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By Yanis Iqbal

Ever since the racist right-wing government of Jeanine Anez has assumed power, Bolivia is continuously experiencing politico-economic tumult. Recently, seven legislators of the Movement towards Socialism (MAS) filed a complaint against the Ministers of Government and Defense, Arturo Murillo and Luis Fernando López, for misconduct in the purchase of riot gear equipments. As per the complaint, the post-coup Bolivian government unfavorably cancelled its purchase with the Brazilian corporation Condor. Thereafter, the Bolivian government signed an agreement with an American company named Bravo Tactical Solutions. The Shifting of purchase to Bravo Tactical Solution has allegedly cost the Bolivian government a surcharge of $2 million. This recent incident of dishonest dealing is one among the 35 cases of corruption which have occurred since Evo Morales, the radical Aymara socialist president of Bolivia, was illegally overthrown with the help of US support. Prominent among these cases was the ventilator scandal in which the governmental coup-plotters purchased 170 unusable ventilators worth $1.2 million for $4.7 million. Due to the public outrage which this corruption scandal generated, the health minister Marcelo Navajas had to be suspended.

The increasing numbers of corruption scandals are highlighting a fundamental feature of the new post-coup government: the new government does not care for the well-being of the Bolivian populace. The historical conditions in which it emerged shaped it as an authoritarian administration which had to act as the handmaiden of US imperialism and neoliberalism. To better understand these structural features of the post-coup government which are going to play out importantly in the future, we need to examine the circumstances in which it rose to power.

In November 2019, the democratically elected socialist president of Evo Morales was ousted through a US-orchestrated coup. This coup was initially spawned by the Organization of American States (OSA) which published a report falsely claiming that the 2019 Bolivian elections were rigged. In the report, OAS expressed “its deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results revealed after the closing of the polls”. Despite being “long on accusations and short on facts”, this report was uncritically absorbed and iterated by major publishing outlets without any qualms. Later on, OAS’s audacious prevarications were disproved by MIT in an article published by Washington Post in which it said that “As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election”. Moreover, an independent verification carried out by The Center for Economic and Policy Research also found that there wasn’t any “quantitative evidence of an irregular trend as claimed by the OAS”.

In spite of subsequent refutations, OAS had already done much damage through its strategically organized falsification campaign. Using the utterly spurious OAS report on October elections, the far-right of Bolivia started to conflagrate the political environment. On November 4 2019, Luis Fernando Camacho, a multi-millionaire businessman from separatist Santa Cruz, promised to “bring the Bible back to the palace of government”. Furthermore, he told Morales to resign within 24 hours and pompously said to a crowd of supporters: “I’m not going with weapons, I’m going with my faith and my hope; with a Bible in my right hand and a resignation letter [for Morales] in my left hand.” Camacho somehow managed to enter the main hall of the presidential palace and placed the bible on a Bolivian flag. After the turmoil of Bolivian coup had settled, Fernando Camacho met Luis Almagro, head of the OAS, in Washington DC who praised Camacho’s “commitment to democracy”. In addition, Camacho was also a guest speaker at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington DC-based think tank, whose shadowy aim is to “foster democratic governance, prosperity, and social equity in Latin America and the Caribbean”.

The symbolic act of placing the bible on a Bolivian flag defines the core anti-indigenist ideology of Fernando Camacho. This ideology wants to relegate the indigenous people to a position of secondary citizens and aspires to ruthlessly subjugate them. The burning of Wiphala flags by Camacho’s supporters highlights the hatred for a plurinational state which is not coerced by Catholicism into mistreating the 36 indigenous groups of Bolivia. But despite its toxic features, the coup plotters garnered backing from USA which, through its conspicuous silence, gave tacit consent to the ongoing violence. Right-wing gangs ransacked the home of Evo Morales, assaulted MAS officials and publicly tortured a female socialist mayor. The final blow came with the November 8-10, 2019 mutinies of the military and police when top Army General Williams Kaliman asked Morales to leave. It is pertinent to remember that Williams Kaliman was trained at the School of Americas which, through its engagement in the dirty wars of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, El Salvador, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and Nicaragua, has acquired a variety of names such as School of Assassins, School of Coups and School of Dictators.

After the military proclamation, Evo Morales had to resign and flee to Mexico. Jeanine Anez, a right wing catholic politician from a miniscule party named Democrat Social Movement, was approved as the interim president of Bolivia by a parliament without the presence of the majority of its elected representatives. Anez ordered a national blockade and selectively sent helicopters to right-wing legislators in order to prevent MAS officials from joining the assembly where they command a two-thirds majority. Through this governmental gangsterism carried out in cahoots with right-wing mobs, Jeanine Anez proclaimed herself as the president and euphorically announced with an oversized bible in her hands that “God has allowed the Bible to come back into the palace. May he bless us.” Furthermore, the new cabinet which Anez announced includes the personal lawyer of Fernando Camacho and it is not surprising that Anez has close affinities with Camacho’s anti-indigenist rhetoric. In a tweet, she said that she dreams “of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites. The city is not for Indians; let them go back to the highlands or the Chaco”.

Donald Trump expressed his full approval for the patently unjust events of Bolivia by triumphalistically saying that the resignation of Evo Morales was “a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere”. Trump actually meant to say that it was a significant moment for ruthless neoliberalism in the Western Hemisphere. With Evo Morales gone, the large lithium reserves of Bolivia, which account for 70% of world’s supply, are exposed to the predatory interests of western transnational corporations. Moreover, Bolivia has considerable amount of indium which is an important component of LCD and with the ouster of Evo’s resource nationalism, these precious metals too can be easily plundered by foreign companies. Access to these resources has been made easier through the foreign policy shift which Anez’s post-coup government has initiated. She has exited the left-leaning Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America and Union of South American Nations to join the Lima Group which is subservient to USA and supports the right-wing self-proclaimed president of Venezuela Juan Guaido. Anez has also closed Bolivia’s diplomatic offices in Iran and Nicaragua and both these countries have been under the radar of US sanctions.

Through a president servile to US imperialism, Bolivia has again become an enclave for US operations. The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been expelled by Evo Morales from Bolivia in 2013, has re-entered Bolivia. This is an important event considering the fact that USAID has previously engaged in subversive activities against Evo Morales. In the past years, USAID had been managing a “decentralization and autonomy” program through a US company named Casals and Associates in the region of Media Luna (Half-moon) where powerful business interests and separatist sentiments are located. USAID has also run a program called “Strengthening Democratic Institutions (SDI)” through which it has worked to “enrich the dialogue on decentralization; improve management of departmental budgetary resources; and promote regional economic development.” All this eyewash of decentralization and regional autonomy masks the underlying objective which is to divide Bolivia and end the unified working class support base of Evo Morales through a strategy of organized separatism.

USAID has tried to augment the strength of opposition parties through two US entities named International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI). These two entities received their funding from the Department of State and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and professionally coordinated to destabilize the socialist government of Evo Morales. Here, we come across another major actor on the Bolivian political terrain which has been prominent in the violent putsch of MAS government: National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In 2019, NED ran programmes such as Countering Disinformation in the Political Process, Informing Citizens Via Digital Platforms, Monitoring the National Electoral Process, Promoting an Informed Electorate, Providing Independent Analysis and Information, Providing Independent Political News and Election Information and Stimulating an Informed National Debate. These NED tactics conclusively point towards a scheme of carefully choreographed propaganda and electoral interventionism which contributed to the 2019 Bolivia coup. Contemporary manifestations of this propagandist-electoral warfare include the funding of Santa Cruz Civic Committee and Santa Cruz Youth Committee (of which Fernando Camacho was a member) by NED, shipment of weapons by US to a militarized opposition group in Bolivia through the Chilean port of Iquique and the involvement of U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Robert Menendez, and Marco Rubio in the discussion of a civil-military transition government which “would allege fraud in the electoral process and would not recognize Morales’ electoral victory”.

The overwhelming influence of USA on the new post-coup government is the reason behind the growing number of corruption cases. This administration was constructed in order to siphon money off from public spending and transfer it to foreign corporations. For this to happen, authoritarian measures have to be taken which militarize the country and crack down on protests. The creation of a “special apparatus of the Prosecutor’s office” to arrest deputies related to MAS, arrest of more than 100 MAS officials and the investigation of 600 former authorities of the executive branch depicts the ongoing governmental crackdown on MAS members. Jeanine Anez’s government has not even spared the civilians and already 36 civilians have been killed by police and military. These killings include the massacre of Senkata in El Alto and the massacre of Sacaba in Cochabamba. Plans are being made to increase military strength for more brutal repression and the use of Israeli military services to train Bolivia’s armed forces is a decisive step in this direction. Along with this witch hunt against MAS members and killings of dissident civilians, the post-coup government is also waging an info-warfare in which the communication minister Roxana Lizárraga is taking “pertinent actions, including deportation, against journalists who commit sedition.” To prevent a critical media from emerging, Russia Today, TeleSUR and foreign outlets have been removed from the cable system and 53 community radio stations have been closed. The new Bolivian government has also signed an agreement with a US-based company called CLS strategies to provide “strategic communications counsel” and it was this same company whom US State Department had allocated $100,000 to spread disinformation against Bolivia through social media platforms. During this entire authoritarian clampdown, neoliberalism is being pursued and the passing of Supreme Decree 4232 is a good example of this. This decree allows the use of genetically modified seeds for five crops i.e. sugarcane, cotton, soy, wheat and corn. Permitting the usage of genetically modified seeds will also allow for use of glyphosate, an herbicide and agro-toxin injurious to human health and used in Colombia by Monsanto for aerial fumigation which increased child deaths, caused respiratory ailments and skin diseases.

Under the post-coup right-wing government, Bolivia is undergoing tremendous upheaval. US imperialism and right-wing militarism are continuously unwinding the major achievements of Evo’s government and are utilizing the Coronavirus lockdown to consolidate power. But despite the repressive political environment, a positive development was the announcement by the Supreme Electoral Court that general elections would be held on 6 September, 2020. According to an opinion poll conducted in March 2020, Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca, the candidates of MAS for president and vice president respectively, are the most preferred among the Bolivian citizens. This means that the revolutionary optimism of fearless Bolivians is still intact and they have not been cowed down by US imperialism.

Yanis Iqbal is a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and is interested in studying the existential conditions of subaltern classes.

10 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

Co-Written by Morgan Palumbo & Jessica Draper

It was a bare-knuckle brawl of the first order. It took place in Washington, D.C., and it resulted in a KO. The winners? Lobbyists and the defense industry. The losers? Us. And odds on, you didn’t even know that it happened. Few Americans did, which is why it’s worth telling the story of how Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari money flooded the nation’s capital and, in the process, American policy went down for the count.

The fight began three years ago this month. Sure, the pugilists hadn’t really liked each other that much before then, but what happened in 2017 was the foreign-policy equivalent of a sucker punch. On the morning of June 5th, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain announced that they were severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, the small but wealthy emirate in the Persian Gulf, and establishing a land, air, and sea blockade of their regional rival, purportedly because of its ties to terrorism.

The move stunned the Qataris, who responded in ways that would later become familiar during the Covid-19 pandemic — by emptying supermarket shelves and hoarding essentials they worried would quickly run out. Their initial fears were not unwarranted, as their neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were even reported to be planning to launch a military invasion of Qatar in the weeks to come (one that would be thwarted only by the strong objections of Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson).

To make sense of this now three-year-old conflict, which turned aspects of American policy in the Middle East ranging from the war in Yemen to the more than 10,000 American military personnel stationed in Qatar into political footballs, means refocusing on Washington and the extraordinary influence operations the Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris ran there. That, in turn, means analyzing Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) documents filed by firms representing all three countries since the spat began. Do that and you’ll come across a no-punches-barred bout of lobbying in the U.S. capital that would have made Rocky envious.

The Saudis Come Out Swinging

The stage had been set for the blockade of Qatar seven months before it began when Donald Trump was elected president. Just as his victory shocked the American public, so it caught many foreign governments off guard. In response, they quickly sought out the services of anyone with ties to the incoming administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. The Saudis and Emiratis were no exception. In 2016, both countries had reported spending a little more than $10 million on FARA registered lobbying firms. By the end of 2017, UAE spending had nearly doubled to $19.5 million, while the Saudi’s had soared to $27.3 million.

In the months following Donald Trump’s November triumph, the Saudis, for instance, added several firms with ties to him or the Republicans to an already sizeable list of companies registered under FARA as representing their interests. For example, they brought on the CGCN Group whose president and chief policy officer, Michael Catanzaro, was on Trump’s transition team and then served in his administration. To court the Republican Congress, they hired the McKeon Group, run by former Republican Representative Buck McKeon, who had previously served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

And that was just registered foreign agents. A number of actors who had not registered under FARA were actively pushing the Saudi and Emirati agendas, chief among them Elliott Broidy and George Nader. Broidy, a top fundraiser for Trump’s campaign, and Nader, his business partner, already had a wide range of interests in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. To help secure them, the two men embarked on a campaign to turn the new president and the Republican establishment against Qatar. One result was a Broidy-inspired, UAE-funded anti-Qatar conference hosted in May 2017 by a prominent Washington think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It conveniently offered Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) a platform to discuss his plans to introduce a bill, HR 2712, that would label Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism. It was to be introduced in the House of Representatives just two days after the conference ended.

Qatar, mind you, had been a U.S. ally in the Middle East and was the home of Al Udeid Air Base, where more than 10,000 American soldiers are still stationed. So that bill represented a striking development in American-Qatari relations and was a clearly traceable result of Saudi and UAE lobbying efforts.

The unregistered influence of players like Broidy and Nader was evidently backed by other FARA-registered Saudi and UAE foreign agents actively pushing the bill. For example, Qorvis Communications, a long-time public relations mouthpiece for the Saudis, circulated a document titled “Qatar’s History of Funding Terrorism and Extremism,” claiming that country was funding Al-Nusra, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other groups. (Not surprisingly, it included a supportive quote from David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)

While that anti-Qatar crusade was ramping up in Washington, the president himself was being wooed by the Saudi royals in Riyadh on his first official trip abroad. They gave him the literal royal treatment and their efforts appeared to pay off when, just a day after the blockade began, Trump tweeted, “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”

A week after the imposition of the blockade, the Emirati ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for Al Udeid Air Base to be moved to the UAE, a development the Qataris feared could open the door for an eventual invasion of their country.

