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Corporate Money Grab of 2020 Coronavirus Crisis Looks Similar to Taxpayer-Funded 2008 Bank Bailout

Sputnik – March 26, 2020

Despite a partisan struggle in the Senate which lasted days, the newly-agreed-upon coronavirus stimulus package was marked by all but universal support for corporate bailouts – the same measure that was tried to handle the 2008 financial crisis.

The Senate on Wednesday adopted the largest emergency aid package in US history, which was largely framed as a measure to protect workers’ jobs and wages.

That might not be entirely true, says Ryan Christian, the founder and editor of the alternative news outlet The Last American Vagabond.

Just another transfer of wealth?

“What is the real motivation behind this legislation?” he inquires. “Following the bail-out of 2008-2009, one of the largest transfers of wealth in US history, no one was truly held accountable, and the entities behind driving the policies that allowed that to take place were allowed to not only take the exact same actions moving forward, but to do so to an unprecedented degree to this day.

”The proposed aid package is worth $2.2 trillion and includes a $500 billion corporate bailout programme; tens of billions of dollars would be allocated out of that pot to distressed airlines and national security companies (those reportedly include Boeing).

That fund is similar to the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), which was established under the Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act of 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis. It ended up injecting $426.35 billion into troubled banks and auto companies, with a $15.3 billion profit. Damon Silvers, a member of the congressional panel that oversaw TARP’s loans, lamented that this body had played a “purely advisory role” (the lack of oversight is what many fear regarding the currently proposed bailout fund).

Although TARP’s support did help overcome the crisis, Silvers believes that it allowed banks to “bleed homeowners to rebuild their capital” and had a “terrible return for the risk that was taken with the public’s money.”

“Regardless of your opinions surrounding this coronavirus event, there are numerous agendas being both forced in, as well as covered up, using the very fear which the-powers-that-shouldn’t-be helped create,” says Ryan Christian.

“So as we continue to see this package increase by not billions, but TRILLIONS, we must begin to see the old familiar bail-out writing on the wall, before we once again awaken to find that wealth was siphoned from the dying middle class, in order to fund another decade of elitist economic adventurism at the expense of you and your family, and of course, the United States itself.”

Christian insists the public should make sure that the proposed act does not become “another PATRIOT Act-style subversion of our rights that forces every American to become even more beholden to an unaccountable power structure.”

States could fall short of what they need

Another $367 billion would be provided to small businesses to help them keep making payroll, in addition to multiple provisions designed to help them weather impending shutdowns and layoffs. And some $500 billion would be set aside for direct one-time payments to people ($1,200 per individual and $500 per child), coupled with an extra $600 per week for four months to jobless people on top of their state benefits.

Alan Gin, associate professor of economics at the University of San Diego, suggests that the $150 package for state and local governments will “probably fall well short of what is needed”.

New York Governor Cuomo, for example, gave a stinging rebuke of the bill on Wednesday, as it would only provide $3.8 billion to his state, compared with the $15 billion the pandemic stands to wipe off its budget.

“Dealing with the consequences of COVID-19 threatens to strain the budgets of state and local governments to the breaking point, which could lead to the curtailing of other services,” Alan Gin warns.

The other problem is with one-time checks: direct payments to individuals would be “the appropriate course of action if people could spend that money, but that is not the case now,” he argues. “Restaurants are closed, as are retail stores, and not many people are going to be taking vacations with that money. It would have been better if that money was directed to state and local governments instead.”

He concludes, however: “Although the proposed legislation is not perfect, it will help in trying to prevent a collapse of the US economy.” It remains to be seen at what cost.

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

Correctly Estimating Coronavirus Infections

By Ron Unz • Unz Review • March 25, 2020

The Coronavirus epidemic may soon produce the greatest American disaster since our Civil War over 150 years ago, and numbers reveal the possible magnitude.

For example, New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof on Sunday reported the disheartening analysis of Dr. Neil Ferguson of Britain, one of the world’s leading epidemiologists. According to Dr. Ferguson the “best case” scenario is that the Coronavirus will kill over a million Americans.

