A look at recent USAID schemes from Pakistan to Syria shows US empire can be very hazardous to your health.

While the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill was authored in the spirit of beating back a pandemic, buried deep within its text is a stipend for the US State Department operations dedicated to carrying out foreign interventions that have contributed to the outbreak of preventable diseases like polio in Syria and Pakistan.

Passed unanimously by Congress this March, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provides $250 million for the State Department to implement "economic, security, and stabilization" activities through an "Economic Support Fund" (ESF). Earmarked for activities through September 2020, the bill authorizes the State Department to fund "international organizations."

While the bill does not specify which organizations qualify for funding, many recent State Department "security and stabilization" operations have relied heavily on foreign proxies which did exactly the opposite of improving public health systems. This was particularly true in Syria, where the US embarked on a multi-billion-dollar regime-change operation that actively destabilized large swaths of the country, resulting in the resurgence of polio just 15 years after the Syrian government had eradicated it.

There is a serious health crisis which must be duly resolved. And this is a number one priority.

But there is another important dimension which has to be addressed.

Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail.

While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis, its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty.

This is the true picture of what is happening. Poverty is Worldwide. While famines are erupting in Third World countries, closer to home, in the richest country on earth,

"millions of desperate Americans wait in long crowded lines for handouts"

"Miles-long lines formed at food banks and unemployment offices across the US over the past week"

Eric Holder thinks the COVID-19 pandemic is a great opportunity to fundamentally change the way America votes.

"Coronavirus gives us an opportunity to revamp our electoral system so that it permanently becomes more inclusive and becomes easier for the American people to access," Holder told Time magazine.

And as the Washington Examiner's Andrew Mark Miller notes, the former Obama Attorney General thinks mail-in ballots are the solution.

"There has to be a sea change in our thinking there," Holder told the magazine, adding "Allow people to access their primary American right by voting at home. It's not as if this is an untried concept. Oregon has been doing this for years. But we have to make sure that we're being sensitive to the needs of poor communities and communities of color by doing things like having prepaid postage on envelopes. Construct a system so that you've got expanded in-person voting, you've got expanded at-home voting and expanded no-excuse absentee vote-at-home measures."

The changes, according to Holder, will help "enhance our democracy."

The same citizen virus-tracing corps the New York Times decried in China as Maoism incarnate is being tried in Massachusetts and San Francisco, and the outlet has decided that what's bad for Beijing is good for democracies.

Massachusetts and San Francisco - as well as the Republic of Ireland - are deputizing citizens to track down contacts of people infected with coronavirus, the Times reported on Thursday, describing the programs in glowing terms. After a blow-by-blow of a phone call between one of the newly-hired Massachusetts virus-trackers and her target, who gratefully gives up a file's worth of data, we learn that the state plans to hire 1,000 caring professionals just like her to fill out its "fleet of contact tracers, charged with tracking down people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, as soon as possible, and warning them."

The article emphasizes the bonds of "trust" between contract-tracer and coronavirus victim. There's no talk of imprisoning people in their homes, of "keeping away outsiders" or of "arbitrary" enforcement. Indeed, one has to read to the end of the article to find out that the Massachusetts program was heavily informed by data from Wuhan and techniques from South Korea.

PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS CLAIMED THAT THE U.S. NO LONGER NEEDS FOREIGN OIL AND IS "ENERGY INDEPENDENT." YET, NOW THE U.S. SHALE OIL INDUSTRY FACES NEAR TOTAL RUIN, MEANING THAT ANOTHER "WAR FOR OIL" COULD BE IN OUR FUTURE. WITH TRUMP AGAIN TAKING AIM AT VENEZUELA, WE MAY BE CLOSER TO WAR THAN WE THINK.

On Sunday, President Trump praised a deal reached largely by Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the top oil producers in the world who together dominate the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), saying that the agreed upon production cuts would "save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States."

Despite the president's rosy tone, most analysts have called the agreement - which presumably will freeze the Saudi-Russian oil price war that broke out last month - "too little too late" and have noted that a slew of bankruptcies from the U.S. shale oil industry are inevitable, despite the actions that have been taken. Even the Federal Reserve has stated that around 40% of domestic shale companies now face bankruptcy in just a few months if the price of oil remains under $30, a figure it is unlikely to pass for some time due to slumping demand caused by global lockdowns, among other factors that have emerged as the current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis has played out. Trump has since fielded the possibility of imposing tariffs on oil imports to drive up oil prices and favor the domestic consumption of U.S. shale oil, but it remains to be seen if that policy will materialize.

