President of large pharma co. and leading doctor among 2,200 famous people caught falsifying vaccine passports
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 8, 2022
Police in Spain have uncovered at least 2,200 famous people, including José María Fernández Sousa-Faro, the President of PharmaMar, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Spain, holding false COVID-19 vaccination certificates bought from a nurse. EuroWeekly News has the story.
Amongst those that have been investigated are leading singers, musicians, football stars, business people, politicians and top medical personnel.
The scandal involved people being added to the National Immunisation Registry in exchange for money, with many of them familiar faces and household names.
The latest of these to be charged is the President of PharmaMar José María Fernández Sousa-Faro, an IBEX 35 company, and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Spain. The company is dedicated to researching drugs including cancer, Alzheimer’s and yes, COVID-19.
The 76-year-old businessman, who has not yet been summoned to testify, was included in the lists to reflect that he had received the third dose.
The leader of the network was a nursing assistant at the La Paz University Hospital, where he is accused of charging more than €200,000 euros for fraudulently registering 2,200 people as vaccinated in the National Registry against COVID-19. He has been arrested and is currently in custody.
Among those accused are Bruno González Cabrera, a defender who played for Betis, Getafe, Levante and Valladolid. Fabio Díez Steinaker in beach volleyball, runner-up in Europe and fifth in the Sydney Olympic Games. The former Valencian boxer and wrestler José Luis Zapater, alias Titín, who starred in more than a thousand fights.
The famous people investigated so far includes: José María Fernández Sousa-Faro, President of PharmaMar; Trinitario Casanova, one of the richest men in Spain; Kidd Keo, singer; Anier, rap singer; Jarfaiter, rap singer; Veronica Echegui, actress; Bruno Gonzalez Cabrera, soccer player; Fabio Díez Steinaker, former beach volleyball Olympian; José Luis Zapater, alias Titín, former boxer; Camilo Esquivel, recognised and prestigious doctor.
According to the police who are investigating the 2,200 over false COVID-19 vaccination certificates, the fee was dependent on your social standing. The more important you were, the higher the price.
This story broke at the end of last month but has received scant attention in the media. Some may say it is obvious this kind of thing is going on – though I’m not sure the public would see it that way. For sceptics, the real crime is coercing people to be vaccinated against their own assessment of the benefits and risks. Since such a law is clearly contrary to any reasonable conception of personal autonomy and human rights, should we really blame people for finding a way around it?
Let’s not forget the biggest scandal here: that the president of a pharmaceutical company would be so wary of taking a drug which all the trials and medical authorities insist is safe and effective. What does he know that he’s not letting on?
Popular Ukrainian Zelensky critic arrested in Spain
Samizdat | May 5, 2022
Prominent blogger and critic of the Ukrainian government, Anatoly Shariy, has been detained by Spanish police as part of an international operation, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced on Thursday.
Shariy was arrested on Wednesday in a joint operation by Spanish and Ukrainian cops, as well as international “partners”, the SBU said in a statement.
The agency, Kiev’s successor to the Soviet KGB, said that the opposition figure is wanted on charges of treason by Kiev, among other things. Shariy has been infringing Ukraine’s national security through his activities in the media realm, while allegedly acting on behalf of “foreign” forces, it insisted. The case against the YouTuber with almost 3 million subscribers was launched in February 2021.
Shariy’s arrest “is more proof that every traitor of Ukraine will sooner or later receive his well-deserved punishment. It is inevitable,” the SBU claimed.
The Ukrainian announcement was confirmed by the Spanish police, who told RIA-Novosti that Shariy was detained in the coastal city of Tarragona on May 4 on an international arrest warrant.
Shariy had been granted political asylum in the EU by Lithuania back in 2012. Back then, he said that he was fleeing persecution by the government of Viktor Yanukovich, whom the Western media branded pro-Russian.
Yanukovich was deposed after the Maidan coup in 2014, but the blogger remained a harsh critic of authorities in Ukraine, be it President Petro Poroshenko or his successor Volodymyr Zelensky.
He condemned Russia’s military operation in Ukraine after it was launched in late February but kept pointing out what he saw as flaws in Kiev’s conduct during the ongoing conflict.
The blogger’s political asylum was cancelled by Lithuania in January this year.
Shariy was absent from social media on Wednesday, but on Thursday he took to Telegram to share a photo of his wife feeding parrots in Barcelona, accompanying it with a comment reading: “This really is a comedy.”