However, this Saudi and Emirati onslaught did not go unanswered.

Qatar Strikes Back

Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, was caught flat-footed by the influence operations of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates. The year before Donald Trump became president, the Qataris had spent just $2.7 million on lobbying and public relations firms, less than a third of what the Saudis and UAE paid out, according to FARA records. But they now moved swiftly to shore up their country’s image as a crucial American ally. They went on an instant hiring spree, scooping up lobbying and public-relations firms with close ties to Trump and congressional Republicans. Just two days after the blockade began, for instance, they inked a deal with the law firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, paying $2.5 million for just its first 90 days of work.

They also quickly obtained the services of Stonington Strategies. Headed by Nick Muzin, who had worked on Trump’s election campaign, the firm promptly set out to court 250 Trump “influencers,” as Julie Bykowicz of the Wall Street Journal reported. Among others, Stonington’s campaign sought to woo prominent Fox News personalities Trump paid special attention to like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He was paid $50,000 to travel to Qatar just months later.

In September 2017, the Qataris also hired Bluefront Strategies to craft a comprehensive multimedia operation, which was to include commercials on all the major news networks, as well as digital and printed ads in an array of prominent publications, and a “Lift the Blockade” campaign on social media. Meanwhile, ads on Google and YouTube were to highlight the illegality of the blockade and the country’s contributions to fighting terrorism. Bluefront Strategies was to influence public opinion before the next session of the U.N. General Assembly that month. Qatar and its proxies then used the campaign “to target key decision-makers attending the General Assembly, including Trump” to gain support on that most global of stages.

Its agents weren’t just playing defense, either. They actively attacked the Saudi lobby. For example, Barry Bennett of Avenue Strategies, a PR firm they hired, sent a letter to the assistant attorney general for national security accusing Saudi Arabia and the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC) of FARA violations in their funding of an expensive media campaign meant to connect Qatar’s leaders with violent extremism and acts of terror.

Such counterpunches proved remarkably successful. SAPRAC eventually felt obliged to register with FARA. Meanwhile, Huckabee tweeted, “Just back from a few days in surprisingly beautiful, modern, and hospitable Doha, Qatar.” Finally, at that U.N. meeting, President Trump actually sat down with Emir al-Thani of Qatar and said, “We’ve been friends a long time… I have a very strong feeling [the Qatar diplomatic crisis] will be solved quickly.” They both then emphasized the “tremendous” and “strong” relationship between their countries.

The Qataris next mounted a concerted defense against HR 2712. Lobbying firms they hired, particularly Avenue Strategies and Husch Blackwell, launched a multifaceted campaign to prevent that legislation from passing. Elliott Broidy even claimed in a lawsuit that the Qatari government and several of its lobbyists had hacked his email account and distributed private emails of his to members of Congress in an attempt to discredit his work for the Saudis.

In November 2017, Barry Bennett from Avenue Strategies went on the attack, using a powerful weapon in Washington politics: Israel. He distributed a letter to members of Congress written by a former high-ranking official in the Israeli national security establishment explicitly stating that Qatar had not provided military support to Hamas, as HR 2712 claimed it had.

Three months later, Husch Blackwell all but threatened Congress and the Trump administration with the cancellation of a $6.2 billion Boeing contract to sell F-15 fighters to the Qatari military (and the potential loss of thousands of associated jobs) if the bill passed and sanctions were imposed on that country. All of this was linked to a concerted effort by Qatari agents to contact “nearly two dozen House offices, including then House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,” to prevent the bill’s passage, according to a report by the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy where we work. Ultimately, HR 2712 died a slow death in Congress and never became law.

The Saudi Bloc’s Battle for the War in Yemen

Just as Qatar started to turn the tide in the fight for influence in Washington, the Saudis and their allies faced another problem: Congress began moving to sever support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. On February 28, 2018, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a joint resolution to withdraw U.S. support for that war. According to FARA filings, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, representing the Saudi ministry of foreign affairs, contacted several members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, particularly Democrats, presumably to persuade them to vote against the measure.

That March, the firm sent out dozens of emails to members of Congress inviting them to a gala dinner with the key Saudi royal, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself. According to the invitation from the CGCN Group, another FARA-registered firm representing the Saudis, the “KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia]-USA Partnership Gala Dinner” was to emphasize the “enduring defense and counter-terrorism cooperation” and “historic alliance” between the two countries. It would end up taking place just two days after the Senate voted to table Sanders’s bill.

Emirati lobbyists similarly reached out to Congress to maintain support for their role in that war. Hagir Elawad & Associates, for example, distributed an op-ed written by the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs justifying the war, as well as a letter written by that country’s ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, to 50 congressional contacts defending the Saudi-led coalition’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties and arguing that “the United States has a clear stake in the coalition’s success in Yemen.”

When that conflict began, Qatar was still a member of the coalition, but the imposition of the blockade led it to withdraw its forces from Yemen. Qatari officials then used the country’s media empire, centered on the broadcaster Al Jazeera, to highlight the disastrous aspects of the ongoing war. In doing so, they provided the Saudis and Emiratis with yet another reason to focus their own influence machines on both Qatar’s and Al Jazeera’s destruction. (That network’s closure was, in fact, one of the original 13 demands the Saudis and Emiratis had made for lifting the blockade.)

From the moment it was founded in 1996, Al Jazeera had been an instrument of Qatari soft power, so it was hardly surprising that the UAE had long pressured members of Congress to force the network to register under FARA as a foreign agent. And Emirati lobbying efforts were not in vain. In early March 2018, 19 members of Congress signed and sent a letter to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging the Justice Department to demand that Al Jazeera be registered under FARA. Another such letter sent to the Justice Department in June 2019 by six senators and two representatives asked “why Al Jazeera and its employees have not been required to register.” According to FARA filings, all but one of those representatives had either received campaign contributions from or been contacted by a Saudi or Emirati lobbying firm. Al Jazeera, however, has yet to register.

The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Despite the efforts of Saudi and Emirati lobbyists in the early months of 2018, the emir of Qatar still managed to land an invitation to the Oval Office. At their meeting that April 10th, President Trump again described al-Thani as a “friend” and a “great gentleman” as well. The emir, in turn, thanked the president for “supporting us during this blockade.”

If Trump’s cozying up to him was a setback for the Saudis, the murder of critic and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi nearly did in the Saudi lobbying juggernaut as well. The CIA later confirmed that the crown prince himself had ordered that Saudi citizen’s assassination at the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

As a result, some lobbying firms cut ties with the kingdom and its influence on Capitol Hill waned, as did positive public opinion about Saudi Arabia. In December 2018, the Senate passed the Sanders bill to end support for the war in Yemen. Both houses of Congress also passed a War Powers resolution to end involvement in that conflict, a historic congressional move in this century, even if later vetoed by President Trump (as were a series of attempts to block his treasured arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).

Given the president’s unyielding support for the Saudis and Emiratis as especially lucrative customers for this country’s defense industry, the Qataris have clearly decided to crib the Saudi playbook. In May, that country purchased 24 Apache helicopters for $3 billion and, a few months later, agreed to pay for and manage a $1.8 billion expansion of Al Udeid Air Base to ensure the American military’s continued presence for the foreseeable future. In doing so, Qatar was visibly at work coopting two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington: the military and the weapons makers.

And the Winners Are…

Though Qatar faced a near-existential threat to its survival when the blockade began, three years later it’s not only surviving, but thriving thanks significantly to its influence operations in Washington. They have helped immeasurably to deepen economic, diplomatic, and military relations between the two countries.

Meanwhile, the emir’s rivals in Riyadh not only failed to make their blockade a success, but saw their influence wane appreciably in the U.S. as they stumbled from one public relations fiasco to the next. Even their staunchest defender, Donald Trump, recently threatened to sever U.S. military support for the Kingdom if the Saudi royals didn’t end their oil war with Russia (which they promptly did).

In truth, however, the real loser in this struggle for influence hasn’t been Saudi Arabia or the Emiratis, it’s been America. After all, the efforts of both sides to deepen their ties with the military-industrial complex (reinforcing the hyper-militarization of U.S. foreign policy) and increase their sway in Congress have ensured that the real interests of this country played second fiddle to those of Middle Eastern despots. Certainly, their acts helped ensure near historic levels of arms sales to the region, while prolonging the wars in Yemen and Syria, and so contributing to death and devastation on an almost unimaginable scale.

None of this had anything to do with the real interests of Americans, unless you mean the arms industry and K Street lobbyists who have been the only clear American winners in this never-ending PR war in Washington. In the process, those three Persian Gulf states have delivered a genuine knockout blow to the very idea that U.S. foreign policy should be driven by national — not special — interests.

Morgan Palumbo is a researcher with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.

Jessica Draper is a researcher with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative and Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

10 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Edward Curtin

I am not trying to be cute and play with words. That title is meant to convey what it says, so let me explain.

The people who own the United States and their allies around the world have a plan. It is so simple that it is extremely devious. Their plan has been in operation for many years. It has most people bamboozled because it is Janus-faced by design, overt one day, covert the next, but both faces operate under one controlling head. Some call this head the Deep-State. Even the Deep-State calls itself the Deep-State in a double fake. It is meant to make people schizoid, which it has.

The so called Deep-State has been given many names over the years. I will not bore you with them, except to say that it was once called the power elite. They are the upper classes, the super wealthy who control the financial institutions, Wall Street, the intelligence agencies, the corporate media, the internet, the military, and the politicians. They are multinational.

They are the wealthy nihilists who care not one jot for the rest of the world. They operate in secret, yet also run above-ground organizations such as the World Bank (WB), the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Agency for International Development AID (USAID), etc. Their bloodstream runs on war, the preparations for war, and economic exploitation of the world. All wealthy people are not party to their machinations, but they are almost always complicit in profiting from their crimes, unless they are very stupid. Or play stupid. Since I am talking about a great confidence game, that is quite common.

Other people, all other classes, the poor, middle-classes, even a portion of the upper middle classes mean nothing to the power elite unless they can serve their interests. They are always waging class warfare to maintain their domination and control. Their recent version of this class war is underway in the United States and in many other countries. As of today, they are using race fears to create chaos and outrage to disguise their class warfare that is leading to the imposition of martial law. Soon they will shift back to the coronavirus fraud. Back and forth, in and out, now you see it, now you don’t.

By shutting down the world’s economy, they have destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and are creating poverty on a vast scale. Much famine and death will follow. In the United States alone, 40-45 million people have applied for unemployment insurance and job loss is the greatest since the Great Depression. The reason: a massive propaganda campaign created around Covid-19 fear porn.

This class war is not new, but it is conducted today at warp speed since these people control the technology that has allowed them vastly increased power. In the U.S.A., it is conducted as usual under the guise of Republicans versus Democrats, the two representative political factions that are the faces of the controlled “opposition,” who are actually allies in the larger confidence game. Keeping “hope” alive is central to their strategy. Mind control is what they do. Speed is their greatest ally. Race is central to their game plan. They always say they are protecting us.

It is all a lie. A show. Nothing but a spectacle for the gullible. A shadow play.

The current president, Donald Trump, is the choice of one faction of these psychopaths. This year, Joseph Biden, is the shaky presumptive choice of the other. Both are deranged puppets. Regular people fight over who is better or worse because they are living inside what Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to ever bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, long ago called “the doll’s house.”

It is a place where illusions and delusions replace reality. It is 24/7 propaganda. It keeps people engaged. It gives them something to argue about, one team to root for. It’s a sport. It is similar to Plato’s Cave. Fire has been replaced with electronic lighting and screens, but little has changed.

The sick system of exploitation is oiled and greased with the tantalizing bait of hope dangled for the masses. Shit slogans like “We are all in this together.”

But there is no hope for this system.

But when the propaganda is so slick that it creates a double-bind, people grasp at any neurotic “solution” out of frustration. As I write, huge angry crowds are out in the streets protesting the sick murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white cop. Police infiltrators have started violent looting. Chaos reigns, as planned. Such killings are routine, but someone turned a switch for this one when just yesterday operation corona lockdown with its fear and fake statistics had everyone cowering behind masks at home as the economic lives of vast numbers were destroyed in a flash. For today, the masquerade is in the streets. Many good people are caught up in it. In a few days the scene will shift and we can expect another “bombshell.” These surprises will keep happening one after another for the foreseeable future. Shock and Awe for the home crowd. The war come home. The controllers know you can’t wage war against the rest of the world unless you do so at home as well.

When one group within the deep-state won the internecine battle in 2016 and “shocked” the country with the election of the comical Trump, the other deep-state group called the Democrats, immediately set in motion a plan to try to oust him or to make it seem as if they were trying to do so. The naïve thought this may happen, and their deluded yearning has been stretched until the 2020 presidential election, although some probably think Trump might go before then. He won’t.

So many people have destroyed their minds and relationships because they can’t see through the fraud.

Early in 2017, as the outgoing front man for the CIA/warfare/Wall St. state, Barack Obama, left his time bombs for the future. The pink pussy hats were sent out marching to open the show. Russia-gate was launched; eventually impeachment was tried. The Democrats. with their media allies, went on a non-stop attack. It was all so obvious, so shallow in its intent, as it was meant to be. But millions who were in the doll house were outraged, obsessed, frantic with rage. They bought the con-game. Both those who hate Trump and those that love him have spent almost four years foaming at the mouth, breathless.

Trump was cast as the personification of evil. A relentless attack on Trump began and has continued all this time. It is pure theater. Trump remains at the helm, as planned, holding the Bible aloft in a style reminiscent of a Bible thumping Klansman from The Birth of a Nation. Only the ignorant thought it might have been different. He knows how to perform his role. He is a fine actor. He outrages, spews idiocies, as he is supposed to do. That Mussolini style stance, that absurd hair, the pout. Just perfect for an arch-villain. It’s so obvious that it isn’t. Herein lies the trick.

And who profits from his policies? The super-rich, of course, the power-elite. Who just stole 6-10 trillion dollars of public money under the hilariously named Cares Act? The super-rich, of course, the deep-state. It was a bi-partisan bank robbery from the public treasury carried out under the shadow of Covid-19, whose phony hyped up numbers were used to frighten the populace into lockdown mode as the Republican and Democratic bank robbers smiled in unison and announced forcefully, “We care!” We are here to protect you.

Remember how Barack Obama “saved” us by bailing out Wall St. and the big banks to the tune of trillions in early 2009. Then waged unending wars. Left black Americans bereft. He cared, too, didn’t he. Our leaders always care.

Obama was the black guy in the white hat. Trump is the white guy in the black hat. Hollywood on the Potomac, as Gary Wills called it when Ronald Reagan was the acting-president. Now Obama’s war-loving side-kick, the pale-faced, twisted talking Biden is seriously offered as an alternative to the Elvis impersonator in the White House. This is the false left/right dichotomy that has the residents of the doll’s house in its grip.

If you can’t see what’s coming, you might want to break out of the house, take off your mask, go for a walk, and take some deep breaths. The walls are closing in.

Knees will be on everyone’s necks in the months ahead.

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.

9 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By John Scales Avery

In written Chinese, the word “crisis” is represented by two characters. One of these, taken alone, means “danger”. The other, by itself, means “opportunity”. A crisis nearly always leads to great change. There is a danger that this will be a change for the worse. But there also is the opportunity to change society for the better – to reform and improve it. Both paths are present in a crisis like our present one. We must strive with all our strength to make society take the right path.

Our present crisis

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is in itself a crisis, many American cities have erupted in massive protests over the senseless killing by police of yet another black man – George Floyd. The country is deeply divided. Throughout the world there have been anti-racist protests, partly in sympathy with the US protesters, and partly because racism exists in many countries.

Donald Trump, who was elected on an openly racist platform, and who has been a racist in both word and deed during his term of office, has reacted by threatening to use the US army against citizens of his own country, calling the demonstrators “lowlifes and loosers”, and telling governors, “If you don’t dominate, you are wasting your time”.

After hiding in a White House bunker, Donald Trump ordered officers to clear a path for him so that he could be photographed holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. The forces used tear gas and flash grenades against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square.

Trump’s threats to use federal troops were too much for defense secretary, Mark Esper, who insisted that military personnel “be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations”.

Another rebuke came from Trump’s former secretary of defense, James Mattis, who said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our constitution”.

What will happen if Trump loses the 2020 election but refuses to give up the White House, claiming that the votes were counted incorrectly? Will the military support him? This danger has to be considered. We must remember the testimony before Congress of Trump’s former associate Michael Cohen, who said, “I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power”.

The Great Depression brought Hitler to power

The present COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous economic impact. Economists fear that it will produce a depression comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, It is interesting to compare what happened then with what might happen today.

The Great Depression brought Hitler to power. Before the economic depression struck, the Nazis were a very minor party, winning only 3 per cent of the votes to the Reichstag in the 1924 elections. But in the 1932 elections, the Nazis won 33 per cent of the votes, more than any other party. In 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor, and head of the German government.

In Denmark, the Great Depression lead to social reform

In sharp contrast to what happened in Germany, the crisis of the Great Depression led Denmark to the social reforms that have made the country so prosperous and happy as it is today.

On January 30, 1933, representatives from labor and management met in the apartment of the Danish prime minister, Thorvald Stauning. During the entire day, and late into the night, they discussed possible solutions to the economic crisis, but they could not agree. Finally, after midnight, Stauning offered his exhausted guests some whisky, so that they could relax a little. As if by magic, the whisky seemed to dissolve the differences separating the delegates, and an historic agreement was reached. It proved to be the model for the Danish welfare state.

Denmark has very high taxes, but in return for these, its citizens receive many social services, such as free health care. The taxes are sharply progressive so the rich pay very much, and the less wealthy very little. Thus the contrast between rich and poor is very much reduced in Denmark. This is a form of socialism, but at the same time, Denmark has a market economy.

If they qualify for university education, the tuition is free, and students are given an allowance for their living expenses. Mothers or alternatively fathers, can take paid leave of up to 52 weeks after the birth of a child. After that, a creche is always available, so that mothers can return to their jobs. When the child becomes too old for the creche, day care centers are always available.

For children of school age, after-school clubs are available where children can practice arts and crafts or other activities under supervision until their parents come home from work.

In 2017. Denmark ranked 2nd in the world (after Norway) in the World Happiness Report. In a number of other years, Denmark has ranked 1st. In compiling the report, researchers ask people in a given country whether they are happy, and record how many say “yes”. Interestingly, in Denmark, women are the most happy of all.

Denmark has also been one of the leaders in addressing the climate emergency, thus demonstrating that the widely discussed Green New Deal strategy can actually be put into practice.

Which path will we take?

The present crisis will undoubtedly lead to great change, but will it be takeovers by neo-fascist leaders such as Trump? Or will the change be social reforms, such as those initiated in Denmark by Stauning? Will the Green New Deal be part of our recovery from the present economic crisis? We stand at a critical point in history. Each of us has the duty to strive with all our strength to persuade our societies to make the right choice.

John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen.

9 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Don Fitz

Beginning in December 1951, Ernesto “Che” Guevara took a nine-month break from medical school to travel by motorcycle through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. One of his goals was gaining practical experience with leprosy. On the night of his twenty-fourth birthday, Che was at La Colonia de San Pablo in Peru swimming across the river to join the lepers. He walked among six hundred lepers in jungle huts looking after themselves in their own way.

Che would not have been satisfied to just study and sympathize with them – he wanted to be with them and understand their existence. Being in contact with people who were poor and hungry while they were sick transformed Che. He envisioned a new medicine, with doctors who would serve the greatest number people with preventive care and public awareness of hygiene. A few years later, Che joined Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement as a doctor and was among the eighty-one men aboard the Granma as it landed in Cuba on December 2, 1956.

Revolutionary Medicine

After the January 1, 1959, victory that overthrew Fulgencio Batista, the new Cuban constitution included Che’s dream of free medical care for all as a human right. An understanding of the failings of disconnected social systems led the revolutionary government to build hospitals and clinics in underserved parts of the island at the same time that it began addressing crises of literacy, racism, poverty, and housing. Cuba overhauled its clinics both in 1964 and again in 1974 to better link communities and patients. By 1984, Cuba had introduced doctor-nurse teams who lived in the neighborhoods where they had offices (consultorios).

The United States became ever more bellicose, so in 1960 Cubans organized Committees for Defense of the Revolution to defend the country. The committees prepared to move the elderly, disabled, sick, and mentally ill to higher ground if a hurricane approached, thus intertwining domestic health care and foreign affairs, a connection that has been maintained throughout Cuba’s history.

As Cuba’s medical revolution was based on extending medical care beyond the major cities and into the rural communities that needed it the most, it was a logical conclusion to extend that assistance to other nations. The revolutionary government sent doctors to Chile after a 1960 earthquake and a medical brigade in 1963 to Algeria, which was fighting for independence from France. These set the stage for the country’s international medical aid, which grew during the decades and now includes helping treat the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the late 1980s and early ’90s, two disasters threatened the very existence of the country. The first victim of AIDS died in 1986. In December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, ending its $5 billion annual subsidy, disrupting international commerce, and sending the Cuban economy into a free fall that exacerbated the AIDS epidemic. A perfect storm for AIDS infection appeared on the horizon. The HIV infection rate for the Caribbean region was second only to southern Africa, where a third of a million Cubans had recently been during the Angolan wars. The embargo on the island reduced the availability of drugs (including those for HIV/AIDS), made existing pharmaceuticals outrageously expensive, and disrupted the financial infrastructures used for drug purchases. Desperately needing funds, Cuba opened the floodgate of tourism.

The government drastically reduced services in all areas except two: education and health care. Its research institutes developed Cuba’s own diagnostic test for HIV by 1987. Over twelve million tests were completed by 1993. By 1990, when gay people had become the island’s primary HIV victims, homophobia was officially challenged in schools. Condoms were provided for free at doctor’s offices and, despite the expense, so were antiretroviral drugs.

Cuba’s united and well-planned effort to cope with HIV/AIDS paid off. At the same time that Cuba had two hundred AIDS cases, New York City (with about the same population) had forty-three thousand cases. Despite having only a small fraction of the wealth and resources of the United States, Cuba had overcome the devastating effects of the U.S. blockade and had implemented an AIDS program superior to that of the country seeking to destroy it. During this Special Period, Cubans experienced longer lives and lower infant mortality rates in comparison to the United States. Cuba had inspired healers throughout the world to believe that a country with a coherent and caring medical system can thrive, even against tremendous odds.

COVID-19 Hits Cuba

Overcoming the HIV/AIDS and Special Period crises prepared Cuba for COVID-19. Aware of the intensity of the pandemic, Cuba knew that it had two inseparable responsibilities: to take care of its own with a comprehensive program and to share its capabilities internationally.

The government immediately carried out a task that proved very difficult in a market-driven economy –altering the equipment of nationalized factories (which usually made school uniforms) to manufacture masks. These provided an ample supply for Cuba by the middle of April 2020, while the United States, with its enormous productive capacity, was still suffering a shortage.

Discussions at the highest levels of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health drew up the national policy. There would need to be massive testing to determine who had been infected. Infected persons would need to be quarantined while ensuring that they had food and other necessities. Contact tracing would be used to determine who else might be exposed. Medical staff would need to go door to door to check on the health of every citizen. Consultorio staff would give special attention to everyone in the neighborhood who might be high risk.

By March 2, Cuba had instituted the Novel Coronavirus Plan for Prevention and Control. Within four days, it expanded the plan to include taking the temperature of and possibly isolating infected incoming travelers. These occurred before Cuba’s first confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis on March 11. Cuba had its first confirmed COVID-19 fatality by March 22, when there were thirty-five confirmed cases, almost one thousand patients being observed in hospitals, and over thirty thousand people under surveillance at home. The next day it banned the entry of nonresident foreigners, which took a deep bite into the country’s tourism revenue.

That was the day that Cuba’s Civil Defense went on alert to respond rapidly to COVID-19 and the Havana Defense Council decided that there was a serious problem in the city’s Vedado district, famous for being the largest home to nontourist foreign visitors who were more likely to have been exposed to the virus. By April 3, the district was closed. As Merriam Ansara witnessed, “anyone with a need to enter or leave must prove that they have been tested and are free of COVID-19.” The Civil Defense made sure stores were supplied and all vulnerable people received regular medical checks.

Vedado had eight confirmed cases, a lot for a small area. Cuban health officials wanted the virus to remain at the “local spread” stage, when it can be traced while going from one person to another. They sought to prevent it from entering the “community spread” stage, when tracing is not possible because it is moving out of control. As U.S. health professionals begged for personal protective equipment and testing in the United States was so sparse that people had to ask to be tested (rather than health workers testing contacts of infected patients), Cuba had enough rapid test kits to trace contacts of persons who had contracted the virus.

During late March and early April, Cuban hospitals were also changing work patterns to minimize contagion. Havana doctors went into Salvador Allende Hospital for fifteen days, staying overnight within an area designated for medical staff. Then they moved to an area separate from patients where they lived for another fifteen days and were tested before returning home. They stayed at home without leaving for another fifteen days and were tested before resuming practice. This forty-five-day period of isolation prevented medical staff from bringing disease to the community via their daily trips to and from work.

The medical system extends from the consultorio to every family in Cuba. Third-, fourth-, and fifth-year medical students are assigned by consultorio doctors to go to specific homes each day. Their tasks include obtaining survey data from residents or making extra visits to the elderly, infants, and those with respiratory problems. These visits gather preventive medicine data that is then taken into account by those in the highest decision-making positions of the country. When students bring their data, doctors use a red pen to mark hot spots where extra care is necessary. Neighborhood doctors meet regularly at clinics to talk about what each doctor is doing, what they are discovering, what new procedures the Cuban Ministry of Public Health is adopting, and how the intense work is affecting medical staff.

In this way, every Cuban citizen and every health care worker, from those at neighborhood doctor offices through those at the most esteemed research institutes, has a part in determining health policy. Cuba currently has eighty-nine thousand doctors, eighty-four thousand nurses, and nine thousand students scheduled to graduate from medical studies in 2020. The Cuban people would not tolerate the head of the country ignoring medical advice, spouting nonsensical statements, and determining policy based on what would be most profitable for corporations.

The Cuban government approved free distribution of the homeopathic medicine PrevengHo-Vir to residents of Havana and Pinar del Rio province. Susana Hurlich was one of many receiving it. On April 8, Dr. Yaisen, one of three doctors at the consultorio two blocks from her home, came to the door with a small bottle of PrevengHo-Vir and explained how to use it. Instructions warn that it reinforces the immune system but is not a substitute for Interferon Alpha 2B, nor is it a vaccine. Hurlich believes that something important “about Cuba’s medical system is that rather than being two-tiered, as is often the case in other countries, with ‘classical medicine’ on the one hand and ‘alternative medicine’ on the other, Cuba has ONE health system that includes it all. When you study to become a doctor, you also learn about homeopathic medicine in all its forms.”

Global Solidarity in the Time of COVID-19

A powerful model: Perhaps the most critical component of Cuba’s medical internationalism during the COVID-19 crisis has been using its decades of experience to create an example of how a country can confront the virus with a compassionate and competent plan. Public health officials around the world were inspired by Cuba’s actions.

Transfer of knowledge: When viruses that cause Ebola, mainly found in sub-Saharan Africa, increased dramatically in the fall of 2014, much of the world panicked. Soon, over twenty thousand people were infected, more than eight thousand had died, and worries mounted that the death toll could reach into hundreds of thousands. The United States provided military support; other countries promised money. Cuba was the first nation to respond with what was most needed: it sent 103 nurse and 62 doctor volunteers to Sierra Leone. Since many governments did not know how to respond to the disease, Cuba trained volunteers from other nations at Havana’s Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine. In total, Cuba taught 13,000 Africans, 66,000 Latin Americans, and 620 Caribbeans how to treat Ebola without themselves becoming infected. Sharing understanding on how to organize a health system is the highest level of knowledge transfer.

Venezuela has attempted to replicate fundamental aspects of the Cuban health model on a national level, which has served Venezuela well in combating COVID-19. In 2018, residents of Altos de Lidice organized seven communal councils, including one for community health. A resident made space in his home available to the Communal Healthcare System initiative so that Dr. Gutierrez could have an office. He coordinates data collections to identify at-risk residents and visits all residents in their homes to explain how to avoid infection by COVID-19. Nurse del Valle Marquez is a Chavista who helped implement the Barrio Adentro when the first Cuban doctors arrived. She remembers that residents had never seen a doctor inside their community, but when the Cubans arrived “we opened our doors to the doctors, they lived with us, they ate with us, and they worked among us.”

Stories like this permeate Venezuela. As a result of building a Cuban-type system, teleSUR reported that by April 11, 2020, the Venezuelan government had conducted 181,335 early Polymerase Chain Reaction tests in time to have the lowest infection rate in Latin America. Venezuela had only 6 infections per million citizens while neighboring Brazil had 104 infections per million.

When Rafael Correa was president of Ecuador, over one thousand Cuban doctors formed the backbone of its health care system. Lenin Moreno was elected in 2017 and Cuban doctors were soon expelled, leaving public medicine in chaos. Moreno followed recommendations of the International Monetary Fund to slash Ecuador’s health budget by 36 percent, leaving it without health care professionals, without personal protective equipment, and, above all, without a coherent health care system. While Venezuela and Cuba had 27 COVID-19 deaths, Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, had an estimated death toll of 7,600.

International medical response: Cuban medicine is perhaps best known for its internationalism. A clear example is the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010. Cuba sent medical staff who lived among Haitians and stayed months or years after the earthquake. U.S. doctors, however, did not sleep where Haitian victims huddled, returned to luxury hotels at night, and departed after a few weeks. John Kirk coined the term disaster tourism to describe the way that many rich countries respond to medical crises in poor countries.

The commitment that Cuban medical staff show internationally is a continuation of the effort that the country’s health care system made in spending three decades to find the best way to strengthen bonds between caregiving professionals and those they serve. By 2008, Cuba had sent over 120,000 health care professionals to 154 countries, its doctors had cared for over 70 million people in the world, and almost 2 million people owed their lives to Cuban medical services in their country.

The Associated Press reported that when COVID-19 spread throughout the world, Cuba had thirty-seven thousand medical workers in sixty-seven countries. It soon deployed additional doctors to Suriname, Jamaica, Dominica, Belize, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. On April 16, Granma reported that “21 brigades of healthcare professionals have been deployed to join national and local efforts in 20 countries. The same day, Cuba sent two hundred health personnel to Qatar.

As northern Italy became the epicenter of COVID-19 cases, one of its hardest hit cities was Crema in the Lombardy region. The emergency room at its hospital was filled to capacity. On March 26, Cuba sent fifty-two doctors and nurses who set up a field hospital with three intensive care unit beds and thirty-two other beds with oxygen. A smaller and poorer Caribbean nation was one of the few aiding a major European power. Cuba’s intervention took its toll. By April 17, thirty of its medical professionals who went abroad tested positive for COVID-19.

Bringing the world to Cuba: The flip side of Cuba sending medical staff across the globe is the people it has brought to the island—both students and patients. When Cuban doctors were in the Republic of the Congo in 1966, they saw young people studying independently under streetlights at night and arranged for them to come to Havana. They brought in even more African students during the Angolan wars of 1975–88 and then brought large numbers of Latin American students to study medicine following Hurricanes Mitch and Georges. The number of students coming to Cuba to study expanded even more in 1999 when it opened classes at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). By 2020, ELAM had trained thirty thousand doctors from over one hundred countries.

Cuba also has a history of bringing foreign patients for treatment. After the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, 25,000 patients, mostly children, came to the island for treatment, with some staying for months or years. Cuba opened its doors, hospital beds, and a youth summer camp.

On March 12, nearly fifty crew members and passengers on a British cruise ship either had COVID-19 or were showing symptoms as the ship approached the Bahamas, a British Commonwealth nation. Since the Braemar flew the Bahamian flag as a Commonwealth vessel, there should have been no problem disembarking those aboard for treatment and return to the United Kingdom. But the Bahamian Ministry of Transport declared that the cruise ship would “not be permitted to dock at any port in the Bahamas and no persons will be permitted to disembark the vessel.” During the next five days, the United States, Barbados (another Commonwealth nation), and several other Caribbean countries turned it away. On March 18, Cuba became the only country to allow the Braemar’s over one thousand crew members and passengers to dock. Treatment at Cuban hospitals was offered to those who felt too sick to fly. Most went by bus to José Martí International Airport for flights back to the United Kingdom. Before leaving, Braemar crew members displayed a banner reading “I love you Cuba!” Passenger Anthea Guthrie posted on her Facebook page: “They have made us not only feel tolerated, but actually welcome.”

Medicine for all: In 1981, there was a particularly bad outbreak of the mosquito-borne dengue fever, which hits the island every few years. At the time, many first learned of the very high level of Cuba’s research institutes that created Interferon Alpha 2B to successfully treat dengue. As Helen Yaffe points out, “Cuba’s interferon has shown its efficacy and safety in the therapy of viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles, HIV-AIDS, and dengue.” It accomplished this by preventing complications that could worsen a patient’s condition and result in death. The efficacy of the drug persisted for decades and, in 2020, it became vitally important as a potential cure for COVID-19. What also survived was Cuba’s eagerness to develop a multiplicity of drugs and share them with other nations.

Cuba has sought to work cooperatively toward drug development with countries such as China, Venezuela, and Brazil, Collaboration with Brazil resulted in meningitis vaccines at a cost of 95¢ rather than $15 to $20 per dose. Finally, Cuba teaches other countries to produce medications themselves so they do not have to rely on purchasing them from rich countries.

In order to effectively cope with disease, drugs are frequently sought for three goals: tests to determine those infected; treatments to help ward off or cure problems; and vaccines to prevent infections. As soon as Polymerase Chain Reaction rapid tests were available, Cuba began using them widely throughout the island. Cuba developed both Interferon Alpha 2B (a recombinant protein) and PrevengHo-Vir (a homeopathic medication). TeleSUR reported that by April 20, over forty-five countries had requested Cuba’s Inteferon in order to control and then get rid of the virus.

Cuba’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology is seeking to create a vaccine against COVID-19. Its Director of Biomedical Research, Dr. Gerardo Guillén, confirmed that his team is collaborating with Chinese researchers in Yongzhou, Hunan province, to create a vaccine to stimulate the immune system and one that can be taken through the nose, which is the route of COVID-19 transmission. Whatever Cuba develops, it is certain that it will be shared with other countries at low cost, unlike U.S. medications that are patented at taxpayers’ expense so that private pharmaceutical giants can price gouge those who need the medication.

Countries that have not learned how to share: Cuban solidarity missions show a genuine concern that often seems to be lacking in the health care systems of other countries. Medical associations in Venezuela, Brazil, and other countries are often hostile to Cuban doctors. Yet, they cannot find enough of their own doctors to go to dangerous communities or travel to poor and rural areas as Cuban doctors do.

When in Peru in 2010, I visited the Pisco policlínico. Its Cuban director, Leopoldo García Mejías, explained that then-president Alan García did not want additional Cuban doctors and that they had to keep quiet in order to remain in Peru. Cuba is well aware that it has to adjust each medical mission to accommodate the political climate.

There is at least one exception to Cuban doctors remaining in a country according to the whims of the political leadership. Cuba began providing medical attention in Honduras in 1998. During the first eighteen months of Cuba’s efforts in Honduras, the country’s infant mortality dropped from 80.3 to 30.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. Political moods changed and, in 2005, Honduran Health Minister Merlin Fernández decided to kick Cuban doctors out. However, this led to so much opposition that the government changed course and allowed the Cubans to stay.

A disastrous and noteworthy example of when a country refused an offer of Cuban aid is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After the hurricane hit, 1,586 Cuban health care professionals were prepared to go to New Orleans. President George W. Bush, however, rejected the offer, acting as if it would be better for U.S. citizens to die rather than to admit the quality of Cuban aid.

Though the U.S. government does not take kindly to students going studying at ELAM, they are still able to apply what they learn when they come home. In 1988, Kathryn Hall-Trujillo of Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded the Birthing Project USA, which trains advocates to work with African-American women and connect with them through the first year of the infant’s life. She is grateful for the Birthing Project’s partnership with Cuba and the support that many ELAM students have given. In 2018, she told me: “We are a coming home place for ELAM students—they see working with us as a way to put into practice what they learned at ELAM.”

Cuban doctor Julio López Benítez recalled in 2017 that when the country revamped its clinics in 1974, the old clinic model was one of patients going to clinics, but the new model was of clinics going to patients. Similarly, as ELAM graduate Dr. Melissa Barber looked at her South Bronx neighborhood during COVID-19, she realized that while most of the United States told people to go to agencies, what people need is a community approach that recruits organizers to go to the people. Dr. Barber is working in a coalition with South Bronx Unite, the Mott Haven Mamas, and many local tenant associations. As in Cuba, they are trying to identify those in the community who are vulnerable, including “the elderly, people who have infants and small children, homebound people, people that have multiple morbidities and are really susceptible to a virus like this one.”

As they discover who needs help, they seek resources to help them, such as groceries, personal protective equipment, medications, and treatment. In short, the approach of the coalition is going to homes to ensure that people do not fall through the cracks. In contrast, the U.S. national policy is for each state and each municipality to do what it feels like doing, which means that instead of having a few cracks that a few people fall through, there are enormous chasms with large groups careening over the edge. What countries with market economies need are actions like those in the South Bronx and Cuba carried out on a national scale.

This was what Che Guevara envisioned in 1951. Decades before COVID-19 jumped from person to person, Che’s imagination went from doctor to doctor. Or perhaps many shared their own visions so widely that, after 1959, Cuba brought revolutionary medicine anywhere it could. Obviously, Che did not design the intricate innerworkings of Cuba’s current medical system. But he was followed by healers who wove additional designs into a fabric that now unfolds across the continents. At certain times in history, thousands or millions of people see similar images of a different future. If their ideas spread broadly enough during the hour that social structures are disintegrating, then a revolutionary idea can become a material force in building a new world.

Don Fitz is on the editorial board of Green Social Thought.

9 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ramzy Baroud

Co-Written by Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo

Wafaa Aludaini is a witness to many of Gaza’s recent tragedies and also never-ending resistance. She experienced the violent Israeli occupation, the subsequent blockade on the impoverished Strip, and several wars that resulted in the death and wounding of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

But none of Israel’s wars impacted Aludaini’s life as much as the 2014 onslaught which Israel dubbed ‘Operation Protective Edge.’

Of the nearly 18,000 houses destroyed, two homes, one belonging to Wafaa’s family and the other to her in-laws, were also destroyed by Israel’s bombs.

Gaza’s infrastructure, which was already dilapidated as a result of previous wars and a protracted siege, took a massive beating during the 51-day Israeli bombardment.

The most irreplaceable of all of this tragic loss is human life, as 2,251 Palestinians were killed and over 11,000 wounded, many maimed for life.

War and siege, however, only strengthened Wafaa’s resolve as she became more involved in covering news from Gaza, hoping to reveal long-hidden truths and defy mainstream media narratives and popular stereotypes.

During the ‘Great March of Return’, a popular movement that began on March 30, 2018, Wafaa joined the protesters, reporting on a daily basis on the killing and wounding of unarmed youth who flocked to the fence that separates besieged Gaza from Israel, to demand their freedom and basic human rights.

Enraged by the refugees’ daily chants of ‘End the siege’, ‘Free Palestine’, and their adamant insistence on their ‘Right of Return’ to their original villages in Palestine, which were ethnically cleansed during Israel’s violent birth in 1948, Israeli snipers opened fire. In the first two years of the March, over 300 Palestinians were reportedly killed, and thousands wounded.

Aludaini was there during the entire ordeal, reporting on the dead and the wounded, consoling bereaved families, and also taking part in an historic moment when all of Gaza rose and united behind a single chant of freedom.

Aludaini was not a typical journalist chasing after a story at the fence, as she was both the story and the storyteller.

“I am a journalist, but I am also a refugee. My parents were expelled from their village in Palestine, which is now in Israel,” she said.

“Being a journalist in Gaza is not easy, because every single day, you are subjected to (the possibility) of being killed, injured, or arrested by the Israeli occupation forces. In fact, many journalists were murdered by Israeli fire this way.”

On why she chose journalism as a career although she studied English literature at a local Gaza University, Aludaini said that the more she understood mainstream media’s reporting on Palestine, the more frustrated she felt by the unfair depiction of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle.

“Journalists who are (advancing) mainstream media (narratives on Palestine) are, in a way, helping the Israeli occupation in killing more innocent people in Palestine, in particular, in the Gaza Strip. (They) are strengthening the people (Israelis) who expelled us in 1948, encouraging them to violate international law,” Aludaini said.

“So I am asking them to come here, to Palestine, to see for themselves, to see the Apartheid wall, to see the checkpoints, to see what is happening in Israeli jails. Only after they see it with their own eyes, can they tell the truth, because journalists should tell the truth and stand for humanity, regardless of religion and regardless of anything else.”

In a similar tone, Aludaini challenged “defenders of the Israeli occupation” to come to Palestine and to “listen to the people who had their children killed; to those who got expelled from their homes. In every home in Palestine, there is a story of misery, but you will never find (these stories) in mainstream media.”

Regarding the Great March of Return, Aludaini said that the March was “a popular protest where the people of Gaza collectively gathered at the separation fence between Gaza and Israel,” to exhibit various forms of resistance that focused mostly on cultural resistance.

Protesters carried out various forms of “traditional activities, like dancing dabka, singing old songs, cooking Palestinian dishes,” Aludaini said, noting that the most touching of these scenes were those of “elderly Palestinians holding the keys of their homes from which they were forcibly expelled in 1948 during the Nakba,” or the Great Catastrophe.

“This kind of popular resistance is not new for Palestinians (as they) have always used all their means to fight for their rights, to fight (against Israeli military) occupation, like the weekly protests (at the Gaza fence), or (the symbolic acts of) stone-throwing. Even when Gazans resort to armed resistance, people never stop displaying popular (forms) of resistance as well.”

But is this the end of the March of Return?

Aludaini said that the March is not over, however, the strategy will be reformulated to minimize the number of casualties.

