RTWed, 01 Apr 2020 20:12 UTC
© Sputnik / Aleksey Druzhinin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law allowing the government to declare a nationwide emergency should the current efforts not be enough to keep the situation with coronavirus, also known as Covid-19, under control.
In a case of emergency,
the government would be able to directly control all medical goods and drugs trade within a special response system as well as introduce stricter quarantine measures. It would also be
able to temporarily freeze all potential bankruptcy cases. The new legislation also separately introduces additional
measures to support Russia's tourism industry.
Most of the country has already imposed some form of lockdown anyway. Residents of Moscow, where more than a half of all confirmed coronavirus cases are registered, have to comply with a strict home-isolation regime.
Comment: The Russian military plane with medical aid
landed in the New York today. If there's one good thing to come out of this, it would be better relations with Russia! Chances are slim, though. In Russia, the number of new cases
dropped, and while
RT says it is "cause for alarm" that almost half of those infected are under 45, that's actually not a bad thing. Younger people have a better chance of surviving. (Alcohol sales in Moscow are
up 148%.)
European and
American markets took another dive, after Trump quoted guesses that "
up to 240k" Americans could die. Where are they getting these numbers, especially given that China, a nation with a population several times larger than the U.S., experienced a fraction of that? The Pentagon
refused one aircraft carrier captain's plea to evacuate and quarantine his ship after over 100 tested positive. Do they know something we don't? Cruise ships sequestered off the U.S. east coast have been
ordered to remain at sea and prepare to treat passengers who get the virus on-ship.
Germany extended their lockdown until
April 19. Georgia (the country) declared a
curfew. These unnecessary lockdowns will have an effect: many right now are fully supporting them and acting like Gestapo informants on their neighbors, while some are growing resentful. The latter will probably increase in numbers as the lockdowns continue. For example, an Arab neighborhood in Jaffa
rioted after Israel cops targeted an alleged "quarantine-breaker".
Over 400 Spanish journalists
rejected a new press conference format in which questions are filtered by government press officers. US nurses are
protesting over lack of safety gear. And over in the UK, only 15% of the number of medical personnel self-isolating or under quarantine have
tested positive. It turns out that the vast majority are fine and fit for work. What a great way to ensure health facilities are ready for the alleged expected "surge" in patients: make sure health workers can't actually work! They can't even follow through on a plan that was already dumb to begin with. But that's government for you.
Norman Lewis
RTWed, 01 Apr 2020 09:19 UTC
© Jo-Anne McArthur
Predicting the future is always notoriously difficult. The unprecedented response to the Covid-19 crisis means most bets are off on what may happen, apart from reinforcing the idea
there is no alternative to state intervention.
Albert Einstein famously quipped that he never thought about the future because it came soon enough. He might have been a genius, but he didn't experience the coronavirus crisis - and thus could not imagine a time when society would be so obsessed with thinking about the future.
There are a number of difficulties with trying to anticipate what society might be like after this crisis. In the first instance, we have no idea how long this will go on. Experts disagree.
Some suggest lockdowns could be relaxed in three months. The UK government is now planning on at least six months. In each case, the outcomes could be significantly different.
Second, whatever happens in the future
we can be sure there will be continuities and disruptions, and destructive and constructive dynamics at play. Crises are never one-way streets.
But -
and this is critical -
the coronavirus crisis will not bring year zero, a new era or clean slate in which what happened in the past will disappear or can be ignored. Nor will pandemics be the new normal.
The exceptional peacetime actions taken by governments and central banks, and the reorganisation of society and the economy around lockdowns - which is inducing some behavioural changes - are temporary, not permanent.
Comment: What better way to tame the public beast than threaten its health and wellbeing with a sudden and traumatic event that has the capacity to circle the globe and unite mankind under false pretenses too scary to be properly examined? What comes up in resistance will then be negated and its opposite supported by appropriate propaganda. Test run almost complete...a few tweaks and next?
Paul Antonopoulos
InfoBricsTue, 31 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
© sana.sy
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad • Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahan
In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the head of United Arab Emirates (UAE), spoke by phone on Friday in the first such communication since the Syrian War began in 2011.