Other possible projections are far worse. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued orders completely locking down his entire state in order to halt the spread of the disease. He justified this decision by explaining that experts had warned him that without drastic changes in behavior, over 25 million Californians would become infected over the following couple of months. Such a calamity would obviously have produced to a total collapse of the state’s health care system, probably resulting in more than a million deaths. A million dead Californians by early summer…

The key to understanding the terrible danger of the Coronavirus is that there is no existing immunity and the disease is highly contagious. Therefore, under ordinary circumstances, the number of infected individuals tends to double every 3-6 days. A doubling-time of 3 days would multiply the ranks of the infected a thousand-fold during the course of a single month.

Thus, in late February Italian political leaders hardly regarded the virus as a serious national threat, but within just a few weeks much of the Italian health care system had collapsed and many thousands of Italians were dead. Despite a full national lockdown, the number of deaths in Italy has continued to rise exponentially.

Similarly, New York reported its first death on March 14th. Yet just ten days later, deaths in that state were running at 50 per day, and rapidly accelerating.

Unfortunately, although numbers are absolutely crucial for our efforts to combat this dread disease, we lack accurate American data, especially with regard to the rate of infection.

The problem is that any program of massive, widespread testing is completely impossible given our lack of sufficient testing resources. Meanwhile, the Coronavirus has a substantial latency period during which victims experience no symptoms, and even afterward many cases are quite mild or even completely asymptomatic, leaving the infected unaware of their condition. So at present, testing has been confined to just a tiny sliver of the population, ensuring that the reported numbers of those infected represents a severe undercount. But we are left to guess just how severe.

However, the Coronavirus death statistics are certainly far more solid and reliable, and I soon noticed a simple and easy means of reasonably estimating Coronavirus infections from Coronavirus deaths. But although the methodology seemed obvious to me, after I described it on a comment-thread yesterday, I encountered quite a bit of initial confusion and disagreement, suggesting that the idea was not nearly as obvious as I had assumed. So on the off-chance that some people might be unfamiliar with the method, I’ve decided to outline it below.

Let us note three crucial Coronavirus parameters, which have already been estimated by medical experts although they are obviously dependent upon particular conditions.

  1. The infection doubling period – probably 3-6 days
  2. The mortality rate – perhaps 1% prior to the collapse of a the local health system.
  3. The typical mortality period (time between infection and death) – according to some estimates, around 3 weeks.

Now consider a Coronavirus death. If we assume a mortality rate of 1% and a three week interval between infection and death, we can therefore estimate that there had been 100 new infections three weeks earlier. Next, if we assume a doubling-period of 6 days, those 100 infections would have increased to 100 * 2^(21/6) = over 1000 infections by the time the death occurred.

Therefore, under these particular assumptions (along with a few simplifications), the true number of total infections can be estimated at over 1000x the number of deaths.

Let’s apply this methodology to a real-life situation. On 3/23/20, New York reported 53 new Coronavirus deaths, bringing the total to 210. This suggests that the true number of new infections that day may have been over 50,000, raising the total infected to more than 200,000. These estimates are eight to ten times larger than the officially-reported Coronavirus totals for New York, namely 4,750 and 25,665.

This estimate of New York infections relied upon a doubling period of six days, and it is quite possible that greater “social distancing” together with the recent lockdown imposed in that state may have considerably increased that parameter this figure, thereby reducing the correct number of infections. But I strongly suspect that the figures provided above are still far closer to the truth than those officially reported by the New York authorities. And there is obviously a huge practical difference between assuming 25,000 infected New Yorkers and believing the true figure is already closer to 200,000.

Here’s another example. The official estimate of Coronavirus infections in Louisiana is currently less than 1,400, but this estimation method suggests that the true total is nearly 50,000, a figure that has vastly different policy implications. While I would put little weight in the precise accuracy of that estimate, I strongly believe it’s much closer to reality than the tiny official total.

Summarizing things, the formula for estimating infections is:

  • Number of infected = Number of Deaths / Mortality_Rate *2^(Mortality_Period/Doubling_Period).

It’s important to recognize that the parameters used may need to be sharply readjusted based upon particular circumstances.

For example, once a health care system collapses, the death rate probably spikes to around 5%, greatly changing the calculation. Similarly, once government lockdowns or other similar measures are taken, the doubling-period of the infection becomes much longer.

Under other circumstances, if a substantial fraction of the deaths are the elderly residents of nursing homes (as was the case in Washington State), the assumed death-rate would be much higher and the doubling-period of the infections generated by the immobile residents lower, significantly altering the appropriate equation.

