© REUTERS / Matthew Brown
During a contentious call with the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, a group of 13 senators from oil-producing states voiced their frustration over the oil price war that is damaging US producers and threatened to upend the US-Saudi relationship.
"We are going to fundamentally, not only reevaluate, but take actions that will start to undermine the long term relationship that many of us have supported," Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska told CNN in describing the messages from the senators to the Saudi Ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, during that call late last month.
The senators have grown increasingly angry as oil prices have plunged as a result of a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which comes as the coronavirus continues to devastate the country.
Italians were deeply offended by the European Union. They believe that Brussels betrayed them and left them to their fate in the fight against the epidemic of the coronavirus Covid-19.
"Staying in the European Union is pointless"Italy faced the deepest and most severe crisis after World War II. The number of victims of the coronavirus epidemic as of the morning of April 9 is approaching 18 thousand, and the confirmed cases of infection have exceeded 140 thousand. The pandemic painfully hit the Italian economy, which had already slipped into the deepest post-war recession. Italian Finance Minister
Roberto Gualtieri recently said that GDP is likely to fall by 6% this year. Many economists believe that the decline will be more significant.
Not only the depth and scope, but also the growing feeling even among pro-European elites that the neighbors in the European home betrayed Rome and left face to face with the coronavirus Covid-19, differs from the recession a decade ago.
The story of Euro-optimist
Carlo Calenda , who headed the Renzi government in the Ministry of Economic Development, is indicative of the past year, he participated in the elections to the European Parliament (EP) under the slogan "We are Europeans!", And in November 2019 created the social-liberal party "Action". The basis of his election program in the EP is the defense of Italy's stay in a united Europe in an era of growing nationalism and populism. It is impossible to call Calenda a Euro-skeptic even with the most developed imagination,
but now the 46-year-old ex-minister and permanent representative of Italy in the European Union (EU) has strong doubts about the correctness of the idea, which he devoted his life to the struggle for.
Comment: The EU was never designed in solidarity with the hopes and dreams of the people in their respective countries. Rather it is mostly one big neo-liberal entity run by unelected techocrats who seek to centralize wealth and power to themselves. And more and more Italians are continuing to recognize it.
See also:
RTSat, 11 Apr 2020 16:14 UTC
© Russian Consulate in Harbin
Just out of its own fight against the coronavirus, China has sent several tons of medical supplies as well as a team of virologists and doctors that will share their firsthand experience with their Russian colleagues.
Invited by the city authorities of Moscow, the Chinese medical team boarded their flight on Saturday, Russia's consulate in Harbin, China said. The task force is comprised of "renowned Chinese virologists and doctors who have huge clinical experience and practical knowledge," the consulate stated.
The mission, run by China's National Health Commission, isn't restricted to experience sharing only. Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia's Far East, has also sent "several tons" of protective gear and equipment to support Russia's frontline hospitals and first responders.
Last week, 26 tons of humanitarian cargo arrived from China, with face masks, respirators, hazmat suits, and infrared thermometers donated by Beijing.
Comment: While China engages in some PR aid campaigns, the U.S. doesn't seem to care much for its image.
Cuba is highlighting the continued effect of U.S. sanctions on the country:
"The United States' economic-financial blockade is the most unfair, severe, prolonged system of sanctions of all time by one country against another," Nestor Marimon, the Cuban Health Ministry's international relations director, told reporters.
Imposed at the height of the Cold War, the American blockade has become "even more cruel and genocidal than it normally is... when we don't have an epidemic," he said, adding that it has severely hindered Cuba's procurement of medical supplies on foreign markets, as cited by AFP. "It's very difficult to buy equipment, supplies, medicines. We're forced to buy them in far away markets that double, triple the costs and on many occasions they arrive late."
According to Marimon, the Health Ministry lost $160 million between April 2019 and March 2020 due to the sanctions, $60 million more than the year prior.
