Dear Friend,
Mainland China has had no new local coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours – the first time since the outbreak began in December. However, China is still struggling to contain imported cases of the disease. Notably, the purported epicenter of the epidemic – Wuhan, in Hubei province – recorded no new locally transmitted infections. The same was true across China, according to reports, citing the Chinese government.
Kindly support honest journalism to survive. https://countercurrents.org/subscription/
If you think the contents of this news letter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
For the 1st time since outbreak, China reports NO NEW LOCAL
coronavirus case
by Countercurrents Collective
Mainland China has had no new local coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours – the first time since the outbreak began in December. However, China is still struggling to contain imported cases of the disease. Notably, the purported epicenter of the epidemic – Wuhan, in Hubei province – recorded no new locally transmitted infections. The same was true across China, according to reports, citing the Chinese government.
Mainland China has had no new local coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours – the first time since the outbreak began in December.
However, China is still struggling to contain imported cases of the disease.
Notably, the purported epicenter of the epidemic – Wuhan, in Hubei province – recorded no new locally transmitted infections. The same was true across China, according to reports, citing the Chinese government.
Health authorities reported 34 new cases on Thursday, but said that all involved people who had come to China from abroad. Twenty-one of the imported infections were in Beijing, marking a daily record for the Chinese capital.
In total, confirmed cases in mainland China have reached 80,928, according to the latest data, with 3,245 deaths as of the end of Wednesday.
The number of deaths in Europe from the virus surpassed those in Asia on Wednesday, raising concerns that Covid-19 could lead to a long-term health crisis for the West.
Coronavirus pandemic: China and Cuba send medical teams, equipments and medicine to countries
by Countercurrents Collective
China and Cuba have stepped in with practical measures at international level amidst the near-collapse health care situation in a number of
capitalist countries in the face of coronavirus pandemic.
China and Cuba have stepped in with practical measures at international level amidst the near-collapse health care situation in a number of capitalist countries in the face of coronavirus pandemic.
China sending million masks & gloves to France
China is shipping one million surgical masks and gloves to France as the EU member struggles to contain the coronavirus, with Europe becoming the new focal point of the global pandemic.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed the shipments on Wednesday in an interview with France’s BFM TV.
The first of two planes has already arrived via Belgium and a second will arrive on Thursday, he said.
China’s gesture comes after France sent 17 tonnes of equipment to Beijing when the Covid-19 virus first broke out in Wuhan last December.
France reported 89 new deaths from Covid-19 on Wednesday, updating the total to 264. The number of confirmed cases has also risen to 9,134 – up from 7,730 on Tuesday – health agency director Jerome Salomon said.
China’s medical team and equipment in Italy
Last week, China shipped a planeload of medical supplies including respirators and masks to Italy, which has suffered more than any other European country so far, and has seen hospitals overloaded with the rapidly increasing numbers of cases.
Along with the 30 tons of equipment, China also sent nine of its medical staff to Italy to help in its battle against the disease.
Italian Red Cross head Francesco Rocca said the country was in “desperate need” of the masks and was grateful for the donation in a moment of “great difficulty.”
“Today, Italy is not alone,” said Italy’s Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio. “Many people in the world are supporting us.”
It is the third team of experts deployed by the Chinese authorities.
EU is not helping
Earlier reports said:
Italy requested the EU and EU member-countries to send medical equipments to fight coronavirus. But the EU and its member-countries declined to help citing the reason that they do not want to deplete their stocks.
Earlier this week, Italy’s permanent representative to the EU, Maurizio Massari, complained that Italy’s plea for medical help to combat the coronavirus outbreak crippling the country had gone unanswered.
Massari noted that while the EU had ignored Italian requests for aid, China had begun helping bilaterally.
“Italy, the European country struck hardest by the coronavirus, has done everything it can to contain and manage the epidemic,” he said.
The Italian minister said: “We must ensure, under EU co-ordination, the supply of the necessary medical equipment and its redistribution among those countries and regions most in need. Today, this means Italy; tomorrow, the need could be elsewhere.
“Italy has already asked to activate the European Union Mechanism of Civil Protection for the supply of medical equipment for individual protection.
“But, unfortunately, not a single EU country responded to the commission’s call. Only China responded bilaterally. Certainly, this is not a good sign of European solidarity.”