Finally, this analysis may carry an important policy implication. Suppose that our best and most accurate means of estimating infections is indeed based upon this methodology. We would therefore be using the current death rate to back into the infection rate that that occurred three weeks earlier, so that any analysis of the impact of government policies would necessarily be lagged by three weeks.

Under these circumstances, it would be extremely inadvisable for President Trump or other government officials to rescind any of their lockdown or quarantine decisions until at least three weeks had gone by and the impact of these policies upon the rate of infection became fully apparent.

March 25, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | 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

Sanctions on Iran, Others Facing Coronavirus Must Be Urgently Re-evaluated: UN

Al-Manar | March 25, 2020

The United Nations rights chief says any sanctions imposed on Iran, among other countries grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, should be “urgently re-evaluated” to support lives of millions of people worldwide.

“At this crucial time, both for global public health reasons, and to support the rights and lives of millions of people in these countries, sectoral sanctions should be eased or suspended,” Michelle Bachelet said in a statement on Tuesday.

She warned, “In a context of global pandemic, impeding medical efforts in one country heightens the risk for all of us.”

She stressed the importance of giving broad and practical effect to humanitarian exemptions from sanctions measures “with prompt, flexible authorization for essential medical equipment and supplies.”

Bachelet pointed in particular to the case of Iran, one of the hardest-hit countries by the pandemic, and said the COVID-19 outbreak was also spreading to neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan.

She said even before the pandemic, human rights reports had repeatedly emphasized the impact of sectorial sanctions on Iran’s access to essential medicines and medical equipment, including respirators and protective gear for healthcare workers.

Nearly 500,000 people worldwide have been infected and over 17,000 have died of the viral disease, according to the latest tallies.

Iranian Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on Tuesday that the number of coronavirus deaths had risen to 1,934 and the total infections to 24,811 during the past 24 hours.

“There have been 122 new deaths and 1,762 new infections since Sunday,” he said. Jahanpour further put the number of patients who have recovered from the viral disease at 8,913.

US President Donald Trump reinstated Washington’s sanctions on Iran in May 2018 after he unilaterally left the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed between Iran and major world powers.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) — known as the World Court — has ordered the White House to lift the sanctions it has illegally re-imposed on humanitarian supplies to Iran.

The US claims the bans do not get in the way of food and medicine exports to Iran, but the Islamic Republic says Washington has been working to make problems for a Swiss humanitarian channel launched to enable the transfer of commodities to Iran.

In a phone conversation with Tunisian President Kais Saied on Monday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said the United States’ move to prevent the dispatch of medical and humanitarian aid and the facilitation of banking interactions to meet the Iranian people’s needs suffering from the deadly new coronavirus contravenes human and the United Nations regulations.

Rouhani said the US administration has intensified its cruel measures and sanctions against the Iranian people even under the current difficult conditions caused by the virus outbreak.

March 25, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Suspending the Constitution: Police State Uses Crises to Expand Its Lockdown Powers

By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | March 24, 2020

You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured.

This coronavirus pandemic is no exception.

Not only are the federal and state governments unraveling the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that are sending the economy into a tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, but they are also rendering the citizenry fully dependent on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.

Unless we find some way to rein in the government’s power grabs, the fall-out will be epic.

Everything I have warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has coalesced into this present moment.

The government’s shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding.

It’s downright Machiavellian.

Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been anticipating this moment for years, quietly assembling a wish list of lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

It should surprise no one, then, that the Trump Administration has asked Congress to allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution whenever it deems it necessary during this coronavirus pandemic and “other” emergencies.

It’s that “other” emergencies part that should particularly give you pause, if not spur you to immediate action (by action, I mean a loud and vocal, apolitical, nonpartisan outcry and sustained, apolitical, nonpartisan resistance).

In fact, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been quietly trotting out and testing a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die…

You’re getting the picture now, right?

These are powers the police state would desperately like to make permanent.

Bear in mind, however, that these powers the Trump Administration, acting on orders from the police state, are officially asking Congress to recognize and authorize barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has already unilaterally claimed for itself.

Unofficially, the police state has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

The seeds of this present madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives, which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Mind you, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president. Indeed, the U.S. military has reportedly already been given standby orders under COG for this present coronavirus pandemic.

So what is the bottom line here?

We are, for all intents and purposes, one crisis away from having a full-fledged authoritarian state emerge from the shadows, at which time democratic government will be dissolved and the country will be ruled by an unelected bureaucracy.

Thus far, we have at least pretended that the government abides by the Constitution.

The attempts by each successive presidential administration to rule by fiat merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

Remember, these powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

So, too, every action taken by Trump and his predecessors to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the executive branch of government has made us that much more vulnerable to those who would abuse those powers in the future.

Think on this: the presidential election is right around the corner.

Suddenly, the improbable possibility of any incumbent president attempting to extend the police state’s stranglehold on power by using current events to justify postponing or doing away with an election—forfeiting the people’s rights to govern altogether—and establishing a totalitarian regime seems less far-fetched than it did even a few years ago.

The emergency state is now out in the open for all to see. Unfortunately, “we the people” refuse to see what’s before us. Most Americans, fearful and easily controlled, would sooner rouse themselves to fight for that last roll of toilet paper than they would their own freedoms.

This is how freedom dies.

We erect our own prison walls, and as our rights dwindle away, we forge our own chains of servitude to the police state.

Be warned, however: once you surrender your freedoms to the government—no matter how compelling the reason might be for doing so—you can never get them back.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, no government willingly relinquishes power.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

The America metamorphosing before our eyes is almost unrecognizable from the country I grew up in, and that’s not just tragic—it’s downright terrifying.

March 24, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | 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

Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group stricken in the Philippines

© Reuters / Kham
RT | March 24, 2020

Three US Navy sailors aboard aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for coronavirus, the acting Naval Secretary has revealed. They will be airlifted off the ship, which hosts 5,000 troops in the Philippine Sea.

The three servicemembers are the first coronavirus cases discovered on board a deployed Navy ship, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday. Currently in quarantine, the sick trio will be flown off the ship later today.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt was in Vietnam earlier this month. Last week, the Theodore Roosevelt Strike Group performed Expeditionary Strike Force maneuvers along with the America Expeditionary Strike Group and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit for three days in the South China Sea.

Pentagon officials diverged from President Donald Trump’s narrative during Tuesday’s briefing, which was conducted virtually, warning that the outbreak could occupy the nation for as long as three months. “I think we need to plan for this to be a few months long at least and we’re taking all precautionary measures to do that,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters. The Pentagon has reported 321 cases of coronavirus, including 174 active-duty personnel, 59 civilians, 61 dependents, and 27 contractors, as of Tuesday. A single contractor at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency died on Saturday after testing positive for the virus.

Trump, meanwhile, has declared he wants the US economy back up and running by Easter Sunday, less than three weeks away. The US has 50,206 confirmed cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University, and 606 deaths.

Also on rt.com:

US Defense Sec admits military readiness could be affected by Covid-19, insists Pentagon can still conduct ‘national missions’

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

Collective punishment has always been the stated goal of Iran sanctions hawks

By Eli Clifton | Responsible Statecraft | March 23, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic’s impact in Iran, which already claimed over 1,800 lives and infected more than 23,000 people, is one of the world’s more troubling examples of widespread infection, with insufficient medical resources to treat the victims and a staggering anticipated death toll.

While public health experts and human rights advocates all point to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime against Iran as contributing to the public health crisis, sanctions advocates in the Trump administration and at two ultra hawkish think tanks claim that the “humanitarian trade” sanctions exemption is sufficient to address Iran’s medical needs.

But the reality is that advocates of an expansive sanctions campaign have been working to deny Iranians the staples of daily life in pursuit of bringing the regime to its knees or fomenting regime collapse. And it’s likely why to this day, the Trump administration, and its pro-Iran war/regime change allies are reluctant to relent to massive domestic and international pressure to relieve sanctions on Iran.

Indeed, remarks and actions from sanctions hawks in the State Department, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) illustrate their desire to inflict collective punishment on Iran as a means of generating political instability and state collapse.

Amid the crisis, on March 17, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced new sanctions against Iran, telling reporters, “We have an open humanitarian channel to facilitate legitimate transactions even while ensuring our maximum pressure campaign denies terrorists money.”

But that assessment of the humanitarian channel isn’t widely shared and, despite Pompeo’s repeated assertions that the Trump administration offered Iran help to deal with the coronavirus crisis, he hasn’t provided details of what those offers entail.

