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By Philip A Farruggio

Singer/Songwriter Neil Young wrote the song ‘ Four Dead in Ohio’ for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:

Four Dead In Ohio Lyrics

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are cutting us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin’.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin’.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.
Four dead in Ohio.

It was a beautiful Spring day in May of 1970 when four Kent State University students, protesting the illegal bombing of Cambodia and the entire Vietnam ( so called ) War, were gunned down by Ohio National Guard troops, many the same age as them. The event made national headlines and ignited a mass of students from literally hundreds of universities to go on strike. This writer was in my third or fourth year at Brooklyn College, who remembers, and I finally became outraged. Up until then, at my own admission, I only cared about playing on our soon to be first year football team, and of course, chasing woman. Oh yeah, and enjoying the pot that my friends and I smoked each and every Friday and Saturday night. I was just 20 years of age and really ‘ feeling my oats’. Yet, when the news made the daily headlines about those four kids, well, just like ME, I swayed over to the campus looking for action. A large group of us literally chased the military recruiters from our campus. No violence. Those guys probably knew deep down that the shit was gonna eventually hit the fan over this ongoing Amerikan tragedy.

The stench from the dual killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy still filled many of our young minds two years after the fact… Or should I say facts? Two well respected leaders gunned down and by now, 1970, the conspiracy theories were holding lots of water. I had already known about The Beast, ever since, believe it or not, I read the 1967 Playboy magazine interview with New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison about the JFK assassination. It opened my eyes to what probably happened, as compared to what my government was telling us. The more I read of that fateful day in November of ’63 the more I knew, intuitively, that The Beast was real. So, we closed down the campus, took over the school president’s office, and waited for the cops to come. That event never occurred ( to my satisfaction) and we ended the strike after a few days. There were some concessions made, nothing of major importance, but enough to make us say that ‘ We Won!’. Those four kids at Kent State didn’t bask in our glory, did they? They say, from historians looking back , that President Nixon was affected enough to start realizing that he had to get out of this mess called Vietnam. Of course, when it comes to The Beast and how it operates, it only reacts when it already has the table turned. So, Nixon waited it out until he won re-election 30 months later to then slowly use the ‘ Get out of jail free ‘ card beginning the process… of course his impeachment/resignation left it to another. Point is, the Kent State killings, coupled with the illegal bombing of another sovereign nation, slowly woke up our Moms and Dads to the truth of it all: This ( so called ) war was not worth it! I can recall, at an Easter dinner a few weeks earlier, with all my aunts and uncles present, the famous words of my father, who voted for Nixon in 1960, Goldwater in ‘ 64 and Nixon again in ’68: ” Let me make this clear. Before I see either of my two sons being sent to Vietnam, I ‘m gonna personally drive them to Canada!! And that’s that!”

Perhaps it was when a guy a few blocks away from me, Tommy L., joined the Marines and came home in a box. I didn’t know him well at all, but I knew his mom. She was our crossing guard on Ocean Ave, which was right by our church, St. Edmunds. Each Sunday after Mass we would see Mrs. L. as we crossed Ocean Ave. She always had this beautiful smile and greeted everyone with it. After her son died in the Nam, you could see how she now had what I always called ‘ The Mona Lisa smile’ from that famous DaVinci portrait. It had that look, to me, of someone who was saying ‘ If you only know what I am going through’. Then, a year later, another guy from our neighborhood, a Polish born son of my friend’s building superintendent, Vito P., was killed on some famous ( for whom?) hill in Vietnam. The last time I saw Vito was , coincidentally,at Mass in St. Edmunds. He was home on leave from the Army, standing there in his Ranger uniform, replete with beret tucked onto his shoulder. Months later we got the word. I used to see his kid brother, who I knew adored Vito, at the school yard where we played softball. He would be hanging out with characters that I would always warn him against. He ignored me, and got into glue sniffing, Quaaludes and finally horse ( heroin). Sometime later, maybe a few years after Vito’s death, his brother OD’d and died. What is it they say ‘ When the war comes home’? Well in May of 1970 it had… and transformed me into the activist anti empire and anti war writer and street corner protestor I have been since then.

And what about ‘ Feeding the beast’? Well:

1933 Germany: Reichstag fire and Enabling Laws to snuff out political parties and dissent

1964 Amerika: Gulf of Tonkin resolution based upon imaginary attack by North Vietnam on our ship

1991: Saddam Hussein encouraged by US non commitment to Kuwait to invade Kuwait over oil drilling dispute. War on Iraq followed

2001, September 11th- Twin Towers and Pentagon attacked in highly suspicious manner, leading to the Patriot Act, increased military spending and 2nd war on Iraq to follow

March 19th , 2003 – Illegal and immoral war on Iraq over WMDs to this day never found. More increases in military spending along with occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and NATO servicemen dead or damaged for life.

2008-09 – Subprime scam costs taxpayers trillions of dollars to bail out failed Wall Street companies.

Meanwhile, health care system is still a joke as is the needs of infrastructure throughout Amerika.

2011 Libya- USA led NATO carpet bombing of Libya, causing death , destruction and refugee crisis that has still caused havoc throughout the region and Europe.

2020 Pandemic- Trump crew ignored the crisis for almost 2 months, even denying it as a HOAX. Our economy is teetering on default as the super rich get most of the bailout. Oh, but the increased military spending survives, eating up around HALF of our federal tax revenues.

Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Cross Currents and Off Guardian sites.

23 April 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian gunboats, should they harass American vessels at sea. His declaration comes after a confrontation in the Persian Gulf.

“I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea,” the U.S. president tweeted on Wednesday morning.

A week earlier, the U.S. Navy accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of “dangerous and provocative” actions, claiming that nearly a dozen Iranian vessels buzzed a group of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet later published video footage of the encounter, which showed the gunboats circling a larger U.S. ship.

Tehran brushed off the accusations, disputing the “Hollywood” scenario portrayed by the U.S.

The Iranian government considers U.S. naval activity in the gulf highly provocative. The Iranian Navy condemned the patrol as “adventurism.”

The U.S. and Iran almost came to war at the beginning of the year, when the U.S. assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike at an airport in Baghdad, apparently in retribution for a series of Iranian-sponsored attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.

However, tension in the Persian Gulf has been high since last summer, when the U.S. and its Western allies blamed Iran for a series of sabotage attacks on oil infrastructure in the region. U.S.-led naval patrols were stepped up, and American troops and air defense systems were sent to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Based in nearby Bahrain, the U.S. Fifth Fleet has been active in the gulf both before and since the flare up last year. The U.S. insists patrols are essential to protect shipping routes against Iran’s “malign behavior.”

Another media report said:

U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf have been authorized to open fire on Iranian ships if they ‘harass’ them at sea, President Donald Trump said, as tensions between Washington and Tehran escalated despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re not going to stand for it. if they do that, that’s putting our ships in danger and our great crews and sailors in danger – I’m not going to let that happen. And we will – they’ll shoot them out of the water,” Trump said on Wednesday during the daily White House press conference normally dedicated to the pandemic response.

He would not say if that meant a change to the rules of engagement (ROE) currently in effect.

Trump accused the Iranian Navy of once again harassing the U.S. naval forces currently deployed in the Persian Gulf, saying there had been an incident on Tuesday in addition to the Pentagon’s claims from last week.

That provided some context for his tweet earlier in the day, threatening to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian boats, but resulted in plenty of confusion about the rules under which U.S. warships would be allowed to open fire.

Last Wednesday, the Pentagon claimed that 11 boats of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) “repeatedly conducted dangerous and harassing approaches” of six U.S. ships as they conducted drills with army attack helicopters “in the international waters of the North Arabian Gulf” (the U.S. name for that body of water).

The boats came within 50 yards of the expeditionary vessel USS ‘Lewis B. Puller,’ and within 10 yards of the Coast Guard cutter USCGC ‘Maui,’ the US Department of Defense said.

Tehran denounced the US claim as “false and fake stories” and released its own video of the incident, accusing the U.S. Navy of “adventurism” and failure to follow international law and maritime protocols regulating navigation in the Persian Gulf.

23 April 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

This is the true picture of what is happening.

How is it implemented? The fear campaign plays a key role. The lockdown is presented to national governments as the sole solution.

The economy is the basis for the reproduction of real life.

It is also the basis for upholding public health endeavors.

This closing down operation affects production and supply lines of goods and services, investment activities, exports and imports, wholesale and retail trade, consumer spending, the closing down of schools, colleges and universities, research institutions, etc.

In turn it leads almost immediately to mass unemployment, bankruptcies of small and medium sized enterprises, a collapse in purchasing power, widespread poverty and famine.

VIDEO: COVID: Closing Down the Economy is not the Solution – Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

21 April 2020

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Countercurrents Collective

U.S. oil market has crashed. The price of U.S. oil turned negative for the first time in history. The U.S. oil industry is facing a doomsday scenario. Hundreds of U.S. oil companies could go bankrupt. Many U.S. oil companies took on too much debt during the good times. Some of them will not be able to survive this historic downturn.

West Texas Intermediate oil prices have gone negative in a record low for the U.S. benchmark, as the market continues to crater amid the general economic collapse.

The price of U.S. oil turned negative means oil producers are paying buyers to take the commodity off their hands over fears that storage capacity could run out in May.

Vanishing demand and a glut of supply have combined to heavily impact the U.S. benchmark fuel, with oil prices dropping from $18.27 to close at -$37.63 a barrel on Monday – down over 300 percent from the previous day’s close. It is the first time the crude oil futures contract has ever traded in the negative since the New York Mercantile Exchange started trading it in 1983.

The collapse in oil markets comes amid a generalized economic downturn, with the coronavirus pandemic plunging most of the world’s economies into a downward spiral many believe will be the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The U.S. Department of Energy is nevertheless weighing the idea of paying domestic producers to simply leave the oil in the ground so as not to further depress prices.

With May’s futures contracts set to expire on Tuesday, investors are scrambling to unload their positions, eyeing the already-glutted market and concerned about being left with a valueless commodity.

As the futures contracts hovered at record lows, oil tankers are reportedly languishing at sea, unable to find places to store their bounty onshore. Demand for the commodity has dropped an estimated 30 percent worldwide amid the coronavirus crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused oil demand to drop so rapidly that the world is running out of room to store barrels. At the same time, Russia and Saudi Arabia flooded the world with excess supply.

That double black swan has caused oil prices to collapse to levels that make it impossible for U.S. shale oil companies to make money.

U.S. crude for May delivery turned negative on Monday – something that has never happened since NYMEX oil futures began trading in 1983. It was easily the oil market’s worst day on record.

US crude for June delivery is still trading above $20 a barrel — but even that is disastrous.

“$30 is already quite bad, but once you get to $20 or even $10, it’s a complete nightmare,” said Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad Energy.

Bankruptcy

In a $20 oil environment, 533 US oil exploration and production companies will file for bankruptcy by the end of 2021, according to Rystad Energy. At $10, there would be more than 1,100 bankruptcies, Rystad estimates.

Noble Energy, Halliburton, Marathon Oil and Occidental have all lost more than two-thirds of their value. Even Dow member ExxonMobil is down 38%.

Whiting Petroleum became the first domino to fall when the former shale star filed for Chapter 11 protection on April 2. But it certainly will not be the last.

“At $10, almost every US E&P company that has debt will have to file Chapter 11 or consider strategic opportunities,” Abramov said.

The most stunning part of the record low in oil prices is that it comes after Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to end their epic price war after U.S. President Donald Trump intervened. OPEC+ agreed to cut oil production by a record amount.

Trump said the OPEC+ agreement would save countless jobs and much-needed stability to the oil patch.

“This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States,” Trump tweeted on April 12. “I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia.”

Yet crude has kept crashing, in part because those production cuts do not kick in until May. Demand continues to vanish because jets, cars and factories are sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic.

The hope in the oil industry is that Monday’s negative prices are somewhat of a fluke caused by the rolling over futures contracts.

The key will be how long oil prices stay dirt cheap. A rapid rebound in prices could allow many oil companies to avoid bankruptcy.

Buddy Clark, co-chair of the energy practice at Houston law firm Haynes and Boone, said his firm is “extremely busy” working on potential oil bankruptcies. Haynes and Boone has been forced to pull lawyers from other areas of the firm to work on the oil problem.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it in my lifetime. It’s unprecedented,” said Clark, who started working in the industry in 1982.

Clark thinks that despite the further collapse in prices, there will still be only — “only” — 100 oil bankruptcies in 2020.

“It’s hard to believe that 100 bankruptcies is the optimistic view. That just shows you where we are,” Clark said.

There would probably be more bankruptcies already if it were not for the extreme volatility in oil prices. Clark said companies are having trouble drawing up restructuring plans because they do not know what the price of the commodity will be.

“Ironically, the lower price has slowed down the process,” Clark said. “A number of companies may have teed up filings but they need to go back to the drawing board.”

The dire outlook in the oil industry will make it very difficult for companies attempting to reorganize in Chapter 11 proceedings to get the required financing and support. Debtholders who would normally swap their debt for equity may not want that equity.

That means, unlike the 2014-2016 crash, some oil companies may not survive altogether.

“Chapter 11 requires financial sponsors to back you. You may see more Chapter 7 liquidations,” said Reid Morrison, US energy leader at PwC.

The nightmare scenario could present lucrative buying opportunities for the industry’s biggest players. That is because struggling oil companies, either in bankruptcy or before it, will be forced to sell off prime acreage — at fire sale prices. Exxon and Chevron, the industry’s supermajors, could be tempted to make acquisitions.

“Those with strong balance sheets will be able to take advantage of the situation,” said Morrison.

However, he noted the supermajors will be “cautious about pulling the trigger” in the next six months because they must defend their coveted dividends first.

Negative territory

Demand for oil has all but dried up as lockdowns across the world have kept people inside. As a result, oil firms have resorted to renting tankers to store the surplus supply and that has forced the price of U.S. oil into negative territory.

The severe drop on Monday was driven in part by a technicality of the global oil market. Oil is traded on its future price and May futures contracts are due to expire on Tuesday. Traders were keen to offload those holdings to avoid having to take delivery of the oil and incur storage costs.

June prices for WTI were also down, but trading at above $20 per barrel. Meanwhile, Brent Crude, the benchmark used by Europe and the rest of the world, which is already trading based on June contracts – was also weaker, down 8.9% at less than $26 a barrel.

OGUK, the business lobby for the UK’s offshore oil and gas sector, said the negative price of U.S. oil would affect firms operating in the North Sea.

The oil industry has been struggling with both tumbling demand and in-fighting among producers about reducing output.

Trump has said the government will buy oil for the country’s national reserve.

Oil rebounds in Asian trading

A Bloomberg report said:

Oil rebounded in Asian trading.

Futures in New York traded at around $1 a barrel after sinking to as low as minus $40.32 during Monday’s jaw-dropping collapse. The June contract, however, which had trading volumes more than 60 times higher, rose above $21. The spread between the two reflects the growing fear that those who take physical delivery of crude in the near future may not find any outlet or storage for those barrels as refineries curb operations.

Crude explorers shut down 13% of the American drilling fleet last week. While production cuts in the country are gaining pace, it is not happening quickly enough to avoid storage filling to maximum levels, said Paul Horsnell, head of commodities at Standard Chartered Plc.

In Asia, bankers are increasingly reluctant to give commodity traders the credit to survive as lenders grow ever more fearful about the risk of a catastrophic default.

Fund Inflow

Despite the weakness in headline prices, retail investors are continuing to plow money back into oil futures. The U.S. Oil Fund ETF saw a record $552 million come in on Friday, taking total inflows last week to $1.6 billion.

The price collapse is reverberating across the oil industry. Crude explorers shut down 13% of the American drilling fleet last week.

Goldman sees oil volatility before ‘violent rebalancing’

The oil market is set to be forced into a “violent rebalancing” over the coming weeks, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Price volatility will remain exceptionally high in the coming weeks, Goldman said in a note.

“With ultimately a finite amount of storage left to fill, production will soon need to fall sizeably to bring the market into balance, finally setting the stage for higher prices” once demand recovers, analysts including Damien Courvalin wrote in the note date April 20. “This inflection will play out in a matter of weeks, not months, with the market likely forced to balance before June.”

India stocks fall with Asian markets as growth worries intensify

A Bloomberg report said:

India’s benchmark stock gauge fell, tracking peers in Asia, as a plunge in oil prices heightened investor concerns about domestic growth.

The S&P BSE Sensex Index fell 2.8% to 30,774.23 as of 9:59 a.m. in Mumbai, and the NSE Nifty 50 Index declined by 2.7%. Asia’s third-largest economy is near a standstill amid a prolonged lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

While India is a net importer of crude, a collapse in oil futures on Monday amid stagnant global demand exacerbated economic growth fears.

All major equity markets in Asia declined Tuesday, with the regional MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropping 1.9%.

India’s government and central bank are trying to cushion the economic effect of virus-enforced closures with fiscal and monetary policy measures. Some makers of information-technology hardware in India, farmers and industries in rural areas resumed operations from Monday even as the lockdown was extended until May 3.

“Efforts to ramp up the economy once the lockdown has been lifted may take a toll as the lack of employees as well as demand may strike down hard on industrial activity,” analysts at Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd. wrote in a note to clients.

With the earnings season underway, Infosys Ltd. on Monday refrained from projecting full-year revenue for the first time in years, joining a growing list of businesses around the world struggling to assess the fallout of the COVID-19. So far, four Nifty 50 members have reported quarterly results.

A hunt for any storage space turns urgent as oil glut grows

A Reuters report said:

With oil depots that normally store crude oil onshore filling to the brim and supertankers mostly taken, energy companies are desperate for more space. The alternative is to pay buyers to take their U.S. crude after futures plummeted to a negative $37 a barrel on Monday.

A topsy-turvy market that has oil prices for October delivery at $31 a barrel has oil firms anxious to sock away millions of barrels now to sell at a profit later.

While the government estimated there is available space, traders said Monday’s market drop indicated any unfilled tanks are under lease, and not available to new renters.

“The industry is really scrambling to source viable storage options,” said Stuart Porter, a manager at Adler Tank Rentals in Texas, which has shale companies lining up to potentially lease dozens of its 500-barrel steel frac tanks. The tanks can be lined up like dominos and filled at the well site by producers without a home for their oil. Converge Midstream LLC with millions of barrels of storage available in underground salt caverns outside Houston has gone from few takers to requiring one- to two-year contracts.

“Quite honestly we were struggling for business. Now that the market has changed, everyone is our friend,” said Dana Grams, chief executive of Converge Midstream.

The hunt for storage points to the magnitude of the collapse in demand for U.S. shale and the huge volume of unsold oil to refiners who are cutting purchases.

In addition to the onshore glut, there are about 160 million barrels of oil sitting on tankers waiting for buyers. At least six crude tankers carrying 2 million barrels apiece are en route to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia, adding to the alarm at the U.S. Gulf Coast.

It is not just crude looking for a place to go. State lockdowns have decimated demand for motor fuel. U.S. gasoline demand fell 32% earlier this month compared with the same time a year ago, the EIA said.

That glut is creating opportunities for some.

At Caliche Development Partners, which stores natural gas liquids in underground caverns near Houston, CEO Dave Marchese may shift his plans and open a newly completed 3-million-barrel underground salt-cavern for crude oil or gasoline.

“Gasoline has a pretty large contango right now,” he said, referring to prices five or more months ahead that are higher than current levels. But both fuels would require new pumps in its salt cavern, Marchese said, and he wants buyers to pay up for any upgrades.

Shale producer Teal Natural Resources had one of its three crude buyers cancel a purchase agreement last month, sending it shopping for frac tanks. They are not cheap, Teal CEO John Roby learned after scouring the market.

Storing a month’s worth of output would cost Teal about $20 a day per tank, or about $300,000 a month. At those rates, Teal would rather shut in wells, he said.

Shutting off wells is not for everyone, though, because it can reduce future oil recovery, and may put a producer in breach of their lease contracts.

Rentals for frac tanks have jumped from about $15 a day previously, a Texas oil marketer said.

Another oil producer, Texland Petroleum aims to sell immediately whatever crude it can this month, said its President Jim Wilkes. He is considering adding frac tanks to avoid having to pay to have his oil carried away in May.

Joshua Wade, an oil marketer in Oklahoma, is in talks to reserve about 100,000 barrels of storage for May using a combination of frac tanks, on-system pipeline storage and smaller tanks that have been dormant on pipelines.

But time is running out and costs are rising quickly.

“A lot of people have been calling me now and saying ‘I wanna go out and buy 100,000 barrels in May and put them in a frac tank,’” said Wade. “I tell them the party started about a month ago and it’s now almost over.”

21 April 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By IMEMC

On the eve of Palestinian Prisoners Day, the Cairo-based Arab States’ Parliaments Forum, on Thursday, called for the immediate release of all Palestinian prisoners from various Israeli prisons and detention centers, as well as halt of all Israeli violations against the Palestinian people.

In a statement, issued by the forum on the eve of Palestinian Prisoners Day, head of the forum, Mr. Mash’al Alselmy, demanded all relevant international bodies, including the United Nations, right groups and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to take the lead by ensuring full protection for Palestinian prisoners, under the spread of Coronavirus pandemic, worldwide, Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

He asserted that the suffering of Palestinian people, especially those women, children, patients and elderly, inside Israeli prisons, should dictate all concerned bodies to pressure Israeli government to respect the international law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons, in Time of War, which he believes could be applied on current times, as Coronavirus is reported to have spread widely including Palestinian prisoners themselves.

He asserted that the suffering of Palestinian people, especially those women, children, patients and elderly, inside Israeli prisons, should dictate all concerned bodies to pressure Israeli government to respect the international law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons, in Time of War, which he believes could be applied on current times, as Coronavirus is reported to have spread widely including Palestinian prisoners themselves.

Alselmy held the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the lives of Palestinian prisoners, after some of them have tested positive for the Coronavirus. He believed that Israeli authorities have intentionally ignored the fact of such an infection.

Currently, there are about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, inside Israeli more than 20 Israeli detention facilities and prisons, across the occupied West Bank and Israel. Recently, some media reports have suggested that few of those prisoners have tested positive for the deadly Coronavirus.

Noteworthy, several hundreds of those prisoners are patients with chronic diseases, while hundreds others are women and children, under the age of 18.

17 April 2020

Source: imemc.org

By Shambhavi Siddhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, April 14, announced that country’s lockdown will be extended till 3rd May. All sorts of praises and criticisms followed the announcement. Since then it has been the topic discussion amongst the Indian middle class as they sit in the comfort of their houses, posting pictures of their newly learned skills on social media, a popular trend these days. Another trending quote, which is making rounds on social media, reads, “Coronavirus doesn’t see if you’re rich or poor.”, while the post does make sense when one realizes that celebrities and politicians like Tom Hanks and Boris Johansson (to name two from a much longer list) were diagnosed with COVID-19, the frightening reality that the Indian society has shamelessly denied is the effect of lockdown on the poor and the marginalized.

The flagrant attempts of Indian Media to communalize the virus in order to hide news stories related to the sufferings of the poor and marginalized is one of the most inhumane and barbaric acts in the history of electronic media of this country. As upper-class households gear up to stock and hoard commodities and get their WIFIs fixed to work from home, the marginalized sections bleakly sit, awaiting help and aid from the government. As if the horrific images of thousands of migrant workers risking their lives and leaving Delhi weren’t enough for this country, now even Mumbai’s migrant workers, after hopelessly waiting for the government to come up with a concrete plan, have decided to leave the city as they don’t see any aid or help to come. And how can we forget to mention the plight of Muslims and Kashmiris as their survival becomes more and more difficult with each passing day; between the virus and the current regime, the latter is more likely to murder them first. The despair of migrant workers and Muslims is only a tiny glimpse into the abyss that hides behind and beside the comfort of upper-class houses. There is one common question that every poor and wretched of this country has on their mind, “What would become of us?”

Arunima is a construction worker in a building in the suburbs of Lucknow. Her family has put up a small tent beside the building, there are six members of her family, all stuffed together in a small tent with minimal resources. Although, Arunima refuses to call it a tent, “this right here, is my home”, she says. Sometimes in the afternoon, she stares ghastly at the building for hours, she remembers how the street resonated with the roaring sound of the backhoe, churning of sand, thak-thak of hammers and other sounds from construction machines. While neighbours of the society frowned at the sound of these machines, Arunima remembers, with tears in her eyes, how her whole life was dependent on these sounds, she says it was music to her ears. She also mentions how a truck with bricks or sand would unload at the end of every week and she remembers how her whole family would clap and rejoice at the sight of it. “A truck at the end of week meant the construction would continue in the coming days too” she mentions in passing. As she walks back into her house with a packet of relief material she has just received, her children come out and hug the relief workers, Arunima folds her hand and tells the relief workers, “you are our truck.”

Right beside Arunima, in a small but well-constructed house of bricks and cement, lives a family of a milkman, “some people have stopped buying milk from us” says the eldest son, Faizan, frowning at the duplex on the corner as he pours milk from one canister to the other. “The households in this area are mostly Hindu, we have never had any problem with them and still don’t” he continues, “but two houses have stopped buying milk from us. As you know, we are Muslims, even though we are not from Tablighi Jamaat these two households simply refuse to understand the difference. The virus wouldn’t have cost us much but the media houses have” Shahrukh blames media houses for the loss their business is suffering. “We have never left this area, we rarely go out of this colony, yet we have to bear the burden, all because of some media houses which spew venom against our community” adds Junaid, the youngest son.

A young girl of 18, Pratima who is also a friend of Arunima’s daughter, used to mow the community park before the lockdown, “my father is a milkman, the grass that I mow from the park, we also use to feed the cattle, but now since the lockdown whenever we go to pick up some grass, a man from that big white house shoos us away as if we were dogs or goats” she says as she points to a four-story manor, which is probably the biggest house in the colony. “I also heard him whisper once that we were a bigger threat than the virus, I don’t know what he meant by that” adds Kanti, Arunima’s daughter who also mows grass with Pratima.

“Had the government prepared properly, we would have left for our villages, it would have been easier there, the fact remains, this is a rich person’s disease, we never travelled abroad, yet we are the worst hit” Pratima’s uncle, Ramchand, who works in the same building as Arunima blames the government and the arbitrary lockdown for their condition. “They think we are stupid and we do not know anything, but we also use Facebook and we know what happened to migrant workers in cities as big as Dilli, I could never imagine travelling back to my village after seeing all that” he gulps a big tear and continues in a trembling voice, “we are not scared of the virus, it will go away, we know, we just want to know how to survive this lockdown.”

COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly in India, and so does despair and hopelessness amongst the poor and marginalized. While we write with the hope that these stories reach the authorities and something is done to ensure a healthy survival of the marginalized communities, the threat that looms on these communities is disseminating fast. The Indian Government remains ignorant and indifferent to their needs and demands as lap media houses continue to communalize COVID-19, or, in a new low, play antakshari on live NEWS TV to keep the man from the big white house and his ilk entertained.

Shambhavi Siddhi is pursuing her Masters in French Literature in the School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

18 April 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nir Hasson

15 Apr 2020 – Clinic in Silwan raided, activists arrested because kits were provided by the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli police raided a coronavirus testing clinic in the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan and arrested its organizers on Tuesday [14 Apr] night because the clinic was operated in collaboration with the Palestinian Authority.

According to the clinic’s managers, there is a shortage of coronavirus tests in Silwan, where doctors say there are 40 confirmed cases and where overcrowded living conditions could lead to a rapid spread of the virus.

The clinic was opened in a hall at one of the local mosques. It was closed on Tuesday night because to the end-of-Passover curfew, but police officers nonetheless arrived, questioned neighbors and arrested four activists who were involved in setting up the clinic.

The coronavirus tests were meant to be processed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. However, Israel prohibits any PA activity in Jerusalem and last month also prevented PA workers from disinfecting public spaces in the capital. In contrast, two weeks ago Israel allowed armed PA forces to respond to a violent dispute that took place in one of the Jerusalem neighborhoods that are beyond he separation barrier.

“You [Israeli authorities] are not helping us and are preventing us from getting help from others,” said one of the residents, Farhi Abu Diab. “For the first time, we have a common enemy, so let’s work together.”

Abu Diab said the Israeli government will respond after it’s too late, after the month of Ramadan, which he said will surely exacerbate the outbreak. “Instead of working together, [Israeli authorities] are bringing politics into this. I don’t care about who has jurisdiction. If something happens to my son I don’t care who tests him.”

On Monday [13 Apr], at the behest of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon and health professionals, the Israeli Health Ministry opened a testing clinic in Silwan, but it is only accessible to members of the Clalit health maintenance organization.

20 April 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Belen Fernandez

14 Apr 2020 – As coronavirus ravages the world, Cuba has exhibited disproportionate heroism, deploying medical personnel to at least 14 countries thus far to battle the pandemic—including to Italy, which has been particularly devastated. The response is in keeping with Cuba’s decades-long tradition of “doctors, not bombs,” which has seen the tiny island nation dispatch tens of thousands of medics across the globe to combat everything from Ebola to more mundane diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The Cuban approach stands in marked contrast to the modus operandi of the global superpower and Cuba’s primary antagonist, the United States, a country with an established predilection for bombing rather than saving people.

Cuba’s coronavirus performance is a welcome bit of uplifting news in an otherwise mostly dismal international panorama. Lest anyone start feeling too inspired by the idea of humanity, however, sectors of the US corporate media are dutifully standing by to burst the bubble.
Bloomberg: Coronavirus Could Give Cuba’s Flying Doctors New Wings

A March Bloomberg opinion article (3/23/20) headlined “Coronavirus Could Give Cuba’s Flying Doctors New Wings,” for example, came equipped with the following caveat in the subheadline: “But allowing Havana to exploit the virus for hard currency will just empower repression at home.” The text of the article, by Mac Margolis, contained few easily detectable illustrations of domestic “repression,” aside from allegedly insufficient Cuban government efforts on behalf of a “consumer economy” and “emerging private sector”—which certainly sounds less repressive than, I don’t know, the US police habit of fatally shooting black people.

Margolis also stressed that, in Cuba, Covid-19 is “anything but an equal opportunity affliction,” and that “compañeros with connections or access to dollars have a far better shot at securing medication and loading up on groceries during a lockdown.” Never mind that Cuban compañeros would have better access to basic necessities in general had the island not been at the mercy of a sadistic US embargo for the past 60 years, or that severe socioeconomic inequality is overall a defining hallmark of US capitalism—as illustrated by reports that low-income communities of color in the States are being hardest hit by the coronavirus.

The Bloomberg article is accompanied by a photograph of Cuban doctors wielding Cuban flags, with the caption: “Nice flags, but how about a bigger paycheck?” And while bigger paychecks are obviously less imperative in societies—like Cuba’s—where the essentials of survival are provided free of charge, a more pertinent question in the time of global pandemic might be how the US spends trillions of dollars on wars and still generates news reports like “Uninsured Americans Could Be Facing Nearly $75,000 in Medical Bills if Hospitalized for Coronavirus” (CNBC, 4/1/20).

Plenty of other media outlets have meanwhile exploited the current pandemic to disseminate frank anti-Cuban propaganda. Over at the Miami Herald (3/27/20), Cuban exile Fabiola Santiago informs us that “Americans, in the midst of food and supply shortages and limitations on personal freedoms, are getting a taste of what it’s like in Cuba and Venezuela—without coronavirus.” Santiago seems to be under the misapprehension that US citizens ordinarily never face food shortages or limits on freedom–but at least now she won’t be alone in her “only-in-Miami form of PTSD, the growing up in Cuba kind.”

Additional moaning is on display at PanAm Post (3/30/20), where Mamela Fiallo Flor—cofounder of the Cuban Libertarian Party—suggests that calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” serves to “dissociate…it from the main culprit: the Communist Party.” The upshot: We should call it the “Communist virus” and recognize its nefarious impact on Cuba, as well, which “advertises itself as a medical power when, in fact, the shortage of hospital staff on the island is a direct consequence of the use of doctors for propaganda purposes.”

Certain mainstream publications have evidently not yet gotten the memo, as a recent Reuters article (3/22/20) emphasizes that Cuba “has one of the highest ratios worldwide of physicians per capita even when excluding those doctors abroad, and its medical brigades for disaster relief continue to earn Havana goodwill worldwide.” The piece was published on the New York Times website (though no longer available there), showing that even the decidedly anti-progressive US newspaper of record, it seems, is susceptible to the Communist virus.

The Wall Street Journal (3/22/20), on the other hand, remains true to principle. An intervention titled “Repression in the Time of Coronavirus”—by Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Journal columnist and editorial board member—begins with a typical jab at the oh-so-radical Democrats in the US:

Given the credibility that President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden lent to Cuban propaganda while they were in office, I half-expected to see them enjoying spring break in [Cuba’s] Varadero Beach last week.

This is the same O’Grady who once insinuated (Wall Street Journal, 11/1/09) that the very Obama administration that backed the 2009 right-wing coup against Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya was itself too pro-left for comfort, and that the US ambassador to Honduras should therefore be relocated to a diplomatic post in Cuba.

O’Grady (5/29/10) also swooned over “The Man Who Saved Colombia” from narco-trafficking and other evils—i.e., former President Álvaro Uribe, the man who not only appeared on a US Defense Intelligence Agency list of “the more important Colombian narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotic cartels,” but also presided over the notorious “false positives” scandal, which saw the Colombian army massacre some 10,000 civilians between 2002-10, passing them off as guerrilla combatants in order to justify continued US aid.

Another Latin American “savior” endorsed by O’Grady (10/28/18) was Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, whom she placed “on the side of reform”—representing an “opportunity to advance liberty and prosperity”—despite being “labeled a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a fascist, an advocate of torture and an aspiring dictator.” (O’Grady presents this list as though it’s self-evidently absurd, but it’s actually a pretty good summary of who Bolsonaro is; see FAIR.org, 10/31/18.)

With so many heroes in our midst, who needs Cuba and its coronavirus-era claims that—as O’Grady scoffed—“it makes magic in its pharmaceutical labs”? O’Grady’s derision was not shared by Yale University Press, which on March 12 published a blog post by University of Glasgow lecturer and author Helen Yaffe, who discusses Cuba’s historically impressive advances in biotechnology, “despite the US blockade obstructing access to technologies, equipment, materials, finance and even knowledge exchange.”

Noting that the Cuban anti-viral drug Interferon Alpha 2b was among those initially chosen to contain coronavirus in China, Yaffe recalls that interferon was instrumental in addressing Cuba’s dengue epidemic of 1981, which “affected 340,000 Cubans with 11,000 new cases diagnosed every day at its peak.” Cuba, Yaffe writes, “suspected the CIA of releasing the virus”—and, while the US naturally denies such allegations, pretty much anything is possible from the country that tried to kill Fidel Castro in no fewer than 638 ways, including via brightly painted exploding mollusks.

In her anti-Cuban coronavirus “repression” piece, O’Grady noted that Cuba has “already been denounced for treating its medical workers like chattel when it sends them abroad to earn money for the regime and indoctrinate populations.” Anyone requiring a footnote on this claim need look no further than O’Grady’s own article (11/9/14), headlined “Cuba’s Slave Trade in Doctors”—which also argued that “making medical professionals an export product is provoking a doctor shortage in Cuba [and] exacerbating widespread privation in healthcare.” (Take that, New York Times!)

In her 2014 exposé, O’Grady cast the Cuban doctor “slave trade” as “big business, which if it weren’t being carried out by gangster Marxists would surely offend journalists”—as if US journalists who mainly work for advertiser-supported outlets owned by multinational corporations have a natural affinity for “gangster Marxists.”

Fast forward six years to O’Grady’s rant against Cuba’s coronavirus “efforts to use the pandemic…to create the illusion that it specializes in advanced medical care”—which, according to her professional assessment, is “a sick joke.”

But as the US continues to thwart effective and affordable medical care for humans at home and abroad—and as neoliberalism and its media acolytes continue to dismantle all forms of human solidarity—there are loads of sick jokes to go around.

__________________________________________________

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso.

20 April 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Ramzy Baroud

6 Apr 2020 – Call it a ‘quarantine’, a ‘shelter-in-place’, a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew’, we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily.

Personally, the first 23 years of my life were lived in virtual ‘lockdown’. My father’s ‘quarantine’ was experienced much earlier, as did his father’s ‘shelter-in-place’ before him. They both died and were buried in Gaza’s cemeteries without ever experiencing true freedom outside of their refugee camp in Gaza.

Currently in Gaza, the quarantine has a different name. We call it ‘siege’, also known as ‘blockade’.

In fact, all of Palestine has been in a state of ‘lockdown’ since the late 1940s when Israel became a state and the Palestinian homeland was erased by Zionist colonialists with the support of their Western benefactors.

That lockdown intensified in 1967 when Israel, now a powerful state with a large army and strong allies, occupied the remaining parts of Palestine – East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Under this lockdown, the Palestinian freedom of movement was curtailed

to the extent that Palestinians required permits from the Israeli military to leave the Occupied Territories or to return home, to move about from one town to the other, and, at times, to cross a single Israeli military checkpoint or a fortified wall.

In Palestine, we don’t call our imprisonment a lockdown, but a ‘military occupation’ and ‘apartheid’.

As for ‘shelter-in-place’, in Palestine, we have a different name for it. We call it a ‘military curfew’.

Since I was a child, I learned to listen intently to orders barked out by Israeli military officers as they swept through our refugee camp in Gaza declaring or easing military curfews. This ritual often happened late at night.

“People of Nuseirat, per orders of the Israeli military you are now under curfew. Anyone who violates orders will be shot immediately,” the terrifying words, always communicated through a loudspeaker in broken Arabic, were a staple during the First Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) of 1987.

The period between 1987 to 1993 was a virtual ‘lockdown’. Thousands of people, mostly children, were killed for failing to respect the rules of their collective imprisonment.

In Gaza, even when a full military curfew was not in place, we rarely left our small and crowded neighborhoods, let alone our refugee camps. We were all haunted by the fear that we may not be able to make it home by 8p.m., the time designated by the Israeli military for all of us to return home.

Every day, ten or fifteen minutes after the nightly curfew set in, we would hear the crackling and hissing of bullets as they whistled through the air from various distances. Automatically, we would conclude that some poor soul – a worker, a teacher, or a rowdy teenager – missed his chance by a few minutes, and paid a price for it.

Now that nearly half of the population of planet Earth are experiencing some form of ‘curfew’ or another, I would like to share a few suggestions on how to survive the prolonged confinement, the Palestinian way.

Think Ahead

Since we knew that a complete lockdown, or a military curfew, was always pending, we tried to anticipate the intensity and duration of it and prepare accordingly.

For example, when the Israeli army killed one or more refugees, we knew in advance that mass protests would follow, thus more killings. In these situations, a curfew was imminent.

Number one priority was to ensure that all family members congregated at home or stayed within close proximity so that they could rush in as fast as possible when the caravan of Israeli military jeeps and tanks came thundering, opening fire at anyone or anything within sight.

Lesson number one: Always think ahead and prepare for a longer lockdown than the initial one declared by your city or state.

Stay Calm

My father had a bad temper, although a very kind heart. When curfews were about to start, he would enter into a near-panic state. A chain smoker with obsessive, although rational fear that one of his five boys would eventually be killed, he would walk around the house in a useless rush, not knowing what to do next.

Typically, my mother would come in, rational and calculating. She would storm the kitchen to assess what basic supplies were missing, starting with the flour, sugar and olive oil.

Knowing that the first crackdown by the Israelis would be on water supplies and electricity, she would fill several plastic containers of water, designating some for tea, coffee and cooking, and others for dishes and washing clothes.

Per her orders, we would rush to the nearby stores to make small but necessary purchases – batteries for the flashlight and the transistor radio, cigarettes for my dad, and a few VHS videotapes which we would watch over and again, whether the curfew lasted for a few days or a few weeks.

Lesson number two: Take control of the situation – do not panic – and assign specific responsibilities to every family member. This strengthens the family unit and sets the stage for collective solidarity desperately required under these circumstances.

Preserve Your Water

I cannot emphasize this enough. Even if you think that a water crisis is not impending, do not take chances.

It is easy to feel invincible and fully prepared on the first day of quarantine – or military curfew. Many times, we lived to regret that false sense of readiness, as we drank too much tea or squandered our dishwashing water supplies too quickly.

In this case, you have a serious problem, especially during the summer months when you cannot count on rainwater to make up for the deficit.

Years after the end of the Intifada, my father revealed to us that many a time, he and mom used the rainwater they collected in buckets throughout the house, including the leaking roofs for our drinking supplies, even when there was no electricity or gas to boil the water beforehand.

In retrospect, this explains the many bouts of diarrhea we experienced, despite his assurances that they had painstakingly removed all bird droppings from the salvaged water.

Lesson number three: Cautiously use your water supplies during a quarantine, and never, under any circumstance, drink rainwater or, at least, keep diarrhea pills handy.

Ration Your Food

The same logic that applies to water applies to food. It goes without saying that any acquired food would have to cover the basics first. For example, flour, which we used to make bread, comes before bananas, and sugar, which we consumed abundantly with tea, comes before Dutch candy.

I made that mistake more than once, not because of my love for the imported Dutch candy which we purchased from Abu Sa’dad’s store, located in the center of the camp. The truth is, my brothers and I played a strange form of candy poker which kept us entertained for many hours. I dreaded running out of my precious supplies before the curfew was over, thus subjugating myself to potential humiliation of having to auction everything else I owned – including my small radio – to stay in the game.

My poor mother was devastated numerous times by the horrible choices we made when we rushed to buy ‘essentials’.

Lesson number four: Agree in advance on what classifies as ‘essential food’, and consume your food in a rational way. Also, if you are lucky enough to locate Dutch candy in whatever version of the Abu Sa’dad’s store, in your town, do not gamble it all in one day.

Find Sources of Entertainment

If electricity is still available, then you still have the option of watching television. For us, Indian movies, especially those starring Amitabh Bachchan, were the number one option. Imagine my disappointment when our beloved movie star, who helped us through numerous military curfews in Gaza, was photographed grinning with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s visit to India in 2018.

If electricity is cut off, be ready with alternative options: books, free wrestling, living-room soccer (with the ball preferably made from stuffed-up socks contributed by all family members), and, of course, candy poker.

Lesson number five: The key is to have more than one form of entertainment and to be prepared for every eventuality, including power outages as a form of collective punishment.

Find the Humor in Grim Situations

Don’t focus on the negatives; there is no point or wisdom in that. Emphasizing the grimness of a situation can only contribute to the feeling of defeat and powerlessness that are already generated by the lockdown. There will be plenty of time in which you can look back, reflect, and even bemoan your unfortunate circumstance.

But, during the curfew itself is when you actually need your sense of humor most. Take things lightly – laugh at your miserable situation, if you must. Forgive yourself for not being perfect, for panicking when you should have been composed, or for forcing your younger brother to gamble his underwear when he runs out of Dutch candy.

Difficult situations can offer the kind of scenarios that can be interpreted in two extreme ways: either extremely tragic or extremely funny; opt for the latter whenever you can, because as long as you laugh, as long as your spirit remains unbroken, your humanity remains intact.

Lesson number six: Be funny, don’t take life too seriously, share a laugh with others, and let humor inject hope in every hour and every day of your quarantine.

Hold Tighter to Your Faith

Whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or any other faith; whether you are an atheist, agnostic, or practice any form of spirituality, philosophy or belief system, find comfort in your faith and beliefs.

Since all mosques in our refugee camp were shut down, if not raided during a military curfew, the call for prayer, which we heard five times during each day, was permanently silenced.

To keep the call for prayer going, we would sneak to the roof of our houses, carefully scan the area for any Israeli soldiers, and collectively make the call for prayer whenever it was required. Volunteers included my English teacher, who was communist and claimed that he did not believe in God, myself, and Nabil, the neighbor boy with the massive head and the most unpleasant voice.

In curfews, we developed a different relationship with God: He became a personal and more intimate companion, as we often prayed in total darkness, whispered our verses so very cautiously as not to be heard by pesky soldiers. And, even those who hardly prayed before the curfew kept up with all five prayers during the lockdown.

Lesson number seven: Let your values guide you during your hours of loneliness. And if you volunteer to make a call for prayer (or recite your religious hymns) please be honest with yourself: if you have no sense of rhythm or if your voice has the pitch of an angry alley cat, for God’s sake, leave the job to someone else.

In Conclusion ..

I hope that under no circumstances you will ever hear these ominous words: “You are now under curfew. Anyone who violates orders will be shot immediately.” I also hope that this COVID-19 quarantine will make us kinder to each other and will make us emerge from our homes better people, ready to take on global challenges while united in our common faith, collective pain and a renewed sense of love for our environment.

And when it’s all over, think of Palestine, for her people have been ‘quarantined’ for 71 years and counting.

______________________________________________________

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

20 April 2020

Source: www.transcend.org

By Susana Hurlich

9 Apr 2020 – Hola from Havana. This morning at 7 a.m. I took the first dose of the homeopathic medication ProvengHo-Vir that the Cuban health system is distributing. Late yesterday afternoon, at about 5pm, Dr. Yaisen, one of the three doctors working at our local family doctor clinic located some two blocks from my home, came by the house to give me the small 10 mL plastic bottle of ProvengHo-Vir and to explain how to use it.

The day before (Tuesday), there was meetings around the country, usually held at the local polyclinic that has a number of family doctor “consultorios” (local doctor’s offices) under them, to explain the distribution process.

In addition to a bag with lots of small bottles of this medication, Dr. Yaisen had a pile of blank white papers that each household was asked to sign when they received the medication. Each sheet probably held 20-30 signatures. Along with explaining its use – and asking that the recipient repeat this to make sure it was understood – Dr. Yaisen handed out a small printed sheet of paper that carefully explains everything one could possibly need to know about ProvengHo-Vir: its composition, pharmaceutical form, indications (what it does) and counter-indications (none), precautions, the dosage and instructions for use, possible adverse reactions (none) and how to store it. And there’s a little graphic showing how to open the bottle and make a hole in the top for counting out the drops.

Without going into all the details about the composition of PrevengHo-Vir –other than saying that it includes components of the AH1N1 and AH3N2 influenza viruses and substances of a vaccine against seasonal flu – what this homeopathic medication does is to help prevent influenza and other flu-like diseases, dengue and emerging (new!) viral infections.

PrevengHo-Vir is NOT a vaccine, but only an additional protection to help reinforce one’s immune system.

And it’s being distributed free to every household in Cuba (total population over 11.3 million; I have no idea how many households there are) through Cuba’s comprehensive public health system. At the grassroots level, this means the neighborhood Family Doctor and Nurse Clinic of which there are 11,432 located around the country coming under 449 polyclinics. Presently, Cuba has about one doctor for every 122 inhabitants and one nurse for every 128 inhabitants.

A tiny bit of history: Cuba’s Family Doctor program began in 1984 at the initiative of Fidel, with the overall objective being that primary and preventive health care, to be truly effective, must be taken to every corner of the country, no matter how remote. In so many ways, this is the heart of Cuba’s National Health System: make a health structure available and responsive to all, and work to prevent health problems before they become serious.

And this is also the same logic behind Cuba’s program against COVID-19: educate and mobilize the people around principles of discipline, cooperation and solidarity, and keep them constantly informed so that they can be active and responsible participants in the fight against coronavirus.

In Cuba, we have some 89,000 doctors (including family doctors), 84,000 nurses and some 9,000 young people who will be graduating from their various medical studies in July. And this isn’t counting health technicians, ambulance drivers and others who all help make it work. But it’s because of these numbers, which are the real reflection of a country committed to a preventive health system, that Cuba is able to provide solidarity health assistance to 16 countries, Mexico being the most recent, in their local battles against COVID-19, without compromising the quality of care of its own people.

Another important thing 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. And Cuba has a highly developed capacity in this regard.

And that’s where PrevengHo-Vir comes in. As I mentioned, it’s a sublingual immunological booster which, since early March, has been applied to at-risk groups in various parts of the country – in Pinar del Río, Mayabeque, etc. – in isolation centers, elderly and mother-infant homes, and in hospitals caring for people who are positive or suspected of having COVID-19.

As I mentioned, it’s being distributed free and it’s being provided to the entire population of this country! I’m actually starting to get calls from several of my neighbors with questions about how to use it, how to store it, etc. My neighbors often tell me that I’m their local mobile Encyclopedia and they call me with lots of questions. It actually keeps me on my toes, making sure I have correct and official information. Don’t put it in the fridge. Don’t put it near electric-domestic appliances as the electric impulses can actually neutralize homeopathic medications, etc. Store it in your medicine cabinet away from computers, radios, etc.

Just to mention: this morning, on the daily 11am televised and radio-transmitted Press Conference, it was the Minister of Public Health, José Angel Portal Miranda, who spoke. We now have 457 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and since the first case was detected on March 11th, there have been twelve deaths. Twenty-seven have been given the all clear sign, two were evacuated, and sixteen are in serious condition.

There are six cases where transmission has been local – not connected with sick people coming from outside the country, be they foreigners or Cubans. Because of this, Cuba’s health authorities have decided that the country has now passed to the second of three stages of the disease: limited local transmission. This is considered a transitional stage which may well lead to the third stage of epidemic. In anticipation, the country is taking measures to prepare: increasing the number of available beds for both hospitalization as well as for intensive care, increasing the number of laboratories in the country (presently there are still three, in Havana, Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba), and identifying some areas for quarantine.

It is impressive experiencing what this country is doing, both domestically and internationally, to battle this disease. A country with tremendous shortages of resources and yet with a health system that is equal to the best and respected by many, many countries in the world.

It is humbling living in a country that truly puts its efforts behind its main objective: protecting the population first and foremost. No matter if the economy – except for food production and other vital necessities – collapses. It’s collapsing everywhere in the world. But without a healthy population it will be impossible to pick it up again. And Cuba’s key resource is so clearly the people – ALL the people. It is humbling seeing that value in operation.

And it is also inspiring, as Cuba, while reeling under a constantly intensifying and cruel blockade, continues to provide a model that another world is possible. It is a privilege and an honor to live here, contributing – as we always say in Cuba – one’s small grain of sand to the new mountain we hope to build.

Finally, as I always say: be sure to embrace a tree, a cat, a dog. It is not social distancing that is important, but physical distancing. Socially there are so many ways to remain connected, so many ways to give and receive love and support – phone calls, texting, email, calling out to neighbors across the street when they go to their windows, going onto your veranda and playing an instrument or singing a song (lovely how people respond to this)…but the physical distancing is crucial.

Take care of yourselves. And in doing so, you’ll be taking care of each other.

__________________________________________

Susana Hurlich is a writer and has been living and working for over 30 years in Cuba.

20 April 2020

Source: www.transcend.org