China sends masks to Serbia
Caught off guard by the EU’s ban on medical exports, Serbia found help in China as it struggled to prepare for the Covid-19 outbreak, the Serbian president said, adding that it has become clear that European solidarity is a myth.
Serbia is the latest country to impose severe restrictions on travel and public gatherings in response to the global epidemic.
As President Aleksandar Vucic declared a national emergency on Sunday, he had some scalding remarks for the EU.
The crisis has proven that European solidarity, only exists “on paper,” Vucic said, citing the ban on the export of medical equipment and supplies imposed by EU members to non-EU countries in response to the outbreak.
“Only China can help us in this situation”, the Serbian leader added, saying he recently wrote a letter to China’s President Xi Jinping “asking him for help and calling him a brother.”
Serbia received five million masks from China that it couldn’t get in Europe and an offer to send doctors to help tackle the disease, the president said.
“I say to foreigners: don’t come to Serbia, except for the Chinese who are called upon to come, their doctors, the people who help us,” Vucic said.
According to official sources, the country had to shop for respirators on a “semi gray market.”
Starting Monday, Serbia has shut down all teaching facilities, mobilized the military to guard sensitive sites such as hospitals, and closed the borders to everyone apart from citizens.
Serbs will have to remain in quarantine after coming back or face prison terms of up to three years.
As of Monday, there are 55 confirmed coronavirus cases in Serbia, which has a population of seven million. Two of the patients are in serious condition. The virus has also reached other Balkan nations with the exception of Montenegro.
The health crisis has put EU cohesion to the test.
Spain Iran Iraq
China has already sent medical missions and shipments of supplies to Spain, Iraq and Iran.
Beijing has been praised by the World Health Organisation for its efforts against the coronavirus. Authorities responded to the outbreak by building new hospitals in a matter of days and locking down Hubei province, which has a population of 58 million, to contain the spread of the disease.
To the U.S.
In addition to the government help, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma sent a shipment of surgical masks and Covid-19 test kits to the U.S., which has its own shortage of kits.
Africa
Ma said Monday he would also donate masks and test kits to all countries in Africa.
Despite its efforts to step up and aid other hard-hit countries, China has faced a barrage of negative media coverage in the West, with Trump administration officials repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” and the “Wuhan virus” given the fact that it originated there in December.
Cuba’s medical team to Italy
Socialist country Cuba has already sent medical team to Italy to help the EU-member fight coronavirus.
Cuba’s team to Venezuela
A specialized Cuban technical delegation traveled to Venezuela March 15 to support the country’s Covid-19 containment strategy.
Cuba’s medicine to China to fight coronavirus
Among the thirty medicines the Chinese National Health Commission selected to fight the coronavirus is a Cuban anti-viral drug, Interferon Alpha 2b. This drug has been produced in China since 2003, by the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture.
Cuban Interferon Alpha 2b has proven effective for viruses with characteristics similar to those of coronavirus, officially named COVID-19.
Cuban biotech specialist Dr. Luis Herrera Martinez explained, “its use prevents aggravation and complications in patients, reaching that stage that ultimately can result in death.”
Cuba first developed and used interferons to arrest a deadly outbreak of the dengue virus in 1981, and the experience catalyzed the development of the island’s now world-leading biotech industry.
In 1981, the Biological Front, a professional interdisciplinary forum, was set up to develop the industry in Cuba. While most developing countries had little access to the new technologies (recombinant DNA, human gene therapy, biosafety), Cuban biotechnology expanded and took on an increasingly strategic role in both the public health sector and the national economic development plan. It did so despite the U.S. blockade obstructing access to technologies, equipment, materials, finance, and even knowledge exchange. Driven by public health demand, it has been characterized by the fast track from research and innovation to trials and application, as the story of Cuban interferon shows.
Interferons are “signaling” proteins produced and released by cells in response to infections that alert nearby cells to heighten their anti-viral defenses.
Countries ask Cuba to send medicine
The Cuban medication Interferon Alpha 2B has been requested by more than ten countries.
Coronavirus-hit cruise ship docks in Cuba for passengers to evacuate
A British cruise ship that has been stranded for more than a week in the Caribbean after several cases of the new coronavirus were confirmed onboard is set to dock in Cuba on Wednesday to allow weary passengers to disembark and fly home.