“Our research showed that in practice, humanitarian exemptions in the U.S. comprehensive sanctions regime have been ineffective in offsetting the strong reluctance of companies and banks to conduct trade with Iran, including the humanitarian trade that is presumably legal,” Human Rights Watch Iran researcher Tara Sepheri Far told Responsible Statecraft. “The Iranian healthcare system, both in terms of access to specialized medicine and also with regards to access to medical equipment, has taken a toll as a result of sanctions,” she added.

Even Pompeo acknowledged that collective punishment and threat of a humanitarian crisis were very much part of the sanctions strategy he was pursuing.

“The leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat,” said Pompeo in 2018. “They have to make a decision that they want to use their wealth to import medicine and not use their wealth to fund [Iran’s Quds Force commander] Qassem Soleimani’s travels around the Middle East, with causing death and destruction.”

Two of the most prominent groups advocating for “maximum pressure” against Iran, even in the face of the coronavirus epidemic, have repeatedly called for collective punishment against Iranians.

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of FDD, a think tank that has regularly called for harsh sanctions and preventive military action against Iran, has repeatedly called for punitive measures against Iran’s entire population.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last April, Dubowitz urged lawmakers to “build a sanctions wall” with the goal of “crippl[ing] key sectors of the [Iranian] economy and lead to larger protests.” He added, “[T]he resulting economic and political instability could be leverage for a better, comprehensive deal.”

In a September Fox News appearance, Dubowitz again argued that widespread collective punishment of Iranians was a desirable strategy in bringing pressure on Iran’s leadership to negotiate with the Trump administration about their nuclear program.

“I think the Iranians are in a situation where they are running out of foreign exchange reserves, they’re not going to have the money to pay for imports that they need to run their factories, with factories closing they’re going to have massive unemployment, and so their situation is getting worse every day,” said Dubowitz. “And I think the administration, with a few moves, could actually bring about that kind of economic collapse which will then put the regime in a position where they’ll have to choose between negotiations and the survival of its regime.”

This mentality isn’t a recent phenomenon. Squeezing the Iranian people has been a goal for some time. FDD “freedom scholar” Michael Ledeen made this argument even more bluntly back in 2012 when he openly celebrated ordinary Iranians being unable to afford chickens, claimed this was largely the effect of sanctions, and applauded the fact that Iranians were blaming their leadership for hardships that were largely out of the government’s control.

“[T]here are a lot of very angry Iranians, who not surprisingly are blaming their government for this foul state of affairs,” wrote Ledeen. “In part, the government is blameless, since the cost of imports and the cost of feed grain have been driven up by the sanctions. But then again, the behavior of the government provoked the sanctions in the first place, and the singularly incompetent economic policies of the regime probably constitute the most important cause of the crisis.”

A U.S. senator at the time was even more explicit in promoting the strategy of denying Iranians basic foodstuffs. “It’s okay to take the food out of the mouths of the citizens from a government that’s plotting an attack directly on American soil,” said then-Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in reference to sanctions that might impose food shortages on Iranians.

Kirk now serves on the advisory board of UANI, a group that has engaged in a lengthy campaign to pressure all companies, including those engaged in U.S. government licensed humanitarian trade with Iran, to halt their business with the Islamic Republic. (Kirk’s former foreign policy adviser, Richard Goldberg, later went to work at FDD where he promoted military options against Iran. And in an unusual arrangement, he later went to work in Trump’s National Security Council while FDD continued to pay his salary and travel expenses. There Goldberg advocated for an expansive sanctions regime against Iran.)

UANI applauded the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy for “wreaking maximum havoc on Iran’s economy” Its CEO Mark Wallace, endorsed “economic isolation … to the point of being unbearable.”

Indeed, both UANI and FDD’s fondness for imposing collective punishment on Iranian civilians in order to pressure Iran’s leadership to make concessions on its nuclear program is also reflected in statements from some of their biggest donors.

GOP and Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson contributed at least $1.5 million to FDD by 2011 (FDD claims he is no longer a funder) and contributed nearly one-third of UANI’s 2013 budget, sending $500,000 to the group.

Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University in October 2013 that Obama should launch a preventive nuclear attack on a swath of uninhabited Iranian desert and threaten that Iran will be “wiped out” if the country’s leadership doesn’t dismantle their nuclear program.