Despite recording only 881 Covid-related deaths in the first week of April, the Netherlands reports that overall mortality for that time period is still much higher than usual, with 5,100 deaths when around 3,000 were expected:
In some municipalities, the weekly death toll exceeded the average twofold and even fourfold, the CBS said. The abnormally large figures alone, however, cannot conclusively show that Covid-19 is to blame, and the spike may be "coincidental and not necessarily related to the coronavirus crisis," the statistics body noted.
The same has been reported for areas of Spain and Italy - spikes in mortality not attributed wholly to coronavirus. Whether it's effects of the lockdown, unreported Covid deaths, responses to hospital treatment, or something else entirely, something weird is going on. (MOMO, the European mortality tracking website,
shows increased mortality in March for Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and England - sometimes reaching or exceeding that of previous flu seasons for the past 4 years.)
The US DHS seems to want to keep America under lockdown.
They say that if containment measures are lifted after 30 days, there will be a summer surge in cases, with 200k deaths. Needless to say, they don't actually
know this, it's just what their 'models' tell them:
At a White House briefing on Friday, Trump offered a much less dire prediction, stating that the epidemic may be nearing its apex, but nonetheless said he was now weighing whether to extend the federal guidelines. "I'm going to have to make a decision, and I ... hope to God that it's the right decision," he said. "It's the biggest decision I've ever had to make."
Trump is also considering
visa sanctions against countries who "delay or deny" return of their citizens - citing the health risk they pose.
Iran has
reopened 'low-risk' businesses, and car production has
resumed in China. But while China reopens its economy, the current lockdown in
India could have longer lasting effects:
While it is not yet clear how much longer Indians will have to stay home, if the lockdown continues for an additional month, it could put 32 million livelihoods at risk and the country's economy could contract by around 20 percent in the first quarter, McKinsey's analysts warn.
However, annual results in this case would not be too devastating, with growth falling between two and three percent in the fiscal year 2021.
The worst-case scenario envisaged by the report said there could be an even deeper annual economic contraction of around eight to 10 percent. This might happen if the epidemic continues to ravage the country and the authorities have to impose additional restrictions that spill into the second quarter and beyond. This scenario would result in an "even greater reluctance among migrants to resume work, and [ensure] a much slower rate of recovery."
Here are the streets of
Turkey 2 hours before a 48-hour curfew goes into effect:
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© ActivestillsHouse demolition in Beit Hanina/East Jerusalem by Israeli authorities.
A
"Dear Colleague" letter was sent by more than 60 Democratic Representatives to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier this week seeking to hold Israel accountable for its massive demolition of Palestinian homes last July in the Wadi al-Hummus neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Steve Cohen (D-TN) led the effort. Khanna stated:
"U.S.-supplied military equipment to Israel should only be used for legitimate self-defense against the very real security threats Israel faces. Such military equipment should not be used to turn Palestinian homes into rubble, displace families, and tear apart communities. I look forward to the State Department providing the information necessary to ensure that U.S.-supplied military equipment in the West Bank is not being used in this destructive practice."
Signers of the letter included a mixture of long-time supporters of Palestinian rights such as Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Mark Pocan (D-WI), and David Price (D-NC); first-term progressives such as Reps. Chuy Garcia (D-IL), Deb Haaland (D-NM), Jahana Hayes (D-CT), Andy Levin (D-MI), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI);
and several veteran Jewish Members of Congress who have become increasingly outspoken on Israel's policies such as Reps. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and John Yarmuth (D-KY).
Comment: There seems to be a glimmer of recognition and accountability within a small portion of the US Congress. Hopefully their actions produce a flicker of light within the dark and oppressive tunnel of Palestinian abuse. More likely, these politicians will become Israeli targets for demolition to be bulldozed out of Congress.
Update 10/4/2020:
Annexation Plan
Haaretz recently reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kahol Lavan Chairman Benny Gantz could move forward with the annexation plan this summer, if it's done with the support of the United States and "other international players."
Earlier this week, Palestinian political analyst Diana Buttu told Mondoweiss's Yumna Patel that the COVID-19 crisis could provide Netanyahu with the cover needed to effectively push the annexation plan.