According to media reports, the blogger was released from Spanish custody and placed under travel restrictions. He’s to remain in Barcelona where he has a home pending a decision on his extradition to Ukraine.
President Zelensky’s representative at the Constitutional Court has already expressed confidence that Shariy will “face a Ukrainian court and will be held liable in line with Ukrainian laws.”
Mexican president updates position on Ukraine conflict
Samizdat | April 10, 2022
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has denounced “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” after weeks of trying to remain neutral on the conflict. However, he managed to do so while reminding the world that some of Moscow’s fiercest critics have previously invaded his own country.
“We do not accept Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because we have suffered from invasions,” Lopez Obrador said on Saturday in a video message. Mexico has at various times been on the receiving end of invasions by the US, France and Spain.
Lopez Obrador issued his video statement to be included in Saturday’s ‘Stand Up for Ukraine’ fundraising event, a campaign that organizers claim seeks to raise money for humanitarian relief to Ukrainian refugees. The Mexican president declined Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invitation to attend the event, but he agreed to release a statement speaking out against the “Russian invasion.”
Lopez Obrador’s comments likely weren’t as pointed as some of his critics would have liked. He stopped short of accusing Russia of war crimes, as Trudeau and US President Joe Biden have done, and he gave no indication that Mexico would join in imposing sanctions against Moscow. He spoke more in generalities about his opposition to war, rather than condemning specific actions by Russia.
“We are in favor of a peaceful solution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” he said. “Peace must be reached so that neither the people of Ukraine nor the people of Russia nor any other nation in the world continues to suffer from such absurdity because wars are disgraceful and must never be sought.”
Lopez Obrador’s comments come amid political turmoil at home. He faces a vote on Sunday over whether he should stay in office for the three years remaining on his term – the first such referendum in Mexico’s history. He called for the vote himself in order to confirm democratic support for his policies, a move that opponents criticized as a costly political stunt.
Striking truckers reject Spain’s half-billion euro offer
Samizdat | March 22, 2022
Striking truckers have rejected Madrid’s offer of a hefty subsidy to offset rising diesel prices, which the government had hoped would shut down a work stoppage that has snarled traffic across the country.
Transport Minister Raquel Sanchez pledged to introduce a $551.35 million (€500 million) subsidy in direct aid to the industry on Tuesday after meeting with the National Road Transport Committee.
However, while Sanchez pointed out the measure was similar to moves taken by France, Portugal, and Italy to shore up their own industries in the face of skyrocketing fuel prices, there will be no reduction in the value-added tax (VAT) on fuel, and strike organizers the Platform for the Defense of Transport did not attend the meeting, calling the government’s announcement “insufficient.”
Three Spanish truckers’ unions opted to join the Platform’s strike on Tuesday, potentially aggravating a food shortage across the country as trucks are already having difficulty making deliveries on time. The unions denounced the plan, scheduled to be approved March 29, in a joint statement, pointing out that it “doesn’t specify what it will comprise, how it will work, and, more importantly, how much aid each trucker would get.”
Drivers loosely allied under the banner of the Platform stopped work last Monday, faced with a surge in diesel prices, demanding the government lower taxes and roll back regulations. “Until we negotiate the real problems faced by small truck drivers, there will be no suspension [of the strike],” Platform president Manuel Hernandez told Reuters on Monday, saying drivers must be protected from taking on losses or else they faced “total bankruptcy”.
Finance Minister Nadia Calvino, however, told reporters that the truckers should not reject the offer and that those who would “are clearly showing they do not defend the interests of this sector.”
The government’s plan was offered up following a European Commission meeting on a draft proposal for temporary crisis aid aimed at propping up the continent’s ailing economy as inflation and fuel prices soar, in part due to the sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its ongoing military offensive in Ukraine.
While the EU receives more than 40% of its natural gas supply from Russia, the alliance is reportedly considering an embargo on oil from the country as part of the latest round of sanctions aimed at economically crippling the country. More than half of Russia’s oil exports are sent to Europe. However, several European countries, including Germany and Bulgaria, have suggested a total ban on Russian fuel is a bridge too far.
Madrid has dismissed the truckers, branding them as unorganized and attempting to link them to far-right extremists. Spain has mobilized a reported 23,000 police in an effort to crush the strike.
Spanish Officials to Hire Foreign Snitch Squads to Report on Illegal House Parties
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | August 3, 2021
Under the justification of stopping the spread of COVID-19, officials on the Spanish island of Ibiza are planning to hire teams of snitch squads made up of foreigners who will report illegal house parties to the authorities.