“After almost three years of the protests, the High Committee of the Great March of Return decided to change the approach of the protests. From now on, the marches are only going to be held on national occasions instead of being held on a weekly basis because Israel uses lethal force against peaceful and unarmed protesters.”

According to Aludaini, the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is already overwhelmed by the lack of hospital equipment, electricity, and clean water, can no longer handle the pressures of daily deaths and injuries.

Aludaini herself spent many hours in Gaza’s hospitals, interviewing and comforting the wounded. She told us of a Gazan mother of four who participated in the March every Friday without fail. “One day, she was shot in the leg, and it was hard for her to walk. But the following Friday, she returned to the fence. When I asked her why is she back despite her injury, she told me: ‘I will never allow the Israelis to steal my land. This is my land; these are my rights and I will come back (to defend them) again and again.’”

For Aludaini, it is the resilience of these seemingly ordinary people that inspires her and gives her hope.

Another story is of a 19-year-old girl who implored her parents repeatedly to join the protests. When they finally relented, the young girl was shot in the eye by an Israeli sniper. Aludaini and her comrades rushed to the hospital to show support for the protester who lost her eye, only to find her in high spirits, stronger and more determined than ever.

“She told us that as soon as she leaves the hospital, she plans to go back to the fence.”

Aludaini challenges “Israeli propaganda” that claims that its wars and ongoing violence in Gaza are motivated by self-defense. If that is the case, “why is Israel targeting the West Bank which is also subjected to annexation and apartheid?” she asks.

“(Currently) There is no armed resistance (in the West Bank), but (the Israeli occupation army) still kills people every single day.”

Aludaini, who is frustrated by the lack of emphasis on media studies in Gazan universities, is determined to continue with her work as a journalist and as an activist, because when the media fails at exposing Israeli crimes in Gaza, it is the likes of Wafa Aludaini who make all the difference.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

8 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

The 8 minutes 46 seconds murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis cops has prompted huge “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations in the US and thence in the UK, Western Europe and Australia (where 434 Indigenous Australian have died in police custody since 1991). Largely deleted by Mainstream media is Apartheid Israeli killing of  10,000 of its Palestinian Subjects since 2000,  and large-scale  Israeli training of  US cops in deadly restraint techniques, including the deadly “knee on neck”.

One can deeply appreciate the indignation of “Black lives natter” demonstrators in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere around the world, but I must make 2 key humanitarian  points. Firstly,  the lack of social distancing in these  mass demonstrations is very likely to lead to a spike in Covid-19 infections and deaths, most notably in the US and UK where gross failure by  the respective governments has already lead to appalling mass mortality. Secondly, largely  ignored are  the Indigenous Palestinians of the Occupied Palestinian Territory who  have been in highly abusive and deadly custody for 53 years under the heel of serial war criminal Apartheid Israel. Careful analysis reveals the shocking statistics that “annual deaths in custody per million of population” are 1.5 (unarmed Black Americans killed by cops), 30 (Indigenous Australians in custody)  and 110 (Occupied Palestinians violently  killed by Israeli armed forces).

(1). Nevertheless “Palestinian lives matter” has surfaced despite massive censorship and self-censorship  of Zionist-subverted Western  Mainstream media.

I get most of my news from Australian ABC (the Australian equivalent of the UK BBC), the multicultural Australian Special Broadcasting Service (SBS),  the American ABC, the US PBS, the UK and Australian Guardian, and, of course, progressive Alternative media such as Countercurrents. However Mainstream coverage of anything in the Zionist-subverted  US or in Zionist-subverted, US lackey Western nations is heavily censored  by massive constraints on reportage of  the daily crimes of a nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, serial war criminal, grossly human rights-abusing, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel.

A major reason for this massive censorship and self-censorship is that the endlessly mendacious, ferocious and genocidally racist Zionists and their collaborators have established a Mainstream norm that falsely labels any criticism of Apartheid Israel as “anti-Semitic”, and falsely defames anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of Apartheid Israel as “anti-Semites”. Indeed anti-racists  Jews are   not only falsely defamed as “racists” and “anti-Semites” but also as “self-hating Jews” and “self-loathing Jews” [1, 2]. Many examples of this ferocious Zionist censorship and intimidation can be given, but the most damaging example was the destruction of progressive and anti-racist UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by the traitorous, pro-Apartheid Israel lobby [1]. As for  my own country, Australia, many examples can be given of the persecution of journalist, writers  and academics daring to criticize the appalling crimes of Apartheid Israel [2-10].

However this extraordinary censorship and self-censorship of Western Mainstream media about Apartheid Israel is occasionally evaded. Indeed this Zionist-established  norm  was notably  broken  in June 2020 by the respected UK Guardian newspaper in publishing an article by Oliver Holmes entitled “Palestinian lives matter: Israeli killing of autistic man draws US comparison” [11]. The article referred to a Tweet  by the Ramallah, Occupied West Bank-located  Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD) about the Israeli shooting to death in Jerusalem of an autistic Palestinian man,  Eyad Al-Hallaq ,despite the desperate pleas of his carer: “Eyad and George were victims of similar systems of supremacy and oppression. They must be dismantled. [Captions on victim pictures stated] Two countries similar system. George Floyd, African American, suspected for using a counterfeit $20 bill, killed by US police. Eyad Al-Hallaq, Palestinian with autism, [Police] suspected his cell phone for a gun, killed by Israeli police” [12]. Warda Abu Hadid (caregiver of the  unarmed and fearful autistic Eyad Al-Hallaq shot dead by Israeli police who ignored her pleas and assumed that his mobile phone was a gun): “[I shouted in Hebrew] He’s disabled, disabled Wait a moment, take his ID card, check his ID”. Suddenly they fired three bullets at him, in front of my eyes. I shouted: “Don’t shoot him.” They didn’t listen; they didn’t want to hear. They came up to me, pressed their guns against me and said: “Give us the pistol he gave you” [he didn’t]” [11].

A Google Search for the phrase “Black lives matter” yields 55,000,000 results whereas a Google Search for “Palestinian lives matter” yields only 27,000 results i.e. over 2,000 times fewer results. However something is better than nothing,  and the Mainstream media reporting “Palestinian lives matter” in the first 5 pages of the Search results include NPR, Los Angeles Times, Times of Israel, Haaretz, Guardian, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, Gulf News, Huffington Post, Telegraph and Herald.

In similar vein, a Google Search for “Rohingyan Genocide” yields 350,000 results.  Wikipedia reports 24,000 killed and more than 700,000 refugees in the ongoing Rohingyan Genocide [13].  However a Google Search for “Palestinian Genocide” yields only 22,000 results, a very surprising outcome in view of the relatively  huge dimensions of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide: 7 million refugees, and 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence (0.1million) or from imposed deprivation (2.1 million) since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1 [14-27].

I devote 1 chapter each to the “Rohingyan Genocide” (Chapter18 ) and to the “Palestinian Genocide” (Chapter 16) in my recently-published book “US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” [27]. Indeed the Epilogue of this book contains a List of 58 Holocausts and/or  Genocides (in which deaths in holocausts, genocides and famines and deriving from actual violence or from imposed deprivation are given in brackets) from (1) the  1978-1997 Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust (6 million deaths) to (58) the 2015 onwards Yemeni Genocide (circa 0.1 million deaths) [26, 27]. Most of these 58 atrocities are variously ignored, downplayed  or not given the precise “Holocaust” or “Genocide” appellation  by Western Mainstream media for the reason explored in “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and  David Peterson. This book  exposes holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring by Western  Mainstream media, political and academic Establishments except when the atrocities are committed  by perceived “enemies” of the US Alliance (all non-European countries plus Serbia) [28, 29]. The Rohingyan Genocide is indeed a Genocide and recognized as such by US-beholden Mainstream media because the perpetrator, Myanmar, is linked to China (hated by the US). Conversely,  the Palestinian Genocide is ignored as such and  greatly downplayed by US-beholden, Zionist-subverted Western Mainstream media.

(2). Each year on average at least 65 non-violent US Blacks are killed by cops versus about 550 Palestinians (mostly civilians) killed violently by Apartheid Israel, and 14 Australian Aboriginal deaths in custody – “annual deaths in custody per million of population” is 1.5 (unarmed Black Americans killed by cops), 30 (Indigenous Australians in custody)  and 110 (Occupied Palestinians violently  killed by Israeli armed forces).

 It is estimated that annual fatal encounters of Americans with police have totalled  about 700 per  year and that Blacks are 3 times  more likely to be killed by police than White people [30]. If one assumes for the purpose of calculation that Black = Non-White,  this data indicates about 365 White deaths each year and 335 Non-White deaths each year at the hands of US cops. Assuming that about 90% of the Non-White deaths are actually Black deaths (African American deaths) then we can crudely estimate that about 300 Black Americans are killed by US cops each year out of a Black American population of 44.0 million (13.4% of the US population of 328 million). It is similarly estimated that an average of 688 Americans  died each year in such killings by cops (2003-2009), with 75% involving response to a violent offence, and the remaining 25% associated with  “non-violent “crimes”  [31]. Applying this to our crude estimate of 300 Black Americans killed each year by US cops, we can estimate that 25% (75) of these deaths did not involve violent crimes and were public-order offenses, drug offenses, or otherwise had no specific context.

Of the circa 700 annual  deaths from US cops, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that: “Of reported arrest-related deaths, 45 percent of persons allegedly engaged in assault immediately prior to or during the arrest…. Of reported persons who died during the process of arrest, 95 percent were male. About 42 percent were white, 32 percent were black/African American [224] and 20 percent were Hispanic or Latino. More than half (55 percent) were between ages 25 and 44, and juveniles (persons under age 18) were about 3 percent of all arrest-related deaths” [14]. Of these 224 Black deaths, 25% (56) did not involve violent crime.  From these 2 approaches we can estimate that about 65 Black Americans die each year in arrests not involving violent crime i.e. in similar  circumstances to the murder of George Floyd. Note that the US population is presently 328 million and the African American population totals 44 million.

While only 4,000 Zionist invaders were killed by Palestinians in the period 1920-2019, since the British invasion of the  Middle East in 1914  about 2.2 million Palestinians have died from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.1 million. In the 21st  century an average of 550 Palestinians have been killed violently each year by the Israeli police and military [32-36]. However it gets worse. Poverty kills and the per capita GDP is a deadly $3,199 for Occupied Palestine as compared to $41, 715 for Occupier Apartheid Israel (World Bank, 2018 [37]).  From differential infant mortality data between Apartheid Israel and Occupied Palestine one can estimate 4,200 avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation each year in Occupied Palestine out of a population of 5 million (an estimated 84,000 such avoidable deaths since 2000) [20].

The Indigenous People of Australia  (Australian Aboriginals) have suffered a 242-year Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Australian Aboriginal Ethnocide that are still ongoing. In short, before the British Invasion in 1788, Indigenous Australians had  been living in Australia for about 60,000 years. There were 350-750 different tribes and a similar number of languages and dialects, of which only 150 survive today and of these all but about 20 are endangered.  After the British Invasion the Aboriginal population dropped from about 1 million in 1788 to about 0.1 million in the first century through introduced  disease, deprivation and genocidal violence. The last massacres of Aborigines occurred in the late 1920s but no Treaty has ever been signed. Indigenous Australians were only counted  after a referendum in 1967, and were finally given some protection by the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. In 1998  about 4,000 Aborigines out of an Aboriginal  population of 500,000 died avoidably  every year but the avoidable deaths as a percentage of population per annum has declined from 0.8% pa in 1998 to 0.6% pa in 2013, with still  circa 4,200 annual avoidable deaths out of an Indigenous population of about 700,000. Indigenous Australians are far worse off than White Australians in relation to housing, health, wealth, social conditions, imprisonment, avoidable death and life expectancy [38-40].

Annual avoidable deaths from deprivation as a percentage of population per annum is  about 0.0% for White Australia, Apartheid Israel and the US, but 0.4% (South Asia), 0.6% (Indigenous Australia)  and 1.0% (sub-Saharan Africa) [38, 39, 41].

Annual Aboriginal deaths custody in the period 1991-2020 total 434 deaths/30 years = 14.5 deaths per year.   The Australian Aboriginal population was 0.266 million in 1991 and 0.700 million in 2020 for an average of 0.483 million. Accordingly, for Indigenous Australians  the annual deaths in custody per million of population = 14.5 deaths/0.483 million people = 30 [38-40].

Annual deaths in custody per million of population are 1.5 (unarmed Black Americans killed by cops), 30 (Indigenous Australians in custody)  and 110 (Occupied Palestinians violently  killed by Israeli armed forces).

(3). Covid-19 deaths per million of population 340 (Apartheid US), 44-828 (Western Europe), 597 (UK), 32 (pro-Apartheid Israel), 4 (pro-Apartheid Australia) and 0.8 (the Occupied Palestinian Territories).

In view of the huge “Black lives matter” demonstrations in the US, UK, Europe and Australia, and the likely impact of consequent  large-scale lack of social distancing on the spread of the coronavirus, it is useful to consider Covid-19 deaths in Apartheid US, Apartheid Israel, Apartheid Australia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The “Covid-19 deaths per million of population” ratio (as of 7 June 2020) is  339 (pro-Apartheid US), 32 (Apartheid Israel), 4 (pro-Apartheid Australia) and 0.8 (the Occupied Palestinian Territories) [42, 43].

Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention state unequivocally that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [44]. However in relation to huge Subject avoidable deaths from deprivation, and ventilator non-provision in  the context of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic,  the US and Australia grossly violate the  Geneva Convention in Occupied Afghanistan, and Apartheid Israel grossly violates this in Occupied Palestine.

Thus “annual avoidable deaths from deprivation” are huge in impoverished Occupied Afghanistan (84,000) and Occupied Palestine (4,200) but zero (0) for the rich and war criminal Occupiers, pro-Apartheid US, pro-Apartheid Australia and Apartheid Israel [45].

Ventilators  per million (/M) people  are 504/M (Occupier US), 173/M (Occupier Australia) and 407/M (Occupier Apartheid Israel) versus 8/M (Occupied Afghanistan), 38/M (Occupied Palestine) and 13/M (Gaza Concentration Camp) [45].

The “Covid-19 deaths per million of population” statistic for the Occupied Palestinian Territory (0.8) is  very good in relation to other world leaders in tackling Covid-19: 0.1 (Kerala), 0.3 (Hong Kong),  0.3 (Taiwan),  0.8 (Occupied Palestine), 3 (China),   4 (New Zealand), 4 (Australia), 4 (Singapore),  5 (South Korea) and 7 (Japan) [42] – but clearly could have been 8 times better but for criminal insufficiencies  imposed by genocidally racist Apartheid Israel.

This excellent result for Occupied Indigenous Palestinians – notwithstanding being under brutal Occupation – is in stark contrast to the gross failure of governments in North America, the UK and Western Europe as revealed by the following “Covid-19 deaths per million of population” statistics (as of 8 June 2020): 44 (Norway), 75 (Austria), 102 (Denmark), 105 (Germany), 145 (Portugal), 176 (Luxembourg), 205 (Canada), 222 (Switzerland), 340 (Ireland), 340 (US), 351 (Netherlands), 462 (Sweden), 447 (France), 561 (Italy), 580 (Spain), 597 (UK) and 828 (Belgium [42].

The excellent Occupied Indigenous Palestinian outcome can be attributed to key factors such as (1) much greater practical social empathy among Occupied Palestinians as in Kerala, and (2) being hermetically sealed off under Israeli Apartheid from its brutal Occupier, Apartheid Israel proper, which due to greedy neoliberalism has a “Covid-19 deaths per million of population” ratio of 32 [42].

(4). Apartheid Israeli and Apartheid US “knee on neck” images – Apartheid Israelis train US police in deadly restraint techniques.

The whole world is now familiar with horrifying images of the slow and public 8:46 minute  killing  of African American George Floyd. You will be utterly shocked and appalled by the New York Times  video reconstruction “How George Floyd was killed in police custody” [46].

However images are now appearing of “knee on neck” and “knee on chest” techniques being applied by  Apartheid Israel IDF and police goons to Indigenous Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Further, clear evidence is emerging that such deadly techniques are being taught by neo-Nazi Israeli practitioners  to US enforcement officers across America. I will let the following   images and words testimony do the talking.

(i). Mohammad Alqadi (Palestinian athlete, tweeting 4 images of  “knee-on-neck” being applied by Israelis to Palestinians): “Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it” [47].

(ii). TRT World reports (with a “knee to neck” image): “For Palestinians living under military occupation in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, the worst excesses of the kind seen in the US recently, are a near everyday occurrence. … “Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it,” Palestinian athlete Mohammad Alqadi wrote on his Twitter above four separate images of Israeli soldiers pinning Palestinians to the ground with their knees on their necks or head” [48].

(iii) Israeli Tactical Krav Maga Counter Terror Academy (law enforcement and counter-terrorism techniques training) writes as follows (with “knee on neck” imagery): “Krav Maga [“Contact Combat” in Hebrew] trainings are certified by Israeli Tactical School – Counter Terror Academy is a program based on Shin Bet special agents training. Police and the security service. Krav Maga training for police designed in particular for those who serve and public safety organizations, including: training for Police; training Government Protection Bureau ; training for an internal security agency, etc. Israeli Tactical School instructors were background in the Shin-Bet as Executive Protection special agents team leaders, Chief Security officers & Krav Maga instructors. Our instructors combat and special operations experience side by side with vast teaching experience offer a unique learning experience from the source. Shin–Bet or the Israeli Secret Service is a leading counter-terror and security agency responsible to protect Israel most value assets – prime minister, diplomats and airlines. For security reasons and adjustment of the level of training, civilians can participate in training after an earlier interview and verification. Department of law enforcement is part of each of the instructor training in Israeli Tactical School” [49, 50].

(iv) Neta Golan ( co-founder of International Solidarity Movement , ISM): “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006. They started twisting and breaking fingers in a particular way around the same time. It was clear they had undergone training for this. They continue to use these tactics — two of my friends have had their necks broken but luckily survived — and it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the US and other countries including Sudan and Brazil” [51].

(v). UK Morning Star newspaper reports: “The training of US police officials by Israeli forces is widespread” [51].

(vi). “Steve Sweeney (Progressive journalist): “ Officers from the U.S. police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law enforcement officers. Floyd’s death in custody on Memorial Day, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests in U.S. cities. At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by Israel’s Chicago consulate, the second time such an event had been held. There, they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorize the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations. The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI… The training of U.S. police officials by Israeli forces is widespread” [52].

(vii). Amnesty International: “Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state as well as the DC Capitol police have all traveled to Israel for training. Thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials here in the U.S.. Many of these trips are taxpayer funded while others are privately funded. Since 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)” [53].

Final comments.

All decent people are obliged to follow the examples of anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics  of nuclear terrorist Apartheid  Israel and its ongoing Palestinian Genocide [54-58]. Palestinian lives matter. Black lives matter. All lives matter. Decent people must inform everyone they can about gross human rights  abuses. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.

Yet speaking out alone is insufficient. Decent people must take individual and collective action  against the mendacious and murderous racists  running Apartheid America, Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia. Decent folk must urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against these racist psychopaths and all those supporting them.  Apartheid America, Apartheid Israel and Apartheid Australia require de-Nazification.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya, “UK racist Zionists falsely defame  UK Labour Party in support of democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/08/uk-racist-zionists-falsely-defame-uk-labour-party-in-support-of-democracy-by-genocide-apartheid-israel/ .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Apartheid Israel Australian Labor Party scraps outstanding anti-Apartheid candidate, Melissa Parke”, Countercurrents, 17 April 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/04/pro-apartheid-israel-australian-labor-party-scraps-outstanding-anti-apartheid-candidate-melissa-parke/ .

[3]. Ali Kazak, “Why should Israel’s lobby have different standards?”, Independent Australia, 9 November 2017: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/does-the-nation-have-a-new-white-australia-foreign-affairs-policy,10913 .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “Yassmin Abdel-Magied censored on Anzac Day – jingoists trash Australian free speech”, Countercurrents, 28 April 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/04/28/yassmin-abdel-magied-censored-on-anzac-day-jingoists-trash-australian-free-speech/ .

[5]. Letters to The Age newspaper (Melbourne, Australia) re Zionists and politicians demanding the banning  of a politics book for high school students and mentioning US and Israeli state terrorism: http://www.theage.com.au/news/letters/he-who-shouts-loudest-not-necessarily-the-best/2006/09/16/1158334730192.html?page=fullpage .

[6]. Paul Heinrichs, “Textbook links US and Israel to “state terrorism””, The Age, 10 September  2006: https://www.theage.com.au/national/textbook-links-us-israel-to-state-terrorism-20060910-ge33s6.html .

[7], Gideon Polya, “Mike Carlton, Top Australian Columnist, Forced From Job For Criticizing Apartheid Israeli Gaza Massacre”,  Countercurrents, 8 August, 2014: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya080814.htm .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Academic Free Speech Under Zionist Attack At Notre Dame Australia And LSE, UK”, Countercurrents, 16 December, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya161215.htm .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Dual Israeli citizenship & Zionist perversion of America, Australia , India and Humanity”, Countercurrents, 30 July 2017 : https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/30/dual-israeli-citizenship-zionist-perversion-of-america-australia-india-humanity/ .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .

[11]. Oliver Holmes, “Palestinian lives matter: Israeli killing of autistic man draws US comparison”, Guardian, 1 June 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/palestinian-lives-matter-israeli-police-killing-of-autistic-man-draws-us-comparison .

[12]. Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, Tweet, 1 June 2020: https://twitter.com/ThePIPD/status/1267121540753129472 .

[13]. “Rohingya Genocide”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal  Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/  .

[15]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli-Palestinian & Middle East conflict – from oil to climate genocide”, Countercurrents, 21 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/21/israeli-palestinian-middle-east-conflict-from-oil-to-climate-genocide/ .

[16]. Gideon Polya, “End 50 Years Of Genocidal Occupation & Human Rights Abuse By US-Backed Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents,  9 June  2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/06/09/end-50-years-of-genocidal-occupation-human-rights-abuse-by-us-backed-apartheid-israel/ .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .

[18]. Gideon Polya, “70th anniversary of Apartheid Israel & commencement of large-scale Palestinian genocide”, Countercurrents, 11 May 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/70th-anniversary-of-apartheid-israel-commencement-of-large-scale-palestinian-genocide

[19]. Gideon Polya, “COVID-19: Occupiers US, Australia & Apartheid Israel grossly violate Geneva Convention re conquered Subjects”, Countercurrents, 7 May 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/covid-19-occupiers-us-australia-apartheid-israel-grossly-violate-geneva-convention-re-conquered-subjects/ .

[20]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[21]. Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) individuals  exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, and (B) countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism.”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .

[22].  “One-state solution, unitary state, bi-national state for a democratic, equal rights, post-apartheid Palestine” : https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/one-state-solution .

[23]. “Stop state terrorism” : https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/  .

[24]. “State crime and non-state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/  .

[25].  Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Genocide poem: “And then they stole the falafel” , Countercurrents, 31 May 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/palestinian-genocide-poem-and-then-they-stole-the-falafel/ .

[26]. “Report genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/list-of-holocausts-and-genocides .

[27]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, June 2020; see: https://korsgaardpublishing.com/portfolio/23945/ .   

[28]. “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and  David Peterson (foreword by Noam Chomsky; Monthly Review Press, New York , 2010).

[29]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “The Politics Of Genocide” by Edward Herman And David Peterson”, Countercurrents, 5 December 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya051211.htm .

[30]. Lauren O’Neill, “Number of U.S. blacks killed by police hard to pin down with no official figures”, CBC News, 9 July 2016: https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/number-of-black-people-killed-by-us-police-still-no-stats-1.3670513 .

[31]. John Wihbey and Leighton Walter Kille, “Deaths in police custody in the United States: Research review”, Journalist’s Resource, 2 July 2016: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/deaths-police-custody-united-states/ .

[32]. Gideon Polya, “Israelis kill ten times more Israelis in Apartheid than do terrorists”, Countercurrents, 1 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/israelis-kill-ten-times-more-israelis-in-apartheid-israel-than-do-terrorists .

[33]. Gideon Polya, “Sharpeville Massacre & Gaza Massacres compared – Boycott Apartheid Israel & all its supporters”, Countercurrents, 6 May 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/06/sharpeville-massacre-gaza-massacres-compared-boycott-apartheid-israel-all-its-supporters/ .

[34]. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Terrorism deaths in Israel – 1920-1999”, 1 January 2000: http://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/terrorism/palestinian/pages/terrorism%20deaths%20in%20israel%20-%201920-1999.aspx .

[35]. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Victims of Palestinian violence and terrorism since September 2000” : http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Victims%20of%20Palestinian%20Violence%20and%20Terrorism%20sinc.aspx .

[36]. “Crime in Israel”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Israel .

[37]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[38]. “Aboriginal Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .

[39]. Gideon Polya, “Aboriginal Genocide by Apartheid Australia”, Sovereign Union – First nations asserting sovereignty, 16 February 2014: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/aboriginal-genocide-apartheid-australia .

[40]. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Statistics on the Indigenous Peoples of Australia, 1994: https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/3d68c56307742d8fca257090002029cd/8dc45512042c8c00ca2569de002139be!OpenDocument .

[41]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes  an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal  on the web  : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/  .

[42]. Worldometer, “Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic”: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .

[43]. WHO, “Coronavirus disease 12019, Occupied Palestinian Territory, 14 May 2020: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-situation-report-29-occupied .

[44]. “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”, 12 August 1949: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .

[45]. Gideon Polya, “COVID-19: Occupiers US, Australia & Apartheid Israel grossly violate Geneva Convention re Occupied Subjects”,  Countercurrents, 7 May 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/covid-19-occupiers-us-australia-apartheid-israel-grossly-violate-geneva-convention-re-conquered-subjects/ .

[46]. New York Times,“How George Floyd was killed in police custody”, YouTube, 1 June 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vksEJR9EPQ8 .

[47]. Mohammad Alqadi, “Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it”,  Twitter, 30 May 2020: https://twitter.com/alqadipal/status/1266675209676959745  .

[48]. “The “knee-on-neck”, long a staple of Israel’s occupation of Palestine”, TRT World, 1 June 2020: https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-knee-on-neck-long-a-staple-of-israel-s-occupation-of-palestine-36787  .

[49]. Israeli Tactical Krav Maga Counter Terror Academy: https://israelitacticalkravmaga.com/law-enforcement/ .

[50]. Israeli Tactical Krav Maga Counter Terror Academy,´” About Us”: https://israelitacticalkravmaga.com/about-us/ .

[51].  Steve Sweeney, “Minnesota cops “trained by Israeli forces in restraint techniques””, Morning Star, 1 June 2020:  https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/minnesota-cops-trained-israeli-forces-restraint-techniques .

[52]. Steve Sweeney, “Israeli forces trained cops in “restraint techniques” at Minneapolis conference”, People’s World, 3 June 2020: https://peoplesworld.org/article/israeli-forces-trained-cops-in-restraint-techniques-at-minneapolis-conference/ .

[53]. Amnesty International, “With whom are many U.S. police departments training? With a chronic human rights violator –Israel”: https://www.amnestyusa.org/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/ .

[54]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home .

[55]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[56]. “Boycott Apartheid  Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[57]. “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration  .

[58].  “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/nuclear-weapons-ban .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia for 4 decades.

8 June 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Helen Yaffe

4 Jun 2020 – The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism and, since the Revolution of 1959, six decades of the criminal United States blockade, can play such an exemplary role is due to Cuba’s socialist system. The central plan directs national resources according to a development strategy which prioritises human welfare and community participation, not private profit.

Cuban authorities reacted quickly to Chinese information about SARS-CoV2 at the start of the year. In January, authorities established a National Intersectoral Commission for COVID-19, updated their National Action Plan for Epidemics, initiated surveillance at ports, airports and marines, gave COVID-19 response training for border and immigration officials and drafted a ‘prevention and control’ plan. Cuban specialists travelled to China to learn about the new coronavirus’ behaviour and commissions of the government’s Scientific Council began to work on combating the coronavirus. Throughout February, medical facilities were reorganised, and staff trained to control the spread of the virus domestically. In early March a science and biotechnology group was created to develop COVID-19 treatments, tests, vaccines, diagnostics and other innovations. From 10 March inbound travellers were tested for COVID-19. All of this was before the virus was detected on the island.