UANI’s top funder, billionaire Thomas Kaplan, is an investor whose companies have looked to profit from “political unrest” in the Middle East. At UANI’s 2018 conference, Kaplan was presented with a framed Iranian rial by Wallace to recognize his support of UANI and their shared efforts to devalue Iran’s currency.

The calls for economic collapse, military strikes, cheering food shortages, and demanding more “maximum pressure” come at a severe humanitarian cost. But for many in the Trump administration and their allies, that’s precisely the point, which explains why, up until now at least, that President Trump has refused to suspend U.S. sanctions on Iran.

“During last year’s nearly-nationwide flood relief, problems with licenses required for transferring funds to Iran slowed down the relief efforts,” said Far. “The COVID-19 outbreak is more of a serious threat by order of magnitude. There’s a collective responsibility to ensure Iran’s access to resources they need to protect the health of millions of Iranians.”

March 24, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Afghan endgame enters the home stretch

Afghans celebrating the US-Taliban agreement of 29th February 2020, Jalalabad, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 24, 2020

In an extraordinary statement titled On the Political Impasse in Afghanistan, Washington has admitted the failure of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s mission to Kabul on Monday to heal the political rift among Afghan politicians and to urge them to form an inclusive government so as to implement the Doha pact of February 29.

In exceptionally strong words, Washington flagged its disappointment over the political rift between the factions led by Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah respectively, which has “harmed U.S.-Afghan relations and, sadly, dishonours those Afghan, Americans, and Coalition partners who have sacrificed their lives and treasure” in the 18-year old war.

No sooner than the failure of Pompeo’s mission became clear, the state department disclosed that the Trump administration is cutting back its aid to the Afghan government — “a responsible adjustment to our spending in Afghanistan” by $1 billion immediately and another $1 billion next year — and will also “initiate a review of all of our programs and projects to identify additional reductions, and reconsider our pledges to future donor conferences for Afghanistan.” A calibrated Plan B with President Trump’s approval is unfolding, for sure.

Importantly, the state department statement added ominously, “We have made clear to the (Kabul) leadership that we will not back security operations that are politically motivated, nor support political leaders who order such operations those who advocate for or support parallel government.”

The reference is unmistakably to the the troika of hardliners surrounding Ghani, comprising “Vice-President” Amrullah Saleh, NSA Hamdullah Mohib and Defence Minister Asadullah Khalid.

However, the state department statement leaves the door open to “revisit the reviews initiated”, provided the Afghan leaders “choose to form an inclusive government that can provide security and participate in the peace process.”

The alacrity with which this statement has come implies that President Trump directed Pompeo to convey to the Kabul elite that his patience has run out and to reiterate that no matter the shenanigans of Afghan politicians, “We are proceeding with the conditions-based withdrawal of our forces in accordance with the U.S.-Taliban agreement.”

This is the nearest Trump has come to threatening that if push comes to shove, he may unilaterally end the war and wash his hands of it.

Evidently, Washington is calling Ghani’s bluff who bragged recently that Kabul has the necessary resources to carry on for at least two years even without any US assistance, signalling his grit to dissociate from the US’ peace talks with the Taliban.

On its part, Washington has put Ghani on notice that if the game plan of the hardliners in his circle is to precipitate security situations with a view to drag the US military into violent confrontations with the Taliban and thereby destroy the understanding forged painstakingly through the negotiations in Doha during the past year and more, that won’t happen.

Equally, Washington has distanced itself from the political rift between Ghani and Abdullah by making it clear that it has no favourites.

The startling development has three dimensions to it. First and foremost, will the Trump administration’s shock therapy have a sobering effect on the rival Afghan factions locked in a struggle for power?

The answer is, unfortunately, that such a probability is unlikely to happen as per current indications — given the vaulting ambitions of the protagonists. Both Ghani and Abdullah also have associates who would have their own agenda.

Having said that, Afghans also have a great tradition of reaching compromises and consensus at the last minute before an irrevocable break-up. Such a fortuitous turn of events can happen in the present circumstances only if Ghani accepts a coalition government with power-sharing of key security portfolios.

Arguably,  the struggle may even take an ugly form and become “physical” unless great self-restraint is exercised. There are ominous reports that the warlords have come out of the woodwork and are marshalling their militia.