Britain’s Foreign Minister Dominic Raab expressed gratitude on Tuesday in parliament to Communist-run Cuba for offering a safe haven to the Braemar, which has more than 1,000 mainly British passengers and crew aboard after several Caribbean ports refused to let it dock.
“Prevention and contention of new coronavirus require the efforts of entire international community,” said Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez. “Let’s reinforce health care, solidarity and international cooperation.”
Passengers would return to Britain from the capital’s international airport in the evening on four charter flights including a separate one for passengers who had received a positive diagnosis for coronavirus or displayed any flu-like symptoms.
Any not considered well enough to fly would be offered support and medical treatment in Cuba.
The ship was refused docking in Barbados and the Bahamas, which are both part of the British Commonwealth – an irony not lost on some passengers.
“We should all remember what #Cuba has done for us, stepping in when none of the British Commonwealth countries and protectorates in the region offered any help,” tweeted one passenger aboard the Braemar, Steve Dale.
Cuban authorities are screening travelers at airports and have stepped up the production of facemasks while banning large cultural events. Family physicians are paying more home visits to monitor local communities.
Yet the government has not canceled flights from countries hardest hit by the pandemic, restricted internal movement or banned social gatherings, in contrast to other countries in the region, eliciting concern among some Cubans, as has the arrival of the Braemar.
A March 18, 2020 datelined Granma report, headlined “A safe port amidst adversity” said:
The humanitarian and altruistic dimensions of the events could make them stuff of a movie scene. The crew of the MS Braemar, owned by the British Fred Olsen cruise line, spent several days sailing the Caribbean with passengers aboard suffering coronavirus infections.
Despite diplomatic efforts by the UK government, the ship was refused entry to several ports in the region. But there was nothing fictional about the urgent situation of passengers, including the sick whose lives were endangered, with the rest facing possible infection, in the middle of the ocean.
Cuba said yes, and offered a safe port in the midst of adversity, with modesty, not seeking headlines in the media, for absolutely nothing in return. Such a decision perhaps generated incomprehension on the part of some, those who are unaware of the value of a helping hand during a catastrophe.
But, for most Cubans, the opportunity to help fills us with patriotic pride, with the emotion only understandable by women and men of good will in all latitudes. Because in “times of coronavirus,” the words “help, cooperate, work together” should be the norm, across the planet. Because human civilization should understand, once and for all, that only together can we overcome common challenges and tragedies.
Cuba, true to its principles, could not act otherwise, nor is this the first time we have done so. Solidarity is in the genes of the Cuban people. It is part of our unique identity and has written memorable chapters in our history.
Perhaps for these reasons, in the time of Covid-19, the eyes of the world look hopefully to Cuba, and our people, who despite hardships and a fierce blockade, did not hesitate to respond.
Requests for support have arrived from various parts of the world.
Meanwhile, others are sending thousands of military personnel to Europe to conduct the most extensive maneuvers since the Cold War, while leading an insulting campaign against Cuban medical collaboration around the world. Cuba’s response? An army of white coats at the service of the dispossessed: more than 400,000 health professionals who, over 56 years, have carried out missions in 164 nations.
Women and men from this Caribbean island have faced Ebola in Africa, blindness in Latin America and the Caribbean with Operation Miracle, and cholera in Haiti. Twenty-six Cuban brigades from the Henry Reeve International Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Disasters and Major Epidemics – recognized with the Dr. Lee Jong-wook Public Health Award, granted by the Executive Council of the World Health Organization – helped during difficult times in Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Venezuela, among others.
In fact, this event is nothing like a film. It is an expression of solidarity from the Cuban people, who understand health as a human right, help any way we can and share what we have, with those who need it most in difficult times.
Martí said: “Cuba does not go around the world begging. She goes as a sister and works with authority as such. By saving herself, she saves.” Then and now, and into the future.
BioCubaFarma guarantees production of 22 medications for the treatment of Covid-19
by Yaditza del Sol González
Although there is no preventive vaccine or specific treatment, at this time, for the new coronavirus SARS COV-2, which causes COVID-19, the Cuban pharmaceutical industry guarantees the production of proven, high efficacy medications, including recombinant human interferon alpha 2b, in addition to another group of drugs that are included in protocols for treating patients with this disease and the complications that may arise.
Coronavirus pandemic: Reports from U.S., India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
by Countercurrents Collective
https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-reports-from-u-s-india-pakistan-afghanistan
Reports from U.S., India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
Viral Reactions:
The Smugness of Celebrity Self-Isolation
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
The rush to elevate self-isolation to Olympian heights as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 has gotten to the celebrities. Sports figures are proudly tweeting and taking pictures from hotel rooms (Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton being a case in point). Comics are doing their shows from home. Thespians are extolling the merits of such isolation and the dangers of the contagion. All speak from the summit of comfort, the podium of pampered wealth: embrace social distancing; embrace self-isolation. Bonds of imagined solidarity are forged. If we can do it, so can you.
A lesson coronavirus is about to teach the world
by Jonathan Cook
If a disease can teach wisdom beyond our understanding of how precarious and precious life is, the
coronavirus has offered two lessons. The first is that in a globalised world our lives are so intertwined that the idea of viewing ourselves as islands – whether as individuals, communities, nations, or a uniquely privileged species – should be understood as evidence of false consciousness. In truth, we were always bound together, part of a miraculous web of life on our planet and, beyond it, stardust in an unfathomably large and complex universe.
If a disease can teach wisdom beyond our understanding of how precarious and precious life is, the coronavirus has offered two lessons.
The first is that in a globalised world our lives are so intertwined that the idea of viewing ourselves as islands – whether as individuals, communities, nations, or a uniquely privileged species – should be understood as evidence of false consciousness. In truth, we were always bound together, part of a miraculous web of life on our planet and, beyond it, stardust in an unfathomably large and complex universe.
It is only an arrogance cultivated in us by those narcissists who have risen to power through their own destructive egotism that blinded us to the necessary mix of humility and awe we ought to feel as we watch a drop of rain on a leaf, or a baby struggle to crawl, or the night sky revealed in all its myriad glories away from city lights.
And now, as we start to enter periods of quarantine and self-isolation – as nations, communities and individuals – all that should be so much clearer. It has taken a virus to show us that only together are we at our strongest, most alive and most human.
In being stripped of what we need most by the threat of contagion, we are reminded of how much we have taken community for granted, abused it, hollowed it out. We are afraid because the services we need in times of collective difficulty and trauma have been turned into commodities that require payment, or treated as privileges to which access is now means-tested, rationed or is simply gone. That insecurity is at the root of the current urge to hoard.
When death stalks us it is not bankers we turn to, or corporate executives, or hedge fund managers. Nonetheless, those are the people our societies have best rewarded. They are the people who, if salaries are a measure of value, are the most prized.
But they are not the people we need, as individuals, as societies, as nations. Rather, it will be doctors, nurses, public health workers, care-givers and social workers who will be battling to save lives by risking their own.
During this health crisis we may indeed notice who and what is most important. But will we remember the sacrifice, their value after the virus is no longer headline news? Or will we go back to business as usual – until the next crisis – rewarding the arms manufacturers, the billionaire owners of the media, the fossil fuel company bosses, and the financial-services parasites feeding off other people’s money?
‘Take it on the chin’
The second lesson follows from the first. Despite everything we have been told for four decades or more, western capitalist societies are far from the most efficient ways of organising ourselves. That will be laid bare as the coronavirus crisis deepens.
We are still very much immersed in the ideological universe of Thatcherism and Reaganism, when we were told quite literally: “There is no such thing as society.” How will that political mantra stand the test of the coming weeks and months? How much can we survive as individuals, even in quarantine, rather than as part of communities that care for all of us?
Western leaders who champion neoliberalism, as they are required to do nowadays, have two choices to cope with coronavirus – and both will require a great deal of misdirection if we are not to see through their hypocrisy and deceptions.
Our leaders can let us “take it on the chin”, as the British prime minister Boris Johnson has phrased it. In practice, that will mean allowing what is effectively a cull of many of the poor and elderly – one that will relieve governments of the financial burden of underfunded pension schemes and welfare payments.
Such leaders will claim they are powerless to intervene or to ameliorate the crisis. Confronted with the contradictions inherent in their worldview, they will suddenly become fatalists, abandoning their belief in the efficacy and righteousness of the free market. They will say the virus was too contagious to contain, too robust for health services to cope, too lethal to save lives. They will evade all blame for the decades of health cuts and privatisations that made those services inefficient, inadequate, cumbersome and inflexible.
Or, by contrast, politicians will use their spin doctors and allies in the corporate media to obscure the fact that they are quietly and temporarily becoming socialists to deal with the emergency. They will change the welfare rules so that all those in the gig economy they created – employed on zero-hours contracts – do not spread the virus because they cannot afford to self-quarantine or take days’ off sick.
Or most likely our leaders will pursue both options.
Permanent crisis
If acknowledged at all, the conclusion to be draw from the crisis – that we all matter equally, that we need to look after one another, that we sink or swim together – will be treated as no more than an isolated, fleeting lesson specific to this crisis. Our leaders will refuse to draw more general lessons – ones that might highlight their own culpability – about how sane, humane societies should function all the time.
In fact, there is nothing unique about the coronavirus crisis. It is simply a heightened version of the less visible crisis we are now permanently mired in. As Britain sinks under floods each winter, as Australia burns each summer, as the southern states of the US are wrecked by hurricanes and its great plains become dustbowls, as the climate emergency becomes ever more tangible, we will learn this truth slowly and painfully.
Those deeply invested in the current system – and those so brainwashed they cannot see its flaws – will defend it to the bitter end. They will learn nothing from the virus. They will point to authoritarian states and warn that things could be far worse.
They will point a finger at Iran’s high death toll as confirmation that our profit-driven societies are better, while ignoring the terrible damage we have inflicted on Iran’s health services after years of sabotaging its economy through ferocious sanctions. We left Iran all the more vulnerable to coronavirus because we wanted to engineer “regime change” – to interfere under the pretence of “humanitarian” concern – as we have sought to do in other countries whose resources we wished to control, from Iraq to Syria and Libya.
Iran will be held responsible for a crisis we willed, that our politicians intended (even if the speed and means came as a surprise), to overthrow its leaders. Iran’s failures will be cited as proof of our superior way of life, as we wail self-righteously about the outrage of a “Russian interference” whose contours we can barely articulate.
Valuing the common good
Those who defend our system, even as its internal logic collapses in the face of coronavirus and a climate emergency, will tell us how lucky we are to live in free societies where some – Amazon executives, home delivery services, pharmacies, toilet-paper manufacturers – can still make a quick buck from our panic and fear. As long as someone is exploiting us, as long as someone is growing fat and rich, we will be told the system works – and works better than anything else imaginable.
But in fact, late-stage capitalist societies like the US and the UK will struggle to claim even the limited successes against coronavirus of authoritarian governments. Is Trump in the US or Johnson in the UK – exemplars of “the market knows best” capitalism – likely to do better than China at containing and dealing with the virus?
This lesson is not about authoritarian versus “free” societies. This is about societies that treasure the common wealth, that value the common good, above private greed and profit, above protecting the privileges of a wealth-elite.
In 2008, after decades of giving the banks what they wanted – free rein to make money by trading in hot air – the western economies all but imploded as an inflated bubble of empty liquidity burst. The banks and financial services were saved only by public bail-outs – tax payers’ money. We were given no choice: the banks, we were told, were “too big to fail”.
We bought the banks with our common wealth. But because private wealth is our era’s guiding star, the public were not allowed to own the banks they bought. And once the banks had been bailed out by us – a perverse socialism for the rich – the banks went right back to making private money, enriching a tiny elite until the next crash.
Nowhere to fly to
The naive may think this was a one-off. But the failings of capitalism are inherent and structural, as the virus is already demonstrating and the climate emergency will drive home with alarming ferocity in the coming years.
The shut-down of borders means the airlines are quickly going bust. They didn’t put money away for a rainy day, of course. They didn’t save, they weren’t prudent. They are in a cut-throat world where they need to compete with rivals, to drive them out of business and make as much money as they can for shareholders.
Now there is nowhere for the airlines to fly to – and they will have no visible means to make money for months on end. Like the banks, they are too big to fail – and like the banks they are demanding public money be spent to tide them over until they can once again rapaciously make profits for their shareholders. There will be many other corporations queuing up behind the airlines.
Sooner or later the public will be strong-armed once again to bail out these profit-driven corporations whose only efficiency is the central part they play in fuelling global warming and eradicating life on the planet. The airlines will be resuscitated until the inevitable next crisis arrives – one in which they are key players.
A boot stamping on a face
Capitalism is an efficient system for a tiny elite to make money at a terrible cost, and an increasingly untenable one, to wider society – and only until that system shows itself to be no longer efficient. Then wider society has to pick up the tab, and assist the wealth-elite so the cycle can be begun all over again. Like a boot stamping on a human face – forever, as George Orwell warned long ago.
But it is not just that capitalism is economically self-destructive; it is morally vacant too. Again, we should study the exemplars of neoliberal orthodoxy: the UK and the US.
In Britain, the National Health Service – once the envy of the world – is in terminal decline after decades of privatising and outsourcing its services. Now the same Conservative party that began the cannibalising of the NHS is pleading with businesses such as car makers to address a severe shortage of ventilators, which will soon be needed to assist coronavirus patients.
Once, in an emergency, western governments would have been able to direct resources, both public and private, to save lives. Factories could have been repurposed for the common good. Today, the government behaves as if all it can do is incentivise business, pinning hopes on the profit motive and selfishness driving these firms to enter the ventilator market, or to provide beds, in ways beneficial to public health.
The flaws in this approach should be glaring if we examine how a car manufacturer might respond to the request to adapt its factories to make ventilators.
If it is not persuaded that it can make easy money or if it thinks there are quicker or bigger profits to be made by continuing to make cars at a time when the public is frightened to use public transport, patients will die. If it holds back, waiting to see if there will be enough demand for ventilators to justify adapting its factories, patients will die. If it delays in the hope that ventilator shortages will drive up subsidies from a government fearful of the public backlash, patients will die. And if it makes ventilators on the cheap, to boost profits, without ensuring medical personnel oversee quality control, patients will die.
Survival rates will depend not on the common good, on our rallying to help those in need, on planning for the best outcome, but on the vagaries of the market. And not only on the market, but on faulty, human perceptions of what constitute market forces.
Survival of the fittest
If this were not bad enough, Trump – in all his inflated vanity – is showing how that profit-motive can be extended from the business world he knows so intimately to the cynical political one he has been gradually mastering. According to reports, behind the scenes he has been chasing after a silver bullet. He is speaking to international pharmaceutical companies to find one close to developing a vaccine so the United States can buy exclusive rights to it.
Reports suggest that he wants to offer the vaccine exclusively to the US public, in what would amount to the ultimate vote-winner in a re-election year. This would be the nadir of the dog-eat-dog philosophy – the survival of the fittest, the market decides worldview – we have been encouraged to worship over the past four decades. It is how people behave when they are denied a wider society to which they are responsible and which is responsible for them.
But even should Trump eventually deign to let other countries enjoy the benefits of his privatised vaccine, this will not be about helping mankind, about the greater good. It will be about Trump the businessman-president turning a tidy profit for the US on the back of other’s desperation and suffering, as well as marketing himself a political hero on the global stage.
Or, more likely, it will be yet another chance for the US to demonstrate its “humanitarian” credentials, rewarding “good” countries by giving them access to the vaccine, while denying “bad” countries like Russia the right to protect their citizens.
Obscenely stunted worldview
It will be a perfect illustration on the global stage – and in bold technicolour – of how the American way of marketing health works. This is what happens when health is treated not as a public good but as a commodity to be bought, as a privilege to incentivise the workforce, as a measure of who is successful and who is unsuccessful.
The US, by far the richest country on the planet, has a dysfunctional health care system not because it cannot afford a good one, but because its political worldview is so obscenely stunted by the worship of wealth that it refuses to acknowledge the communal good, to respect the common wealth of a healthy society.
The US health system is by far the most expensive in the world, but also the most inefficient. The vast bulk of “health spending” does not contribute to healing the sick but enriches a health industry of pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance companies.
Analysts describe a third of all US health spending – $765 billion a year – as “wasted”. But “waste” is a euphemism. In fact, it is money stuffed into the pockets of corporations calling themselves the health industry as they defraud the common wealth of US citizens. And the fraudulence is all the greater because despite this enormous expenditure more than one in 10 US citizens has no meaningful health cover.
As never before, coronavirus will bring into focus the depraved inefficiency of this system – the model of profit-driven health care, of market forces that look out for the short-term interests of business, not the long-term interests of us all.
There are alternatives. Right now, Americans are being offered a choice between a democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, who champions health care as a right because it is a common good, and a Democratic party boss, Joe Biden, who champions the business lobbies he depends on for funding and his political success. One is being marginalised and vilified as a threat to the American way of life by a handful of corporations that own the US media, while the other is being propelled towards the Democratic nomination by those same corporations.
Coronavirus has an important, urgent lesson to teach us. The question is: are we ready yet to listen?
This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/
Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
Death at the Greek Border: Syrian Refugees Should Not Be Used as Political Pawns
by Dr Ramzy Baroud
In a surprising move, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced on February 29 that he will be re-opening his country’s border to Europe, thus allowing tens of thousands of mostly Syrian refugees into Greece and other European countries.
In a surprising move, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced on February 29 that he will be re-opening his country’s border to Europe, thus allowing tens of thousands of mostly Syrian refugees into Greece and other European countries.
Expectedly, over 100,000 people rushed to the Ipsala border point in the Edirne province separating Turkey from Greece, hoping to make it through the once-porous border.
Even though, initially, the sea route was not opened for the refugees, many attempted to brave the sea, anyway, using small fishing boats and dinghies. A few have reportedly reached the Greek Islands.
What transpired was one of the most tragic, heart-rendering episodes of the Syrian war and the subsequent refugee crisis saga.
This time around, Greece, with tacit political support from the rest of the European Union, was determined not to allow any of the refugees into its territories.
The prevailing understanding in Europe is that the Turkish government was purposely engineering a refugee crisis to press the EU into supporting Turkish military operations in Idlib in northern Syria.
“They didn’t come here on their own,” the Greek Public Order Minister, Michalis Chrysohoidis, told reporters on February 29, with reference to the flood of refugees at his country’s border. “They are being sent away and being used by (our) neighbor, Turkey,” he added.
While the media focused mostly on Erdogan’s decision within the context of the Idlib conflict, little mention was made of the fact that Syrian and other refugees in Turkey have been the focal point of an internal crisis within the country itself.
The Istanbul mayoral election (held on March 31 and, again, on June 23) underscored the anti-refugee sentiment among ordinary Turks, one that is compounded by the fact that Turkey itself has been subjected to a protracted economic recession.
Unsurprisingly, the over 3.5 million Syrian refugees who had fled the war in their country over the last decade are being scapegoated by opportunistic politicians, the likes of Istanbul’s new Mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu
“Imamoglu was … able to tap into simmering discontent with the large number of Syrian refugees in Istanbul in the context of his general complaints about the high level of unemployment in the city,” wrote Bulent Aliriza and Zeynep Ekeler on the Center for Strategic and International Studies website.
The Turkish government is now fully aware of the obvious correlation in the minds of many Turkish voters between the oppressive economic crisis and the Syrian refugee population in Turkey.
In fact, a recurring argument made by the Turkish government is that its military campaign in northern Syria is ultimately motivated by its desire to create a safe zone that would allow for the resettlement of many Syrian refugees.
With its NATO alliance faltering, and with growing difficulties at the northern Syrian front, Turkey’s strategy quickly fell apart. However, the scenes of naked, shivering refugees running back to the Turkish side, after being pushed away by Greek military and police was not only indicative of Turkey’s growing political dilemma, but of Europe’s betrayal of Syrian refugees and its utter incompetence in fashioning long-term solutions to a crisis that has been brewing for years.
On March 18, 2016, Turkey and EU countries signed the statement of cooperation, which resulted in a short-lived barter. According to the deal, Turkey agreed to stem the flow of refugees into Europe in exchange for economic incentives to help Ankara cope with the economic burden, partly resulting from the refugee crisis.
Aside from the fact that Turkey has claimed that the EU failed to fulfill its part of the deal, the agreement did not offer a long-term solution, let alone a political vision that would ultimately end the suffering of millions of Syrians.
What makes the Syrian refugee crisis within the Turkish-EU context particularly complex is the fact that the refugees are finding themselves hostage to selfish, political calculations that view them as a burden or a pawn.
This unfortunate reality has left Syrian refugees in Turkey with three options, all of which are dismal: returning to a war zone in Syria, coping with unemployment and an increasingly hostile political environment in Turkey or making a run for the Greek border.
When Ahmed Abu Emad, a young Syrian refugee from Aleppo, opted for the third and final option on March 2, he was shot in the throat by Greek border police. His fellow refugees rushed his gaunt body back to Turkey, where he was laid to rest.
Considering their limited options, however, neither death, injury nor torture will end the quest of Syrian refugees, who are desperately trying, as they have for years, to find a safe space and badly needed respite.
Perhaps only Palestinian refugees can relate to the dilemma of their Syrian brethren. It is one thing to be pushed out of your homeland, but it is a whole different thing to be refused, dehumanized and subjugated everywhere else.
The Syrian refugee crisis is a political, not a humanitarian crisis – despite the palpable humanitarian component of it. Therefore, it can only be resolved based on a comprehensive political solution that keeps the interest of millions of Syrian refugees – in fact, the Syrian people as a whole – as a top priority.
Several ‘solutions’ have been devised in the past but they have all failed, simply because various governments in the Middle East and Europe have tried to exploit the refugees for their own political, economic, and ‘security’ interests.
The time has come for a more considerate and thoughtful political strategy that is predicated on respect for international and humanitarian laws, one that adheres to the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of war refugees.
Syrian refugees do not deserve such inhumane treatment. They have a country, a glorious history and a deeply-rooted culture that has profoundly influenced ancient and modern civilizations. They deserve respect, rights and safety. Equally important, they should not be used as pawns in a costly and dirty political game in which they have no interest or choice.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Tone-Deaf Techies
by Romi Mahajan
In yet another tone-deaf ejaculation of mind-blowing idiocy, member of the tech elite Hadi Partovi declared that recession could be good for Seattle. Faithfully reported by Geekwire.
Helping Haymarket
by Romi Mahajan
I make no bones about it- this piece is a plea for help. I’m lucky; so far I’m fine. So the help is not for me. It’s for an institution that I believe in- Haymarket Books. Haymarket is one of the few publishers left that puts out a stream of books on progressive matters, espouses progressive values, and gives “unpublishable” authors a chance to teach us all.
I make no bones about it- this piece is a plea for help. I’m lucky; so far I’m fine. So the help is not for me. It’s for an institution that I believe in- Haymarket Books. Haymarket is one of the few publishers left that puts out a stream of books on progressive matters, espouses progressive values, and gives “unpublishable” authors a chance to teach us all.
Now, clearly, even before the Coronavirus-induced slowdown, there are many people and businesses suffering. And, clearly, there are more existential, even pressing, needs to be attended to. The issue at hand is not about the hierarchy of needs but about the fragility of institutions and the irrevocable nature of certain collapses.
There are a variety of recent precedents to consider. Take one glaring example- for the past ten years, journalism of all sorts has been decimated. Layoffs have been commonplace in newsrooms and almost daily one hears of some publication or another being put in bankruptcy. We’ve all suffered from this fall. Society thrives when investigative journalism exposes abuses of power, when truth-telling prevails over mendacity. We’ve lost these, hopefully not permanently.
Rebuilding institutions that took hundreds of years to nurture is nigh impossible. Even with the best of intentions, we’ll need time—a lot of time. So we have to ensure we maintain these institutions and don’t let them falter to the extent of having to cease operations.
Now, I’m not privy to any such cataclysm at Haymarket but I do know it is suffering from the twin punches of recession and general disinterest in progressive material. On the other hand, Haymarket has a loyal base of people who want to continue to understand the world as it is really not as the propagandists tell us it is.
So, therefore, the appeal. Please consider buying books from Haymarket-directly that is. Or, even better, joining one of their various subscription programs.
It is hard to all the people and institutions you want to right now. I’m feeling the same pinch. This one, to me at least, is important because I can’t imagine a world in which access to good progressive books and analysis isn’t available.
Romi Mahajan in an Author, Marketer, Investor, and Activist
The difference
by Neera Kashyap
The Buddha himself had narrated this story to a married couple. He had waited for them ‘like a hunter on the trail’ in his monastery cell in Jetvana, wishing to teach the husband a few lessons in gender
equity.
Do you think solidarity between women is possible?
by Dr Meenakshi Malhotra
One way to address the issue of difference, rather to sidestep it, is to abandon the idea of solidarity and sisterhood since it is impossible for all feminists or all women to unite on a common platform or under the same banner. The other is to invoke Gayatri Spivak’s idea of strategic essentialism, and concur with Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake’s laying out a program and agenda for third wave feminism:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.