On March 11, three Italian tourists were confirmed as the first cases of COVID-19 in Cuba. Cuban healthcare authorities stepped into action, organising neighbourhood meetings, conducting door-to-door health checks, testing, contact tracing and quarantining. This has been accompanied by education programmes and daily information updates. The population went under ‘lockdown’ on 20 March, required to abide by social distancing rules and wear facemasks when leaving homes on essential business. Business taxes and domestic debts were suspended, those hospitalised had 50% of their salaries guaranteed and low-income households qualified for social assistance and family assistance schemes, with food, medicine and other goods delivered to their homes. Workshops nationwide began to produce masks, bolstered by a grassroots movement of home production, and community mutual aids groups organised to assist the vulnerable and elderly with shopping for food as long queues became the norm. On 24 March, Cuba closed its borders to all non-residents, a tough decision given the importance of tourism revenue to the state. Anyone entering the country was required to spend a fortnight in supervised quarantine, under a testing regime. Defence Councils in the Provinces and Municipalities were activated.

In April payment of utility bills was suspended, likewise local and regional transport, while transport was guaranteed for medical staff and other essential workers. Havana and other cities were disinfected. 20 communities in six provinces were placed under total or partial quarantine. A Cuban-designed mobile phone app, ‘Virtual Screening’, went live with an opt-in application allowing users to submit an epidemiological survey for statistical analysis by the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP). Measures were taken to keep the virus out of prisons, with active screening twice daily and no reported cases by 23 April.

By May 24, a Cuban population of 11.2 million had reported 82 deaths and fewer than 2,000 confirmed cases; 173 confirmed cases per million people, compared to 3,907 per million in Britain. Not one healthcare worker had died, although 92 had been infected by mid-April.

Cuba’s exemplary response is based on five features of its socialist development. First, its single, universal, free public healthcare system which seeks prevention over cure, with a network of family doctors responsible for community health who live among their patients. Second, Cuba’s biopharma industry which is driven by public health needs, produces nearly 70% of the medicines consumed domestically and exports to 50 countries.[1] Third, the island’s experience in civil defence and disaster risk reduction, usually in response to climate-related and natural disasters. Its internationally applauded capacity to mobilize national resources to protect human life is achieved by a network of grassroots organizations which facilitate communication and community action. Fourth, the island’s experience in operating infectious disease (border) controls. For decades, Cuba has sent healthcare professionals to countries which have infectious diseases long-since eradicated on the island and has invited tens of thousands of foreigners from those countries to study in Cuba. It has well-developed procedures for quarantining people (re)entering the island. Fifth, Cuban medical internationalism, which has seen 400,000 healthcare professionals providing free healthcare for underserved populations in 164 countries; some 28,000 medical personnel were serving in 59 countries when the pandemic began. By late May, an additional 2,300 healthcare specialists from Cuba’s Henry Reeve medical brigades, specialists in epidemiological and disaster response, had gone to 24 countries to treat patients with COVID-19.

A commitment to high-standard public healthcare

In 1959, Cuba had some 6,000 doctors but half of them soon left; only 12 of the 250 Cuban teachers at the University of Havana’s Medical School stayed. There was only one rural hospital. The revolutionary government faced the challenge of providing a high-standard public healthcare system almost from scratch. To that end, in 1960, the Rural Medical Service (RMS) was established and over the next decade hundreds of newly graduated doctors were posted in remote areas. RMS physicians served as health educators as well as clinicians. National programs were established for infectious disease control and prevention. From 1962 a national immunization program provided all Cubans with eight vaccinations free of charge. Infectious diseases were rapidly reduced, then eliminated. By 1970, the number of rural hospitals had reached 53. Not until 1976 was the pre-revolutionary ratio of doctors to citizens restored. By then, health services were available nationwide and indicators had improved significantly. A new model of community-based polyclinics was established in 1974 giving Cuban communities’ local access to primary care specialists. Training and policy emphasized the impact of biological, social, cultural, economic and environmental factors on patients. National programs focused on maternal and child health, infectious diseases, chronic non-communicable diseases, and older adult health.

In 1983, the Family Doctor and Nurse Plan was introduced nationwide. Under this system, family doctor practices were set up in neighborhoods, with either the doctor or the nurse living with their family above the practice, so medical attention is available 24 hours a day. Family doctors coordinate medical care and lead health promotion efforts, emphasizing prevention and epidemiological analysis. They rely on history-taking and clinical skills, reserving costly high-tech procedures for patients requiring them, holding patient appointments in the mornings and making house calls in the afternoons. The teams carry out neighborhood health diagnosis, melding clinical medicine with public health, and individualized ‘Continuous Assessment and Risk Evaluation’ (CARE) for their patients. Family doctors and nurses are also employed in large workplaces and schools, child day-care centers, homes for senior citizens and so on.

By 2005, Cubans had one doctor for every 167 people, the highest ratio in the world. Cuba now has 449 policlinics, each attending to 20,000 to 40,000 people and serving as a hub for 15 to 40 family doctors. There are more than 10,000 family doctors spread evenly throughout the island.

Primary Health Care as the backbone of Cuba’s response

An article in April 2020 Medicc Review describes Cuba’s primary health care system as a ‘powerful weapon’ against COVID-19. ‘Without early access to rapid tests, massive testing was clearly not in the cards as a first strategic option. However, primary health care was.’ Cuban authorities ensured that everyone in the healthcare system, including support staff, received COVID-19 training before the virus was detected. Senior medics from each province were trained at Cuba’s world-famous hospital for tropical diseases, Instituto Pedro Kourí. On returning to their provinces they then trained colleagues in the second tier – hospital and polyclinics directors. ‘Then they went on to the third tier: training for family doctors and nurses themselves, lab and radiology technicians, administrative personnel, and also housekeeping staff, ambulance drivers and orderlies. Anyone who might come into contact with a patient’, explained a polyclinic director, Dr Mayra Garcia, who is cited in the Medicc article.

Each polyclinic also trained non-health sector people in their geographical area, in workplaces, small business owners, people renting homes, especially to foreigners, or managing childcare facilities, telling them how to recognize symptoms and take protective measures. Senior medical professionals in the polyclinics were sent to family doctors’ offices as reinforcement. Medical staff were posted in local hotels to provide 24-hour detection and health care to foreigners residing there. Walk-in emergency services were re-organized to separate anyone with respiratory symptoms and to provide 24-hour assessment. Non-COVID-19 related appointments were postponed where possible or shifted to home visits for priority groups.

The Medicc article underscores the importance of the CARE model for combating COVID-19. All Cubans are already categorized into four groups: apparently healthy, with risk factors for disease, ill, and in recovery or rehabilitation. Doctors know the health characteristics and needs of the community they serve. ‘The CARE model also automatically alerts us to people who are more susceptible to respiratory infections, the people whose chronic diseases are the risk factors most commonly associated with complications in COVID-19 patients’ explained Dr Alejandro Fadragas.

Throughout Cuba, CDRs, or street committees, organized public health information meetings for family doctors and nurses to advise neighborhoods about the pandemic. Once the first cases were confirmed, the family doctors daily house visits were extended and became the ‘single most important tool’ for active case detection, to get ahead of the virus.[4] Some 28,000 medical students joined them going door to door to detect symptoms. This procedure means the whole population can be surveyed.

People with symptoms are remitted to their local polyclinic for rapid evaluation. Those suspected of having COVID-19 are sent on to one of the new municipal isolation centers established throughout the island. They must remain for a minimum of 14 days, receiving testing and medical attention. If the case appears to be another respiratory illness, they return home but must stay indoors for at least 14 days, followed up in primary care. Hospitals are reserved for patients who really need them.

Primary healthcare professionals are also responsible for rapid contact tracing for all suspected cases; those contacts are tested and must isolate at home. In addition, the homes and communal entrances of patients sent to isolation centers are disinfected by ‘rapid response’ teams consisting of polyclinic directors and vice directors, alongside family members. Family doctors’ offices are also disinfected daily. Meanwhile, workers in hotels where foreigners are lodged are checked daily by medical staff. The polyclinic provides them with PPE and disinfectants. Polyclinics and family doctors are also responsible for 14 days follow-up for COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals.

Home-grown medicine

The Cuban treatment protocol for COVID-19 patients includes 22 drugs, most produced domestically. The focus has been placed on prevention, with measures to improve innate immunity. Early on the potential of Cuba’s anti-viral drug Heberon, an interferon Alfa 2b human recombinant (IFNrec), was identified. The biotech product has proven effective for viral diseases including hepatitis types B and C, shingles, HIV-AIDS, and dengue. Produced in Cuba since 1986 and in China since 2003 through a Cuban-Chinese joint venture, ChangHeber, in January 2020 it was selected by the Chinese National Health Commission among 30 treatments for COVID-19 patients. It soon topped their list of anti-viral drugs, having demonstrated good results.

The drug has most efficacies when used preventatively and at early stages of infection. In Wuhan, China, nearly 3,000 medical personnel received Heberon as a preventative measure to boast their immune response; none of them contracted the virus. Meanwhile, 50% of another 3,300 medics who were not given the drug did get COVID-19. Cuba’s IFNrec is recommended in the medical protocols of several countries, by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Johns Hopkins Medical Centre and the World Journal of Paediatrics among others. The product was already registered in Algeria, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Jamaica, Thailand, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen and Uruguay. By mid-April requests for its use had been received from some 80 countries and it was being administered by Cuba’s Henry Reeve medical brigades treating COVID-19 patients overseas. On 14 April it was reported that 93.4% of COVID-19 patients in Cuba had been treated with Heberon and only 5.5% of those had reached a serious state. The mortality rate reported by that date was 2.7% but for patients treated with Heberon it was just 0.9%.

Other Cuban medicines reporting promising results include:

• Biomodulina T, a immunomodulator which stimulates the immune systems of vulnerable individuals and has been used in Cuba for 12 years, principally to treat recurrent respiratory infections in the elderly.
• The monoclonal antibody Itolizumab (Anti-CD6), used to treat lymphomas and leukemia, administered to COVID-19 patients in a severe or critical condition to reduce the secretion of inflammatory cytokines, which cause the massive flow of substances and liquid in the lungs.
• CIGB-258, a new immunomodulatory peptide designed to reduce inflammatory processes. By 22 May, 52 COVID-19 patients had been treated with CIGB-258; among those in a severe stage, the survival rate was 92%, against a global average of 20%. For those in a critical condition the survival rate was 78%.
• Blood plasma from recovered patients.

Cuban medical scientists are producing their own version of Kaletra, an antiretroviral combination of Lopinavir and Ritonavir, used to treat HIV/AIDS. Domestic production will eliminate costly imports from capitalist big pharma and subject to the US blockade. Meanwhile, the homeopathic medicine, Prevengho-Vir, which is believed to strengthen the immune system has been distributed for free to everyone on the island. Medical scientists are evaluating two vaccines to stimulate the immune system and four candidates for specific preventative vaccine for COVID-19 are under design.

By early May, Cuban scientists had adapted SUMA, a Cuban computerized diagnostic system, to detect antibodies for COVID-19 rapidly, allowing for mass testing at low cost. ‘The objective is to find new cases and then intervene, isolate, seek contacts, and take all possible measures to ensure that Cuba continues as it is now’, said Cuba’s top epidemiologist, Francisco Durán during his daily televised update on 11 May. This means the island no longer relies on donated tests or expensive ones purchased internationally. Cuba’s comparatively high rate of testing is set to soar.

BioCubaFarma is mass producing facemasks, personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical and sanitary products, as well as coordinating state enterprises and self-employed workers to repair vital equipment, such as breathing ventilators. Cuban efforts to purchase new ventilators have been obstructed by the US blockade which, for almost 60 years, has included food and medicines among its prohibitions.

Leading the global fight

On March 18, Cuba allowed the cruise ship MS Braemar, with 684 mostly British passengers and 5 confirmed COVID-19 cases, to dock in Havana after a week stranded at sea, having been refused entry by Curacao, Barbados, Bahamas, Dominican Republic and the United States. Cuban authorities facilitated their safe transfer to charter flights for repatriation. Three days later, a 53-strong Cuban medical brigade arrived in Lombardy, Italy, at that time the epicenter of the pandemic, to assist local healthcare authorities. The medics were members of Cuba’s Henry Reeve Contingent, which received a World Health Organization (WHO) Public Health Prize in 2017 in recognition for providing free emergency medical aid. It was the first Cuban medical mission to Europe. By 21 May, over 2,300 Cuban healthcare professionals had gone to 24 countries to treat COVID-19 patients, including a second brigade in northern Italy and another to the European principality Andorra.

The threat of a good example

Cuban medical internationalism began in 1960, but the export of healthcare professionals was not a source of state revenue until the mid-2000s with the famous ‘oil for doctors’ program under which 30,000 Cuban healthcare workers served in Venezuela. US President Bush’s administration responded by attempting sabotage Cuba’s medical export earnings with the Cuban Medical Parole Programme. This induced Cuban professionals, who had paid no tuition costs, graduated debt free and voluntarily signed contracts to work abroad assisting underserved populations, to abandon missions in return for US citizenship. President Obama kept the Programme, even while praising Cuban medics combating Ebola in West Africa. It was ended in his last days in office in January 2017.

The Trump administration has renewed attacks on Cuban medical missions, fuelling their expulsion from Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia, and leaving millions of people in those countries without healthcare. The motivation was the same; to block revenues to a nation which has survived 60 years of US hostility. In the context of the pandemic, when the US government’s wilful failures have resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, socialist Cuba’s global leadership has represented the threat of a good example. Lashing out, the US State Department has labelled Cuban medics as ‘slaves’, claiming that the Cuban government seeks revenues and political influence. It has pressured beneficiary countries to reject Cuban assistance in their time of urgent need. These attacks are particularly vile; it is likely that Cuba is receiving no payment, beyond costs, for this assistance.