This shows a metamorphosis of alliances and geopolitics in the Middle East and the wider region considering the UAE was one of the main backers of terrorist organizations who fought to remove Assad from power. However,
for more than a year, the UAE has been sending signals showing a change in policy towards Syria. The phone call was after a long series of rapprochement that began in late 2018 with the reopening of the Emirati embassy in Damascus.
Prince Mohammed
said on Twitter:
"I have discussed with the Syrian president... updates on the coronavirus. I assured him of the support of the UAE and its willingness to help the Syrian people. Humanitarian solidarity during trying times supersedes all matters, and Syria and her people will not stand alone."
Danielle Ryan
RTTue, 31 Mar 2020 23:47 UTC
© Frontpage/Shutterstock/KJN
With the Covid-19 crisis occupying the national psyche and political agenda for the foreseeable future, the
US Department of Defense has quietly asked Congress to allow it to make its future spending projections a secret.
The submission of an unclassified version of the 'Future Years Defense Program' (FYDP), which estimates defense spending for five to seven years,
has been a legal requirement since 1989 — in other words, roughly since the end of the Cold War.
The
details of the request to scrap that long-standing obligation (which has curiously flown under the radar for weeks) were
published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) on Monday. The March 6 proposal would
"remove the statutory requirement" to submit spending projections to congress and would also "remove the requirement to certify the accuracy of the input" to the FYDP.
Javier Blas, Sheela Tobben
BloombergFri, 27 Mar 2020 12:25 UTC
© AYouTube
In an obscure corner of the American physical oil market, crude prices have turned negative --
producers are actually paying consumers to take away the black stuff.
The first crude stream to turn upside down was
Wyoming Asphalt Sour, a dense oil used mostly to produce paving bitumen. Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., a trading house,
bid negative 19 cents per barrel in mid-March for the crude,
effectively asking producers to pay for the luxury of getting rid of their output.
"These are landlocked crude with just no buyers," said Elisabeth Murphy, an analyst at consultant ESAI Energy. "In areas where storage is filling up quickly, prices could go negative. Shut-ins are likely to happen by then."
Comment: The 'bottom' of the barrel! We are surely in strange times when you almost can't give it away!
Timothy Gardner, Darya Korsunskaya
ReutersMon, 30 Mar 2020 09:15 UTC
© AFP/Brendan Smialowski
Russian President Vladimir Putin • US President Donald Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed during a phone call on Monday to have their
top energy officials discuss slumping global oil markets, the Kremlin said, as Trump called Russia's price war with Saudi Arabia "crazy."
The agreement marks a new twist in global oil diplomacy since a failed deal earlier this month between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia to cut production ignited the price war between Russia and OPEC's de facto leader Saudi Arabia.
The fallout from the coronavirus pandemic also helped to send oil prices into a historic tailspin, threatening higher-cost drillers in the United States and around the globe with bankruptcy.
"Opinions on the current state of global oil markets were exchanged. It was agreed there would be Russo-American consultations about this through the ministers of energy," the Kremlin said in a readout of the call.
Oleg Burunov
SputnikTue, 31 Mar 2020 16:16 UTC
© AP/Ranier Jensen
US Patriot surface to air missile system
On 10 March, General Kenneth McKenzie, chief of the US Central Command, said in an apparent reference to the Patriot interceptors, that the
Pentagon is in the process of delivering its "air defence systems" to Iraq.
The Middle East Eye news outlet quoted unnamed sources as saying on Monday that the
US military had deployed its Patriot missile defence system to the Ain al-Asad base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.
According to the sources, the system is currently being assembled amid reports that the
Pentagon plans to send two more Patriot batteries to an undisclosed location in Iraq. Baghdad has not yet commented on the matter.
Paul Antonopoulos
InfoBricsMon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
© Reuters/Ognen Teofilovski
North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev • NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
Bulgaria says there is
no Macedonian language but rather it is a Bulgarian dialect. There is
academic consensus that the Ancient Macedonians were Greek. Albanians claim nearly half of North Macedonia in their project for Greater Albania. North Macedonia is a complex and complicated country, but despite this fact, on Friday,
it became NATO's thirtieth member, with Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, saying:
"North Macedonia is now part of the NATO family, a family of thirty nations and almost one billion people. A family based on the certainty that, no matter what challenges we face, we are all stronger and safer together."