"If there's any time to go forward with annexation, it's now, when everyone is focused on something else. With everyone being ordered to stay in their homes, grassroots resistance is hindered.
"Israel is using this opportunity to continue its occupation practices such as night raids, arrests, and home demolitions, and all the while activists cannot come together to protest or protect their communities because of the coronavirus."
See also:
Gantz and Netanyahu reportedly come to agreement on annexing West Bank — liberal Zionists appeal to Pelosi
© Flickr/Dave Center
You don't need to read Michel Foucault's work on
biopolitics to understand that neoliberalism - in deep crisis since at least 2008 - is a control/governing technique in which surveillance capitalism is deeply embedded.
But now, with the world-system collapsing at breathtaking speed, neoliberalism is at a loss to deal with the next stage of dystopia, ever present in our hyper-connected angst: global mass unemployment.
Henry Kissinger, anointed oracle/gatekeeper of the ruling class, is predictably
scared. He claims that, "sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity." He's convinced the Hegemon should "safeguard the principles of the liberal world order." Otherwise, "failure could set the world on fire."
That's so quaint.
Public trust is dead across the spectrum. The liberal world "order" is now social Darwinist chaos. Just wait for the fire to rage.The numbers are staggering. The Japan-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), in its annual economic report, may not have been exactly original. But it did note that the impact of the "worst pandemic in a century" will be as high as $4.1 trillion, or 4.8 percent of global GDP.
This an underestimation, as "supply disruptions, interrupted remittances, possible social and financial crises, and long-term effects on health care and education are excluded from the analysis."
What will be next? Is a question on many people's minds. Very likely the world will never be the same again. That might be good, or not so good, depending on how we look at this disastrous, "pandemic" which by all serious accounts does not deserve the term "pandemic", that was unwittingly attributed to the SARS-2-CoV, or 2019-nCoV, renamed by WHO as COVID-19.
On March 11,
Dr. Tedros, WHO's Director General called it a pandemic. This decision was already taken by the WEF (World Economic Forum) in Davos, from 20 -24 January 2020, when the total COVID19 cases outside of China were recorded by WHO as 150. On January 30, theWHO Director General determines that the outbreak outside of Mainland China constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). This was a first indication that there was something not quite right, that there is another agenda behind the "outbreak" of the COVID-19 disease.
On March 26, in a peer-reviewed article in the highly reputed
New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM),
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the US National Institutes of Health - NIH), likened COVID19 to a stronger than usual common flu:
If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.nejm.org
This scientific assessment in the New England Journal of Medicine has not prevented Dr. Fauci from saying exactly the opposite, when interviewed by the mainstream media: see below.
© Official FBI PhotoImageFBI to face new scrutiny with declassified Russia case notes.
Key FBI officials failed to review an intelligence file identifying Christopher Steele's ties to Russian oligarchs and were later advised some of the information he provided agents in his dossier appeared to be misinformation planted by Russian intelligence, according to declassified information made public Friday.
The explosive revelations were contained in footnotes that had been originally redacted from Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's December report on FBI failures in the Russia case. The information was provided to two Senate committees in recent days.One of the newly declassified footnotes highlights a glaring misstep early in the Russia case, when key officials failed to review the intelligence control file for Steele, a former MI6 agent who approached the FBI with unverified allegations about Trump after he was hired to do opposition research by the firm working for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
© REUTERS / Leonhard FoegerSebastian Kurz wears a protective face mask as he attends a session in the Parliament.
Several countries in Europe have announced plans to reopen at least parts of their economy and society.
Sweden remains open and has kept its borders open as well as its preschools, grade schools, bars, restaurants, parks, and shops.Norway is
planning to open kindergarten next week.
The Danish Prime Minister announced that she expects to
open day care and schools up to 5th grade on April 15th.
And Austria is planning to lift its coronavirus lockdown while requiring citizens to wear face masks.