Meanwhile, the criminal US blockade, which has been punitively tightened under Trump, is preventing the purchase of urgently needed ventilators for Cuba’s own COVID-19 patients. A Chinese donation to Cuba of medical equipment was blocked because the airline carrying the goods would not travel to Cuba for fear of US fines. There is now a growing international demand for an end to all sanctions, not least against Cuba which has shown global leadership in combating the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. We must all add our voices to this demand. There are also calls from organisations and individuals worldwide to nominate Cuba’s Henry Reeve Contingents for a Nobel Peace Prize. What is clear from its history of principled medical internationalism is that, with recognition or without, revolutionary Cuba will continue to fight for global healthcare wherever its citizens, and its example, can reach.

8 June 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Steve Striffler

2 Jun 2020 – On April 7, a top court in Ecuador sentenced the country’s former left-wing President Rafael Correa to eight years in jail in absentia for corruption. The ruling in the case, which came to be known as Sobornos (Bribes) 2012-2016, is still pending appeal and Correa’s lawyers will no doubt take this matter to international institutions where they will argue he has been the victim of a political witch-hunt with no respect for due process.

Correa, who has been living in his wife’s home country, Belgium, since before Ecuador’s current president, Lenin Moreno, unleashed the judiciary against him, is unlikely to be extradited in the context of what has become a highly politicised process.

The fact that Interpol has already rejected a red notice that Ecuador had requested against Correa, albeit for a different case, is a strong indicator that there is little international trust in the political neutrality of Ecuador’s justice system.

The primary goal of the trial, however, is not to imprison Correa, but to make sure he is prevented from entering the country and from appearing on any ballot in the 2021 presidential and parliamentary elections.

This manipulation of the judicial system in order to prosecute opponents is familiar enough to observers of Latin America; indeed, it is such a well-worn strategy of the region’s resurgent right that it has its own name: “lawfare”.

What is new in the case of Ecuador is the scale of this practice. Perverting the legal system in order to subvert the democratic process has become the defining strategy – indeed, the essence – of the current government, which is faced with plummeting popularity and an opposition that would win in any fair election. This is not good news for democracy in Ecuador or Latin America.

The Moreno government has faced rising unpopularity (his credibility rating oscillates between seven and 14.7 percent depending on the pollster, and a recent poll put his approval rating at 18.7 percent) amid the disastrous state of the economy, the gross mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, and major backsliding in the area of social policy. All this has meant that Correa, whose 10-year rule was crowned by a sharp reduction of poverty and inequality, and sustained economic growth, once again looms large on the political horizon.

Polls suggest that were elections to be held tomorrow, Correa, or even “Correa’s candidate of choice”, would come first place in the first round of presidential elections and possibly even win the runoff. The possibility that Correa’s movement might return to power has led a desperate government to take “lawfare” to new heights, a tendency that has serious implications for democracy in the region, as similar political battles will no doubt play out throughout Latin America in the coming years.

With elections scheduled for February 2021, Moreno’s government has accelerated its attacks on Correa and his followers. In the aftermath of large-scale protests against Moreno’s IMF-driven reforms in October 2019, several Correa allies were arrested on dubious charges, including Paola Pabon, the elected governor of Pichincha province, which encompasses the country’s capital.

Several legislators belonging to Correa’s party sought refuge in the Mexican embassy to avoid being arrested. Under international pressure, including some exerted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Ecuador eventually released some prisoners and allowed safe passage for some who wanted to seek asylum in Mexico.

Some prominent supporters of Correa’s political movement, however, were not as lucky. Jorge Glas, the former vice president of Ecuador and a close Correa collaborator, for example, remains in jail on charges of corruption, despite criticism that his trial was aimed at removing him from the vice-presidency.

Correa can no longer run for the presidency after the Ecuadorian constitution was amended in 2018 with a provision barring elected officials from running more than once for the same office. The amendments were approved in a referendum, which the Moreno government convened and which IACHR and the Organization of American States criticised.

However, Correa can still vie for other elected office. If he were to run for the vice presidency or for a seat in the National Assembly, it could draw a great deal of popular support to his political movement and help it win next year’s election. Only a criminal conviction against Correa, confirmed in appeals, could prevent that.

Coincidentally or not, as of April 2020, Ecuador’s chief prosecutor, Diana Salazar, a fervent anti-correista, was overseeing more than 25 investigations against the former president. But only certain types of crimes, in the cases of former civil servants, can be tried in absentia. And only a final conviction, after the appeals process has been fully exhausted, can lead to the stripping of someone’s political rights and bar that person from participating in elections.

So, in May 2019, the prosecution opened a corruption investigation against Correa and several of his former collaborators for illegal campaign financing. The case soon rested on the testimony of one of Correa’s former advisers, Pamela Martinez, who claimed to have accepted money, with Correa’s knowledge from several donors.

After offering her testimony against Correa, Martinez, who had been arrested as part of the investigation, was able to secure her freedom. Part of the evidence used against Correa is a notebook supposedly detailing illegal transactions in 2013-2014.

Martinez claimed she had written the whole notebook from memory “on an impulse” during a flight from Quito to Guayaquil in 2018. The defence has argued that this seemed unlikely, given that she documented amounts to the exact dollar for dozens of cash deposits from different individuals.

On April 6, the day before the court announced its verdict in the case, what appeared to be emails between the secretary of the Prosecutor General and the judge presiding over the case, containing a draft of the final sentence, were leaked by a group of people claiming to be judicial workers. These claims, if proven true, could lead to the judge and those involved in the prosecutor’s office being criminally tried for perverting the course of justice.

The COVID-19 crisis has brought Ecuadorian judicial proceedings to a standstill. But the case against Correa has proceeded, and we can expect to see the appeals process speed up too. If the former president registers as a candidate in the 2021 electoral race on September 18, he would be immune from prosecution until voting is done. The clock is ticking.

The case itself has been marred by irregularities, which could discomfit the judges in the appeals process. And only time will tell whether Correa’s appeal to a higher court will yield the same result or lead to the ruling being overturned.

Likewise, Ecuador’s dire economic travails, its disastrous handling of COVID-19, rising social unrest, and popular anger against the government could still disrupt elites’ carefully crafted plans to subvert the democratic will of the people and be rid of Correa and his politics. Regardless, nothing less than democracy itself will be at stake in Ecuador during the coming months.

Steve Striffler is the Director of the Labor Resource Center and Professor of Anthropology at UMass Boston.

8 June 2020

SOurce: www.transcend.org

By Gregor Link

2 Jun 2020 – The coronavirus pandemic is acting as a catalyst in the scramble by the great powers to redivide Africa. German imperialism sees the crisis as an opportunity to assert its global geopolitical interests by force of arms. In the last few days, the Bundestag (parliament) decided to extend or prolong two military operations. Besides Libya, Mali and Somalia, German forces may operate in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger in the future.

Sahel region

On Friday [29 May], by a large majority, the Bundestag gave the starting signal for a massive escalation of the German military deployment in the Sahel region of west Africa. The stationing of 1,100 Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) soldiers in Mali under the umbrella of the United Nations (UN) MINUSMA mission was extended. At the same time, the training of African troops has been expanded.

The Bundestag resolution provides for the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) programme, which has been running for seven years, to be extended until May 2024 and extended to the entire Sahel region. This means that in the future, European soldiers will also train the armed forces of the pro-Western regimes in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. The European Council had already created a corresponding mandate a week ago.

In Mali, the EUTM “training mission” has so far built up an army of 20,000 troops. However, in a recent editorial, Lorenz Hemicker, political editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, considers the results achieved so far to be insufficient. He complains that the Malian armed forces are not yet capable of “fighting insurgency on their own,” although the Bundeswehr informs the government troops “about the best tactics in local and house fighting.”

For this reason, the new mandate provides for the mission to be strengthened by Germany with 100 additional soldiers. The troops of the Bamako regime, which is hated by the population, will thus be able to go into action in the future accompanied by up to 450 German “trainers.” In this way, the Bundeswehr is provoking violent clashes between German soldiers and local oppositional militias, which in turn could provide the pretext for the deployment of armed combat drones in the region. A currently unarmed Heron combat drone has been in service with the Bundeswehr in Mali since 2016.

In addition, the EUTM mission is being transferred from Koulikoro in southern Mali directly to the war zone in the interior of the country. The new base will be in Sévaré near Mopti, where the heaviest battles between government troops and militias are raging. Only a few kilometres away, unknown persons murdered the inhabitants of the village of Ogossagou last March, including many women and children.

As eyewitnesses told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk radio at the time, the murderers included heavily armed men in uniforms of the Malian army. They were equipped “with bulletproof vests and modern weapons, as the Malian army has them,” a witness reported. The Malian government troops, according to their own statements, had “withdrawn” from the village a few hours earlier and did not return to the scene of the massacre until hours later—although the villagers had sent desperate distress calls to the authorities.

For years, the Malian regime has been demonstrably committing atrocities against the civilian population. A report to the UN Security Council spoke of at least three “attacks on civilians” in 2018, including a “suspected mass execution with 44 dead” and an attack on a cattle market in which “12 civilians were killed.” UN investigators also discovered several mass graves. In 2019, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which also supports military action, wrote that the regime-supported “militias…terrorise the population in order to impose its influence in disputed regions.”

This policy is now being extended to Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Chad in the interest of German and European imperialism. A strategy paper of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) states that “the regional security forces” are indeed “part of the problem”—but “without them, it is not possible.”

Since “overcoming the corona crisis will temporarily push everything else into the background,” the German government should work towards “including countries like Burkina Faso and Niger and better linking all missions [in the Sahel]. The focus initially should be on civil and medical projects, rather than military capabilities [emphasis added].”

In other words, under the pretext of the fight against COVID-19, Bundeswehr troops and the murderous “regional security forces” trained by Europe should “link up” their combat strength with the UN mission MINUSMA and the French military mission code-named Barkhane.

MINUSMA comprises up to 15,200 foreign soldiers and police officers who were stationed in Mali “following Opération Serval” in order to “stabilise” conditions. Barkhane, the successor mission to Serval, in turn officially includes 3,000 French soldiers for “counterinsurgency” measures and the killing of “Islamists,” as well as special forces and mercenaries of the Foreign Legion.

In addition to access to gold, uranium, and labour, involvement in the region, from the German point of view, is particularly concerned with combating so-called “illegal migration”—i.e., using armed force to fight desperate refugees.

People fleeing from ethnic violence and colonial oppression and seeking a way through the Sahara meet watering points that are blocked by the Nigerian military. The result is a gigantic death strip right across the African continent. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that the number of people who die in the desert is at least twice as high as the number of dead migrants in the Mediterranean. The organisation estimates that more than 30,000 people “disappeared” in the Sahara between 2014 and 2018.

In Niger, which has been armed to the teeth by Germany in particular, the Bundeswehr also maintains a military base that, according to media reports, acts as a “hub” for all German military operations in the Sahel region. Chancellor Merkel had thanked Nigerian President Issoufou Mahamadou in 2018 for the “highly successful cooperation” in the “fight against illegal migration.”

Germany is directly involved in this bloody “fight.” For at least half a year now, elite German navy troops (KSM) have been on combat duty in the country and training special units of the Nigerian military. The secret mission had previously taken place without a Bundestag mandate, but with the extension of EUTM, a mandate has now been created for the so-called Operation Gazelle.

Those who do not die of thirst in the Sahara are threatened with enslavement. In Mauritania, whose troops will in future also be trained by European soldiers, slavery was legal until 2007, though the economic structures of it still exist. According to estimates by local anti-slavery organisation SOS Esclaves, there were still 600,000 slaves in Mauritania in 2010.

Horn of Africa

On Wednesday, the Bundestag extended the European “Atalanta” mission off the coast of Somalia by another year, by an overwhelming majority of 536 parliamentary deputies. This means that up to 400 German soldiers will continue to participate in the European Union’s so-called anti-piracy mission, which has been ongoing since 2008. The German and European naval forces are defending imperialist interests in a region that has suffered unprecedented social devastation due to Western overfishing, unilateral trade agreements and decades of civil war.

“Through its presence in the sea area off the Horn of Africa, the EU…protects European interests and contributes to the stabilisation of the region,” reads the German government’s mission statement. Among other things, the mission plans to use armed force to shield UN food supplies from unauthorised access and to fight local “pirates” with naval forces.

The military mission has not failed to have its effect over the past 12 years. According to a report by weekly Die Zeit, which welcomes the mission, the number of attacks on transnational trawlers has “decreased enormously” in recent years. Illegal fishing by foreign fleets, on the other hand, has continued to increase in the slipstream of European warships, according to UN sources.

Somalia and other countries in East Africa are currently suffering the worst floods in 40 years. The massive rains have caused dams to burst, which in turn have destroyed infrastructure and homes, forcing people to stay in home-made huts. Nearly 1 million people have been affected, and 400,000 have lost their homes.

The flood disaster is also hampering the humanitarian work of the UN, including the fight against COVID-19, and has created the conditions for the second plague of locusts since the beginning of this year. Twenty million Somalis are at risk of starvation, and almost 3 million are refugees. The country’s infrastructure has been largely destroyed after three decades of armed conflict.

As for COVID-19, the country is threatened by the epidemic. The US Johns Hopkins University lists the country in second last place in its Global Health Security Index (GHS Index), which represents the state of preparedness to deal with epidemics in 195 countries. The university currently measures the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Somalia at 1,731. The number of cases has been rising rapidly since the beginning of April, and the number of unreported cases is likely to be high; the 67 officially registered fatalities include the Minister of Justice of the state of Hirshabelle.

Although the imperialist powers have created the conditions for this maelstrom of displacement, natural disasters and pandemic in the last decades, they are now using the devastating situation as a pretext to prepare a geopolitical redivision of the region using military force. The Atalanta mission also fulfils a “deterrent function” in this respect, Die Zeit notes.

“Germany and Europe face several challenges in dealing with COVID-19 in the Horn of Africa, but there are also opportunities,” notes a current strategy paper published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Germany has proven to be a “reliable partner” for the East African regimes and should now “lead the way” in taking on the role of “coordinator” within the EU.

In this context, the paper suggests “hosting a Sudan conference,” as the country on the Red Sea is of “enormous strategic importance” for the entire region. At the beginning of May, the Bundestag sent almost 300 Bundeswehr soldiers to Libya, where such a conference was held in January chaired by Germany.

8 June 2020

Source: www.transcend.org