Yes, really.
Organizers of illegal parties face gigantic fines of up to €600,000 euros, but that apparently hasn’t deterred some people from risking financial ruin after local authorities once again shut down nightclubs and imposed a ban on mixed household gatherings from 1am to 6am.
Local official Mariano Juan appealed for “outside help” after explaining that it was hard for police to infiltrate the parties because officers were known to locals.
He added that authorities are working with a private company to hire “foreigners between 30 and 40 years old” who can infiltrate the parties and then report back to police.
In other words, the government is hiring private snitch squads to grass people up for having fun in their own homes.
“The idea has… been heavily criticised by the Socialist party, which leads the regional administration covering Ibiza,” reports the Guardian. “A spokesperson, Vicent Torres, called on the island’s officials to put forth “serious proposals that have legal backing” rather than “acting irresponsibly by launching ideas that we cannot agree to.”
Draconian efforts to enforce coronavirus rules are still underway despite a recent ruling by Spain’s top court which concluded that the country’s lockdown was unconstitutional.
Spain’s lockdown was characterized by innumerable dystopian facets that confirmed it as one of the most brutal in Europe.
During the first six weeks of the lockdown, stay at home measures were so strict that Spaniards weren’t even allowed to go outside to exercise or walk their dogs.
In one case, police were called after a neighbor spotted two brothers playing soccer in their own back yard.
For many months during hot weather, wearing masks in every outdoor setting, even on beaches, was compulsory and authorities briefly told citizens that wearing masks while swimming in the sea was mandatory.
People were also issued fines of €2,000 euros for “disrespecting” a police officer during lockdown.
Numerous instances of police beating people for not wearing masks also emerged, while protesters at one point freed a woman from police arrest while cops were trying to handcuff her for not wearing a face covering.
Spain’s Top Court Rules That Lockdown Was Unconstitutional
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | July 14, 2021
Spain’s top court has ruled that the country’s national COVID-19 lockdown was unconstitutional following a lawsuit filed by the populist Vox party.
“While leaving intact most of the state of emergency’s terms, the court said that the key articles ordering the population off the streets except for shorts trips for shopping and unavoidable commutes for work and other official business were unconstitutional,” reports the Associated Press.
“According to TVE, the ruling said that the limitations on movement violated citizens´ basic rights and therefore the state of emergency was insufficient to give them constitutional backing. The six magistrates said that a state of exception, which does allow the government to suspend basic rights, would have been necessary.”
During the first six weeks of the lockdown, stay at home measures were so strict that Spaniards weren’t even allowed to go outside to exercise or walk their dogs.
In one case, police were called after a neighbor spotted two brothers playing soccer in their own back yard.
As we previously highlighted, Spain’s lockdown laws were so draconian that at one point authorities briefly told citizens that wearing masks while swimming in the sea was mandatory.
For many months during hot weather, wearing masks in every outdoor setting, even on beaches, was compulsory.
People were also issued fines of €2,000 euros for “disrespecting” a police officer during lockdown.
Numerous instances of police beating people for not wearing masks also emerged, while protesters at one point freed a woman from police arrest while cops were trying to handcuff her for not wearing a face covering.
Early on during the first lockdown, police helicopters fitted with loudspeakers were also used to aggressively order beachgoers to go home.
The Spanish government many now face multiple lawsuits as a result of the lockdown being declared unlawful.
Spain allows Israeli agent to interrogate Palestinian journalist in Madrid
MEMO | April 15, 2021
The Spanish security services have allowed an Israeli agent from the Mossad spy agency to interrogate a Palestinian journalist seeking asylum, Wafa news agency has reported. The incident at the Civil Guard building in the capital has been condemned by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.
The syndicate called on the Spanish government to assume its responsibilities by ensuring the security of Muath Hamid and his family. It also called for the Spanish authorities to open an investigation into what happened during the interrogation.
Spain’s Civil Guard is the oldest law enforcement agency in the country and “military in nature”. The journalists’ union said that it is suspected of being “complicit” with Mossad in allowing the Israeli agent to interrogate Hamid in its building. “This was a gross violation of international law, a violation of Spanish sovereignty and a threat to the journalist’s security and safety,” the syndicate insisted.
It added that the case is being followed closely in conjunction with the Union of Spanish Journalists, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry, and the Spanish political and security authorities to ensure that Hamid is not subject to any harm or torture. The reporter for Al Araby TV and freelance contributor to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed is currently a refugee in Spain, where he lives with his wife and two children.
