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War profiteering in the time of Corona

Christian Sorensen
Dissident Voice
Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
war industry
On 11 March, executives from the war corporation CACI, which sells goods and services to CIA, NSA, and the U.S. Armed Forces, rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. That ceremony embodies the war industry's business as usual approach to the coronavirus. Industry executives are doing their best to keep the gears of war churning, however, as portions of the overall military-industrial-congressional triangle stumble, the working class must seize the moment to obtain peace in our day.

The war industry received 367 distinct deals (contracts or contract modifications) during March 2020, a figure I tallied based upon the Pentagon's public records. This is above average. A typical month of contracting sees between 240 and 350 contracts issued. Salient military contracts issued to the war industry during March included a state-of-the-art logistics system for DARPA, the burial of nuclear reactor components in Washington state, nearly $1 billion on a single day for Lockheed Martin's THADD, plenty of missiles, science & technology operations and support for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and $4.9 billion on a single day for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter boondoggle.
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Binoculars

On-going Yemeni crisis ignored by mainstream media due to coronavirus coverage

Lucas Leiroz
InfoBrics
Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
destruction in Yemen
The world pays constant attention to the coronavirus, occupying the news agencies with a high coverage of the pandemic. Meanwhile, on the global periphery, geopolitics continues at full throttle, with several conflicts occurring unnoticed by most people outside the affected regions. The case of Yemen is a clear example of what we are talking about here. Recently, the conflict in the country completed five years of uninterrupted fighting, reaching the regrettable marks of more than 10,000 killed in the confrontation, in addition to almost 100,000 killed by the social ills caused by the war, such as hunger, mainly among children. The poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula has become a strategic area in strong dispute and a real geopolitical thermometer for Middle East tensions, especially between the two regional powers most involved in the conflict, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are increasing their rivalry day after day.

Comment: See also:

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Black Magic

The Fed-induced monetary abyss stares back and asks who's next?

Tom Luongo
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
monetary abyss
We are at a critical moment in the history of politics and markets. Everyday the U.S. government stares into the fiscal and monetary abyss and chucks trillions in hoping that will be enough to finally fill it.

We stand by hoping that it will work to reflate markets collapsing from a catastrophic mispricing of assets. At least some of us do. I don't.

I hope it fails and it's because those inflated prices fuel the very global political order that is anathema to human advancement.

President Trump is finally happy with his FOMC chair, Jerome Powell, after he opened the door to unlimited quantitative easing, nearly unlimited liquidity injections via the repo markets, and taking interest rates to the zero-bound.

It's clear that the Keynesians at the Fed and the U.S. Treasury Dept. have no answers to the problems in front of them. They are simply doing what they always do when a crisis hits. Print money and hope someone still believes the new money is worth buying.

The sudden supply and demand side shock to the global economy thanks to the COVID-19 coronavirus is outside of their frame of reference.
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Oil Well

Saudis use low oil prices to force US to cut shale production, but fallout to all countries may prompt talks


RT
Sat, 04 Apr 2020 21:36 UTC
pump jacks oil rig production
© Reuters / Nick Oxford
Pump jacks operate in front of a drilling rig in an oil field in Midland, Texas.
A fall in oil prices intensified by Saudi Arabia's actions has dealt a deadly blow to US shale oil companies, but "counterproductive" measures that harm all oil producers may force Riyadh, Washington and Moscow to finally talk.

The so-called 'Shale Revolution' in the US in recent years has deprived the Saudis of a huge chunk of the American oil market, but Riyadh is now using the coronavirus crisis to win back its lost position.

After failing to find common ground with Russia on how to respond to the pandemic, Saudi Arabia began pumping oil at such an intense rate that the prices saw the sharpest drop, unseen since the Gulf War in 1991.

Comment:

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Better Earth

Can coronavirus diplomacy bring EU closer to Eurasia?

Paul Antonopoulos
InfoBrics
Sat, 04 Apr 2020 21:38 UTC
BRICS
© Sputnik/Anton Denisov
The European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), an association of post-Soviet states, effectively serve a similar function to each other as an economic bloc. Unlike the 27-member EU, the EEU has only 5-members as many post-Soviet states allege it is nothing but an attempt to revive the Soviet Union, which the countries of the West do not want to promote. The West's resistance has brought no economic benefit to it and this geopolitical duel was reflected in the limited success of sanctions against Russia. However, the credibility of the EU and the liberal orders continues to diminish as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic actually creates a unique opportunity for the EU and EEU to integrate into a single system, or at least move closer together.

Russia's dominance of the EEU is both a positive and a negative for Eurasian integration. Russia's large market forms the basis of the integration potential of the EEU, however, limited economic growth, sanctions and its participation in global geopolitics create risks for the Eurasian integration process. However, Eurasian integration would be in the interest of EU as it will connect European states to new markets in Central and East Asia far more efficiently and quickly then by other means. The EU claims that it works towards common markets and efficiency but does not seriously consider connecting Lisbon on the Atlantic Ocean to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.

The EU is losing its position as a top trading partner of the EEU, and it's not just because of China's growing importance. As a trading partner of the EEU, China has already surpassed most of Europe. The role of the EU as a trading partner of the whole EEU is due to the important role of the EU for Russia. However, Russia has been slowly turning eastward from the EU for years now as the future leading economies of the world will shift from the West to Asia.
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Quenelle

Trump cans Michael Atkinson, intelligence IG who started the Democrat impeachment circus by telling Congress about Ukraine phone call

Dom Calicchio
Fox News
Sat, 04 Apr 2020 21:15 UTC
Michael Atkinson
© Associated Press
Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, leaves the Capitol after closed doors interview about the whistleblower complaint that exposed a July phone call the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Oct. 4, 2019.
President Trump has fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community who alerted Congress to concerns about a Trump phone call with the president of Ukraine - a matter that led to the president's impeachment last year.