There was little surprise that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed jubilation by saying that their membership
"will support greater integration, democratic reform, trade, security and stability across the region. North Macedonia's accession also reaffirms to other aspirants that NATO's door remains open to those countries willing and able to make the reforms necessary to meet NATO's high standards, and to accept the responsibilities as well as benefits of membership."
Pompeo is effectively opening the floodgates for more NATO members.
© Reuters/Erin Scott
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz
The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General has
a "lack of confidence" in the FBI's procedures to validate information used to obtain spy warrants on American citizens, the watchdog said in a report released Tuesday.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found errors in all 29 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications that were subject to the review.
The audit is a follow-up to an
investigation of the FBI's surveillance of Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide.
A report of that investigation blasted the FBI for making dozens of errors and omissions in four applications the bureau submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The findings prompted the Justice Department to
retract two of the warrants because they were based on faulty information.
The OIG review released Tuesday suggests that the FBI's problems are widespread.
Comment: Consistency is admirable unless it is errors!
From a dataset of more than 700 applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) submitted by eight FBI field offices, Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his team selected a sample of 29, made between October 2014 and September 2019, pertaining to US citizens or "green card" holders. They found an average of 20 errors in each one.
"We could not review original Woods Files for 4 of the 29 selected FISA applications because the FBI has not been able to locate them and, in 3 of these instances, did not know if they ever existed," Horowitz wrote.
Attorney General Bill Barr was "appalled" at the way the FISA process was abused, resulting "in one of the greatest political travesties in American history," DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said.
Two of those [Page] warrants have been ruled improperly obtained since, and the DOJ has moved to "quarantine" information obtained through all four from all pending investigations.
Even so, Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray insisted that FISA warrants remained a vital and "indispensable" tool to guard the US from national security threats, and urged lawmakers to extend those powers going forward.
Democrats, on the other hand, insisted that the actual takeaway from the audit was that the FBI was not evil, but merely incompetent.
See also:
© Getty Images
Former British ambassador Craig Murray
The day after I publish
my article accusing the corporate media of being an active part of the conspiracy against Alex Salmond, and of giving disgracefully selective, slanted and biased coverage of the evidence of his trial, the
Daily Record has decided to investigate my home and personal finances. Is not life full of little coincidences?
I received this email from the
Daily Record's political editor.
I replied to him politely. This was probably a mistake - I should have just told him where to go.
Comment: The Russian military plane with medical aid landed in the New York today. If there's one good thing to come out of this, it would be better relations with Russia! Chances are slim, though. In Russia, the number of new cases dropped, and while RT says it is "cause for alarm" that almost half of those infected are under 45, that's actually not a bad thing. Younger people have a better chance of surviving. (Alcohol sales in Moscow are up 148%.)
European and American markets took another dive, after Trump quoted guesses that "up to 240k" Americans could die. Where are they getting these numbers, especially given that China, a nation with a population several times larger than the U.S., experienced a fraction of that? The Pentagon refused one aircraft carrier captain's plea to evacuate and quarantine his ship after over 100 tested positive. Do they know something we don't? Cruise ships sequestered off the U.S. east coast have been ordered to remain at sea and prepare to treat passengers who get the virus on-ship.
Germany extended their lockdown until April 19. Georgia (the country) declared a curfew. These unnecessary lockdowns will have an effect: many right now are fully supporting them and acting like Gestapo informants on their neighbors, while some are growing resentful. The latter will probably increase in numbers as the lockdowns continue. For example, an Arab neighborhood in Jaffa rioted after Israel cops targeted an alleged "quarantine-breaker".
Over 400 Spanish journalists rejected a new press conference format in which questions are filtered by government press officers. US nurses are protesting over lack of safety gear. And over in the UK, only 15% of the number of medical personnel self-isolating or under quarantine have tested positive. It turns out that the vast majority are fine and fit for work. What a great way to ensure health facilities are ready for the alleged expected "surge" in patients: make sure health workers can't actually work! They can't even follow through on a plan that was already dumb to begin with. But that's government for you.