According to popular Spanish online newspaper Público last Friday, on 9 December Hamid received a telephone call from “Nicolás”, an officer on duty at the Civil Guard’s Spanish Information Services “Nicolás wanted to discuss Hamid’s work as a journalist, his past and his current life in Spain. This is a regular procedure for refugees and migrants.”
When the journalist went to meet “Nicolás” in Bilbao, he met another officer, Javier. “Hamid answered all the questions, explaining why he applied for asylum in Spain and describing his journey from Palestine to Europe through Turkey,” reported Público. “In early February, the young Palestinian journalist was summoned again by Nicolás… this time in the Spanish capital, Madrid.”
This time there was also another man in the room, allegedly named Omar, “who was introduced to him as a Palestinian. Hamid, however, immediately noticed his strong Israeli accent… and he decided to answer his questions in Hebrew.” Omar acknowledged that he was an Israeli, at which point Javier “left the room, leaving Muath in the hands of the supposed Mossad agent… who threatened the Palestinian journalist and his family, saying that they will never be allowed to go back to Palestine due to one of his journalistic investigations” related to the work of the Israeli spy agency.
Público sought comments and clarifications from the Israeli Embassy and the Civil Guard, as well as Spain’s Interior Ministry. It has received no replies.
Spanish Court Dismisses Criminal Complaint against BDS Activists
Palestine Chronicle | January 24, 2021
The Provincial Court in Valencia, Spain, has definitively dismissed a criminal complaint against eight Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists who had questioned the invitation for Jewish American singer Matisyahu to take part in the Rototom Festival in 2015.
The Court’s decision has been praised by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), an NGO based in Amsterdam that defends and empowers the Palestine solidarity movement in Europe through legal means.
“This is another milestone victory for the right to freedom of expression for those who defend Palestinian rights in Spain,” said a spokesperson for the Centre.
The Court acknowledged in its hearing earlier this month that criticism of the Israeli government’s practices against the Palestinians does not constitute an incitement to hatred.
Objecting to a singer’s participation in a festival that is committed to respecting human rights, when the objections are based on his personal support for the practices of the State of Israel, the Court determined, is not a criminal act. It is, rather, reflective of a legitimate form of activism in support of Palestinian rights.
Spain Rejects Extradition of Orlando Figuera’s Murderer – Black Chavista Burned Alive in 2017
Enzo Franchini Oliveros inside the red circle. File photo.
Orinoco Tribune | October 2, 2020
A Spanish Justice on Wednesday rejected the extradition of the Venezuelan Enzo Franchini Oliveros, who is requested in Venezuela for his participation, during the 2017 guarimbas, in the criminal action, where a group of people stabbed and burned alive 22-year-old Orlando Figuera, under the accusation of “being Chavista.”
The ruling issued by the Spanish National Court revokes the sentence adopted in June that ordered the extradition of Franchini on whom audiovisual evidence weighs that points at him as the material author of this action that resulted in the death of Figuera as a consequence of a cardiopulmonary arrest due to the collapse that registered his body after being stabbed six times and suffering for several days second and third degree burns in 54% of his body.
According to the EFE news agency, this judicial overturn, promoted by three magistrates, arises under the argument of understanding “the rational fear” of the accused, who alleged that in Venezuela his “fundamental rights” could be affected.
Contrary to this assertion, in the same ruling the rapporteur judges acknowledge that “the seriousness of the crime that motivates the extradition request (a hate crime) is undoubtedly considered,” while accepting the “lack of political connotations” in the extradition request on the part of the Venezuelan authorities.
They also acknowledge the absence of evidence that indicates a possible political persecution against Franchini by pointing out “the lack of data that allow us to conceive a special significance of the accused as an opposition political leader of the current Venezuelan government.”
Prior to this ruling, the first section of the Criminal Court of the National High Court agreed to extradite Franchini considering that all the requirements were met and after ruling out a motive of political persecution by not “glimpsing any element”, it stressed the importance of guaranteeing the application of justice against Franchini given “the connotation of the crime.”
Spanish Politics Jolted by Claims of Government Spying
By Cain Burdeau – Courthouse News – July 14, 2020
Spain was rocked Tuesday by allegations that the government may have hacked a smartphone used by the pro-independence president of the Catalan parliament and spied on him and others during a tense period in the run-up to a politically explosive trial against Catalan leaders.
Allegations that the Spanish state may have used an Israeli company’s hacking spyware to target Roger Torrent, the speaker and president of Catalonia’s regional parliament, were revealed in a joint investigation by the newspapers El País and The Guardian.
The domestic espionage claims open a new chapter in an emotional and epochal fight in Spain over the future of Catalonia and its capital Barcelona. About half of Catalonia’s population wants to secede from Spain. An unauthorized independence referendum in 2017 led to massive protests, police violence, the arrests of Catalan politicians and the criminal conviction of pro-independence leaders last October.
The newspaper reports about the hacking of Torrent’s phone sprang from a wide-ranging probe by digital experts at a Canadian university into allegations that authoritarian governments around the world have abused technology developed by Israeli hacker-for-hire firm NSO Group and taken control of cellphones to spy on dissidents, journalists, lawyers, activists, human rights advocates and opposition politicians. NSO is fighting numerous lawsuits in the United States and elsewhere against it over its spying program called Pegasus.
NSO claims no responsibility for how its Pegasus spyware is used by governments and says it only sells the spyware to governments to help them fight crime and terrorism. The Pegasus program can take control of a phone, its cameras and microphones, and mine the user’s personal data.
Spanish authorities denied any knowledge of the alleged spying on Torrent.
Andrew Dowling, an expert on Spanish politics and history at Cardiff University, said the allegations against Spanish authorities appear solid.
“In one sense it is not that surprising at all,” he said in an email to Courthouse News. It appears, he said, that “sectors of the Spanish security services act autonomously and are not fully subject to democratic control.”
Torrent called on the Spanish state to investigate the claims. He said he was unsure who was behind the hacking but he suspects state actors carried out the surveillance without judicial authority.
“The espionage I have been subjected to violates my right to privacy, the right to secrecy of communications and the right to be able to develop a political project without illegitimate interference,” Torrent said on Tuesday in a statement to media at the Catalan parliament. “It is inappropriate in a democracy that state apparatuses illegally spy on political opponents.”
He charged that the evidence confirms the Spanish state is seeking to use illegal means to squash Catalonia’s drive for independence.
“This is the first time, therefore, that what many of us already knew and have been denouncing for a long time has been conclusively proven: espionage against political opponents is practiced in Spain,” he said.
He said he was told about the alleged hacking by newspaper reporters and that he feared his smartphone’s camera and microphone were remotely turned on to spy on him. He said the Pegasus program allowed hackers to listen to all his conversations on the phone and those that took place while the phone was close at hand. He said conversations he had with politicians, trade union members, economic leaders and international representatives had been put at risk.
“This type of software is intended for use in investigating complex and serious crimes, such as terrorism or drug trafficking,” Torrent said. He said watchdogs, including United Nations Rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye and Amnesty International, have warned that governments in Morocco, Mexico and Saudi Arabia have abused the Pegasus software to spy on opponents.
“Now,” he said, “we know that this practice has also occurred in Spain.”
He said Catalan authorities will “take all political and legal action” to “get to the bottom of the matter.”
The hacking of Torrent’s phone was confirmed by Citizen Lab, a center that researches digital threats, the newspapers reported. Citizen Lab is working with the social media platform WhatsApp to find improper hacking that took place around the world in April and May 2019 by exploiting a previous weakness in WhatsApp. The lab is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
Besides Torrent, a former Catalan parliamentarian, Anna Gabriel, and pro-Catalan activist Jordi Domingo also were hacked, according to the newspapers. Gabriel fled Spain after the Spanish state cracked down on the Catalan independence drive in 2017 and she remains in exile in Switzerland. Other Catalan politicians, most notably former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, also fled Spain to avoid arrest. Puigdemont is a member of the European Parliament and condemned the alleged domestic espionage on Tuesday.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, said on Twitter that there is a “troubling sign of a pattern of political hacking in Spain.”
The newspaper reports said WhatsApp believes the hacking took place between April and May 2019 and involved 1,400 of its users around the world. Until now, European governments had not been linked to the hacking attack.
WhatsApp is suing the NSO Group in the U.S. and charges that the Pegasus program was used to hack more than 100 journalists, human rights activists, diplomats and government officials in various countries around the world. The Pegasus program has been linked to surveillance of associates of slain Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Citizen Lab says Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and India have been linked to abusive use of the spyware to target civil society.
Citizen Lab says the software is among the world’s most sophisticated commercial spyware and can be deceptively placed on phones without a user’s knowledge or permission. Once the software infects a phone, hackers can obtain a person’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls, Citizen Lab says. Hackers can also turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to monitor activity in the phone’s vicinity and track someone’s movements through GPS, the group says.
On Monday, NSO won a case in an Israeli court brought by Amnesty International seeking to stop the company from selling its software around the world.
Spanish authorities said they were not behind the hacking of Torrent’s phone.
The newspapers said the National Intelligence Center, Spain’s domestic and foreign intelligence service, issued a statement saying it acts “in full accordance with the legal system” and that its work is overseen by Spain’s Supreme Court.
Socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez also issued a statement saying his “government has no evidence” that Torrent was hacked, according to the newspapers. The hacking allegations have the potential to sour relations between Sanchez and Catalan politicians upon whose cooperation he depends in the Spanish parliament.
The hacking allegedly took place while Sanchez was prime minister and may erode trust in the Socialist leader’s promises to open dialogue with the Catalan separatists to find a political solution to demands for Catalan independence.
Torrent called on Sanchez to live up to his pledges, he is leading a progressive government in coalition with the far-left Podemos party.
“A government that claims to be the most progressive in history cannot allow such practices to go unpunished,” Torrent said. “We cannot make it normal for there to be prospective wiretaps, to criminalize a peaceful and democratic movement.”
Dowling, the Cardiff University expert, doubted the Spanish state or European Union institutions will investigate the allegations.
“Spain has little tradition of independent investigation into political scandals, however deep,” he said. “The fact that it has had widespread European coverage will be embarrassing but I don’t perceive the EU intervening in what it will consider to be the internal affairs of the Spanish state.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Profits before People: Spanish Company CAF to Join Illegal Construction around Occupied Jerusalem
By Santiago González Vallejo | Palestine Chronicle | May 18, 2020
The controversial Israeli expansion project of the red tram or light rail line that will run through the occupied Palestinian area around Jerusalem is now entering a new phase.
Both the mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, and the Israeli infrastructure authorities seem to consider that the forced lockdown and the consequent reduction of activity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to speed up these works. Thus, their planning bodies have been instructed to accelerate the project, which was awarded to the JNET consortium.
JNET is a consortium made up of the Israeli engineering company, Shapir, and the Spanish company CAF, based in Beasain, in the Basque Country. Shapir has been identified by the United Nations Human Rights Council as one of 112 companies profiting from illegal occupation.
The JNET consortium is in charge of executing the extension of both the existing red line and the planned new blue tram line, which will cover also occupied Palestinian territories. Both projects have already been pre-planned, so there is now a go-ahead to accelerate the works in this new scenario, justified by the decrease in road traffic that will make it easier to work in relevant crossroads in the settlements.
The work will include both the excavation and laying of the railway infrastructure, as well as communications infrastructure, and possibly the laying of rails. The construction would be carried out in the Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Ze’ev settlements along Arthur Hanke and Henrietta Szold streets; and from the other end, they will proceed from Herzl Street on until the Ora crossing, and then to Hadassah Ein Kerem in the following stage.
Originally, the construction in these areas was scheduled to begin last October. According to the new plans, the work at the crossings will commence in the coming weeks, with the hope to advance construction as much as possible before the end of the lockdown, thus before regular traffic is restored.
Last February, Israel decided to reach a termination agreement with the former concessionaire of the Red CityPass tram line to take control of it and recover the concession, upon payment of compensations of around 420 million euros, awarding management control to the new JNET consortium.
Among the beneficiaries of this operation is the company Alsthom (a competitor of CAF) that held 50% of the CityPass shares, and which – in addition to earning a substantial capital gain – would receive an additional reward, since they would be in a position to request their exclusion from the list of companies that profit from their participation in activities promoting the occupation of Palestinian territories — not a petty matter that causes significant damage to the corporate image and prestige of the companies involved in those illegal activities and remains a heavy burden for their taking part in other international tenders.
On the contrary, the CAF management took the decision to obtain this contract, assuming that the risk would be minimal and that a long-term impact is unlikely.
The unquestionable fact is that Shapir, CAF’s Israeli partner, has been formally listed by the UN among companies profiting from the occupation and that CAF may be singled out as such by executing a project so unjustifiable that it violates innumerable United Nations resolutions, as well as the Geneva Convention. All of this is taking place in a favorable political context for Israel, where right-wing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his former rival Benny Gantz are now both part of a joint national unity government. A top priority on this new government’s agenda is the annexation of some illegal settlements and of 30% of the occupied West Bank.
The choice of CAF CEOs and managers to remain in the consortium and obtain short-term profits stains the corporate image of the company, and will most definitely harm the relationship with other international vendors.
CAF managers now stand on shaky grounds. Their partaking in the Israeli violation of international law in occupied Palestine is destroying the credibility of a company that has been, otherwise, exemplary in many other respects. CAF’s miscalculations will also increase the risks for the company’s shareholders and workers, and, needless to say, the very government that protects CAF’s operations.
– Santiago González Vallejo is the head of the Comité de Solidaridad de la Causa Arabe (CSCA).
Europe: Over 520,000 coronavirus cases and almost 38,000 deaths
By Robert Stevens | WSWS | April 3, 2020
European countries, including Spain and the UK, announced record-high daily coronavirus death tolls Thursday. With the 4,199 new deaths yesterday, 37,864 have already perished in Europe. There have been more than 521,000 cases of COVID-19 infections on the continent including 33,661 new cases.
In Spain, 950 died—the third consecutive day of a record high.
Italian Army soldiers monitoring cars and controlling the streets in Bari: (credit Twitter: Italian Army)
In the UK, the death rate has quadrupled in a week. In just four days since Monday, 1,693 coronavirus deaths have been announced—more than were recorded on all days up to March 29. The Department of Health and Social Care reported a record 569 deaths Thursday, taking the total to almost 3,000 (2,921). This was the second consecutive day Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced over 500 deaths. Wednesday’s 563 fatalities were a 31 percent increase on the previous day.
With an age range of the latest deaths between 22 and 100 years old, nearly 8 percent (44 people) of yesterday’s victims had no known underlying health conditions.
Britain is now showing the terrible daily toll commonplace in Italy and Spain, with the pandemic taking over 13,000 and 10,000 lives in those countries.
The UK infection rate has also shot up, with 4,324 new cases announced Wednesday and 4,244 Thursday. Total infections in the UK stand at 33,718 but are in reality much higher. Hardly any tests were done when the outbreak began, despite months of warnings. Three weeks ago, Johnson announced—as part of attempting to enforce his “herd immunity” policy aimed at infecting everyone in the country with coronavirus—that no systematic testing would be done and that everyone who showed symptoms should self-isolate.
More than 1.7 million people in the UK have likely caught coronavirus over the past 15 days. Data from the NHS 111 online service revealed that web-based assessments flagged 1,496,651 people as potential carriers; a further 243,543 calls to 111 and the 999 emergency number concluded callers had signs of COVID-19.
It was only after widespread outrage at its social Darwinist policy that the government was forced to pledge that widespread testing would be done. Even now, just 163,194 tests have been completed with yet another promise yesterday of 100,000 a day for the end of April. Only 2,000 of 550,000 National Health Service frontline workers have been tested.
The BBC’s head of statistics, Robert Cuffe, commented Thursday, “if that [UK death rate] keeps up, we’d expect to see in the region of a thousand deaths a day by the weekend.” Sky News economist Ed Conway noted that “For the past week or so,” the UK’s death rate has “been doubling every three days” and “if the growth rate continued like that, in a week’s time there would be 10,000 people dead and the UK would be on a far worse trajectory than Italy.”
An explanation of this steeper curve emerged late yesterday, when NHS England reported that the earliest death in the UK had in fact occurred on February 28, one week earlier than previously reported. In total, six people had died in hospital prior to March 5.
In Italy, 760 died Thursday, taking the total to almost 13,915. Two new studies suggested the true death toll could be significantly higher than reported. The InTwig data analysis firm reveals that while there were 4,500 deaths in the hardest-hit city of Bergamo, the Civil Protection Agency only reported 2,060 deaths. The University of Bergamo, using historical data from the national statistics office compared to current hospital data, showed that deaths in the north of Italy doubled in the first three weeks of March, compared with the average number of deaths during the same period between 2015 and 2019. The uncounted deaths were mostly elderly victims who were not admitted to hospital and never tested for the virus.
The government welfare assistance website remains down, leaving Italy’s most vulnerable unable to receive any COVID-19 scheme for financial support. An estimated 3.3 million Italians work in the black economy and don’t qualify for welfare support schemes. Twenty thousand army soldiers are deployed in southern Campania, Puglia and Sicily to patrol the streets amid rising tensions as citizens run out of food and money.
Germany announced 168 new deaths, taking the total to 1,099. After Berlin approved its “coronavirus aid programme”—a bailout worth €600 billion for the banks, corporations and the super-rich—anger among workers is growing. In the past days, health employees in hospitals, nursing homes and workers in businesses vital to the supply of the population’s needs have criticised catastrophic and unsafe working conditions.
Truck drivers, airport workers, delivery workers and steelworkers are also voicing opposition. A worker at the Outokumpu stainless steel group in Krefeld, speaking anonymously to the WSWS, said, “We’re all angry, feeling betrayed. Even those in risk groups still have to work. An info sheet says they should talk to the company doctor. I did that. He advised me to wash my hands and disinfect myself. But we don’t have any disinfectant, or face masks. I use keyboards, telephones, etc.”
In a dramatic development, France’s death toll shot up by 1,355. Previously, Emmanuel Macron’s government had only released the deaths of those who had died in hospital of coronavirus. Yesterday, it announced that 884 people had also perished in retirement and care homes. On top of the 471 hospital fatalities, this takes total deaths to 5,387. Other countries, including until recently Britain, have also not included those who died outside hospital in their fatality announcements to play down the scale of the catastrophe they are responsible for.
Aware of explosive social anger in workplaces, the Stalinist General Confederation of Labour (CGT) has issued an authorization for public sector workers outside the hospitals to strike in April. The CGT is not calling for strike action or opposition to President Emmanuel Macron, but cynically authorizing isolated action by individual workers while the union bureaucracy keeps working with the government to slash wages and social benefits.
Workers have mounted strikes or walked off the job at Amazon, in supermarkets, in the auto industry and in aeronautics. One worker at an air conditioner manufacturing plant told the press, “This epidemic has woken up a lot of people…now the masks are falling. Usually management manages to calm them down, but today they are seeing that even when it is a matter of life and death, management has no concern for them.”
Lockdowns throughout the continent have led to staggering job losses. The Financial Times reported Wednesday, “Unemployment is growing much faster than in previous recessions because the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus are felt most severely in low-wage, labour-intensive sectors such as retail, hospitality and other consumer-facing services.”
In the UK, more than 1 million people have been forced onto the welfare rolls in just two weeks. Austria reported Wednesday that unemployment now stood at over 12 percent—the highest level since records began in 1946. In Spain, over 900,000 people have been made unemployed since the outbreak began there. In Norway, unemployment has risen from 2.3 percent to 10.4 percent in little over a month. The Financial Times noted the government’s Labour and Welfare Administration statement that a quarter of tourism and transport workers and almost a fifth of retail workers were now claiming unemployment insurance.
The newspaper reported that in Germany, “some 470,000 companies have applied for government wage subsidies through the ‘Kurzarbeit,’ or short-hours, programme—almost five times higher than the 100,000 people who used the scheme during the 2008-2009 recession.”
Another indication of the devastating impact of the coronavirus on the working class is seen in the map produced by the Catalan regional government in Spain, showing that the virus is six or seven times more prevalent in Barcelona’s poorer areas than in wealthier areas.
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From the Archives
A Cautionary Tale About the WHO
By Larry Romanoff | Moon of Shanghai | May 10, 2020
There appears to be no shortage of claims from multiple informed and independent sources that the WHO has two primary functions, the first as a tool for world population reduction on behalf of its masters, and the second as a powerful marketing agent for big pharma, specifically the vaccine manufacturers. Many critics have pointed out that the ‘vaccination experts’ at the WHO are “dominated by the vaccine makers standing to gain from the enormously lucrative vaccine and antiviral contracts awarded by governments.” And indeed, the advisory and other committees involved with the WHO’s vaccine programs seem heavily populated with those who profit directly from those same programs.
Equally, the claims and concerns about population control and reduction are far from conspiracy theories today, with far too much evidence, some of it frightening, that this is indeed a major agenda of the WHO today. We have already seen too much hard evidence of this body’s involvement in both areas to justify dismissing the concerns as implausible fears. Moreover, there is a disturbing list of individuals closely associated with the WHO, who have had either population reduction or mass vaccinations as a pet project; individuals like David Rothschild, David Rockefeller, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Gates, and many more, the list including national organisations like the CDC, FEMA, the US Department of Homeland Security, the Rockefeller and Carnegie Institutes, the CFR, and others.
It is not difficult, on the basis of all the evidence, to conclude the WHO is an international criminal enterprise under the control of a core group, one with European corporate dynasties at its center which, as one writer noted, “provides the strategic leadership and funds the development, manufacturing and release of synthetic, man-made viruses solely to justify immensely profitable mass vaccinations”. We have seen so many instances of an unusual and apparently laboratory-made virus appearing without warning, the onset followed immediately by urgent worried pronouncements from the WHO of yet another mandatory mass vaccination. … continue
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