The government also commands shadowy militia groups beyond the pale of law who have been trained by the US to function as a state within the state. Indeed, Afghanistan has a violent history and its democratic temper is only skin-deep. Peaceful transfer of power is a recent phenomenon under the US diktat.

Second, what will be the impact on the security situation? The critical factor here is that, undeniably, there are ethnic undertones to the Ghani-Abdullah political rift and how they might impact the cohesion of the Afghan army and security forces is anybody’s guess. Of course, the US has been bankrolling the Afghan army.

To jog memory, it was Najib’s inability to pay the salaries of the Uzbek militia guarding Kabul city in the critical period since the Soviets withdrew aid that ultimately became a clincher for Rashid Dostum’s treacherous defection to the Mujahideen camp of Ahmed Shah Massoud that in turn resulted in the roof coming down on the communist regime.

Third, how will the Taliban react to these big shifts in the politico-military alignment? Clearly, the Taliban are already at peace with the US forces. Strict orders have been given to the commanders not to engage the US military.

Thus, the state department’s assurance that the US military will not be a party to any conspiracies by the hardliners in Kabul to precipitate confrontations with the Taliban becomes important. In good measure, Pompeo also flew to Doha to meet the Taliban leaders to discuss the current impasse. The Taliban will make careful note of Washington’s eagerness to stick to the Doha pact — and it will reciprocate. 

Now, if Ghani resorts to delaying tactics much longer in releasing the Taliban, it may provoke the Taliban into ending the current (tacit) ceasefire and step up its operations against the Afghan security forces with a view to demoralise them.

There are also indications of the Taliban having infiltrated the Afghan army and police and security agencies.

Suffice to say, it will come as a surprise if the Taliban does not take advantage of a most conducive situation arising in Afghanistan — a rump administration ruling the roost in Kabul, lacking in political legitimacy (and the US distancing from it); the grim political struggle for supremacy amongst the Afghan factions that may take a violent form; the chain of command of Afghan forces coming under stress due to the ethnic fissures; and, the strong possibility of Trump unilaterally extricating the US out of the war at some point in a near future.

The big question is whether the Taliban will be savvy enough to wait for Kabul to fall like a rotten apple or will they hastily pluck it as a low-hanging fruit.

The bottom line is that the Taliban (and Pakistan which mentors it) would see that the political ascendance of the Taliban in Kabul, whenever it is due, happens with international legitimacy. The Trump administration’s stated preference still is to reach a negotiated peace settlement as envisaged under the Doha pact through intra-Afghan dialogue. And the Taliban too adheres to the Doha pact. 

It is unlikely that the Taliban will opt for a decision to grab power through force. The preference at this stage will be to pitch for an interim government that is inclusive so as to carry as many Afghan factions as possible.

Make no mistake that time works in the Taliban’s favour. Unlike in the past, the Taliban has networked extensively with the international community in the recent years — especially with the major regional states — and its interest lies in securing world recognition for any future government under its leadership.

March 24, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Yemen’s Ansarullah welcomes UN call for global ceasefire to tackle coronavirus pandemic

Press TV – March 24, 2020

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has welcomed a call by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a ceasefire in all conflicts worldwide amid a global fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, said in a tweet on Monday that Sana’a welcomes the UN chief’s call and supports a halt in attacks by the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their allies against Yemen.

The movement, he said, also seeks the lifting of an aerial and maritime blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi regime and its coalition allies since early 2015, to facilitate the adoption of preventive measures against the coronavirus outbreak.

The United States and Britain are not part of the Saudi-led alliance but have been providing all sorts of support to the bloody war.

Speaking to reporters from the UN headquarters in New York on Monday, Guterres called for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world,” adding, “It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on true fight of our lives, pull back from hostilities and put aside mistrust & animosities.”

The United Nations has been trying to mediate an end to conflicts in countries including Syria, Yemen and Libya, while also providing humanitarian assistance to millions of civilians.

Guterres warned that in war-torn countries health systems have collapsed and the small number of health professionals left were often targeted in the fighting.

While Yemen has not recorded any COVID-19 cases to date, the possibility of an outbreak threatens the war-ravaged country’s already fragile healthcare system.

Last week, Houthi warned that the Saudi-led coalition of aggressors will be responsible for a possible spread of the virus to Yemen, citing the negative impacts of the siege.