Trump formally notified the intelligence committees of both the Senate and House in a letter dated Friday. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., posted the letter online.

"This is to advise that I am exercising my power as President to remove from office the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, effective 30 days from today," the president wrote.

Comment:

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Snakes in Suits

Britain's Labour turns page on socialism with Starmer as new leader

Kate Holton
Reuters
Sat, 04 Apr 2020 20:17 UTC
Keir Starmer
© Neil Hall / Reuters
Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer was elected as the leader of Britain's main opposition Labour Party on Saturday, pledging to bring an end to years of bitter infighting and to work with the government to contain the raging coronavirus pandemic.

Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions who was known for a forensic attention to detail when opposing the country's exit from the European Union, won with 56% of the vote.

The comprehensive defeat of an ally of the outgoing leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the election of Angela Rayner as Starmer's deputy, heralds the end of the party leadership's embrace of a radical socialism that was crushed in the December election.

Starmer, who takes over immediately, said he would work constructively with government when it was the right thing to do, while testing Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson's arguments and challenging the failures.
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Broom

Time to clean eco-fascism out of environmentalism

Stephen Corry
Counterpunch
Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
Garden Eden
© unknown
Banished from the Garden of Eden
The coronavirus pandemic is lethal, but could there be a silver lining beyond the pain? Social media is awash with how the newly cleaned environment is hosting wildlife not seen for years. Dolphins are swimming in Venetian canals: except they aren't, they're really near Sardinia as usual. Swans? Yes, but they've always been there. The canals may be cleaner but the story's fake.

Facts matter less than our ache for an unpolluted globe. We yearn for a lost world of childhood innocence, and so project our hope onto juvenile activists. But there clearly are benefits in the reduced use of fossil fuels as flights are cancelled and car journeys shrink to levels last seen on distant Sundays when the shops were shut. Some are reporting easier breathing during an epidemic which attacks the lungs.

Surely this will strengthen the current insistence to turn thirty, even fifty, percent of the globe into "protected areas" (PAs)? We're told this is the answer to climate chaos and protecting biodiversity - no people, no pollution, problem solved?
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Dollar

Von der Leyen: EU plans to spend €100bn to save jobs during coronavirus crisis

Daniel Boffey
The Guardian
Thu, 02 Apr 2020 13:57 UTC
Ursula von der Leyen
© EPA-EFE/Francois Lenoir
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen holds a news conference detailing EU efforts to limit economic impact of the coronavirus disease.
Ursula von der Leyen has laid out plans to borrow and spend €100bn to stop firms in the EU laying off staff during the coronavirus pandemic, and has apologised to the Italian people for the bloc's lack of solidarity.

The president of the European commission said she was confident the 27 member states would back her scheme, describing the EU's budget as the Marshall plan for the crisis, in reference to the post-second world war fund that rebuilt Europe.

The EU's executive branch is proposing to borrow from the international markets and make loans to member state governments to allow them to fund short-time working schemes, under which employees work reduced hours with some of their salary paid by the state.

Comment: EU borders; feedback from Italy
"We are in consultation with member states on how to proceed beyond Easter," Ursula von der Leyen told Europe 1 radio.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer wants to expand his country's border controls to include more states as well as the airports.

Feedback to Von der Leyen's apology to Italy for Brussels' muted response to the pandemic has been less than optimistic. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that he welcomed the news, but that the bloc would need to create a "European lifeboat" in order to overcome the crisis. "European solidarity ... was not felt in the first days of this crisis and now there is no more time to waste."

Matteo Salvini, head of the opposition League, said in response to von der Leyen's apology that it was "understandable" why Italians would want to leave the European Union entirely. He said that the bloc must take broad and immediate action to help his country.
EU's inaction followed by 'coronabonding'
The coronabond idea has been supported by the countries affected the most by the virus, namely Italy, Spain, and France. Other, more well-off EU members, like Germany and the Netherlands, strongly oppose the idea of issuing bonds together with heavily indebted nations.

Italy and Spain were offered use of the European Stability Mechanism, which grants conditional financial assistance to countries in dire financial straits, to which Salvini responded that he doesn't want the Germans and the Dutch to "come to demand money from our children," and later calling the ESM a "mortgage on the future of Italians."


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Magic Hat

UK govt. to write off £13.4bn NHS debt freeing hospital trusts from balancing the books

Lizzy Buchan
Independent
Fri, 03 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
plymouth NHS hospital
© Aruba Network
The government will write off £13.4bn of NHS debt to allow the health service to focus on the response to coronavirus crisis, the health secretary has said.

Matt Hancock announced plans to wipe out historic debts to let hospital trusts channel their resources into battling the outbreak, rather than balancing the books.

In his first public appearance after self-isolating for seven days, Mr Hancock also paid an emotional tribute to NHS staff who have lost their lives, including doctors who had come to work in the British health service and "paid the ultimate price".

The health secretary told the daily Downing Street briefing that he would ease financial pressures on trusts that have built up significant debts after years of austerity.

Comment: Is it a loop? How does government bookkeeping interfere with government hospitals when the trusts are owned and funded by the government via taxation of the people? Does this handy dandy government write-off merely serve itself?

The left saw it as proof that the NHS debt has been a "a pernicious fiction" all along, blaming it on Tory austerity policies, and argued it was time to fully re-nationalize the health service they say was "privatized" by a succession of Conservative cabinets.




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