Despite thousands of Americans out of work and tens of millions impacted by coronavirus cutbacks, experts expect that Israel will get its full massive aid package. Administration official says Israelis don't have to worry "even if there is a depression"... and even though the aid is damaging to Americans...

Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper reports that "nearly all the experts" it consulted believe that Israel will get at least $3.8 billion from the U.S. in the coming year despite economic devastation to the U.S. economy caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

JP notes that the aid is expected even though "American economic activity has declined in recent weeks at a rate not seen since the Great Depression." Barron's similarly reports that the entire U.S. economy "has been brutalized" by the coronavirus pandemic. It predicts:

"Whatever happens next, the events of the past six weeks will scar the U.S. economy well into the 2030s, if not beyond. Tens of millions of Americans are already paying the price, and they will continue to do so for a long time."

Nevertheless, the Jerusalem Post reports, a "Trump administration source" said that Israel would not need to worry about getting the money "even if there is a depression" in the U.S.

American intelligence passed an early warning about the coronavirus to Tel Aviv and NATO as far back as November, Israel's Channel 12 claims, even after a top US medical intel officer dismissed a similar report just last week.

The broadcaster aired a story on Thursday alleging that the US intelligence community shared classified information about a new viral outbreak in China with the Israeli military and senior NATO officials. With nobody willing to go on record to confirm the report, however, the story is based on murky anonymous sourcing, leaving it a mystery where the claim originated. The Channel 12 broadcast said, as cited by i24 News:

"Still in November, the IDF held a first discussion regarding what impact this unknown disease would have were it to reach the Middle East. How would we be affected? How would it affect our neighbors?"

A similar report from ABC last week stated that the Pentagon's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) warned that an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan could become a "cataclysmic event" in a document compiled last November. But the story was swiftly shot down by NCMI director Colonel R. Shane Day, who insisted "No such NCMI product exists" and that the report was simply "not correct."

China has revised its coronavirus death toll after much speculation from around the world that the country had suppressed its numbers of confirmed cases and fatalities."

Wuhan, in the Chinese province of Hubei and ground zero for the deadly pandemic, has had its death toll increased by 1290 to 3869, according to China Central Television (CCTV), a state owned network.

The total number of confirmed cases in Wuhan was also revised up by 325 to 50,333.

The new numbers take China's national death toll to 4632 - an increase of 39 per cent.

CCTV attributed a few reasons as to why the numbers were so far off, citing pressure on hospitals and their staff:

"In the early stage of the epidemic, due to insufficient capacity for admission and treatment, a small number of medical institutions failed to connect with the disease prevention and control information system in a timely manner, the hospital was overloaded, and medical staff were busy with treatment. Objectively, there were late reports, missed reports, and false positives."

Tehran is considering the construction of nuclear-powered submarines, Iran's navy chief has revealed. The development would greatly expand the state's capabilities to operate in the seas beyond its home waters.

"It would be negligence on the part of Iran if it fails to consider using submarines with nuclear propulsion," Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi said on Thursday. "Therefore, we are thinking about it."

Iran boasts a fleet of various submarines, ranging from midget-subs to some capable of carrying over 50 crew and traversing rough waters. All of its vessels, however, use conventional means of propulsion.

The naval chief gave no timeframe on when exactly a nuclear-powered vessel might emerge, stating only that Iran already has "domestic capacity" to build ships larger than the homegrown Fateh-class "semi-heavy" submarines.

Former US Attorney Joe diGenova was on the radio earlier this week and he dropped some bombshells when discussing the ongoing work related to the crimes committed by Obama's Deep State actors.

Here is a section of what diGenova said early in the interview:

Bill Barr announced there are going to be indictments in this case. When he went on the Laura Ingraham Show the other night, and gave an amazing interview for an Attorney General of the United States.

He said, yeah sure John Durham could write a report but that's not what he's doing. He's getting ready to bring indictments if he has the evidence, quote unquote. But if he has the evidence is like a passe footnote. What the Attorney General was saying after saying that Crossfire Hurricane was one of the greatest travesties in American history, and that he was deeply disturbed about the evidence that he had seen. I think it's pretty clear that John Brennan, if he doesn't have a lawyer now then he better get one because the indictments are coming.

As we have discussed on this program for a long time. This was never about John Durham writing a report. He can do that if he wants to but the most important thing is to bring indictments and the Attorney General just said to us, that's exactly what he's doing.