Houthi’s comments come as Yemen is preparing to mark, on March 26, the fifth anniversary of the military campaign, which the Saudi regime and a number of its vassal states launched to reinstall a Riyadh-backed former regime in Yemen.

The Western-backed offensive, coupled with a naval blockade, has destroyed the country’s infrastructure.

The aggression has also led to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where over 1,000 people, including many kids, were killed and hundreds of thousands afflicted by cholera, diphtheria, measles and dengue fever in 2019, according to the World Health Organization.

March 24, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

House of Mirrors: Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy – Book Review

House of Mirrors, by Yves Engler. (Photo: Book Cover)
By Jim Miles | Palestine Chronicle | March 23, 2020

(House of Mirrors – Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy. Yves Engler. RED Publishing, Saskatoon/Black Rose Books, Montreal. 2020)

Some book covers are better than others, and that of Yves Engler’s House of Mirrors is beautifully expressive of the contents of his latest work. It shows a very friendly face and happy smiling Justin Trudeau in an iconic pose that says it all: America first.

This is Engler’s eleventh book exposing the downside of Canadian politics. It covers two main themes, the obvious first one is that of Canada’s involvement in the U.S. imperial-hegemonic demands around the world.

The second, more domestic, is that the Liberal’s and Conservatives, Canada’s two main parties, are essentially the same thing when it comes to foreign policy. Whereas the Conservatives are much more aggressive with their terminology while the Trudeau Liberals couch their words in a fancier more humanistic sounding language, the end results are the same: following the U.S. corporate-industrial-military complex and in certain cases being ahead of that curve.

With that as its underlying theme, Engler covers many topics concerning the Trudeau Liberals. The first long section deals with “The Canadian Monroe Policy” discussing how Canada fits into U.S. initiatives throughout Latin America with the overthrow, attempted overthrows, and manipulations of various organizations (OAS) in order to control the western hemisphere.

While paralleling U.S. interests, in terms of Venezuela, Canada, under Chrystia Freeland’ tutelage, has taken a leading interest with its support of the Lima Group (all sycophantic governments to U.S. corporate interests) against Venezuela.

A long essay on the Middle East, “Loving Monarchies, Hating Palestinians” discusses how Canada relates to the Arab countries, Israel, and the Palestinians. An earlier chapter, “The Sun Never Sets on the Canadian Military”, ties in with this chapter in exploring the numerous military sales and security contacts with Middle Eastern countries.

Large orders of military materials are sent to the likes of Saudi Arabia in support of its war on Yemen. Much information and technological information for security is exchanged between Canada and Israel (fun fact: Canada developed apartheid long before South Africa and Israel). The official position for Palestine is the stillborn two-state peace process while the actual position is more one of asking why the Palestinians do not acquiesce to Israeli demands.

Many other important topics are presented: around the world from China and North Korea through to Freeland’s favorite bogeyman, Russia, and on into Africa (military and mining interests); around the world from its domestic carbon dioxide/environmental policies; another hit on Canada’s mining interests in particular with South America; and the language of “Judge What I Say, Not What I Do”.

It is interesting how often Chrystia Freeland’s name rises in connection with Trudeau’s foreign policy. She is foremost in using the platitude about “international order based on rules” and the “rule of laws”. Whatever the foreign policy, as Foreign Affairs Minister and now as Deputy Prime Minister (a conveniently invented position), she carries considerable sway concerning Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria and other global hotspots (coronavirus notwithstanding). She inverts the colonial role, making Canada a victim rather than a colonizer and exploiter, “Canada has never been an imperialist power…we’ve been the colony.”

In his conclusion, Engler reprises comments about Canadian banks, the mining industry, Russia, Israel, Iran, the military, and business in general. He summarizes, “corporate Canada is highly international” with “segments… tied to extreme capitalism.” Extreme capitalism being capitalism dominated by and supported by the military-industrial complex with assistance from the financial community and the mainstream media.

As with all of Yves Engler’s books, House of Mirrors is tightly written, with little philosophizing, allowing the information to speak for itself, information that is highly notated and well referenced. The smiling man on the cover, Justin Trudeau, is essentially another true believer in an oligarchic world order (along with Ms. Freeland) supported by an international array of corporate and military liaisons.

– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles.  His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.

March 23, 2020 Posted by | Book Review | , , , | Leave a comment

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