Comment: Merkel too has
expressed "cautious hope" at signs of Germany's curve "flattening out" - Germany could start easing restrictions next week. Global carmakers also plan to
reopen their plants, promising increased worker safety. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Moscow is
tightening control over people's movement, planning to implement a "pass system" for traveling to work, and "if necessary", even movements within districts. Residents will have to apply for these travel passes. Local authorities in two Indian towns are resorting to measures previously adopted by some Chinese authorities: physically
locking people in their homes for "breaching quarantine". They must call delivery services to receive essential items.
Hungary's PM Orban
says the "real test is yet to come" for his country, despite signs of the crisis "peaking" in other countries. UK PM Johnson has reportedly been moved out of
intensive care and will be closely monitored. Gaza Strip has reportedly run out of test kits, and Hamas fears a health sector collapse, saying they will not hesitate to impose a curfew if necessary. According to some medical sources in
Ecuador, more than 40 medical workers have died in recent weeks, but such data "has been kept hidden from the public eye." It's hard to say at this point how much is hysteria and disruption of normal operating procedures, and how much is do to a real overloading of the system, as happened in northern Italy.
After the USS
Theodore Roosevelt "scandal", Air Force General John Hyten unintentionally
said something extremely true:
We have too many ships at sea, we have too many deployed capabilities. There's 5,000 sailors on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. To think it will never happen again is not a good way to plan.
You can say that again. Yankee, go home.
Here's Dr. Fauci back in January. Wonder what changed his mind?
And yesterday, Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the Covid-19 death toll will be "much lower" than models have suggested. Hmm... When the overall impact of the virus turns out to have been much lower than people's expectations, they will be able to say, "See, all our measures were effective!" But will they have been? Or did the virus just run its course fairly naturally?
© AFPSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the architect behind Democrats' decision to block $250 billion in additional funding to small businesses suffering because of coronavirus-related lockdowns, now says there's "no data" to support an influx of emergency cash, even as banks are reaching their lending capacity due to unprecedented demand for aid.
Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) moved to
block Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from passing the emergency bill by unanimous consent on Thursday morning. McConnell had hoped that the need for assistance would be evident enough that he would not have to call Congress back from recess to vote on the measure, but Democrats disagreed.
McConnell was left incensed,
noting that the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program fund, which guarantees entrepreneurs with fewer than 500 employees low-interest loans that will be forgiven if they use the money to keep workers on the payroll, is "on track to be depleted by the end of this month."
Comment: So now Pelosi using identity politics to break the backbone of the American economy. We'll see how that works out.
© Reuters/Lucy NicholsonSenator Bernie Sanders
The lobby group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) sent out an email this morning,
celebrating the fact that Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race and gearing its supporters up for a fight to keep the Democratic platform pro-Israel.
The email, which was written by DMFI President Mark Mellman,
takes partial credit for Sanders's departure. "Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for president," Mellman, "That's a big victory — one you helped bring about."
Before Iowa's January caucus,
DMFI did run a series of anti-Sanders ads in Iowa, but the Vermont Sanders won the state's popular vote anyway.
The group spent more than $800,000 on the ads and the effort helped Sanders raise $1.3 million in just one day.Mellman declares that the lobbying organization's next battle will be over the Democratic platform:
"Extreme groups aligned with Sanders, as well as some of his top surrogates — including Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar — have publicly declared an effort to make the platform anti-Israel.
"As a career political professional, I will tell you that if Democrats adopt an anti-Israel platform this year, the vocabulary, views, and votes of politicians will shift against us dramatically. We simply can't afford to lose this battle."
Mellman points out that, while some people dismiss the importance of party platforms, the GOP effectively became an anti-abortion party after modifying its platform in 1976.
Comment: Politics, especially during election season, are compounded by persuasive factions without accountability. Accusations and bias go unchecked - as long as the money lasts.
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Comment: The EU was never designed in solidarity with the hopes and dreams of the people in their respective countries. Rather it is mostly one big neo-liberal entity run by unelected techocrats who seek to centralize wealth and power to themselves. And more and more Italians are continuing to recognize it.
See also: