the abnormal situation by boosting its capital spending by 66%. At the same time, other oil producers were forced to cut their spending that year, as their revenues dropped drastically.

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Taiwanese Nationalists Seek Closer Relations with China

By Paul Antonopoulos | March 12, 2020

In the the Kuomingtang (KMT), the Nationalist Party of Taiwan, election held on Saturday, Jiang Kai (commonly known in the West as Johnny Chiang) was selected as a new head of the political party. According to Taiwanese media, Jiang Kai will change the KMT’s policy towards mainland China. The press draws such conclusions based on the KMT’s new president’s statement about the 1992 consensus, also known as the One China Consensus, as “somewhat outdated.”

In the presidential election held on January 11, KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu, a former mayor of Kaohsiung City, lost to Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In addition, the DPP still occupies the majority of seats in the Legislature.

In the election for the new party chairman, Jiang Kai only had a single opponent – the former Taipei mayor, Zhu Lilun (commonly known in the West as Eric Chu). He overcame his opponent with 84,860 votes compared to 38,483 votes, however it is worth noting that only 35% of voters bothered to vote. Taiwanese authorities claim that such a low rate is due to the coronavirus epidemic. In his speech after announcing the conclusion of voting, Jiang revealed that the KMT needs to make some changes to meet the spirit of the times, and he will make these changes within a year. The KMT are no longer as conservative as they once used to be, and in this way, Jiang is hoping to attract a part of the DPP’s voters who are generally younger and more progressive than the KMT.

For example, the KMT opposes same-sex marriage, but the law is still valid because the DPP legislature occupies the majority of seats. And among young Taiwanese, not just in the LGBT community, the legalization of such relationships is considered the greatest achievement since democracy reached Taiwan. An even more important contradiction between the two parties: the so-called 1992 consensus and the concept of “one China” (united China). The DPP does not recognize this consensus and the KMT has supported relations with mainland China, something the DPP are extremely hostile to. Clearly, the KMT now wants to move on to resolve internal issues, such as attracting new voters, and then resolve relations with Beijing. That’s why the KMT must begin entertaining the idea of making some changes to the 1992 consensus.

How will the new KMT party chairman and changes in the party’s policy affect Beijing? The last election showed that the DPP won the populist wave in the context of social disturbances in Hong Kong, and now they are also using the Covid-19 epidemic for political purposes to prove the validity of not strengthening relations with Beijing. The anti-Beijing DPP has prevented relations from becoming closer with Taipei, despite Taiwan’s economy suffering greatly just because its relationship with mainland China has cooled. This economic factor was especially felt when Beijing stopped granting licenses to travel companies to go to Taiwan which saw the number of tourists decrease by nearly a third. Agricultural imports into mainland China have plummeted, even though two years ago China purchased 20% of agricultural products worth nearly $1 billion. Taking into account the damage that coronavirus outbreaks has caused worldwide, economic development may become the most important task. The KMT will then try to balance domestic political interests and not move too far away from mainland China.

This spells bad news for the U.S. as they have been the main backers of Taiwan since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 when the KMT were defeated by communist guerrillas and forced to leave the Chinese mainland. Taiwan’s modern history lays with the U.S.-backed authoritarian regime of General Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the KMT. Chiang then imposed martial law and became dictator of Taiwan for the next 38 years, before a gradual democratization was achieved and presidential elections in 1996. The resentment of losing mainland China to the communists and the permanent deployment of tens of thousands of American soldiers has ensured that Taiwan, an island located just off the coast of China’s Fujian province, is a major U.S. pressure point against Beijing.

Although the days of Chiang and the KMT believing they are an exile government is long over, they still believe in One China, a stark difference to that of the DPP who want complete sovereignty and independence in their own right and reject One China. With the KMT seeking closer relations with Beijing despite once being mortal enemies, their inevitable return to power in the future could mean that they will begin to de-Americanize Taiwan as they seek closer relations, particularly for stability and economic reasons, with China, recognizing that we now live in a multipolar world order.

A de-Americanized Taiwan effectively means that the U.S. will lose a major submissive partner that acted as a thorn to Chinese hegemony in the South China Sea, and it is unlikely that Washington will accept this reality so easily. None-the-less, as the KMT changes its policies to attract the younger generation, it can see a real potential for One China to be achieved and the U.S. expelled from the island just as calls for the U.S. military to leave South Korea and Japan also intensify.

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

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

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